Evan Carmichael sold his first business and said yes to a free speaking gig at his local YMCA. Only three people showed up, but the rush he felt while speaking told him something. He spent 12 years building on that moment, turning unpaid talks into a YouTube channel and paid speaking career.
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How did I find my passion? I'm going to answer that question in today's episode of Ask Evan. So recently I got asked a question from one of my loyal YouTube viewers, Kaushal, who wrote in to say, "How did you find your passion and what were the difficulties that you faced to your journey here and how did you deal with it?" It's a great question, one I haven't answered for a while, so I'm happy to retell the story. My passion for entrepreneurs started almost by fluke. I had sold my first business and I didn't know what to do next with my life. And so I followed my own advice and just started to explore. And I said yes to a whole bunch of opportunities. And one of them was the YMCA. My local YMCA asked me to come and speak at one of their places to their group of entrepreneurs. They had this entrepreneur program, young entrepreneurs who are trying to build businesses. and they wanted me to come and speak to their students. And I thought, sure, why not? I'll say yes, I'll try it and see if I like it. And so I spent 2 weeks preparing for this presentation and working on it and wanted to put all of my heart, effort, and love into providing amazing value. And I remember the day came close and I was promoting it before, telling people, hey, come out to this event. And I was so nervous. I hadn't done a lot of speaking. I remember kind of walking up to the YMCA, my heart's beating faster, my palms are getting sweaty, and I walk into the door and get to the elevator and push the button, and we booked this huge room for me to go and speak at. I get to the door and take one last deep breath, like, this is it, we're gonna start. And I was so nervous, and I walked into the room, and there were 3 people in the room, and my heart stopped, and I felt like a total failure. I felt like, man, I can't get anybody to show up to a free event, and the YMCA was promoting it to their students And I thought, you know what, the show has to go on. They came out and it was awesome. Those 3 people, they came out as changed entrepreneurs. They had new ideas, new motivations to help them grow their business. And it felt so good. I think that was the most important thing for me. I came alive. It felt so amazing during and after. I was kind of walking on a cloud going home. And despite being so super nervous and afraid going into it, I did it anyway and had a lot of fun with it. I knew that I had to find a way. And I think with all matters of the heart, you know when it's the right thing to do. You know when it feels like it's the right thing to do, when it's something that makes you come alive and you're just feeling it and you can't wait to get up and go do that again. That was the high I got from that speaking engagement, and I couldn't wait to go and do it again. I was looking for my next opportunity, I had so much fun. The challenge was, you know, I didn't get paid to do that. It was a free thing, only 3 people came out, and looking at it from a logical, you know, brain point of view, how would I ever make money doing this, right? There was no logical way. If I can't get people to come to a free event, how would I ever be able to pay for this? How would I ever be able to make a career and a living from this? And it didn't matter. Because I loved it so much, even if I had to go do something else, I would do that and keep doing this because I loved it so much. And I think that's how you know. And over, you know, that was maybe 12 years ago, over that course, I've changed my model around a lot, and I've tried a lot of different things. And now I get paid to go and do speaking gigs, and it's evolved to, it came from a website and became a YouTube channel. It always evolved around helping entrepreneurs. And it all came out of that one YMCA event that was a total failure, failure in most people's eyes, but for me was amazing and I knew I had to keep going. So if you don't know what your passion is, you're still trying to discover it, go out and try stuff, right? Say yes. People invite you to things, people give you opportunities. It may feel scary for you, it may feel like you're stepping outside your comfort zone. That's where you learn, that's where you have fun, that's where you develop, right? You're not going to develop anything staying inside your box, staying inside your circle of comfort. And so by saying yes to those opportunities— and I said yes to a whole bunch of other stuff that I wasn't that excited about, I didn't get that same energy and passion from— but I'll say yes to almost anything once and then see where it goes from there. And so if you're trying to discover that passion, I encourage you to say yes, explore, and see what you fall in love with. See what just makes sense to you. And even if you're not good at it, even if you, you know, on paper it looks like you'll never be successful at it, there's tons of reasons why you shouldn't do it, the only reason that really counts is that you feel it here. I hit my microphone, I don't know if that matters. Here. You feel it here, right? Strongly, like you can't wait to go and do it again the next day. When you found that, then you have to find a way to keep going and going and going, because that's the only way you're going to be happy, it's the only way you're going to make a lot of money, it's the only way you're going to have a huge impact on the world, it's the only way you're really going to feel fulfilled. Follow your passion. Thank you for the question, I hope that helped you guys. I'd love to know how you found your passion. Leave it in the comments below, I'm really curious about your story and I'm going to join in the discussion with you. Thank you so much for watching, continue to believe, and I'll see you soon.
