Evan Carmichael Radio Show - Episode #12

Hello and welcome to the Evan Carmichael Show. I am your host Evan Carmichael. I believe in entrepreneurs. Welcome to 2014. It's been a while since I've been with you guys over the holiday break and I'm excited to be back. I'm excited for you to make this year the year that your business takes off, to stop struggling, to stop doubting yourself, to go and do something important and change the world. On the show today: how to find your strength, do one thing, the 3 most important steps you need to know to start a new business, and just do it. Now, find your strength. I got a question on Twitter recently where somebody asked me, "Where do you find the strength to do all these big things? How do you do it?" The answer for me is simple. If you want to have strength and feel more energy, Stop working on projects that bring you down, that suck your energy, that drain your life force. If you're forcing to do something, if you're forcing yourself, stop. Get rid of it. That's not your path. You won't build anything great by repeatedly doing things that you hate. Instead, focus on what gives you energy. Things that you look forward to, projects that you actually enjoy. Running a business, it's brutally hard. In my opinion, you might as well be doing something that you actually like. Here's the process that I go through when I'm working on new projects. Here's what I do and hopefully you guys can learn from it. Like most entrepreneurs, I like starting projects. I like the new. I love the challenge. It's fun. We like going after these new things. Then I get bored of it. I build things up myself. I invest typically no money and only my time because you don't need a lot of money to do something amazing, just a lot of heart. When I get bored, I see how far along the project has come. Then I decide either I kill the project or hand it off to someone to run with. I do this over and over and over again. It's a process and it works. And sometimes I get bored after an hour and I stop. And sometimes it may last for weeks. It may last for months. Some projects like this radio show I don't get bored of at all, at least not yet. And as soon as I get tired of something, and I'm sure you guys can realize this too, as soon as you get tired of something, your productivity, it drops. The quality of what you are making drops. If you are not excited by it anymore, The quality is going to drop off and your happiness level, your energy, your strength, it all drops off too. It's better to move on to something else. Either I've taken it far enough along that someone else can come and take over for me and it will help my business or it's still too experimental and it's not worth continuing to invest in. But move on. When you don't bring passion anymore to your business, Everyone suffers. Your customers won't be as responsive. Your team, they won't be as productive. Your family will notice that you're not happy. It's too important to your own life and to the people around you that you stop doing the things you hate and focus on projects that you love. And here's something really important to remember, okay? It's okay to change. A lot of us have in our mind that this is the plan that we started with and we have to see it through to the end. But you know what? Your business It's going to change. The thing that you start off doing is not going to be how you end up. Everybody changes. I'm not doing the same thing that I was doing over a decade ago when I started this business. It looks completely different and it continues to evolve with what I'm passionate about. This happens with every single entrepreneur. You look at every famous entrepreneur, they always change their plan. They have to adapt to what the market is telling them and to what they're excited about. If you think about Wrigley's— Wrigley's is the gum company. They started off selling soap, and then they sold baking soda, and eventually became a gum company. If you think about BMW, they make cars now, but they started off making planes. If you look at their logo, it's a propeller from a plane. That's where their logo came from, and they evolved and moved into cars. If they stuck with their business and said, "Hey, we're only going to make planes," and they lost their passion for that business, they may not be around anymore. Lamborghini— this is one of my favorite stories— Lamborghini started off selling tractors. The guy named Lamborghini. He started off getting into cars because he bought a car from Enzo Ferrari. Enzo Ferrari made the greatest car in the world at the time, the Ferrari. Lamborghini said, "You know, here are a few things that might make you better." Enzo Ferrari told him, "Listen, you stick to making tractors and I'll make cars." That got Lamborghini all fired up and then he went into the car business. You are going to change. You have to change. The next time you feel yourself doing something for too long and finding your energy and strength are gone, think about what excites you and go do that. Amazing things will come out of it. Believe. I want to get to your calls. I have Jacqueline on the line. Jacqueline, where are you from and how can I help?

Hi, I'm from Chicago, Illinois. Welcome. Basically— yes, can you hear me now?

Yeah, I can hear you.

Okay. I'm from Chicago, Illinois, and my question is basically I want to know what is the easiest way to find financing or investors for a new business venture?

What do you need to finance?

Well, basically what it is, I'm in the arts, okay, and I have screenwriters and screenplays that need to be financed. And I'm having a problem finding funding.

What have you done so far to try to go out and get that funding?

So far I've filled out grants— grant— I've looked for grants and I've looked for investors, but I'm finding it very hard to do so.

Have you had any luck with the grants?

I haven't got a response back yet for those yet.

Okay. The biggest challenge with these kinds of things when you go into an investor is, "What's my return?" Right. Making the business case. Right? So if you're going to— let me give you some of your options, okay? If you're going to a bank, they're not going to finance this unless you put yourself on the line. Right? If you're going to put up your house or some other asset. Banks are not interested in this kind of stuff. Okay. So you're looking at either government, which would be— or you're looking at individual investors.

Okay.

And the individual investor is going to want to see, how am I going to make my money back out of this? Okay. And it's really hard for this kind of business. Have you figured out what your business case is going to be?

Actually, no. And in addition, I also have an online jewelry store, and I was looking for financing and investors for that too.

And it's going to be hard without that business case, right? You have to be able to show them here, you know, if you give me— how much money do you need for that store?

I need about $43,000.

$43,000, okay. So I like that it's an exact number. But so if I give you $43,000, what am I going to get out of it and how long?

Oh, okay, I see what you're talking about.

Yeah, right. And they want to know exactly how you're going to spend the money.

Oh, okay.

It sounds like you're still really in the early stages of this.

Oh, basically, yes, I am. Yes, I am.

So, and basically, what might— what you might actually want to do to start— have you ever worked at a jewelry store before?

I'm just doing retail. On the low employee end of cash sharing and stocking. That's about it.

Right. It may be worth joining a company that's a small company, like 10 people around for employees, somebody that you aspire to be, and try to learn as much about that business. So when you do go out— because if you start your business now and say you take out a loan or whatever for the $40,000, your chances of success are pretty low because you've never done anything close to this before.

Okay.

So go work for somebody who has done it and get beyond just the cashier level. Work with the entrepreneur and show that you want to learn about the business and learn more so that you're making mistakes but getting paid to do it.

Okay, I got it.

Then when you're ready to go out and start your business, your chance of success goes dramatically.

Okay.

All right.

All right.

All right. Well, I still want to know how it's possible. I know I have to go to the bank and I know I have to get investors. Is there another way to get seed capital?

Typically you're looking at banks or individual investors for where you're at, but again, the bank is only going to take what you Uh, but they want to take your asset in case you can't pay them back. They want to take your house. They got to take something. One other site that you may want to look at is a website called kickstarter.com, and what they do is they allow startup funding for different projects, and it's basically crowdsourced. So people from around the country will help support you in individual investments. So go check it out, okay?

Okay, thank you so much.

No problem. I want to see you have massive success with your company in 2014, and part of that is going to come from getting more focused. Now, what I want you to think about is doing one thing. Okay? Often we have so many opportunities in front of us, so many different ways to go that we get paralyzed and don't do anything. This actually happened to me a couple of weeks ago. I was working with my media coach. Every week we sit down and listen to my radio show or my YouTube videos and she gives me advice on what to do to get better. If you guys like the show, a lot of that is thanks to her for helping it get better. A couple of weeks ago she came to me with this huge list and she said, "Evan, here is what you need to work on. Here are some ideas for you." It was this huge list of maybe 40 different ideas. I loved it. It was great. So many great ideas for what I could do on the show or with my videos. I got off the call and I printed off the list and I looked at it. I was just overwhelmed. I didn't know where to start. And when it came to time that she recorded my videos, I didn't do any of the things that she asked me to do. I just did my normal stuff because it was too overwhelming. I didn't know where to start. And this happens a lot. And so the next week I got on and I said, "You know what? I love that list you gave me last week, but..." It was too much. Just give me one thing. I trust your judgment. Give me the one thing I need to work on this week and I will do it. And she said, okay, do a 1-minute video on Mondays. One Minute Mondays. And so I did it. I did it that week and it turned out to be one of the most viewed videos I did that week and I have done it every week since. And so if you find yourself overwhelmed and bombarded with tons of different options, The worst thing you can do is nothing. Do something because your Plan B, your Plan C, your Plan F is better than no plan. As you get into it, you'll see if it works for you or not. Don't be so paralyzed by fear that you don't do anything. Pick one thing, make it happen this week, and then go out and do another thing and another thing and another thing. Believe. I want to get to the calls. I have Stacy on the line. Stacy, where are you from and how can I help?

I'm from the great Commonwealth of Virginia, my friend.

Virginia, all right. Welcome to the show.

Thank you. I was wondering, I have an idea for an invention. How do you get an idea from being an idea to taking it to the next level as far as getting it marketed and patented and all that good stuff? How do you take an idea to the next level?

Okay, you got me curious now. What's the idea?

Now, I don't want to be Kenya Moore, you know.

I don't want to—

I don't like to talk about it, uh, and then somebody, you know, go out here and steal your idea. Every idea you have is probably about 10 million people thinking the same thing. The only difference is that one person acts on it, and I want to be that one person regardless to what it is. It could be a, you know, a moon catcher, you know what I mean? I don't care. The bottom line is, how do you take an idea to the next level.

Okay, so let's go with your Mooncatcher. So what you need to figure out first is, can you patent this? Okay, if you're thinking about creating an invention, can you patent this product? And your best bet, honestly, is to talk to a lawyer to get their advice on if it's patentable or not and how much it's going to cost to actually go through that process.

Uh-huh.

If you are— is your end goal to sell this to a big company or to sell this to the masses or what do you want?

To sell it to the masses, to sell it to a big company. You know, it's, you know, they say the best, some of the best inventions are things that we already have, you know, to improve on them and to perfect them. And you know, with that premise, there are a lot of things I can see that need— I find fault in everything, but I also find solutions, my friend. So I'm not just there— You know, I'm picking out faults, but the thing is, this could work better if you did X, Y, and Z. And, and, you know, and I'm just sick of seeing, like, for instance, instance, the flavored bottled water. I had that idea like freaking 30 years ago, you know, because I hated water. I said, if it was flavorful, I would freaking drink it. Next thing you know, some idiot does it, and now he's a multi-billionaire, and I'm kicking myself in the butt saying, oh my God, I thought about that when my doctor told me to stop drinking so many Slurpees. And start drinking more water.

But it doesn't count unless you act on it, right?

Exactly. So, so how do you— so, so you saying go to a lawyer? Oh God, might be most vile of all beings.

Okay, um, I feel your pain, but okay, here's, here's what happens. Okay, if you want to get a patent, you, you first apply, and what you get is patent pending status, okay?

Just go down to the Patent Office in Virginia because there is a Patent Office in Virginia.

Just go down there and— I would still recommend going through a professional. Like, you can go there and ask who's a really good patent lawyer that doesn't charge too much that can work with me. But if you try to do it yourself and you make a mistake, then this huge idea of yours is gone, right?

Okay.

So for patent, you you apply for, you get patent pending status, and then that gives you a year to basically figure out if you can market this thing or not. Because the full-blown patent, you have to pay every year to maintain.

Okay.

And so you don't want to do that unless you know that you have something that people will actually buy and you're making money from.

Gotcha.

Right. It's important, especially if you want to sell to a big company, because a big company will buy— a lot of the best inventors, a lot of the people who make the most money aren't the ones who go out and try to sell the product themselves. They basically license it to a big company. Right? Like that bottled water company. It isn't, "I'm going to make my own bottled water with flavor." It's, "Here's my idea. I patented it and then I go sell the idea to Coke and they pay me 10 cents every bottle that goes out." Gotcha. Right? So to do that kind of deal, you have to have the patent. Okay, that's what they're paying for, because they're going to look at— I want to do this myself, I don't want to pay her. But they can't because you had the patent for it.

All right, well, well, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to give you a call back and let you know how it, um, when you talk about it again. I'm going to do it and see what happens.

Never know. I'll get—

I'll patent it, go on that Shark show and see if I can sell it.

Get going and call me back. Let me know how it's going.

Will do, my friend.

Alright.

Thanks a lot.

Thanks, Stacy. Bye-bye. Bye. Listen, if you have an idea, you want to protect it. If you want to make those big deals, again, most inventors make their money not from going out and selling the product themselves, but by making a big deal with a big company and they get paid a royalty every time that product sells. Because you need to focus on what you are good at, which is inventing and not necessarily being a marketer. What are the most important steps to starting a business? This is a question I got asked on my YouTube channel by Celeste and she wants to start a magazine. I thought, "Hey, this is a great question." I answered her and I thought the radio audience needs to know the answer too. I'm going to share it with you guys today. So 3 steps, the 3 most important things you need to know when you're first starting a business, you're thinking about starting a business. Number 1, identify your passion. You have got to start a business around something that you are over the moon excited and passionate about. Every other rule in business doesn't apply, will not help you, will not save you, will not make you money unless you're passionate about your business. Entrepreneurs, we're a little bit crazy. You have to be crazy because it's so hard to launch a business and to get it to go, to get it to take off, that most normal, most sane people will quit. But you keep going because you love doing it. You're doing it to do it. This is an important mission that you're on. But do you love your business or your business idea that much? If not, you have to go find something else. If you're in it just for the money, you're going to quit as soon as it gets hard. Some of the most successful entrepreneurs, billionaire entrepreneurs, failed for year after year after year after year, but kept going even though there was no hope, no glimmer of light. They kept going because they just loved what they did. That's rule number 1. You have to love what you're doing. Number 2 is go get some experience. Here's a rule in business. You make money by providing value. You want to make a lot of money, provide a lot of value. You want to make a lot of money really quickly, provide a lot of value really quickly. How can you provide value to your customers? A lot of it comes from experience. You know what you're doing so you can help somebody solve a problem. If you have no idea what you're doing, then you're not able to provide a lot of value and you're not able to make money. So go get some experience. Work for somebody who's done what you're trying to do. Just like the advice that I gave to Jacqueline, she wants to start this jewelry business in Chicago, but she's never done anything close before. If she goes out and takes out a loan for $43,000 and launches this company, chances are it's going to fail because she has no experience in it. Go work for a company who has like 10 employees, somebody who you want to be in a couple of years. Don't just do the menial jobs. Learn from the entrepreneur. Every entrepreneur wants a great team and wants ambitious people who want to take on projects. Get close to the entrepreneur. Learn from them. You're making your mistakes while getting paid to do it. Instead of you paying to learn, you're getting paid to learn. You're taking a job not for the money. You don't take a job for money. You take a job to learn, to gain a skill set. So that when you're ready to go and launch your business, the chances of you succeeding go up dramatically. What I don't want to have happen is you end up starting this business, taking out a loan to do it, and running out of cash. That's what happens to most entrepreneurs. They run out of cash in 3 months or 6 months or 12 months because it's harder than they thought it was going to be, because they didn't quite know what they were doing, and they end up having to go back and get a job. I don't want that for you. I want you to give yourself the best chance of success. Yeah, I'm the entrepreneur guy and I may be saying, "Hey, go get a job," and that might sound counterintuitive, but it gives you the best chance of your business succeeding. Go find someone who has done this before and learn from them. Even if it's 3 months or 6 months, whatever it takes for you to feel comfortable that you can go do it on your own. The last thing, step 3, is start on the side. Prove that this will work. You have your job. You're making money. You're not at the point where you can't pay your rent and you can't pay for food on the table. Start on the side and show that people will pay you for what you do. You have to get it to the point of survival. Get it to the point, get your business on the side to the point where you can quit your job. And not have to worry about putting food on the table. I'm not talking about living a life of luxury. Okay? Bare essentials. Survival. But you can do it. So to summarize: 1. Identify your passion.

2.

Go get some experience. 3. Start it up on the side. Build it to the point of survival. Then quit your job and blow it up. I want to get to your calls. I have Derek on the line. Derek, my producer says you sound like a nice guy.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I have an entertainment company called D&J Entertainment and Costumes, and I bought the costume store from the old owner back in 2007. And we were already doing birthday parties, clown characters, you know, what we have to do now. You know, costumes basically sell in October for Halloween, in December Santa Claus for Christmas. But now, you know, the tax issues, it seems like I just can't seem to keep up with them. I mean, every time I turn around, it's more. I mean, I've been paying them every 3 months, and you know, it just seems like, okay, they can put you on a payment arrangement. And I'll start asking for the first year when we bought the business, is there a tax amnesty? You can, you know, because I had to use all my money to buy the— to pay the old owner off. And then as soon as I walk in, it's like, okay, you owe quarterly taxes. Okay, you owe more quarterly taxes, uh, $600 here, $700. Okay, now you owe yearly taxes for the whole year. And, you know, uh, we know you made $120K, you know, but you owe us, um, what, what, $5,000 in taxes? And I'm like, oh, you know, and, and then not— I'm not racist at all, but I have Indian friends and Asian friends, and from what I hear, for the first couple years they were in business, they didn't have to pay any taxes. Is that true? Am I wrong or what?

Uh, well, there's different types of taxes. So you have to pay taxes on your actual building, right? And do you own the building or you're renting?

No, I'm renting the building.

Renting. So is the, is the landlord passing that tax on to you?

Um, no, we don't. We just pay rent. We, we pay our rent every month. We don't have to pay a renter's tax. I'm talking about the business tax, the city tax.

What other kind of tax is it?

The federal tax.

Those are, those are all taxes that you have to pay. Now, some entrepreneurs at the start, they don't know what they have to pay. They don't file for it, and they may kind of skirt under the line for a little bit. Right, you're supposed to pay those taxes, right?

But is there something that says the first year, you know, I'm like, okay, if I was Korean and I moved to America, is there something that—

I'm just, I don't know if it's true—

do some people don't have to pay the first 2 years they're in business, or, or does everybody pay, or what?

Everybody should pay. There may be a few specialized rules if the government really wants So, example, like, if the government— if a new stadium is being built in a city, the government might give them a tax break because they really want that basketball team to come to the city.

Are there any tax breaks on small business owners?

No.

Okay. That's why I called you.

Yeah, there may be something state by state, but nothing that I am aware of aside from those big decisions where they really want to bring companies in. Now some states have different tax systems than others, right? Like you move over one state, the tax rate could be totally different. Mm-hmm. Okay, but were there back taxes before?

No, no, like, no, there wasn't. There wasn't, because when we took over, we just started paying them. And it's like, you know, you're paying your rent at the store and then the mortgage at the house, and you're only making like $100K, you know. And it's like, wow, I owe you $7,000.

That quick? Yeah. How good is your accountant?

Um, my wife likes the accountant. I don't— I'm not saying that I dislike him. I'm just thinking, but when I'm talking to other business owners, the first couple of years they were in business, they weren't owing $4,000 and $5,000.

Yeah. And a lot of that comes from having a good accountant. Right. A regular accountant, all they do is they do your books. But a good accountant helps you tax plan, right? Right.

And, and I, I don't exactly know, you know, she likes them and she said, oh, you know, she said this is what we're supposed to file and we need to say this and we need to do that. And I'm like, you know, we don't—

this is—

this guy's not a friend. It seems like he's not trying to look out for us. I just feel like, aren't there more things that we should be getting off for taxes? So, I mean, because since I left my government job back in 2007, I never got a refund. You know, I haven't got a refund since I left the government job. I've been paying the government ever since I left, and I don't like what the accountant is doing because I just don't think he's looking out for our best interest.

Yeah, you know, you're at the point now with the size of your business where you need to have a good accountant. It's not like he's a nice guy, so we're going to keep him on. This is costing you dollars every month, right?

I mean, every month I'm paying. I mean, do business owners ever get a refund?

You can. Depends. Depends on a lot of different factors, but you need an accountant. Really, it's worth spending an extra $1,000 to save $5,000. Right. Okay? Yeah, don't hear— Find your accountant today.

I'm gonna tell her about this year's taxes. We're gonna apply, and I want to send it to two accountants, see if they come up with the same thing.

Perfect. Good luck, Derek. Thank you, sir.

Have a good day.

No problem. Welcome back to the Evan Carmichael Show. I believe in entrepreneurs and I want you to make something happen this year with your company. A lot of times we get ideas in our head, great ideas for things to do, and we never act on it. It's because we want to have the perfect plan. It's the perfect plan, we want it to make sense before we take action. The thing you have to keep in mind is you never have the perfect plan.

Plan.

I made this mistake. I had a software company, my first business. I spent a whole summer working on my plan. I wanted it to be perfect before I launched. It had to be perfect. So I spent the whole summer working on it. I had to research everything. As soon as I launched, everything changed. The market changed. The market wasn't what I thought it was. You can never really tell until you actually get out there and start selling. It never works out like you think it's going to work out. Like the Wrigley story. He started off selling soap. That didn't work out. He had a great plan for it, but it didn't work out. So he sold baking soda. Well, that didn't work out. So he started the gum, and that took off. You got to stop planning so much, get out of your head, and start doing something. Start doing something and change accordingly. According to the feedback you're getting back. Okay, but just stop thinking so much because you think so much that you end up doing nothing. So just get out and do something. Just do it. Okay? We're in our last segment. I got time for one last caller. I have got my caller on the line. It is Nerman. I think Nerman is a repeat caller. Nerman, how you doing?

Hi, I'm doing well. Thanks so much for having me back on.

I really appreciate it.

What now, you were the website that helped connect women in New York, right?

Yes, I was.

All right, testing my memory there. So it was Lumel.com?

Yes, it was Lumel.com.

So what's going on?

Well, since we've launched, we've had a whole bunch of members sign up for the site, and what's been really interesting is You mentioned that, you know, it was limited for New York for the beginning part.

Right.

But after launching, we've had so many people from various other parts of the country like Chicago, California, Florida, D.C. contact me personally saying, "Hey, this is so great. This is fantastic. Can you make this available where I'm living?" And—

Okay, great.

So we're now responding to that demand and we're actually expanding expanding in 2014, hopefully in the next 30 days, into these other areas and making Lumelle available for everyone in the US at least for now. And my question is that as we're expanding right now, what's going to be my best sort of marketing technique and how can I sort of keep the branding sort of pure instead of it being more diluted? like how do I still maintain control over it as it's going national and I'm still based in New York?

Yeah, and I think my fear for you would be if one person sets up in California, then they're not going to have a friend to connect with, right? You need a certain base.

Exactly.

Right?

Exactly.

What if you did this?

Could you have it so that you have some kind of counter on your website that says, if it's say by city, so say San Francisco, You need, like, for Fort LaMelle to work, you need at least X number of people. Say it's 100. 100 women to sign up, right? Is that a good number?

Yeah, sure.

Okay. And before you unlock it, you have to get to that number. So you can show the map of the states and all the cities and how many people have signed up per city, because it would encourage people to spread the word and say, "Hey, you got to sign up for this website. You got to sign up because I want to get it to 100." But also when you launch, you have a base because you don't want to launch in a city and have 5 people and they meet and there's no connection and they say, "Ah, lo malo. It doesn't work." Yeah, exactly. What do you think? Would that work for you?

Yeah, I think so. I think that's a great idea. I mean, the last thing I want to do is have people join early on and then sort of have negative comments about it because, you know, the base numbers aren't up yet. I think that that's definitely something that can be done. In terms of like reaching out to sort of these cities and sort of marketing to them, do you have like a particular approach that I should use to help build the base in those cities?

I think your best bet is through the media. I remember when you first called in, my producer Fernanda, was like, "I love this idea!" As soon as you said it, she loved it. You've got to get the message out. I think the media is a great way to do it and tell stories about why this is a problem.

Okay.

Then people will come to the website and you can say we're trying to build up these different cities. As each one launches, you can do a local campaign in those cities as well. Think about what the main problem is. Busy cities, women don't have any friends anymore even though there are so many people around us and we are so connected online. Your message is something that your audience of young women professionals can relate to. Just getting that out in the media and then if you have a clear message on your website where people can see what cities are opening up and that there is pent-up demand in certain cities, that will help spread the a little bit more.

Okay, yeah, that's great advice. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.

No problem. When I first did my website and I was trying to get the word out about it, I built a media list myself of local media and national media. Every week I would send out a new press release. The press release you want to make like a story, not just a typical press release because nobody cares about your company. They care about the stories behind it.

Sure.

And I always got a response from somebody. Okay. If it was radio or TV or print. So build your own list and see who's talking about— like every newspaper has a columnist who talks about the single life in that city.

Yeah.

Right? Or lifestyle. You need to be talking to these people and get on their radar. And this is a cool story. You're making their job easier by introducing yourself.

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, that's really great advice. I'm definitely going to start working on a media list.

Cool.

Good luck.

Thank you.

Thank you. And call back again with your update.

Will do.

Thank you so much.

All right, no problem. Cheers. For all of you out there who are trying to build up a brand and trying to build up a website and get known and build something national, the media is a great way to do it. If you think about do you want to buy advertising or do you want to be in a story, what do you pay attention to? You pay attention to the stories, not the ads. The stories are free. You just have to be able to write a good interesting article that somebody would want to share, because reporters are always looking for stories. They are looking for experts. They are looking for someone to come up and make their job easier. So if you do that, your chances of success go up dramatically and they will spread the word. Word for you. We're already at the end of the hour. It's crazy. Thank you so much to Zach and Fernanda, my producers. You guys are the all-star team. I love you guys.

Stay tuned.

We'll be back in 2 weeks. You can visit my website, EvanCarmichael.com, in the process. Believe in yourself, guys. We'll see you soon. Take care.