In this short "Ask Evan" episode, Evan Carmichael answers a newsletter reader’s request for guidance on uncovering and activating personal leadership and business potential. He outlines three practical steps: (1) read inspiring leadership and entrepreneurship books to gain ideas and mentorship from authors; (2) seek out real‑world mentors by meeting respected people, asking for coffee, and bouncing ideas; and (3) most importantly, take decisive action—start leading by hiring freelancers, treating them respectfully, assigning tasks, or launching a new business. Carmichael emphasizes that learning comes fastest through doing, not just reading or networking, and ends with a motivational “kick in the pants” encouraging viewers to get started, while inviting comments and likes.
Chapters
Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. Welcome to another edition of Ask Evan. In today's episode, I'm going to answer a question from one of my newsletter readers, Olobi, who wrote in saying, "Please enlighten me on how to discover and activate the leadership and business potential in me." So Olobi, there's a couple things you can do. The first that I always find interesting and helpful is to read books. So find books that inspire, motivate you, want to take action, leadership books, entrepreneur books. I find that some of my best mentors have come from people I don't know, but they're, they're authors who I believe in their message, or famous entrepreneurs who I've read their story and I get ideas from. Second is see if you might be able to find a mentor and ask to meet with people, people you respect, people you might be able to bounce ideas off of. You've seen them grow their business, or you see them as a good leader, and you want to just just tap their mind, ask them to coffee just to pick their brain the first time and see if you guys hit it off, if you get some ideas. And third, the most important one is you have to take action. So you learn a lot from books and from meeting people, but you learn the most by, by doing it. You learn through doing. And if you want to learn to be a leader, start taking leadership positions. It can be as easy as hiring somebody off of oDesk to get started, or Elance. Like, hire your first worker Treat them with respect, learn to lead them, give them tasks, involve them, and you'll learn a lot by actually doing that than just reading about it in a book. If you wanna push to start a business, start a business. You know, actually get out there and start a new company, try to sell your products or service. And the most important step you can take to grow your business and to learn these skills is to actually get going instead of just reading or meeting people. So I hope that helps. Maybe a little bit of a kick in the pants to get started. I'd love to hear what you guys have to say if you want to leave a comment on the video, and I always appreciate any thumbs up you want to leave. It gives me a lot of excitement to see when you leave a thumbs up on the video, so thank you for those, and stay tuned for the next episode.
