"Building a Successful YouTube Channel: Expert Tips from Evan Carmichael & Phoebe Chongchua"

And we are live! Welcome everybody to another YouTube Hangout. Super excited to be back on with you. I love Thursdays, get to do all these interviews, so much fun. I have a repeat guest with me. You may have remembered my special guest Phoebe when we talked, I don't know, I want to say 2 weeks ago about the brand Journalism Advantage. I was interviewing her on my channel and now she wanted to interview me for her podcast. Today we're going to talk about how to have success with YouTube for all you guys out there wanting to have more success on YouTube. So Phoebe, welcome back.

Hey, thanks for having me. So good to be here.

Cool. So Phoebe is going to run this like her podcast, so I'm going to turn over the reins to her and she's going to go through her intro and whatever magic stuff she does. You guys can check out the Brand Journalism Advantage. Is it thebrandjournalismadvantage.com?

Is that where people can find us? Yes, that's right. Or even easier than typing that is thinklikeajournalist.com. They both direct there. So cool, super easy to get there. And right, I've got the reins, so let's go, right? Giddy up, here we go. Well, you know, this is really cool, Brand Journalism Community, because we're doing something a little bit different. And I really want to direct you to EvanCarmichael.com to check out his YouTube channel and learn about what he's doing for entrepreneurs. Because you guys come to my show to learn a lot of information about brand journalism, storytelling, entrepreneurship, and this goes hand in hand. So, so fun. I was on Evan's show a little while back at the time of this this recording and now Evan is joining us and we are doing it as a Google Hangout. Evan is really testing me here and pushing me to move into that space of video. Having come from the world of TV, I really need to do more of that. Thank you Evan for getting me here. Welcome Brand Journalism Community. I am Phoebe Cheung Chua. Thanks for tuning in to the Brand Journalism Advantage Podcast. Here we go with the inside scoop. On today's show, Evan Carmichael. Evan believes in entrepreneurs. At the age of 19, he built then sold a biotech software company. Now at just 22 years old, he was a VC helping to raise $500,000 to $15 million. Today he runs EvanCarmichael.com, a popular website which is loaded with information for entrepreneurs. He breathes and bleeds entrepreneurship. He is obsessed with it and aims to help 1 billion entrepreneurs change the world. Welcome to the show, Evan. How are you?

Thanks for having me, Phoebe. I'm pumped. I'm ready to do this.

Yeah, me too, me too. Well, we share a word in common, as we were discussing before we got online, and that's believe. I want you to quickly tell me how that word came about to you. Why is it so impactful?

Yeah, I, so I believe everybody has one word that defines them. It's actually the topic of my new book. I think most people aren't aware of what their main core values are, and as a result, they kind of live life not as purposefully as it could be. And so for me, I was running a business, I was having some success, but I felt kind of disconnected. I felt like I could be having a greater impact. I felt like I could do more. And I think a lot of people feel that, like, I'm doing okay, but I feel like there's more to me. I feel like I'm not reaching my potential. And so I started looking inward to figure out what is it that I'm all about before getting to what project I'm going to work on. Like, who is Evan Carmichael? What do I stand for? You know, what's the most important core value to me? And it kept coming back to this word believe. And I ended up doing this crazy thing and built my entire business around believe. And everything that I've touched that had to do with belief just instantly started doing well and taking off. And, you know, we can go further into all that if you want, but I think kind of understanding your core value, what you're all about, and then bringing that to your business and your life so everything is done a lot more on purpose will make you happier as well as have a much greater impact on the people around you.

Well, you know, brand journalism community, we talk about positivity, we talk about storytelling, and belief is certainly at the core when you want to launch a brand or a business. If you don't have that, the chances of succeeding are very, very slim. I've often referred referred to my career in TV and the fact that I was able to get into the San Diego marketplace at 19. I had to really believe. So great, great word. What we're talking about in this episode, Brand Journalism Community, is building your internet TV channel. I love this because Evan's done a remarkable job at it. Make sure you go to his site. You'll find him in the show notes at thinklikeajournalist.com and check it out. You'll see, I mean, it's literally like turning on a great cable channel and just watching. I mean, you know, I do it all the time with your stuff. So good, good stuff. But before we go into those top tips, let's kick it off with your icebreaker. And Evan, you know, this just doesn't surprise me in light of what I read in your bio, but at 5 years old, get this, Evan was convincing his, yes, 3-year-old little sister to go into business with him essentially. And you were selling— was it art and baseball cards? Tell me about this.

Yeah, so yeah, my first thing was selling art. I was 5, my sister was 3, and I convinced her to just draw. We went to our bedroom, we were drawing stuff on paper, and then I wanted to go door to door in my neighborhood and sell them. And I sold my first piece to my next-door neighbor for 5 cents or 10 cents. And yeah, I was in business. That was my first entrepreneurial venture.

Well, that's cool because I got to tell you, my older sister, she didn't sell her artwork, she sold my mom's jewelry. And let me tell you, that didn't go over too well. Little entrepreneurs running around. Alright, well, you know, we kick it off with the Think Like a Journalist quote, and I know this is going to resonate with you, but I'd love to get your input. The true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer. Nolan Bushnell, entrepreneur. What do you think of that?

I love that. Yeah, I think a lot of entrepreneurs are dreamers too, but I think the ones that make it are when they can combine it, because everybody has some kind of dream. Even people who are in a company, there's a lot of people who've thought about wanting to start their own business and they don't. Yeah. And the biggest thing that separates someone who has a lot of success as an entrepreneur from the ones who don't is that they actually did something about it. They don't just dream about it. They don't just complain when somebody else takes their idea and make tons of money off of it. They had the courage to get up and take action. And it's not about being a Type A personality or introvert, extrovert, or tons of resources and no resources. People, successful entrepreneurs come from all walks of life. But the one thing that they all had in common is that they got started and took action. So it's a must to be a success as an entrepreneur.

For sure. Well, share with us a success tip or a quote? We know that your one word is believe, but what's something that will be impactful as people want to build out maybe their own internet channels? Maybe there's a quote or a tip that you'd like to share around that, or one that's just meaningful to you.

One of my favorite quotes comes from Calvin Coolidge, and it's actually on the desk kind of behind me back there, where he says, persistence alone is omnipotent. And that's maybe a mouthful and not easily kind of understood by everybody, but he's basically going on— and Calvin Coolidge was the President of the United States, a lot of people don't know that either— but basically saying it's not about how wise you are, it's not about how many resources you have, it's not about most of the things people think make up success. It's persistence. It's just getting up and doing it again and doing it again and doing it again. And when you have a dream and you want to do something that hasn't been done before, especially, there's going to be people who hate on it. There's going to be people who tell you you can't do it. You're going to tell yourself sometimes that you can't do it and that you're crazy. And what am I doing? I should go back and do the safe thing. And the thing that just keeps you going is that persistence. The persistence will solve the problems of humanity. Just keep on attacking it until you climb that mountain.

That's right. Never, never giving up. Well, it certainly sounds like you have that thriving spirit from all of what we've heard. But what I'd like you to do is take us back in time. Let us get to know you a little bit more with a little bit more of your backstory, and then take us forward to that moment in time that is considered your proudest moment, your career highlight.

Oh, wow. Okay, so how far back do you want to go? We're going back to 5 years old.

We already went to 5 years old. Just fill us in with, you know, fill in a little bit of the gaps where we talked about, you know, you were 19, you built this business. I'm kind of curious How, you know, at 19 would you build and sell a biotech software? And then don't forget to take me to that moment, that one moment, one story that's your proudest moment.

Sure. I think I had a lot of entrepreneurial tendencies growing up. I didn't really recognize them. Nobody in my family was entrepreneurs. My parents had safe kind of jobs. They supported everything I did. They supported my baseball card ventures and my you know, lemonade stands. And when I tried to turn raisins into grapes outside and try to sell them and didn't realize it goes the other way. I still thought I wanted to be a banker. And in my high school yearbook, when I was graduating, it says, where are you going to be in 10 years? For me, it was VP at a bank. So I had a lot of tendencies, but I didn't, you know, I didn't have the environment around me to kind of push me to be an entrepreneur. I connected with two people in my university and they had a software company that I joined as an owner in, and that was my first real exposure to entrepreneurship. And I was faced with a really, really, really tough decision as to whether I should go— I had opportunities to go work for the banks that I thought I wanted to do and make, you know, $80,000, $100,000 starting salary and fly around the world and all of these great things that I thought I wanted versus be at this startup where I was not making anything $300 a month. And that was one of the toughest decisions of my life, was deciding I'm going to— I don't want to live with regret. I want to— I'm going to try this and give myself a year and just see how it goes. I could live with turning the jobs down and come back next year and get a different job. Maybe that exact same job, but I can find another job where I felt like this opportunity isn't going to come around again. And I owed it to myself to try. And that's one of the proudest moments of my early career, I think, because I've used that framework, that decision-making process for every big decision that I've had to do in my life. Will I regret not doing this? Mm-hmm. And if I'm going to regret it, then I have to do it, even if I'm afraid, if I'm scared, if I don't have the resources, even if whatever reason. Comes into your head when you're afraid of something. If I'm going to regret not doing this, then I have to go and do it. And that time, the first time making that decision was so hard. Looking back now, it's so easy to say, oh, it was like the easiest decision ever. Like, of course it made sense, but it was, it was massively painful. And ever since then, it's been a lot easier to make those tough decisions because I just fast forward to life at 90. Or, you know, by the time I'm there, it might be like we're living forever. So I'll be like 250 looking back on my, on my years and just not living a life full of regret. It's really helped me make a lot of important decisions.

I think a lot of people listening to that when they hear not living with regret, you know, they immediately might feel that, that twinge of pain or something because they go, oh, I regret this. So I think the message is, if you're living in that space now, And hearing what Evan's saying, you have to move beyond that because the real risk is living with it, right? Living with that regret of something I know was a burning desire and I wanted to do. For me, it was that newscaster. I was scared to death to talk to a microphone or a camera. I mean, so how do you become a newscaster then? So I know exactly what you're talking about. Evan, I'd like for you to share with us a time, because this goes hand in hand, it makes people understand and helps them, you know, move to that space where they're not going to live with regret. That there are going to be mistakes. There are going to be those moments in time. I call them "when it didn't work." So share with us a story now about when it didn't work. What was your struggle? And really unpack it. Take us to that moment so we can feel what you were experiencing. And then tell us how maybe you found correction as direction through that "when it didn't work" moment.

Correction is direction. I like that. I like that. Yeah, so especially in that first company, I'll take you to one of the hardest days ever in my life. I was sitting there with my business, we were not having success. I'm making $300 a month. I'm lying to my friends saying that I can't go out to dinner or whatever with them because I'm busy and living the entrepreneur dream and all that. I just really couldn't afford it and I didn't— I was too ashamed to tell them. I'm the kind of guy who I worked hard at everything I did and I knew when I worked hard I got results. In school and in athletics and whatever I did. And here I was, I was working, I was grinding, like every waking hour was going to this business and I was not getting results. And I just felt absolutely worthless, like I'm adding no value to the world. And it's just with, with months and months and months of this happening, it just takes its toll on you and you feel like a total failure. And I wasn't used to feeling that way. So I was at a family dinner and I remember having a disagreement with my partner over what the direction of the company should be. And I just told him, you know what, I'm tired of feeling useless. I quit. I'm out. I'm like, I'm done. You do whatever you want to do. And I hung up the phone and just started bawling, you know, stuff coming out of my nose, my eyes, like just terrible. And my mom comes up. It was, I think it was Thanksgiving or something. She hears me, she puts her hand on my shoulder and I don't even know what she says. And just like, that's the lowest point ever in my life. And what I learned from that, the correction is direction. I had a terrible night's sleep and I woke up the next day and realized, like, I don't want to be a quitter. Like, hearing those words come out of my mouth just didn't feel right. And I still had passion for this. Realized was I just have to find a different way to stand. I have to find a different way to do this. And going to rock bottom helped me realize that, you know what, I'm not the first guy to try to sell software before. You know, like somebody's figured this out. Why do I have to come up with every genius idea myself? Somebody has figured this out. I need to learn from that and apply it to my business. And so I looked up Microsoft and Bill Gates and how Bill Gates started. Zero to one. That's it. Not how he makes another million now. It's like, who cares? Zero to one. How did he get there? And it was through partnerships. And so that strategy I applied to my business, and that's actually how I started to get out of the hole. But coming down to the bottom, the correction is direction moment for me was realizing that I'm not the first guy to try to do this. Somebody has figured it out and I can learn from it, tweak it, and apply it to make it work for me.

Wow, what a cool story. But, you know, we don't, we don't grow like that. I don't think anyway, until you hit those moments. We've all had those. Really deep, dark moments when we feel some level of shame. And just being able to push through that shows your character. And like we talked about at the very beginning, that entrepreneurial spirit of perseverance, right? And the taking action.

100%. And a big credit goes to my business partner too, where, you know, I quit on him. I said, no, you know, I'm out. And then the next day I woke up and I like, I wanted to keep going. And I just showed up at his apartment like I normally— I work from his dining room table out of his condo. That was our headquarters. And I showed up the next day and he didn't even— like, we had no conversation. I just looked him in the eyes and like went back to work. And he could have given me a really hard time. Yeah, right. Like, he could have said, I thought you quit, man. I thought you're out. Like, you could have had a big ego trip. And so to his credit too, I was able to just go back to work and we eventually found our way out of that massive hole. Yeah, worst day of my life.

Oh man, I can imagine. But you know, there have been so many better days, so that's cool. Thanks for sharing that. Let's dive into this building your internet TV channel, Evan, because, I mean, alright, so you came from that, you were 19, you did some other things, you know, VC, but then you got this idea. So take me back to when the idea came about to do the channel and then Give us an idea of like, you know, did you just say, hey, everybody's watching YouTube, I want to be there? What happened?

Yeah, so when I started YouTube, I didn't want to be YouTube famous. Like, it wasn't a thing. YouTube celebrity was not the aspiration. I think a lot of people now are like, I want to be, I want to be a YouTuber. That's my career. I never thought I would make money from YouTube. It wasn't my goal. I found a lot of success in modeling others. So Bill Gates saved my business even though I never met him because of how he started Microsoft. And there wasn't a lot of great resources that I found online in a visual format. I like, I like learning visually. There are a lot of books and stuff, but I wanted a visual format. So I started making videos on YouTube of successful entrepreneurs and how they got started, partially for myself to keep learning from these great entrepreneurs and also to share it in hopes that so that other people wouldn't have to feel the big low that I felt when I was starting my company. So I did a bunch of those, and then people started asking me questions, and I would write out long email responses that would take 20, 30 minutes. And I thought, why don't I just turn this into a video? I'd rather talk than write, and it'll help them, and it'll help other people who have the same problem. And so I started making video responses out of that and started building up, I guess, an expertise. There was no strategy though. It wasn't like— this was not part of my plan. I think now if you're looking at getting online and building a brand and being seen as an expert or being a reporter or journalist, I think it's a critical component. But when I was starting out, it was just curiosity. I wish I could say like I knew it, I had it all planned out, I'm a genius, but it was all like just fumbling my way through.

All right, so let's talk a little bit about it. Somebody who's listening and, you know, because I always encourage brands on this podcast, The Brand Journalism Advantage, to be the media. And what I mean by that is exactly what you're doing. You know, you intentionally or not intentionally, you luckily wound up that way. And so you get great interviews. So let's, let's talk about going back in time. You had this idea, you started doing it, you started learning from it. But now, you know, 20/20 is hindsight, right? So what would you tell our audience listening today What are the first steps of doing it? Obviously taking action, setting up your video and not being afraid to get on. We hear a lot of that, but what are some of the strategic strategies that you can share with us to build it? Because now when people watch or when they're starting to do this, there's so much noise and so much disruption. How do you get through and find that audience?

So first off, I would say there's always room for quality. In whatever industry you're in, a lot of industries are noisy. There's always room for quality at the top. So you have to make something good. If you make something good, you will be able to gain an audience. I would say understand what it is that you want to— like, what are you standing for? What's your message? Like, if you're reporting on the news and you report it the same way everybody else is reporting it, you're going to lose. You need your own your own style, your own edge, your own one word, your own like, Phoebe doesn't do it the way everybody else does it. You know, you need your own Phoebe recipe, your own special sauce has to come out in your delivery of the content. I think it gives you a lot more freedom to have it on your own channel, where if you're in a news program, you're expected to be formal and, you know, say these exact words and don't deviate from the script. And these are how anchors you know, are supposed to act, where it doesn't allow for a lot of personality to come out, where with your own show, you can do whatever you want, you know? And so I think that's super important. I would expect to suck at the start. Now, if your audience are already journalists, they already have some kind of on-camera experience, they might be ahead of the game compared to most people, but expect to suck. Like, expect your first thing not to do well. I think a lot of times we put so much pressure on it on ourselves that the first thing has to be great. It's like going on a first date with somebody and expecting to marry them. You put so much pressure that it doesn't work out. Like the first time you get on a snowboard, you're going down a hill, you're going to fall down 100 times, right? That's just— it's okay. And I think people look to the bigger YouTubers and they say, well, look at how that person's delivering. Look at how great Phoebe is at her podcast. I want to do it like her. And you get on and you do your first podcast And it's nowhere near, but you can't compare where you're starting with where Phoebe's at now because of all the experience that she's had. And I— so I think it's important that the quantity leads to the quality. Like, you got to do a lot of work. I'm not gifted at this. I have 4,000+ videos of experience. And if you go back on my channel, look at me early days, it's embarrassing. I watch it like, oh man. I should remove that video, it's so bad.

No, it's all good. And that sounds like my early newscasting days. Embarrassing. Thankfully YouTube wasn't around then, so it's not archived to the web. Well, can you give us maybe 3 things? And I'm talking about in building the channel, obviously, you know, you want quality over quantity, but there is that pressure because if your quality means releasing 1 video once every 3 months, you know, you're not going to build that audience. You have to be more consistent. Think about TV news. You got to be able to turn it on and, and, and have it there. So what are 3 things that you learned through this process that helped you build your channel? And that could be, you know, whether you were using Instagram or Pinterest or buying ads via YouTube. What are the 3 things that you think really helped you?

Sure. Well, first off, addressing that, I've had the most success within the platform. So I haven't had success by promoting it on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram or going off platform to promote it. I've had most of my success within platform.

Um, and was that organic or were you doing paid? You know, did you build eventually into paid?

Like, paid doesn't give you subscribers. Paid doesn't give you the long-term success. Paid will Like if you want vanity metrics and you want to say, hey, I have X number of views and that helps you go get corporate sponsorship or whatever, then you can do it, but it's not going to lead to real engagement. So it's a model, especially if there's like— if you had some sponsored content that you really want to drive views up on, you know, you could put a paid program behind it to get some exposure. And most brands, they don't even know what they're doing on YouTube. So all they care about is the views. And so you can inflate your numbers, but it's not going to help your channel really in the long term.

It's like the vanity metrics on any of these things. You know, if you have a Twitter feed that has tons and tons and tons of people, but they're not quality people and they're not engaging, what's the point? So, okay, so you did it organic and two other things, and you did it within the platform. That's interesting.

Yeah, I would say create content that you want to see, that you feel is missing. So a lot of the stuff that I've done, I was the first to do it because I didn't even want to do it. I wish somebody else had done it. I wanted to just be a consumer of it, but it wasn't being done. And so I went out and had to do it and now built a team around 6 people full time working on my YouTube channel. I had to go out and make it. And so like, where's the hole in the market? If you're a journalist reporting on something, What, what's the problem with journalism that you see today and how can you fix that problem for yourself and bring it out? And then if I had to give another tip, I would say I saw a really big jump when I moved to daily content instead of weekly. Moving to daily content, I think one, within just a YouTube algorithm, they like seeing more content coming out, and as people watch one video, they want to see what else you have, and they watch the next video, and the next video, the next video. And I think also it just helped me get a lot better in that the more videos I did, the more comfortable I got, the more expressive I became, the more my nature came out, the more I kind of figured out what I was all about. And so jumping from like 1 to 2 to 3 videos a day. Like, now we're up to 5 to 9 videos a day on the channel.

Wow.

But the biggest jump, I think, came from once a week to once a day.

Yeah.

Um, and so I would encourage, like, yes, quality is important. Absolutely. If your stuff is garbage, it doesn't matter if you're posting 20 times a day, it's not going to help you. But understanding that the quantity leads to the quality— you're going to suck at the start and you have to put in the work to get good at it. And don't be so embarrassed because nobody's watching you to start anyway. So when you're throwing out all of these crappy videos, you know, nobody's watching you. So get out there, practice.

That's right, definitely. Alright, it's time to think like a journalist. Evan, you've been hired to help an ailing company. It's about to financially collapse. Now its reputation's shot. You've got a month, a $1,000 budget, a smartphone, and a laptop. How do you begin to turn this company around?

I would look at what strengths the CEO, ideally founder of the business, has. And I would, I would leverage that. You don't really need money to do it. I don't even need $1,000 to do it. I would ideally try to get the story out on a video format because people connect with video better. But what I would want to see is the passion and conviction of the founder telling the story as to why he or she started the business, why they're at where they're at now, and how they're going to come out of it. And it doesn't have to be highly produced. It could be off your cell phone. You know, if I had $1,000, I would, I would just buy a, you know, a $5 or $10 like tripod stand for that cell phone. So it's not like wobbly as I'm going through it. Maybe even an external microphone jack, but you don't really need that. And I would want to start storytelling around the founder as to why you're here and the passion to want to come through. I need to feel, if I'm a consumer, if I'm a, like, if it's a public company, if I'm shareholders, if it's the media, I want to feel a personal connection to the founder and the story that's behind it and the confidence that you're going to get through it.

What is one piece of technology, video, multimedia equipment, or an app that you just can't live without?

I can't live without YouTube, but it's more a platform. In terms of the technology, honestly, it doesn't matter. Like right now, recording off a webcam, and I have a Yeti microphone. I filmed off my iPad, off my phone, off of a $10,000 camera off of my Handycam. I'll still make videos. But here's an example. I got— I won't say the name— I got hired by a company to be on their TV series, and they flew me out to their offices on the West Coast, and they had this huge production with a co-host and like 8 to 10 people on set. With lights and cameras and sound and like all this stuff, right? Yeah, all of the gear, like tricked out to the max. Like, you know, they're spending tons of money, they're hiring me to come out there and do this thing. And then while I'm there, I'm taking my Sony Handycam and, and walking through the streets of the city doing my own videos for my YouTube channel. And, and just one of my videos got more views than, than all of the, like, miniseries that we did on the interviews on their channel.

Yeah.

And so, like, I feel like it's such a— they wasted so much money on this, but they can— I don't know how they justify it. They justify it somehow, but it's not about the gear. And, and so many people ask me, like, what gear do you use? It's like, don't get, don't get tricked up in the gear. Much more is you. Like, you put Phoebe on something with a crappy, like, 5-year-old iPhone, and she's going to crush it compared to some, you know, rookie who's got all the fancy gear in the world. And so much more important, like, it's easy to focus on that because, because it's easy to focus on. Like, yeah, it's easy to think that, hey, if I just get that camera, that's going to make the difference. I don't want to put in all the hard work of actually making myself better and improving my skills as a, as a host or a thought leader or interviewer. So yeah, like there's no single piece of tech that I need.

Yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely true. All right, this is going to be a tough one, but just name one book, documentary, blog, podcast, or internet TV channel that you'd like to recommend to the community.

You know, I just made a list. I just put out a video of my 7 favorite YouTube channels for entrepreneurs. And I put my own channel as number one, mostly I think because of the— like, I collect, I aggregate famous entrepreneurs and innovators and thought leaders and put out their wisdom. And so, like, even if you don't like what I have to say, we collect this data from— instead of watching 40 hours of Elon Musk videos, here it is, his best, best stuff that he's ever said in 8 minutes. For you to hear. So I think it's— I'm a big fan of my own channel. But if I had to pick another one, the one that I like most— there's two— I would go with Gary Vaynerchuk's channel. He's on the marketing side of things. He's very aggressive and can come off as rude and, you know, swears a lot. But if you can get past that, the message he has is a really good one. And the other one was Lewis Howes, who has another YouTube channel, more known as a podcaster. So you're familiar with him, School of Greatness, but also has a YouTube channel that has video of his podcast. And he interviews, you know, world-class performers in athletics and authors and entrepreneurship and has them on his show at least once a week, maybe twice a week. And so those two Those two guys, I watch every video pretty much that they put out, and I would recommend checking out.

As we start to wind down, it's expert predictions time. The year is 2025. So from your vantage point in particular, you know, building this internet TV channel that you didn't expect to be making money off of, but it's come, you know, into a nice business for you. Tell us what you think the landscape will look like And what's one piece of parting advice to build a competitive advantage about 9 years out?

Wow, Phoebe hits the questions. I would say you want to be paying attention to where people's attention is. And I think people have been really slow to adapt to it, especially the bigger companies. I think even now the influencers, the people with popular YouTube channels are reaching more people than a lot of traditional media and the advertisers still haven't figured it out and a lot of the money is still just going to come in. And so paying attention to where people's attention is and is going is super important. It may not always be YouTube, you know, it may be Shmup Tube that comes out and like that's the thing, right? Or Snapchat is the thing, right? And so understanding where people's attention is and then bringing it, especially if you have a skill. Like in the early days of YouTube, people sucked. And still people now, the people who are asking, people who are doing interviews and podcasts, a lot of them suck. Like they don't have the skills yet. They're working on them, but they've just been podcasting for a year. Where if you took your skills and your abilities of like a decade or however long you've been a journalist for asking questions, you could destroy in the industry. And they're not. And so like all these influencers who have grown up in prominence are there just because people— there's this huge demand and the people with the most talent people who are already on, already on, already are, sorry, on-air personalities, they could be just crushing it. And so I would just be thinking about paying attention to where people's eyeballs are and then trying to keep going there.

And as we close out, you know, adding to that, circling back, brand journalism community, to where we were in the beginning, which is talking about not just dreaming but actually taking action. And then of course Evan's favorite word, and mine too actually, believe, right? It's all possible. It's all possible. And you know, if you think about it, you know, like I have guests on the show when I asked them that question about 2025, I can't remember which episode it was, but gentleman said, yeah, they're going to— technology will be implanted in us. And I mean, it's wild, the stuff that's coming out. So for me, you know, there's people who will be afraid of all of this and afraid, like they want to keep it the same, you know. You have to, like you said, learn and push forward and continue to develop and persevere. So I just thank you so much. I love what you're doing. I'm definitely a fan of your channel as well. So thank you so much, Evan, for being on the Brand Journalism Advantage podcast.

Cool. Thanks for having me, Phoebe. It's been fun.

Well, that was fun.

Yeah. Okay, cool. So good. Do you have any like closeout that you want to do?

Yeah, so I actually, well, we add in a close at the end.

Okay.

So we roll in some music and stuff like that. And I don't know how you want to do that. I'm happy to share that with you. But actually what I ask my guests to do is to introduce the show. So, and the way the guest does that is says their name, what we're talking about. So we're talking about building your internet TV channel. And you're listening to the Brand Journalism Advantage. So, you know, I'm Evan Carmichael. However you want to introduce yourself. We're talking about building your internet TV channel and you're listening to The Brand Journalism Advantage. So if you could do that for me, that'd be awesome.

Let me write this down to make sure.

Yeah.

Yeah. Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. Let me say entrepreneur and YouTuber.

Yeah. And you're listening to The Brand Journalism Advantage.

The Brand Journalism, Journalism Advantage.

But just before that, I would say what we're talking about. So I'm Evan Carmichael, YouTuber and and, you know, author, entrepreneur. We're talking about building your internet TV channel and you're listening to, so you close with, and you're listening to the Brand Journalism Advantage.

Cool. We got people watching live. They're like, is this still supposed to be live? Yes, this is still supposed to be live. Okay. You're in behind. This is what happens behind the scenes on a podcast.

That's right.

Video podcast edition. Okay, so let me read it first. Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael, entrepreneur and YouTuber. Today we're talking about building your internet TV channel, and you're listening to the Brand Journalism Advantage.

You got it.

Okay, let me do that with a little more oomph.

Yeah.

Okay. Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael, entrepreneur and YouTuber. Today we're talking about building your internet TV channel, and you're listening to the Brand Journalism Advantage.

Hey, I didn't hear your name.

Did I not say hi, Evan Carmichael?

I don't know, you can ask people listening, but I didn't hear it, so maybe do that one more time.

Alright, again. Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael, entrepreneur and YouTuber. Today we're talking about building your internet TV channel, and you're listening to The Brand Journalism Advantage.

Boom, love it. So, so good, Evan. That was fun, and I really appreciate you being on the show.

Cool. Do you want to get to some of the comments?

Yeah, of course. Of course.

Cool. Andrew's talking about having a great why. We talked back to like the regret comment, I think.

Yeah.

Do you have a great why that's the foundation for your other whys?

Is this a statement, question?

Yeah, well, just like, yeah, I guess the question, like, do you What's your great why? Do you have a great why that is the foundation for your other whys? Like one big why that's above the others.

Yeah. And the little baby whys underneath. Yeah. So, you know, I do. So I am all about the story. For me, I became a, you know, people become journalists for different reasons, but I really felt that I wanted a front seat to the world, right? To be able to tell those stories. So my why is always about getting the story out. And today as a brand journalist in work working for corporations, in helping other people build what's so important to them. It's gone beyond just telling the story, but helping them live what I would call purposeful lives. And, you know, these, the integrity of doing and pursuing what you want. And that's what drives me to do what I do. That's why I have, you know, some 350 episodes of the Brand Journalism Advantage podcast, because I'm learning from that. But then I also feel like, hey, I could have done this and called up and gotten these interviews and just kept it to myself. But I felt like it's so important important to get it out to the world as well. So that's kind of what's driven me and the stories have changed. I don't cover double homicides anymore, thankfully. I now get to cover the cool stuff like people like yourself and the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur is going to be on my show. So people like that who are really doing awesome stuff and that's what inspires me and that's what literally when I feel those moments where I want to give up, That's what keeps me going.

People love the Babywise comment. They're hashtagging Babywise. Woo! Yeah! Hashtag storytellers, hashtag Babywise. J-Rise is asking, why is it called the Brand Journalism Advantage?

Good question. And sometimes I wonder if I should have called it that. But, you know, here's kind of a shout out to John Lee Dumas who does Entrepreneur on Fire. I met with him and I actually told his story, a video story, and we got into this discussion about brand journalism and he kind of advised me, just call it what it is. And so in that moment I was like, well, it's brand journalism and it gives you a competitive advantage. So if you put it all together, that's why at the end of the show I always ask the question, what's your competitive advantage in 2025? Brand journalism is storytelling for brands not necessarily about brands, but it's to benefit them and their audience. And so it's not content marketing. It literally is sort of a new style storytelling, and it gives you that advantage in your marketplace. So the brand journalism advantage, it's super long, but well, there you have it.

Cool. Well, the follow-up was thank you for the clarity, and people have a lot of respect for positive storytellers. So there you go. How do you stay on top of social trends, collective conversations, and the flow of attention?

Mm, man. Okay, so my iPad's sitting here next to me, my MacBooks are here, my smartphone. I am on social media all the time. I do a lot of events So I'm asked to emcee a lot of different things. I just did, at the time of this recording, the La Costa Film Festival and had a lot of the directors in there learning about their storytelling from a cinematography angle. But I keep on my iPhone and my Apple Watch, I keep tons of content flowing to me and I read all the time, I watch all the time, I am an avid learner, and I think you'll hear that about most journalists. They want to learn, learn, learn. It's, you know, it's like this insatiable desire that we have. And so I'm always plugged into that, maybe sometimes to a fault, you know, that I have to kind of like, okay, let's chill out and have those moments. So that's why I go and I practice yoga and I try to unplug from it. But I I really consider it my job. I can't do a good job for my clients and I do take on lots of clients especially in the lifestyle space and I'm expected to know. I can't know everything. I mean, I often call myself a strategist rather than an expert even though I ask expert predictions but because we're always learning and we're always honing that craft. So I've spent 20 years in front of cameras and and microphones and things like that, but there's always something I learn from someone else. So I think that if you keep those streams alive, and then I use things, I can tell you, I use BundlePost, I use Hootsuite, I use Apple News, I use Google News, I use Twitter, everything you can imagine to bring that in and just kind of go through it. So I set aside a portion of my day to really get that download. And then I try to stay up on everything, even the things that I'm maybe not as, you know, as into. I still think it's important to know about, and that's a journalist perspective for sure. Cool.

Well, people are saying good answer, I like the honesty, thank you, nice, hashtag avid learner. So they're liking it. Maybe one last question because I know we—

Yeah, sure.

Basically asking about on-air interviewers. How can people be better on-air interviewers or what are you seeing wrong with how people are interviewing on air?

So here's what I'd recommend. I started out at KPBS, which is the public broadcast station. Now that's radio, but I wanted to be on TV. I got my feet wet there, and I worked for, you know, a cable portion of the station for the visually impaired. I just practiced. So much like Evan said, I think you said 4,000 videos or something like that, you get better by doing. That is the only way. So what I do is I carry this, and I carry a secondary iPhone because I teach iPhone storytelling. Sometimes I'm plugged in on this one and sometimes I'm using this with camera gear attached and I'm telling stories. Sometimes these stories get on the air as far as when I say on the air I'm talking about your non-traditional, now YouTube, but sometimes they make it on the air on TV, news segments, that kind of thing as well. The way you get better is to force yourself to do it. If you want to be a better writer, write every day, read every day. Make it a practice. Same thing with my yoga, same thing with the interviewing. Get these people onto your show. Start as small as you have to start. Ask them, you know, I do a lot of speaking for people because I'm happy to help. You know, that's what got me off the ground. But the number one tip is don't just do it, review it. Okay, and I didn't mean it to sound that way, but it kind of came out that way. You know, literally don't just do it, review it. Because when I started out in the industry, I was afraid to watch myself on camera because I was just horrified. I didn't think I looked good, I didn't like the way I sounded, I was super critical. All of this goes through your head. You have to be able to watch it and review it because if you don't, you're just basically doing without evaluating. That's the same thing as if you work for a brand or your business and you go out and you put out all this content and you never look to see is anybody reading it or what's happening with it or you don't measure it. You get better through measuring results. Same when you hit the gym, you get better by knowing how much you lifted last week versus how much you're lifting this week, right? So that is probably one of the things that I see the least practiced. And when I, when I coach in this area and I videotape folks, often they don't want to watch it. You know, they just want to hear me give their feedback. And I'll say, or even after a podcast, you know, what's really great, I've noticed a trend lately is the podcast the interviewee will say to me, "What could I have done better?" So if you ask that question, that also helps. But literally go back and listen to it, as painful as it may be, and a lot of times you'll find it's not painful because it really was indeed good. The final part that I would say to that is just be real. When I learned— I start off talking about KPBS— when I learned to watch their style, if you listen to Ira Glass and you, you follow the great story, and those guys are really great storytellers. It's different from TV news because we have a very commercialized, structured style, which actually I love this YouTube space and Facebook because I can break away from that in a way that I couldn't break away from it as a TV newscaster because I had to hit certain times. And you know, there's a countdown going on, 5, 4, 3, you got to hit this soundbite, right? And there's all this going on like you were talking about with all the cameras and everything. So it's a different vibe. So I I think now is the greatest time for some of the people who are just super low-key. They don't have that sing-songiness in their voice that comes from, you know, a newscaster that has been poorly trained or just, you know, isn't plugged in. So that last parting advice, after reviewing it and being real, is keeping in your head who you're talking to and being in the present moment, because you will go to somewhere else if you're not in the present moment. And when your delivery isn't isn't in the present moment, you're not gonna sound good. You're gonna sound canned or fake, and people don't resonate with that. So now we can be as real as we can be, and that's what's awesome. I love that.

Very cool. The fountain of wisdom over there. I love it. Well, Phoebe, thank you so much for the opportunity. Thank you guys for watching on the livestream too, and all the great questions You can check Phoebe out at thinklikeajournalist.com. This podcast coming out in a couple weeks.

Yeah, maybe even sooner. I'm going to link it together with, you know, some of the founders of— or not founders, but the managing editor and the editor-in-chief of Entrepreneur. So good, good stuff.

Cool. Well, thank you guys again for watching. Phoebe and I both believe in you. We hope you continue to believe in yourselves and whatever your one word is. Much love, guys. We'll see you soon.

Bye-bye.