Evan Carmichael Radio Show - Episode #13

Hello and welcome to the Evan Carmichael Show. I believe in entrepreneurs. I want to see you have massive success with your company. And I'm really upset today, so I'm just going to get right into it. I'm upset with the little man. I'm upset with the guy— we all have a little man in our life. This is the guy who tells us that you're not good enough, that hates on your idea, that tells you all the reasons why your dreams are not going to work out. We all have these people in our lives and they hold us back from achieving massive success. I have a story today about a little man in my life who's been causing me some grief and I want to share that with you and talk to you about how you can avoid and overcome the fears and the doubts that little man puts in your mind. This is important because I don't care about this little man in my life right now. I'm at the point in my career where if you tell me I'm not going to be successful at something, I'm going to go out and prove you wrong. But the little man, when you're first getting started, the little man is a dream killer. And it bothers me that little man exists. Think about it. When you have a new idea for your life, your company, right? You're lying in bed, it's 2 in the morning, you come up with this great idea. I'm going to launch this business. And you have the courage. You have that courage for the brief moment in time to say, "You know what? I can be more than I am right now. I can build a better life for myself." That takes guts. That takes bravery. And then you wake up the next day and you still have some doubts. You have doubts because you haven't figured it all out yet. But you're sitting there and you're thinking, "You know what? I really want to do this." And so you go and you tell your friends. You tell your family, right? Who do you talk to about your new ideas? And this is where you know who's a true friend in your life and who's just a little man. Because the friends are going to be the people who tell you, "Go for it. I support you. I believe in you. You can do this." Who find the holes in your plan and help you figure out ways to overcome them. Because when you first come up with an idea, you don't have it all worked out. Right? It's just an idea right now. It's a dream. You kind of, you have a vision for what you want to be, but you don't quite know how you're going to get there. Your plan is gonna be full of holes, and that's okay. The little man is the guy who's gonna come on and say, you're not gonna do this, you're not good enough, you're not gonna make it. Look at all these holes in your plans. It's not gonna work because of this and this and this and this and this. That's what the little man does, and he puts doubt in your mind. Even if little man has no idea what he's talking about, even if little man has no experience in this, The fact that little man doubts you makes you doubt yourself. You need to believe in yourself, in your vision, in what you stand for more than you believe in the opinions of other people. That's why it's important because little man is a dream killer. Because he has more confidence in his wrong opinions than you do in your idea and that makes you shut down. For that brief moment in time when you have some courage. And he writes into me. And this is what he writes. This is great. This is great. He tells me, "Please tell me you actually understand how the internet works." This is what he writes to me. So let me take a breath. You can tell I'm upset today. Now let me back up a sec, okay? Because I'm all for criticism. I love criticism. Criticism helps make you better. It gives you ideas on how you can become a better person, a better entrepreneur. But you have to look at the source. You have to look at who's telling you this. And you go and you fight for your business. And you fight for a better life. And you fight for your family. And you're in the arena fighting. Meanwhile, you have all these people around you watching as spectators. That's where little man sits. Screaming at you, laughing at you, throwing popcorn at you. Pay him no mind. Their wrong opinions and try to put you down. So when someone writes in to me and says, "Please tell me you actually understand how the internet works." You know what, if that's coming from the founders of Google, or the founders of Twitter, or someone who I look up to in the online world like Gary Vaynerchuk, if those guys are writing to me saying that, then I'm going to listen and say, "Hey guys, you've done a lot more than I have. What can I do?" Tell me, tell me how to get better. But if it's somebody who's never done anything important in his life, I'm not letting his opinions get me down. Why don't we just do a little comparison? Okay, me versus Little Man online. I've got 20 million people who visited my website. Little Man, 1,000 if he's lucky. I've got 200,000 followers on Twitter. Little Man, a couple thousand. I'm about to pass a million views on my YouTube channel. Little man's got a couple thousand. And here is little man telling me that I don't understand how the internet works. Little man is just the guy up in the crowd throwing popcorn down on you. Pay him no mind. I don't care about this little man because he's not changing my life. I'm not changing my decisions based on what he's saying. The problem is He impacts a lot of you. And you may be second-guessing yourself. You may be questioning yourself. You may be thinking, "I don't know if I'm going to be able to do this or not. You know, maybe little man is right. I don't know what to do." That's what bothers me. If you think about your dream as a precious idea, if I went to that little man before I had started, if I said, "Here's an idea I have." What do you think? And all he did was trash it. Then I would be stuck. You know, I might doubt myself. I might say, this isn't gonna work. Maybe little man is right. Maybe I should stop. You need to believe in yourself more than you believe in little man. I got a question from someone on Twitter who wrote in to say, what if it doesn't work out? You know, what if little man is right? What if it doesn't work out? How do I get over that fear to get going? And this is going to happen. You know what? Success is not a straight line. That's not how it works. It's not you come with an idea and boom, you take off. There's a whole bunch of little failures that are going to happen before you end up having success. And anywhere along the line in there, you might shut down. You might feel the world is against you. You're never going to make it. If you look at any successful company, look at your favorite successful entrepreneur, whoever it is, whatever industry they're in. You look at how they got started, the business idea that they started with is not the same as what made them successful. Your business will always change. And anywhere along that curve, as you're growing, you're starting this company, you have these assumptions that you think are going to work, you're going to get hit with the reality that a lot of your assumptions are wrong. And you could stop right there. You could stop there and say, "You know what? It's not working out." And when little man is criticizing you and saying, "See, I told you. That was a stupid idea." That might be enough to say, "You know what? I'm out. I'm done. I'm not going to do this anymore." You need to find another way to stand. Getting out there and talking to your customers and modifying your business idea and adapting to the changes. If you really believe in what you're doing, if it's important to you, you'll find a way to make it successful. You look at every successful entrepreneur, they're not doing it because they want to make a lot of money. You look at Oprah Winfrey, Donald Trump, Bill Gates, you name it, the biggest entrepreneurs in the world, look at why they started. It wasn't to make a lot of money. It's because they had a deep passion for what they're doing. And that passion gets you through. It gets you through the criticism that you're going to get when you go up against little man. So this show is all about how to beat down that little man because he is a cancer. Little man thinks small. Little man can't see a vision. Little man gets no dreams. Joy in his own life, so he's got to put you down for you trying to be great. And whether he's jealous of you, whether he's afraid of you, whatever it is, he doesn't want to see you be successful. And you can't let that hatred keep you down. Over the course of my business and my career, I've had a lot of people who believed in me. I've had my parents who, whenever I was down, told me, you know what, Evan, you're You're Evan Carmichael. You can do this. And I grew up in a family where I had that passionate belief that I could do anything. But you're gonna always run across that little man who comes and tells you that it's not possible, that you can't do it, that you're not good enough. You can't listen to him. You have to be stronger than him. You have to know that what you're doing is right, that you will be successful. That even though you just see darkness all around you, you don't know how it's going to work out, that's okay because you're committed to making your business a massive success. Here's the thing with little man, okay? Little man has to be right. He has to be right even if he doesn't know what he's talking about. He always has to be right. He's a small thinker. So a little man wrote to me and he was talking about my idea and he was trying to convince me that it would never work out. And he wrote in and he said, this is what he said, "If you zoom out, you'll find that I'm right." It was hilarious. Because this little man is such a small thinker, he wouldn't know a big idea if it hit him right in the face. And here he is telling me, zoom out and think bigger. My goal is to help a billion entrepreneurs. What are you trying to do, little man? This guy's allergic to thinking big. This is the problem. Again, like, this guy has no impact on my life, but people in your life, people who have no idea what they're talking about, have zero experience, have zero credibility, will be absolutely 100% convinced that what you're doing is wrong, and they'll have an opinion on everything. Don't let those people drag you down. Just because they're confident in their wrong opinion, it doesn't mean that they're right. Stand up for yourself. Believe in yourself. Believe in your dream. Let him be right and then go out and prove him wrong. I want to get to your calls. I have Tony on the line. Tony, thanks for waiting. Where are you from and how can I help?

I'm from Scottsdale, Arizona, and I've got an idea to do fat loss centers throughout the country. Okay, LED light treatment.

Okay.

And, uh, my idea is— absolutely works. If it didn't work, I wouldn't be wasting my time.

Okay.

So what I do is I've got a machine that actually melts the fat, and you can see a 2-inch loss after your first treatment. So my idea is to get, uh, some doctors on board, locate, you know, co-locate in their office with them, so it keeps my rent down. And my initial investment down and just to, uh, get out throughout the country. I think I can have 50 locations by, uh, by the end of the year.

So what's holding you back?

Money. I need to find some— I need to find some investors.

So how much does it cost for a machine?

About $50,000 per machine.

Okay, and why can't the doctors put that up?

Well, you know, if you've ever dealt with doctors, doctors are notoriously bad businessmen. And they're very cautious in how they do it. So I was wondering if you think that I should go after a— where do you think I should get the money from? Do you think I should go after hedge fund people, individual investors, or— and what would be your idea for me to find the capital that I need to start this?

Okay, so I used to be in the venture capital business to do some angel investing. This is not something that a hedge fund is going to look at. It's not something that a VC VC is going to look at. You're dealing, in the best case, an angel investor. The challenge you're going to have is showing that it works, right? That was my first reaction. Does this thing actually work? And I honestly, I think your best bet is going to be from getting forward-thinking doctors. Yeah, it's true, a lot of them suck at being a businessman, and that may be where you can come in and help them a little bit. But there are quite a few who are forward-thinking, looking for ways to grow their business, are up to date on technology, and this is something they would jump on. Like, you're not going to be able to help every single doctor in the country, right? That's not your target. You want to go after the guys who get technology, who can sell this, who understand it, who want to make more money, who are forward-thinking and believe in investing in products.

I would be best off in the, you know, in with a plastic surgeon in their office because they've already got existing clientele. So that way I can, um I can keep my advertising dollars down right off the bat and I think it would be beneficial for both because when I do spend money on advertising that I'm going to get customers for them and they're going to get customers for me too. So that's what I was thinking. That's what I was thinking.

I was at your head in the same way myself with my thinking there. You've got people there who understand business, plastic surgeons are much better business investment than a lot of doctors, and, and the best ones make a ton of money. So they have— $50,000 to them is nothing. They have the capital to invest in this. And you may, to make it easier, want to consider working with some kind of financial institution that you can, uh, you can set up a payment plan so they're not, they're not buying $50K cash up front, but you can You get a finance—

That's a really good idea. I like that idea.

So it's like $100 a month or $200 a month. And if you can show them, hey, this is going to make you $5K every week, then it's a no-brainer investment for them.

Absolutely. That's, you know what, that's great advice. I really appreciate that.

Now— And it's not you putting it on your business and you having to have great financials. They're putting it on their business.

Absolutely. And I'll tell you, your segment I was listening earlier about the little man, Anytime you start any type of business, I've learned in my lifetime, and I've been in multiple businesses, everybody's— there's going to be a million people out there that can tell you why it can't work. Absolutely. Your advice was, uh, was excellent, and it, uh, it really hit home because everybody's like, oh, you can't do it. They'll tell you this and tell you that, and you just really— every time what I've done in my life is every time someone tells me no, it excites me, and I want to work harder to make it work. To prove everybody wrong.

Yeah, you got it, Tony. You got it. You're the entrepreneur.

Thank you very much. I appreciate it.

No problem. Thanks for calling in. So for everybody listening, if you are going out and trying to finance venture capital funding. Those are the guys who have deep pockets who are going to finance you. If it's smaller, then you're looking at going to angel investors. And these are wealthy individuals, people who have some money, people who are looking for opportunities. A lot of them are doctors and dentists. I dealt with a lot of them inside the industry. It's called DDI, doctors or dentists with disposable income. And a lot of them are so bored with their jobs They're day in, day out, that they're looking for investment opportunities. They want to live vicariously through you. So you can go to those guys, but also see if your customers might be able to finance it. In Tony's case, he's targeting these doctors, the plastic surgeons making a ton of money. Those guys should be financing his operation. And you can potentially get it financed by a financial institution as well. So you make those small monthly payments instead of a huge chunk. Right up front. So look for creative ways. Bootstrap it. It doesn't have to be you dipping into your bank account, mortgaging your home, risking everything, putting it all on the line. There's always a creative way to get something done. And I hate spending money until I'm making money. So try to use that as a principle. I echo Tony's thoughts on the little man. He hates the little man too. There's always going to be people who are trying to bring you down, tell you all the reasons why it's not possible. Pay the little man no mind. He is not important to your life. He adds no value. He just brings you down. And that might be a close family member of yours or a friend. But you got to think back to say, does this person actually understand what he's talking about? Is this person actually qualified to give me good advice? Or not. Usually it's not. Ignore the haters. Focus on your business. Believe in yourself. Believe in your dream. If you can keep that confidence and keep that courage up, you can build something amazing. Today's show is all about stomping out the little man in your life, the people who tell you that your idea isn't good, that you're never going to make it, that you should give up, that you should quit. That you're not good enough. We all have these people in our lives who try to bring us down, who offer no real value to us. And I'm sharing some stories about the little man in my life. So this is a great story. You're going to like it. I just launched this video, okay? It's called Believe. It's a 6-minute video. It's a motivational video that basically tells the story of people who didn't believe in themselves, who didn't believe that their goal was possible. And that small shift in mindset, that change that gave them a little bit of courage that said, "I think I can do this." When they shifted that, they were able to go out and accomplish great things. It's 6 minutes. It's one of the things I'm most proud of creating so far in my business. It's great. And little man gets a hold of it. And he writes into me and he says, Evan, videos on YouTube should not be longer than 3 minutes. Your 6-minute video is too long. It's never gonna work.