Entrepreneur Motivation - How do I know what my passion is? - Ask Evan

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 forum readers who wrote in about passion. So she wrote in asking, "I don't know what my passion is. How do I find it?" Great question and definitely something that you want to check out before you launch your business. A lot of entrepreneurs start a company just trying to make money without doing something they're really passionate about, and they rarely end up being successful. You'll find that the ones who are the most successful are the ones who really love their business, are truly passionate about what they're doing. They're more likely to be a lot more successful. So it's definitely worth investigating, spending some time doing some soul searching to figure out what your passion is before you go launch your business, because in the long term you have a much greater chance of success. So in terms of how do you find your passion, there's a couple ways to do it. The first thing I would look at is what are you already doing You know, outside of whatever job you have or whatever you're doing to make money right now, what are you doing that you find really enjoyable and you're able to help people and add a lot of value to their lives? Chances are it's probably some things that you're doing, maybe it's based around a hobby that you have or some skill that you have, that you're helping people, maybe it's for free, just friends and family, but you find that they really appreciate what you're doing. You're adding a lot of value to their lives. And is there a way that you can turn that into a potential business? Sometimes the things that we're good at, we're not necessarily super passionate about, so we don't want to build it into anything. But often, some of the things we're good at and work hard at just outside on our own, if it's a hobby or a skill, there's ways to turn that into our own business. And you'll probably be excited to go and do that every morning. So definitely be looking at what you're doing to help people, because that's what a business is all about. The more you can help people, the more successful you're going to be, the more money you're going to make. So what are you doing right now that's already helping people, you're getting really good feedback, even if you're not getting paid, there may be a way to turn that into a business. So that's my first way to look at it. The second way to look at it is what are some frustrations that you feel in your own life? What are things that you're struggling with and you'd really wish there was a solution for? Maybe you can go out and try to find a solution for it and, and help yourself and also help other people in that process. So is there anything in your own life, your day-to-day, existence that you find really, really frustrating, you wish there was a solution out there, maybe there's a way you can create that kind of solution that would help you and also help other people who are like you. So quick example from my background, when I sold my first software company, I was in a fortunate position of not having to go do anything for a while, but I wanted to do something, right? You don't want to just sit around and do nothing all day. I'm not the kind of guy who wants to just sit on the beach all day long. So the next thing I did was hook up with a venture capital company, and we started raising expansion capital for companies. And that was something that was interesting for me, and I could also add a lot of value to my friends because they were asking, well, how do I raise capital, and how do we go through this process? I want to get my company up and sold. And having gone through the process myself, I then was able to help some of my entrepreneurial friends who were in my same city do some of the same things themselves. So that That was where I was able to take something that I was kind of already doing on the side and be able to turn that into more of a business. And then the second thing I did was I launched my website. So I launched EvanCarmichael.com, and at first there wasn't a business model behind it. It was just something I did because I really liked doing it. I found with my software business, I got started when I was 19, so pretty young, didn't really know anything about sales or software or running a business before. And I was kind of scared at the beginning, right? 19-year-old kid. And what I found was, you know, I was a little overwhelmed and I thought, I'm not the first guy to go and try to sell software. And I started researching companies like Microsoft, McAfee, Intuit, a couple others, and looked at how did they get started? How did they go from nothing to their first million? And how can I do something similar? And I used those strategies to help me grow my business. And I thought that could be a really cool way to also help other entrepreneurs. So I launched EvanCarmichael.com sharing a lot of the famous entrepreneur profiles and stories that I found inspired me. So the first part of what I did was a venture capital business, and that was just something I was doing to help other entrepreneurs, and I found that I was able to, you know, make some money in the process as well by helping them grow their business. And the second part is I launched EvanCarmichael.com based on a pain that I saw for me personally, a frustration that Here I was, this young guy starting a business, had no idea what I was doing, and then realizing that if I just copied the strategies of other famous entrepreneurs, I could achieve some success on my own as well. And out of that frustration, I was able to help other entrepreneurs. And we've built up now the largest collection of famous entrepreneur profiles anywhere online. So that was kind of the beginnings of EvanCarmichael.com, and I still love what I do every day. I love helping entrepreneurs, and that's the backbone of my business. I love helping out entrepreneurs and help them grow their business and start a new business as well. So that was the discovery I went through after selling my first software company and was able to get to this point and very grateful for it. And hopefully, by going through that same journey of self-discovery, you'll be able to find something you really love and can be really successful at as well. But, you know, make sure you don't start anything until you're really passionate about it. Don't just do something because you think you have to do something and you're just trying to make a buck. Try to do something where you feel you're really excited about it and you think you can add a ton of value to your customers and people who are gonna eventually, you know, pay you for your services or for your product. Hopefully that helped. If you guys like the video, please give it a thumbs up below. That, you know, really motivates me to wanna make more of these videos for you guys. And if you have a question about this video or you have a question of your own about your own company, feel free to leave it in the comments below. I always read those and try to respond to as many as I can. So thank you, and we'll see you on the next episode.