In this #Entspresso episode, host Evan Carmichael opens with his belief that entrepreneurs will solve the world’s biggest problems and introduces the theme of building a great team. Kandi Burruss shares how strategic business partners enable her to pursue multiple ventures, emphasizing that a solo effort cannot sustain growth. Carmichael expands on this by outlining the entrepreneur’s journey from solo bootstrapping to identifying one’s unique, world‑class talent and delegating everything else. He warns that the first hire often fails due to misaligned values and weak leadership, and stresses the need for caring, human‑focused management. To overcome financial constraints, he proposes resourceful hiring models: part‑time specialists, interns, volunteers, and sweat‑equity partnerships. Real‑world proof is given through Carmichael’s own YouTube channel, where adding editors and researchers multiplied his output from weekly to multiple videos per day, allowing him to focus on his on‑camera strengths. Interspersed clips from Richard Branson, Swae Lee, and Beyoncé reinforce the universal message that a motivated, well‑aligned team is the engine behind scaling any business, regardless of industry. The episode ends with a direct question to viewers about the first pivotal hire they need, a shout‑out to Coach Bailey Cooper, and Carmichael’s signature encouragement to “believe in yourself.”
Chapters
Good morning, Believe Nation. My name is Evan Carmichael. My one word is believe, and I believe that entrepreneurs are going to solve all of the world's major problems. So to help you on your journey today, we're going to learn how to build a great team. Over to you, Candy Burris.
It's always good if you can get somebody to partner up with you and with other businesses, because for me, I have a business partner with TAGS, my stores. I have a business partner with Bedroom Candy. If it wasn't for that, I wouldn't be able to do all the things that I'm doing. But because I do have great business partners, they help me keep those things going, you know. So you have to have a great team. You by yourself, it probably wouldn't work. You can't be bud in so many places at one time. So you have to have people to see your vision and, you know, help make your vision happen.
You can't do everything yourself if you want to be a successful entrepreneur. There are only so many hours in a day and you only have so much limited ability that if you try to do everything in your business and never look to scale or grow, then you're going to be limited in how much you can do and how much you can accomplish. Now at the start, you do everything yourself. At the start, you bootstrap, You hustle, you find ways, but quickly you need to figure out what is the thing that you are among the best people in the world at, or have that world-class potential. You are genius-level talent at something. What is that? Figure that out and spend as much time in that lane as possible, and then look to expand by building up people who are great at all the things that you're not good at. Here are a couple of the pitfalls that people fall through when they go through this process. First off, rarely the first person that you hire is a good fit. They may have the skills that you want, but your values don't align, right? You don't have similar one words. You haven't gone through that process. Your values don't align, and so it falls apart. You also likely suck as a leader. Part of now building a team is you need to lead a team. You need to be a good manager. You have to care about your people, not just about them getting the work done, but care about them as human beings and what they're going through and how you can help. And you can be supportive to them. So a lot of times that first hire doesn't work out, and here's what happens to so many entrepreneurs. That person didn't work out, I can't build the team, that was a stupid idea, I'm just gonna go back to doing everything myself because it was so much easier. And then you end up playing small again. So what ends up happening when you hire is they take up a lot of your time, there's a learning curve, they may have some problems at the beginning, but by working through that and maybe getting rid of them and bringing somebody else in, work it through that, getting the right people in place, that's when you can go and explode and do much more meaningful work, spend your time doing the things that make you a lot more excited and have a much bigger impact. A lot of people also say, well, I don't have the money to go out and hire somebody. I can't afford to go out and hire somebody. How am I going to build a team? You know, I can't even pay myself. Well, a couple ideas. One, you don't necessarily need to hire somebody right now. As long as it's on your roadmap, as long as it's something that you're constantly paying attention to that is in your vision so that you are not going to be doing this alone for the rest of your life. Two, you can look at hiring somebody on a part-time basis. The first person I hired was for 1 hour a day, 1 hour a day doing database work for me because he was better at it than I was. And he freed up an hour and a half of my time to go off and do other things that I enjoyed more and I was better at and could help build the business. So you could hire somebody for an hour a day or a couple of hours a week just to free up some of that work that you don't want to do. To focus on bigger things. And 3, you can also look for people to volunteer, to be a part. It might be a partnership in your business and you're both putting sweat equity in. It might be mentoring somebody who is a high school intern or university intern and bringing them into your business. Now you have to do your job of actually mentoring them, but they're looking more for the experience of being involved in what you're doing than for monetary compensation, right? They're getting a grade at their school, so they have to do a good job, and that's what they're looking for, much more than getting paid to do it. So there's always other options. And one of the most important things that you need to understand as an entrepreneur is you need to be resourceful. You will get these kinds of problems constantly. I need to bring on a team, but I can't afford to do it. How do I do that? I need to go and market my company, but I can't afford to take out an ad on the Super Bowl. So how do I go and do that? Right? You will constantly have these restrictions and restraints that are put on you as you try to build a business. You are constantly lacking in resources, and so you succeed by being resourceful, by finding another way, by being creative, by understanding people and what they need and how you might be able to give it to them in a non-monetary way. That's the game of entrepreneurship. I was able to greatly expand my businesses, but my YouTube channel, since that's what you're maybe more familiar with, at the beginning it was me doing videos all by myself. And I would make a video, you know, at most once a week, but usually maybe once a month to twice a month. And then as I brought my first editor on board, that's when I was able to go from once a week max to once a day. That was a huge increase, right? 7 times or more. And then when I got a second editor, when I got researchers, I can move up. I went to 2 a day and went to 3 a day. And so you can greatly improve your productivity by building the team, and I get to focus on what I love doing. I don't like editing. It's not what I love. Christina loves editing. Christina's editing this video. I love you, Christina. Christina loves editing, and what she loves to do, what she's great at, it's amazing. I love being in front of the camera, and it's the highest value that I can bring to the team. If it relied on me being a great editor, this company would fail, because it's not something that I actually want to learn to get better at. There's this old saying: if you want to go far, you go with team. If you want to go fast, you go alone. And so stop focusing on the short-term game of just going fast. Think long-term, think bigger picture, think going far, think about the vision, think about what you're trying to accomplish. You need a team to help you get there. So the question of the day today is, I'm curious, who was the first person that you hired on your team that added incremental improvement and you saw big business growth because of it? Or if you haven't hired yet, Who is the first person that you need on your team to be able to blast through? Really curious to find out. Leave it down in the comments below. I also wanna give a quick shout out to Coach Bailey Cooper from canvassingcoachaustintx.com. Thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word. I really, really, really appreciate the support and I hope you're enjoying the read. So thank you guys again for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love, and I'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot of enespresso.
I wake up every morning, espresso keep me going.
Over the next 5 years, we plan to take on the banking community, we plan to take on the cosmetics industry, we plan to take on the clothing industry, and telecommunications, and one or two other industries, and see whether we can give them a run for their money and do it slightly differently than it's been done before. And why do you think you can do it? Mainly because I think we've got a fantastic team of people. We attract good people. And their skills are translatable to whatever the industry is? It's creativity, it's risk orientation, it's what? I think if you can run one business well, you can run any business. If you know that what matters in business is a good team of people, well-motivated team of people, incentivized well, and given a lot of freedom to go out and prove themselves, you can pretty well achieve anything.
What do you credit for your success?
Man, you gotta have a great team. It's all about having the right people around you. Surprise, surprise, another night of turn up.
Whoa!
Both who are solid workers, but also just positive influences to you. You know what I mean? People that inspire you, people who bring good energy every day. That and just, you know, hard work and dedication. You sound so passionate about so many diverse pieces of your life that the big question is, how do you juggle all that?
Like, how do you make all of that happen and successfully?
From your music career to being a mom, to being a life partner, to like all of that is so hard to juggle. How do you do it? What's the secret behind that?
I don't know how I'm going to keep doing it. That's a good question. Because with a baby, things tend to change a lot. But, you know, I have a great team, people who understand me very well, who understand my cause, my commitments, and who support him and make my life easier. So it is very important to be well surrounded.
