Evan Carmichael left a university job to co-found a biotech software company, sold it, then took a VC role while speaking at a YMCA event with three people in the audience. That small talk sparked his passion for helping entrepreneurs. He built a website for event promotion into a content hub, then YouTube and social media, measuring success by community engagement.
Chapters
How did I get started? So I got a great question from one of my readers, Dennis. Love you guys. Dennis wrote in to me, he's on my newsletter list, and he wrote in to say, Evan, you didn't tell me how you got started with what you're doing, man, so would you care to tell me a short tale on that, dude? Dennis, thanks for the question. So, quick story I'll put together. When I was in university, I had job offers from companies that I thought would be awesome to work with a couple years ago, and I felt like I wanted to bet on myself and just try my own business. And I had a biotech software company with two friends, and we struggled in the beginning. I was making nothing, and we turned it around, and in a couple years I got the company acquired, and my partners went to California as part of the deal, and I stayed here. And that's when I, I struggled to figure out what am I going to do next, you know? I'm like, I'm in my early 20s, I had the success with this company, I didn't want to go get a job, but I didn't have a burning idea for what to do with my next company. And I've always been a big believer that if you're not sure what you want to do next, you don't have a burning passion for anything yet, go out and explore. Try stuff, and a lot of it won't work, and you get a sense of that pretty quickly. And some of it will stick, and you'll love it, and opportunities will come from that. Don't try to force an idea. I know that's hard. Like, that was me. I'm like, I want to do something now. I got to figure this out now. You know, I'd always had an interest in venture capital. I never needed it for my business, but I wanted to learn about it. So through a connection, I ended up with a position at a venture capital company in Toronto, helping companies raise $500,000 to $15 million for companies. And I learned how the process worked, and I connected with the 3 founders who were all in their 60s or 70s and had all the experience in the world. And I had a position with them as an associate. Wasn't a formal employee relationship. I could still do whatever I wanted. But I helped bring in deals and I learned the process because I wanted to learn about it. I didn't think this would be a long-term thing for me, but it was something I was curious about. At the same time, I was in the media a lot. I was asked to speak at events because I was a young entrepreneur, sold the business, had that success. And my first speaking gig in Toronto was at the YMCA. They had a group of entrepreneurs who were, I think, fired or laid off from their jobs and they wanted to start their own company as a way to create their own path for themselves. And so I said, sure, I'd be happy to come and speak and share my lessons, what I've learned. I'd love to help. And I spent a lot of time figuring out everything I wanted to say and all the things that I had learned through my failure and then success. And I remember the day came when I was promoting it for 2 weeks to my, you know, friends and circles, and, and the YMCA was promoting it to their audience. And I spent so much time on this concept presentation, and I was nervous, you know, I wanted to be perfect. And I, you know, come up on that day, and I remember going through the doors, and my heart's beating, I'm starting to sweat, like, oh my God, it's coming, I've been working so hard for this moment. And I go up, and then we had this huge room ready to go, tons of chairs, and I walk into the room, open the door, and I just sink for a minute because after all of this work, 3 people showed up to listen to me. I was like, "Wow!" I was promoting this for 2 weeks and the YMCA was promoting it to their audience and they had a student base already who was interested in this. And I felt like such a failure, you know, like I spent all this time on something for a free event and I could only get 3 people to come out. And that was a big turning point for me because I could have given a crappy presentation and felt like this wasn't for me and tried something else. But what I discovered was I was there, we had 3 people, like, I'm gonna— I did all this work on the presentation, so I'm gonna make it the best presentation these 3 people have ever seen. And it ended up being amazing, and those people were changed that day, and I felt the way that I had to keep doing this. It felt so natural, felt so amazing, on such a high helping these people out and changing their lives that I felt like I had to keep going and doing this, even though anybody who looked at this would have said, Evan, you're crazy. Like, you want to turn this into a business? This is going to be your thing now? You can't get more than 3 people to come to a free event, man. What are you doing? This is stupid. And by all logical reasoning, it was, right? It was. It was stupid to think that I could turn this into a business. And yet I loved it, and so I knew I had to find a way to keep going. And if you talk to successful entrepreneurs, that's what you'll often find, is they love what they did so much that they had to find the way to keep going. And people would do it even if they weren't getting paid because they loved it so much. Like, I love helping entrepreneurs. And I do a lot of it without getting paid just because it brings me happiness. And then I found a way to turn it into a business eventually, right? It wasn't— I wish I said I had this whole plan worked out, like I sat down and I wrote my plan and this is how it's gonna work. I had— I didn't have a plan. I was following my passion and tried to find something that would take me in a direction that I would enjoy doing. And it turned from the speaking into my website that I used to say where I was speaking, and then people started asking, could they share content on there? I said, sure, you can write an article for my website. This is a time before article marketing was anything. People wanted just to be on my site, and I used it as lead generation for the venture capital business that I was part of. Then I started talking about modeling the masters, and I started talking about how to raise capital, put those articles up there, realizing I could sell advertising against that and then started making money from advertising. It was a little side thing on just whatever, just something I was having some fun with. And then more and more people started writing in to me and saying, "We want to know more about your story. We want to know more about what got you here and your advice." And at that time, everything was behind the scenes for me. I was always sharing stories of famous entrepreneurs and their success and showing examples, but not too much about my story. And I was shocked, like, why do people care about my story? So I started sharing it more and more, you know. My face wasn't even on the homepage. And so it got more and more me telling my story, and then I got invited to do more speaking, and then I started my YouTube channel and social media and Twitter and all that stuff. And it's built, it's built into this amazing community, right? Every video I put up, we get comments, we get views, we get subscribers. I love it. Like, the best part of my day now is being— I wake up in the morning, I grab my bowl of lentils, and I go to the computer and look at the comments that I get from YouTube and my social media channels. I love that stuff. And it all came out of following what I love doing, having the courage to not know where I'm going and just explore things. And when I found something that I really like to do, even though it made no sense to continue doing it, I continued on and found a way to turn it into a business and something that I'm still passionate about. I don't know, 12 years later, 11 years later, 12 years still, whatever, doesn't matter, still passionate about it. So that's my story. I don't know, hopefully that helps give you some inspiration or helps answer your question. Let me know what you guys think. You know, if you want more videos like this, leave a comment below. Let me know what other questions you have. I'm happy to do a video for you. If you like the video, give it a thumbs up. Click on my face there, subscribe to the channel. Thank you so much. I'll see you soon.
