Discovering Growth in Video Content | Evan's Journey in 35 Minutes

OK, so recently my media coach, Janie Moon, love you Janie, challenged me to look back on my old videos and talk about them, I guess, with you and do a quick review. I haven't looked at my stuff for a long time. When I started doing these videos, I don't know how many years ago, I guess we'll find out, I did it because I'm a visual learner. I learned from watching things, so I wanted to create content that people could learn from as well. And I sucked at the beginning and slowly have gotten better and better and better and better. And she said it'd be fun for you to go back and look at some of your really old stuff and comment on it. So today I'm gonna accept Janie's challenge and see what happens. So I've loaded up my page. I don't even know how to go back and find old videos. Let's see, videos, date, newest to oldest, or oldest to newest. There we go, friends! That was actually a surprisingly great YouTube experience. Although I love that how oldest to newest shows me 1 month ago as my oldest video. Great, so it wasn't an awesome experience. That's terrible! So how do I find my oldest videos? You'd think by going date oldest to newest I'd find my oldest video. The first ones I were doing was about the famous entrepreneur profiles. What would I call it? Walt Disney documentary Disney success story. There it is! Okay, so I know there's a story behind this one. I didn't feel comfortable doing videos myself, so I partnered up with Fantamedia. It was run by by an entrepreneur friend of mine named Mark Drager. And he's a videographer, right? That was his whole company. So I said, okay, Mark, I wanna do this video on Walt Disney. I'm gonna put on my website and give you some exposure. Can your team come in and help me? And this is the result. So let's play a little bit. So the first part is the Fanta kind of promo. His company is called Fanta Media. And then— Hello and welcome to— Oh my God, look at that. My name is Evan Carmichael. I'm so nervous. I hate sitting down. I hate sitting down and talking because I don't get the vibe. Like, I got the stand-up desk. I remember he orchestrated it. He came to my office and he orchestrated it so that I'd be— he had the light behind me and sitting at a desk and in this pose, and it felt so awkward. So he made this intro for me. We used this a couple times. I partnered with Mark a couple times. Oh my god, so I've got a tie on. I was so stressed out making this video that I had to— I was trying to I was trying to memorize everything. I wasn't in the zone. I was trying to memorize the lines. And so he cut to a lot of pictures when I'm thinking like this and trying to— ugh. The content is still great, but there's no passion. Look at me. Man. This had nothing to do with Mark. Mark, you did a great job. It was all me. It was all me sucking on camera. But this was my first video. Wow. I developed a passion for drawing. I'm talking about his passion, and I have zero passion in telling the story. We made this, and we put it up, And it had 40,000 views. Uh, April 2019. April 2019. Wow, so it's almost 5 years. Because I didn't know what to do after this. I felt like, ah, it wasn't great. I felt embarrassed looking at it. Because this was actually professionally produced. I didn't make this myself. Let's look at the Harlem. Harley Davidson. Wow, that's really bad. I think this is when I started recording it myself. Mark only came in for the first video. Hello and welcome to Modeling Your Success. Oh, so boring again. Dedicated to helping entrepreneurs find a shortcut to business success. Listen to me. By modeling the strategies and ideas of other famous entrepreneurs. I feel like I'm gonna fall asleep. You can learn viable strategies to implement into your business. This is at my office. See, the content was great. The content was great, the delivery was just terrible. Terrible. I'm glad we put in these pictures. I think I started editing this. No, I guess it was still Mark. It was still Mark 'cause they had the— I helped find the pictures 'cause it was taking him too long to find the pictures his team. So I helped find the pictures, and then we put them up and he mixed them. If it was just me on camera, it would have failed royally, man. Holy cow. How well did this do? 7,000 views, 53 likes. See, 53 thumbs up, 1 thumb down. That's still decent, people. That's still decent. Okay, what's the next one? Hershey success. Hershey success. Milton Hershey success story, 5 years ago. Oh, Fantamedia, Fantamedia, the intro. Welcome back for another— Oh, this one was great. Okay, so this one, let me pause this here. This is great. So now I started using my flip camera. So I started using my flip camera, experimenting, right? This little flip camera, and I put it on a shelf kind of like this. I put it on a shelf facing me, but because I kept stopping, starting, stopping, starting, the camera kept moving. It wasn't quite stable when I started talking. So if you watch this You can watch this video. It's always— it's moving and wiggling around. But whatever, I still posted it. On top of that, this is just done at home, and there's two holes in the wall behind me because I had pictures up on the wall. I thought I'll take them off and I'll have a nice clean background on a white background. But then you see these holes in the wall, and I looked at it like, man, this is such a bad video, right? Like, the camera's shaking, it's bad quality, there's holes in the wall. I sound like I'm gonna fall asleep. But still, 13,000 views, 59 thumbs up, 1 thumbs down. That's not too shabby. Like, this is how we started and built it up. There's one more that's bad. What's the P.T. Barnum one? P.T. Barnum, was that the next one? Yeah, documentary success story. P.T. Barnum. P.T. Barnum. This one I remember. Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. So this, look at this one. I borrowed a buddy of mine's camera. It's like, okay, now I'm gonna step up. I still didn't invest in anything yet. I'm buying a buddy of mine's camera, and I didn't know that you're not supposed to speak with the light directly behind you, right? So I'm so dark because I'm filming this at my old house and the light is behind me. And again, like, so this time I have a tripod, I've got a half-decent camera as a test. I was just borrowing stuff as a test, and the content again is okay, but then like, look at the quality. It's so bad. It's brutal. What I did here was I modified it so that I would only be talking on camera for a short amount of time. So I only had to remember a few things, and then when you get into the story, I'm reading it while we're showing pictures. So again, I had to find all these pictures to give to Mark so we could put something up. Good quality again, but just no passion. With gusto. Sweep through the city with gusto. You hear that? Brutal. So bad. Oh man, this one, 16,000 views, 101 thumbs up, 2 thumbs down. Still decent, man. Good content, but just experimenting, right? Experiment with other people's gear. It's embarrassing. I hate looking at this stuff. All of my videos at the start were famous entrepreneur profiles, and then I don't remember when I started answering questions and doing other stuff. Let's see if we can find it. 3 years ago, business ideas, productivity in the workplace, workplace for entrepreneurs. That's some good keywords. There, this one. Okay, so wow, so for basically 2 years I did just the famous entrepreneur stories, and I would find kind of 3 lessons to share. And then this is the first one that I did that was not related to a famous entrepreneur, I don't think. Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael, and welcome to a special video edition of Ask Evan. Ah, so Ask Evan started, I don't know, I think it started in the newsletter. And so now, this is the first video. I'm doing this at my home. I'm using my Nikon DSLR camera, and I remember I had to have my sister or my wife come in and focus it on me because it doesn't autofocus, and then leave the room because I was too nervous to do it in front of them. And every time I did a video, they'd have to do that same process over and over again. We're gonna look at one of the most common questions that I get asked by entrepreneurs: how can I be more productive? So we're gonna look at how you can eliminate, automate, and delegate your way. I still talk about eliminate, automate, delegate. It's just, I think it's like Jurassic Park soundtrack or something. No, it's Gladiator. It's the Gladiator, like the peaceful song in the background. I think now, I don't know if Mark got tired of me or what was happening. I started editing these videos, and this was just What's the Windows tool? Movie Maker. This is Movie Maker. So I'm just finding my pictures. I put in the Gladiator theme song in the background, throwing some pictures up. And again, I'm reading this. That's why I had to have pictures, because I'm reading this as we're going. Just— I was barely on camera because I couldn't remember enough. And I was so happy with what I was doing, you know, like I memorized these 4 sentences that I had to say on camera. Man, it's all pictures all the way through here. It's all just pictures, and then I just came back at the end, I think. Yeah. Wow. See, I was too scared to come on camera, so I just did the intro extra, but the content's the same. Okay, let's go. Where am I? Thank you for joining me for this special video edition of Ask Evan. If you like the video, please give it a thumbs up. I'd also love to hear your thoughts and comments if you want to leave a comment below, and stay tuned for the next episode. Wow. And what was my extra? More info at the website. Cue the Gladiator music. How long was that extra just sitting on my website listening to Gladiator music? Oh my god, it's hilarious. Okay, what else did I do? Oh, I did a book about my favorite sales and marketing book. Let's look at that because I just recently did a book about the top 7 books— I think it's 7— that entrepreneurs need to read. But I talked about one of the books 3 years ago Let's see, marketing book, Ask Evan. 3 years ago, only 270 views. Ah, so sad. Oh, okay, so now I hired somebody on oDesk. We're fast-forwarding a little bit. My first video editor, because it was taking too much of my time to edit this stuff, and I landed a deal with TELUS, which is a telecom company here in Canada, where I had budget now to go out and make some of these Famous Entrepreneur videos. So I'd write a blog post for them, get some video added to it, and so like, okay, well now I'm getting paid a little bit so I can afford to go out and hire somebody to help me. Because the part I hated the most was doing editing. I wasn't very good at it. So I hired somebody on oDesk and he made this intro for me too. And for a lot of my videos, that's my standard intro. Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael, and welcome to another video edition of Ask Evan. In this video, I want to answer a question from one of my readers, Hubert, who asked me what my favorite sales and marketing book is. So I read a lot of books, I read a lot of blogs, I read a lot of articles. The format is not that different than what I do now, right? It's almost the same stuff. I remember this is in my basement now at the house, and I've got these lights set up on me. I did so much experimentation with how do you get the lights You know, do I wear a light color? I found that later I should be wearing a dark color shirt instead of a light color because that makes my face lighten up a little bit more. And Fred Factor is— Fred Factor, still here. Oh, you know, it's in my room. I'm reading it again. I'm reading it again right now. Fred Factor, John Sanborn, usually it's on my shelf. And also introduce their friends and family to you so they can buy from you as well and get the same experience that they have. So it's all just like one angle. There's no zoom in, zoom out, no fun fun stuff happening in the videos. But basically I wanted to do this as a way to connect with my audience. They were asking me questions, and instead of me, you know, writing an email to them all the time, I made a video response. Okay, what else do we have? So I just recorded a David Ogilvy Famous Friday. Christina, let's pop— ah, I keep pointing the wrong way. Let's pop that up. And I did one 3 years ago as well. So let's see how that— David Ogilvy Documentary. Success story. There we go. There it is. This is Saad, who was my first video editor. Saad then got kidnapped and held for ransom and disappeared for months. Oh, so this is where— yeah, that was intense. This is at my office again. I rotated, like I was figuring out I sucked at this. I mean, this is using my my Nikon DSLR at the office. Nobody could be at the office, and I experimented in different rooms and different lighting and tried to get the best. Look, I'm wearing this collared shirt with a— man, I used to be so dressed up. This is me editing. This is my editing. I could tell. And there's a title. This is still all done with, um, Movie Maker. Yeah, Movie Maker. 2 years. Oh, I did the whiteboard phase. Yeah, where's the insurance? Okay, how to sell insurance. So this was great. So you got to experiment, right? You got to keep experimenting, find your voice, find out what works for you. I'm trying stuff all the time that doesn't work until you find, you know, what does work. So this is why I thought, hey, I had a whiteboard in my office, why don't I write stuff down on the whiteboard as a way to answer people's questions? I think I did maybe 5 or 6 or maybe 10 of these kinds of videos. And what I would do is— let's see, as it shows up, I had a hard time getting the lighting to work. Oh, this actually looks pretty good. I thought it was way worse. Worse than it turned out. I would write the answers to what I was going to say just below. So I would have to go on the whiteboard and draw this black line under where the camera stopped filming. So just around where my shirt is here, and then I would write down what I was going to say so I would remember, because I didn't remember. So just write Joe Insurance at the top and then start writing. So let's see, how's my handwriting? I don't— wow, what does that even say? Customers, I guess. That's brutal. At the end of the day, this just took too much time to do, to think about what I was gonna say and then write it. And I thought the lighting was bad. I found there was a lot of glare coming off the whiteboard. I didn't know how to solve it, but this isn't actually that— that's not that bad. Maybe I should do some more whiteboard, but I got like— gotta work on my handwriting. I don't write. Do you? I don't— do people write anymore? I don't know. I don't write. I'm still boring though. Listen to me. —video, especially if you haven't met them yet. It's coming through a connector or media. This one did well though, 64,000 views, 737 thumbs up. This is still getting a lot of views, and people look at it and they say, like, let's look at a recent comment. They're still getting comments. Let's see what the most recent one is. Thanks for the info, take your advice. Like, it's still getting, it's still getting some views. I spent a lot of time on this video. The info is pretty good, but again, my delivery was just terrible. I got the collared shirts. I lost my sweater though. The sweater is gone, and now I'm just wearing the collared shirts, and I got the dark collared shirt because I knew that on the white background it pops a little bit more. So I'm getting better, I'm slowly learning my way through this. Oh, I think I have a microphone too! Do I have a microphone on? I think it's just— oh, you know what, I remember this. I didn't want the— I got a ClipMic, I got it on here. I didn't want it to be seen, I thought like ClipMic, you shouldn't let that be in the camera, so I would wear a button shirt and then around here I'd figure out where the cutoff of my shirt was and just put the mic a little bit lower so it captured my audio. I don't know, clip mic is fine now. I'm not worried about it. So I use a clip mic because in my old videos I was just using the camera mic and it was echoey and people were complaining about the audio. I got a lot of complaints, so I decided, hey, I'm starting to make some money from these videos, so now I'm gonna invest in my gear a little bit more. This camera too, I upgraded to a Sony Handycam, which I don't have anymore. Oh, do I have it? I think I actually still have it. Yeah, I do. My old camera, Sony Handycam. I kept upgrading at Costco, and I got this one because it had an external mic jack. A lot of the cheaper cameras, they don't have an external mic jack, or at least they didn't when I was getting started. And I got it from Costco because you can return it within 30 days, where the camera stores is only 7 days, so it's not enough time to test it out. So I got this, which had the external mic jack, and then I bought this clip mic. Is it still like the same? Oh, Oh, it turns on. It's still the same clip mic that I used since I got this. It's a couple years old, but still works. I did webinars. So this is newer. This is 2 years old. This is August. I guess it's more than 2 years old. It says 2 years old, but that's— it's more than 2 years old. No, I guess it's 2 years old. 2 and a half years old. This is still with Saad, my first guy. I changed my tagline to "We help entrepreneurs. Over 14 million entrepreneurs helped and counting." I started doing webinars as a test. Again, this is one thing that I wanted to test out. I made these PowerPoint files and then I got online, I don't know if it was once a month or whatever it was, and started making these videos. And they got some, not really a lot of comments, but some decent views. And I don't know why I stopped. I guess it wasn't getting enough traction or maybe, I think it was a lot of work. To make these slides was a crap ton of work. And wasn't getting huge pickup on it, like 3 comments on them and only one of them wasn't me, right? So one comment, all that work for one comment? Ah, so I stopped. I did 5 out of 10 and then we never finished. And you know what, nobody cared, so I stopped doing it anyway, right? If you stop doing something and people write in and say, where'd it go? Then maybe you should pay attention. What else do we have? What inspires you? Ask Evan Carmichael. Okay, so then— then, well, only 61 views. Holy cow, it's like it's getting worse. Oh, I'm gonna do this one, this one, this one. I have my phone. So then I started doing out of my house, and instead of just doing in the basement, I started doing it upstairs with stuff in the background. I started experimenting. Do I want stuff in the background? I want a simple white wall. So this is me, this is my old house. I would just get my phone out, have the questions, and read the question and answer it. I had to make sure that everything was clean, right? There's a lot of house in the background there, so I had to make sure everything was spotless so I can get going. I had to have a huge extra-large French vanilla cappuccino sitting there waiting for me so I could drink it back in between questions. A great question that a lot of home-based— and look how much energy I have. Starting a business is one of the hardest things that you're ever gonna do. So bad, I have no energy. I'm jacked up. On French vanilla. I got zero energy here. I thought this was pretty good. I thought I was getting better. Wow. Number 1: Hustle while you wait. Oh, still— I'm still doing— I still can't do a full video myself. This is how old? February 2013. So this is, this is almost 2 years ago. I'm still not doing a full video myself. I still have to do the intro and then have a script that I type and read and show pictures on top of it. And it took me a long time to build this up. Jeez, what's next? This starts getting better. So April 2013, so this is when I started working with my agent, and he challenged me to make a raw video, just be on camera all the time and be passionate, energetic, emotional. Tell me your story, tell me something inspirational. And the raw series was just basically standing in front of the camera and not edited, not polished. That's why it was raw. And I did so many— he made me do so many versions. Most of these aren't live that you can see. I published a few of them. So this one got 131 views, 9 thumbs ups. Let's see how I'm doing. You can't throw in the towel. It's gonna be tough. It's gonna be one of the hardest things you've ever done in your life. You're gonna doubt yourself. You're gonna wonder why you don't go back and get a job. It's starting to get there. The energy is starting to flow. Even if you model success, even if you're the smartest person in the world. Oh, there's a great one. There's a great one where I'm sitting. This is a memorable moment. We got to find this video. There's one I'm ranting. It's a raw series. It should be raw. Let's see raw. See if I can find it. Turning point starting to come, working with my agent here. Raw, get rid of my books. Yes, fighting with entrepreneurs who don't think big. Yes, okay, so this one got me, this one got me upset. I was, I was, I came back from a meeting, I think was my mastermind group, and, and I was just pissed off that they were thinking so small. And I just, I was listening to the advice from my agent to say, just when you're excited about something, when you're emotional film it right away. Don't wait until next week to go and film it. Just sit down and film it. So I'm sitting here in my room, sitting on the floor with my laptop camera, so the quality is not great. It's night, so there's not a lot of natural light. I was— I felt like this was a turning point video for me, but let's see how good it is. This is one year ago. So when is this? This is September 26, 2013. Oh, I'm on to my new logo. So we're moving to Christina now. Christina is in the house! Christina, say hi. Hi. So she made a new logo for me. We started working with the sound effects as it was flying in, and it's gotten better over the videos. But we got— oh, that's the one with the trailer. I'm really frustrated tonight. I got into fights with 5 different entrepreneurs today. Challenging day. I had tons of meetings lined up, and these are entrepreneurs who came to me and they have problems with their business and they're not getting the results that they want out of their company and they're holding themselves back. And I give them great advice. I hand it to them on a silver platter. It's so obvious. This is what you need to do to make a bigger impact, to grow a bigger company. And they're so resistant to change. They're so locked into their current mindset, so unwilling to do anything slightly out of the ordinary. The sigh, I know it's hard. The emotional sigh. That's some raw, raw stuff. Got 123 views, 15 thumbs ups. Did I get any likes? I did a shout out for likes. 12 comments. Hey, we're getting better, getting some comments. You can lead me to water but you can't make me drink. Love your passion. This is the first like, ah, getting some passion. Still not what I'm doing now, but it's close, it's close. This is good turning point conversation here. Then what do we have after that. How to minimize the chance of failing. So this is Christina now. I was a little bit older because I had— if you want to learn about a business, learn about an industry. So, so, oh, that's a great point to pause it on, eh? This is Christina's work, and Christina, uh, played around with the lighting effects. This is at my office, so it's— this was a lot more yellow. She played around with a lot, and she started panning and zooming, and I had to go get a new camera because of Christina's editing work because she would I could punch in on me. Punch! And the quality of the camera degraded because when you zoom, you lose the quality. So I had to get a better camera that would allow for still HD video when you zoomed in. What else? I have a hickey on my neck there. Some people are asking, is that a hickey? And yeah, well, you know, whatever, I'll just go with it. I covered it up a little bit, but not enough. You can see the microphone on there. Let's see. Go get some experience by working for somebody who you respect in the business, and they'll teach you the ropes and minimize your chances of failing when you start your own business. So this is important because a lot of people make videos like, oh, you know, I have a pimple in the middle of my head that you can see, I've got this hickey on my neck. Still do your video, right? You're gonna find excuses every day for not doing your video. Get up there and do it. This video, how well did it do? 98 views. Hungry entrepreneurs deserve help. 98 views, 8 thumbs up, 1 thumbs down. Any comments? Thanks. Oh, he said solid advice. So like, I wasn't getting huge traction yet, but this is what happens, right? Like, that one comment from Chris, like, ah, I got a comment! Solid advice! Yes, it fuels me to keep going. Give me something, one little ounce. For those of you guys watching other people's videos, if there's no comments, leave a comment, because that one piece, that's like somebody's paying attention, right? Be that change for somebody. Chris probably made my day here when he said solid advice. It's a passion. It's something I really believe in. You have to start a business around something that you're passionate about. That gives you the greatest chance of success. So I'm still kind of boring, but I'm getting better. I'm getting better. Starting to happen. So the fact that you love cars— what else? What was the next one? For the people, the people in your network. This is Evan Carmichael. So listen, It's really important that you support the people in your network. Okay, the people who have their— So this came as part of my training with my agent to do raw videos, to be in the moment, to do something spontaneous. So I decided to call up this guy who's also at the agency, who introduced me to the agency, Sean Moffat, and just randomly call him up on my cell phone. These are the days when I used my cell phone! Ah, so sweet! This is who we're calling. The Sean Moffat. Hello, speaking? Sean, Evan Carmichael, how are you? Great, brother, how are you? Listen, man, before we get too far, I've got you on speaker and I'm doing a video. You're on my video. I love being on video. We're talking about social media training and I sent you that email. Did you get it? Yeah, yes, I got it and I responded to you. Oh, okay, okay, I missed it because I'm doing the videos now. So this was a test where I I started recording conversations. I remember I had one call. I was filming and my agent calls me and we were working on something. We had exciting news, but I didn't tell him I was recording it and I recorded the whole call and then he said he didn't want to use it. Like, ah, that's some quality footage, man. Steve, man, that was some quality footage we could have used. I'm still hurting a little bit for not being able to use that. I didn't do this again. Maybe I should do this. if you guys think I should call people up spontaneously and talk to them on a live video, leave a comment, let me know. Okay, what was next? Zipcar, Evan Carmichael. So this was another test, this is a year ago. So I like, again, working with my agency, I experiment with a whole bunch of stuff, and this was my first Zipcar experience. Okay, let's try it up. Put the keys in. It starts. I hope I have more than a quarter tank of gas. Whoa! Holy cow! Okay, let's turn this down. That was awesome. Wow. All right. So I did a whole bunch of videos just experimenting, doing live stuff, finding my flow, finding what works for me, seeing what kind of new videos I wanted to do. How to How to make professional videos. Evan Carmichael. So that was a year ago. I'm making videos on how to make professional videos. Pretty good. This is the new logo. How do you create professional videos? This is my old videos. It's a question I got from one of my readers, Karen. Great question. Kind of a long story, but basically wrote— I'm still reading off my phone. I don't do that anymore. Producing my videos, if I can give her some advice. So, Karen, great question. So this is at the office. This is Christina, see the punch? Punching in and out, Christina adding some magic. I hate spending money until I'm making money. I'm telling my story. Using the ClipMic, still got the— I still don't have the branding yet, I don't have the shirt, the EC gear happening yet. So when I started my videos, if you go back on my channel, the videos sucked. Let's do the do it in public. So this was a challenge that my agent gave me. To go out and speak in public because I was afraid of it, where I was, you know, everything was in the confines of my house or my office. And I got, you know, I got more comfortable with it. My sister could be in the room, my staff could be in the room, but he wanted me to do something out in public with my phone, and I was freaking out. So I decided I'd do a video about doing speaking in public. And again, this is more for me, only 200 views, 13 thumbs up. Probably a few comments, some decent comments. Maybe don't do it in public, that kind of came out wrong, but do your thing in public. Don't do it in public. Do your thing in public doesn't sound that much better either. Whatever your business is, you should be trying to have an impact, right? You should have a message. But the passion's coming out, the passion's coming out. And for that to happen— anyway, we're starting to get some more comments, I think, right? But still not that much, man. 5 comments, 2 or 3 of them are mine, so I'm only getting 2 comments on these videos, but this is the hustle, right? Like those 2 comments, ah! Somebody says Evan's video is awesome. Yes, right? Drives me to keep going. This is how— when did I start this? So I started 5 years ago. This is, this is 1 year ago. 1 year ago, I'm only getting 2 comments on the video. Man, a lot has exploded. Anyway, but you keep like, you keep hustling. I'm still pumping out the videos. Still getting better. This is the work you got to put in when you see very minimal results at the start. What's the first video where I have a shirt on? Tough times, Evan Carmichael. So this is one of the first videos where I'm wearing a branded shirt. How to get through hard times. A buddy of mine is going through a hard time in his life. This is a great video. I sent him a message This is, this is the most like emotional video that I did where I'm talking about a really hard year that I had about being stressed out and gaining weight and going through a divorce and all of this bad stuff that happened to me in my life. And it happened because I was talking to a buddy of mine, he was going through it. And I realized that what I wrote in that message, I've never really shared with people before, and I haven't shared it with you. And I feel I thought that the message might help you if you're going through a hard time in your life right now, and it's sharing my story. So this was a good start, but I wanted to show this because it was the first video that I had a branded shirt on. And I remember there was a company called Rapa Nui that had this shirt that was— I don't know how we found them. They emailed me and said, hey, if you give me that shirt, I will wear it on, you know, a week's worth of my videos. And it was also a pretty emotional video, so we had 1,300 views, 36 comments! That's what's up, friends! Actually, some of them are still coming. This is one week ago. So, you know, this is a really emotional story. You guys can check it out if you want. But now we're starting to get a little bit of traction. We're like, I'm pouring my heart out here. I'm starting to get some comments. I'm starting to get some good views on the videos. But it took me— it took me years. That's 2014. That's only a year ago. It took me— it took me 4 years to get to that point. That's crazy, man. That's crazy. Step into Fear, Evan Carmichael. 10 months ago, I started my first videos with my own shirts. There are things that you need to do in your business and in your life to achieve your goals that you are afraid of. If you want to bust out of your average— passion's coming out, man. The passion's coming out. Recording, I was nervous, I was scared, I was sweating. My heart was pounding the first time I got up on stage to do my keynote presentation at a conference. This is good, this is starting to come. The whole week before that I was— So we've gone through an evolution, man. This is fun, this is cool. Evan, it's cancelled. You know, I was too embarrassed to watch my old videos. It's actually not that bad watching it now, but I was too embarrassed to watch my own videos, and there was a point around the 800 video mark that I could watch my own videos and not be embarrassed. But then there was this video that blew my mind because I, I inspired myself. I watched like Yeah, I gotta go do something today. That was only 3 months ago, but look at this video. 75,000 views, 80,000 views, 90 thumbs up, 36 comments. If you're not sure what to do next in your life, if you don't know what to study, if you don't know where to take your business, the best advice that I can give you right now is to follow your flow. Find the things that excite you, that interest you. Find the things that make you come alive and go do that. And since then, now you guys are familiar with the channel, adding videos. Answering the questions, still doing a lot of experimentation. This has been a fun experience actually. Janie, thank you for the, for the suggestion. It's been cool to watch the progress. So I started just as a way to give back, to help entrepreneurs. I had to practice everything. I was memorizing script. I was barely on camera because I was reading and showing pictures. I was using shaky cameras, knew nothing about lighting, was dressing all business and professional, had no comments on my videos. But just kept doing it, and slowly they got better. I stopped editing myself, edited my intros, I got better gear, I got better with my agent and Janie's training to speak more from the heart with more passion, even the same content but with more passion and excitement. And it's fun to see the turning points. What are the turning points videos? The first one was the Mark Drager one, the Walt Disney one, where I was super nervous and sitting down and trying to memorize. The most emotional turning point for me, I think, was that raw one where I'm complaining about not thinking big enough, and then I started getting more emotion into all of my videos. Definitely adding Christina to the team has been an awesome win, and then this follow your flow one that, that, you know, started exciting me, started getting me motivated myself, watching my own videos. But you can see the journey. You see my early videos had no comments, very few views. And I kept going because 1 or 2 comments on a video, that was enough to give me the excitement to want to keep going. Trip down memory lane. Thank you, Jenny, for the great suggestion. Thank you guys for watching. Let me know what you think about this video. Leave a comment below. Subscribe to the channel if you want to see more just like it. Thank you so much. I'll see you guys soon. Props to Jason Fonseca here for finding the videos on his laptop and queuing them up because YouTube broke on me. So there we go. Nice job, son. Woo! Evan, your newsletters have taught me not to quit. I look forward to them every week. They have changed my life. Thank you.