How Evan Carmichael Turned Passion into Proof: The Ultimate Guide to Building a Business!

Give them proof. So I'm a big believer in going in on projects when you're passionate about something, and I'll make a lot of gut call decisions where people won't understand it or agree with it at the start. Because it only kind of exists in my heart, and then I'll just go and do it and then want to show them this is why it works, this is why it's great, and it's easier for them to come on board when they see it and they have proof, much more than just listening to an idea. When I'm starting on projects, I'll try to, you know, recruit people to help me and get their advice and opinions and feedback. But if nobody wants to help me, I'll just go and do it. I'll do it myself. I'll be an army of one. We talked about earlier today and just create it. In talking about my book, I had this vision for creating the book, and everybody thought— most of the people that I talked to at the start thought it's a workbook, it's a little kind of tiny pamphlet, but it's not— there's not enough content to make a book. Like, you guys, maybe I'm not explaining it right, but you guys are missing the boat on how much content could be created around this idea. And so I went out and created it and ended up writing 120,000 words when they wanted 60. And ended up cutting half the book. How it's relevant now, what's happened this week in the book, is my editor wanted to cut a couple of extra sections from the book. Couple pages, not a huge deal. But what I did was, I didn't just— you know, intuitively I felt like I like those pages. Like, this is important, this needs to be in here, it's part of the message. Everything that has made it into the final cut, I'm attached to, I feel needs to be there, it's super important. When I had the book out, I gave it to 20 different people, and you guys saw kind of the recap. And I had them review it, I had them underline it, and I took all of their feedback and made a master copy. And the pages that my editor wants to cut, the audience liked. There's comments, there's checkmarks, there's underlines, there's highlights. And because I had that proof, I can show that to my editor and say, listen, it's not just me saying I like it and I'm emotionally attached to it. I gave it to these people, they think it's relevant, they think it's valuable, and now it's a lot harder for for her to say no because there's proof. So show them, right? If you have something that you want to create, don't just accept their— you know, the other people's limiting views on it. Go out and show them. Show them that it works. Give them proof that this can create something amazing. And JRyan has brought up an example about the Believe video. When the origin, you know, Harry the Dream Killer, the little man, told me that no video should be 6.5 minutes long, I still went out and made it. And launched it, and it has over a million views and was a super popular video and impacted— It was my first one to get a million views. Yeah. And so I showed him, right? Like, here's the proof. And then that created a model to then go do it again and again and again. So if you have haters or doubters or people around you who, you know, don't quite believe in it, then just go and show them, get them proof. Okay, questions. Q&A time. Peter, I have a question. I'm not super skilled in one thing. I don't think I want to. I got lots of basic knowledge on different subjects. I just don't know how I could start a business this way. I really want to start my own business. I don't have the specialism. I like business, fitness, books, being outside. My knowledge is in Excel, nutrition, business. You know where I get stuck. Do you have any suggestions on how to work this problem out?

Well, there's a few ways to look at it. I mean, there's always a place in the world for generalists. You never know if you've found your focus or niche. Like, as you explore, you might find, oh, I really love doing this particular thing and I want to get rid of the other things. So there's a whole bunch of experimentation, but assuming that variety is your thing or multidisciplines, you can use all those skills, Excel, nutrition, and business.

Business, yeah.

You can use all those skills to create, to bring value to the world, to create a business around those particular things. Maybe you release workout spreadsheets, really refined complex workout spreadsheets and you sell them as a business. I mean, there's a ton of options, but I also wouldn't put yourself in a box and be like, I don't like focusing on any one particular thing. I'm sure those people exist, but whether you're— whether that's you or not remains to be seen.

Yeah, I agree. I think the genius is in combining all those things, combining the things that you love that make you you and making that your business. So Excel, nutrition, and business. If you tried to do just one of those things, you would suck at it because there are other people who are better at Excel than you, other people better at nutrition, other people better at business. but you can be the best at combining those 3 things together. And there are people who want that, who want the best. They want to build a business around nutrition and tracking it in Excel. You can build a business off of that and you could be the best in the world at that. And so that's what you should go and do. And as you go and explore new things, are interested in other things, bring that into your business as well. Because if you try just to do the one thing, then you won't be successful. Are successful as you could be. Take all the pieces of you and put it together into one business.

Combine your passions.

Combine your passions. That's the answer.

That's an Evan video.

That's an Evan video. We have that somewhere. Let's link that up. Oh, not over Jay's face. Let's link it up on my chest. There you go. Patricia, I'd love to see a video series on the marketing efforts leading up to the book's release.

Oh yeah, this is exciting. That's a common request. I feel like this question comes up every time, every book. Video, and your answer is usually, "I'm not focused on that right now." Yeah, we're almost there.

I'm almost ready.

But it's exciting.

Starting to think of some things.

Book trailer?

Yeah, starting to think of some things. So right now, where I'm at— I don't know what week this is— right now where I'm at is I have the close to final version going back and forth with the editor. It's still missing my conclusion. There are still 3 things that I'm fighting over that we gotta figure out. And then the people that have done guest contributions to the book. I need them to approve their sections and get them to sign off on it. And then I need to write my conclusion and that's it. And so hopefully that'll happen in the next couple weeks. And then it's, we're looking at early December release date. I think it was December 6th. Is that what I said? 6th, 6th or 7th. So from then on, it's going to be figuring out the marketing and I appreciate that you want to hear about it. And so that's probably what this series will transition to learning about.

I'm already thinking about the marketing.

How to launch. I'm excited because it's been so much about writing the book. It's like, I need to get this away. Now that I'm at the point where I love what I've written, like, it's ready.

It's solid.

The editor might not think it's ready, the publisher might not think it's ready, but I think it's ready, so it's ready. And we need to work on a cover, and we need to work— I'm sure there's things we need to work on, like table of contents and acknowledgements and whatever, but like, it's ready, I want to get it out, let's start marketing it. I'm excited to market it. It's been so long of creating this thing, I want to get it out. So I'll keep you guys posted. This has been fun! Keeping people in the loop and hearing your feedback and questions is fun. And keeping it secret. Yeah.

Well, you get to know about it.

I'll talk about it soon. Oh, this is a long one. Okay, Wang Wu. What's your take on promoting your book door-to-door and hitting the streets and canvassing your book to your selecting audience personally instead of sending them to Amazon or Kindle or a website where they have to take a cut from your book and have to ship it out?

What do you think? Well, I mean, Taylor Swift went to people's homes to give them a Christmas present. You responded individually on like personal YouTube comments. You made a video reply to people.

So it's—

I don't feel like you're I'm not anti-door-to-door or anti-in-person, but it doesn't seem that high leverage or befitting of the whole campaign.

Like, it's a— I mean, it's an idea, certainly. I feel like Wang is asking this because of a monetary reason. I feel like that last part—

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, probably.

Because it will take a cut from your book and then have to ship it out.

You're not even doing this for money anyway.

And that's the thing. Like, this is not a financial reason for me launching the book. And if it were, if you want to make money just from selling a book, self-publishing is the easiest I don't know, I want to retract that. I don't know if easiest is the way to do, but is the way to go to make more money. Because you keep the most, right? Like you get 100% of everything minus whatever expenses that you have. And so yeah, door-to-door, even if it's on your own website and then doing a campaign and going on people's channels and promoting it, it's a way to do it. It's just not interesting for me because I wanted to reach millions of people. And so I'm okay with losing a huge chunk of that if I can get impact.

That could actually happen with with self-publishing, you can reach millions, but—

Sure.

I mean, there's a big value in the middleman.

Yeah.

I just don't want it to come through that you can't reach millions self-publishing.

You can, but it's harder. You know, like if you want—

That's the value in the middleman.

If your goal is awareness and your goal is to reach a lot of people, then you want to have a team of people who are good at doing that and they can round out your weak spots. So that's why I chose to go with the pub— I would never— I didn't want to self-publish. It was never on my radar to self-publish because it wasn't a financial decision. It was just for opportunity. So I think if that's your goal, you want to make money from a book, then yes, look at self-publishing, look at how you can keep the most from it and just hustle your way. I don't know if door-to-door is the highest leverage. I'd be looking at media, I'd be looking at connecting with YouTubers and Instagrammers and people who have a following and getting them to review it and then send it back to your website. Much more effective than one at a time. I'd be looking at those kind of partnerships. Who can I connect it with so that I can reach 1,000 people at a time or 10,000 or 100,000 people at a time and not one at a time of going door-to-door.

Influencers with a platform.

Influence with the platform. Not interesting to me though, because it's not my goal. Tamara: Fabulous! Nina is the best wife ever.

I don't know if that's a question, but I concur. Fantastic.

And that's Nina. We love her. She's special. I agree. I agree. Nina is a great wife. Best wife ever. I love it. It's her birthday coming up. Actually, this is being released on a Saturday. It's her birthday coming up, so you can all wish Nina a happy birthday in the comments. Maiyar: Organize a book launch, create a Facebook event in North York and stream it online. I promise I will come in person and support. Many people have qualitative and inspirational thoughts in their minds, but the effort you've put towards sharing yours with many others is just respectful.

Feeling the love.

Yeah, so in terms of— so that's back to the marketing thing, and I haven't figured it out, and I love all the ideas. So keep them coming if you have thoughts of what I can do on the marketing side. I will be likely doing some kind of tour, you know, it makes sense to do something where I am here locally in Toronto, and he's right here in North York. We're shooting in North York. We're in the Toronto Dance Salsa Studio here, just shooting. Empress Walk, North York.

Young and Empress.

Yeah, so I think one of the plans I'd like to do is figure out where, whether we do it by pre-orders or how we're going to do it, but stopping at different places, stream some events, have people who bought some books be on the video. So if we do like a top 10 video, have some of the people who have bought the books be in the videos and sharing their thoughts or sharing their experiences. I think there'd be— my publisher advised me against doing a book tour, basically saying you don't make money from a book tour because the people that you reach at those locations don't buy enough books to justify the return. But for me, I'd be looking at how can I turn that into an online event that we can then leverage. Sam Rock, great message today, Ev. Ev. Ev? Who used to call me Ev? Somebody used to call me Ev.

Evan Almighty.

No, like from my youth, somebody used to call me Ev. Yeah, my parents gave me a short name because they didn't want people to shorten it. And it's still not a short name. Because Evan is 4 letters, nobody's gonna shorten it. They didn't want to call me like Jonathan because it would be John.

You can't do 2 syllables.

Right? So yeah, so they were, you know, anyway, Ev. Now everybody's gonna call me Ev. This is gonna be epic. Your excitement is infectious as you've got me pumped now. You'll be on Oprah soon enough. Nice. No questionnaire, but feeling the love. I love it. Vic Cooper 841: The audio version would be awesome for the ones who live outside the US. I'm so happy for your success and sense of accomplishment. Can't wait to have your book. I think I announced that we're doing an audiobook.

People are hungry for the audiobook.

Yeah, the audiobook is gonna come, and I haven't talked about the details again, but I think also I mentioned that I'm gonna insist on reading it. I don't see why they wouldn't want me to read it. I think if you can ever get the author to read it, it's better.

Oh, I agree.

And I think some authors may not have the skills or the interest. They may be lazy and they're just mailing it in and just, I'm just doing the book, I don't want to do the audiobook. And then you get somebody else to do it, or they may not have the skills to speak and they, you know, they're not comfortable in their voice or whatever. I have the skills, and so I'm gonna do it, and it's gonna be all hell if they don't want me to read the audiobook version. I'm gonna freak out if they don't want me to read the audiobook version.

The passion, man, the belief.

But it makes sense. I don't know why they wouldn't. It'd be— I don't know why they wouldn't. Although if it wasn't me, who would you want to have read the audiobook version?

Oh, Morgan Freeman.

Morgan Freeman? No, no, it doesn't— No, you know, I would want, I would want like I would want young Les Brown reading it. Young Les Brown. Yeah, spitting the fire. He's gotten a lot mellower now, but young Les Brown. We have to rewrite it for him. Or we can have Eric Thomas read it. Less than that. Young Les Brown. But young Les Brown, I love young Les Brown, man. Don't stop running toward your dream. Who would you have read your book?

If I wrote a book?

If you wrote a book.

If I wrote a book?

If I had a million dollars.

I'd get Gary Vee. You were comparing me earlier. Gary Vee. Similar rashness or whatever, so I'd write it and He could probably pull it off, you know, with the vibe.

I feel like you need to go like Kanye or Jay-Z. You got to go bigger.

Well, I'm trying to think. I think about the artistry, right? Whatever I write, it has to come out of their mouth. So it has to—

It's got to match.

Jive, right? And I don't feel like Jay or Kanye talk like I talk. Maybe Kanye. Alright, okay.

Gary Vee, I'm a fan. I'm a fan. Okay, last question. Rishi Cupp TV. Evan, you're all about standing up and providing value through core values. So keep fighting, man. My question: did you have the full vision for your book when you began? Or did you just take action and vision came? So this is an interesting one. Two parts on this. First part was I never wanted to write a book. My agent— I have a talent agent and then a—

what are they called?

What's the other agent called? No, no, no. Literary agent. Literary agents are just for books, and then my talent agent's for other speaking gigs, other kinds of stuff. My talent agent insisted that I needed a book, that a book would make me huge, that it was huge credibility, and that mainstream companies and media would pay more attention to me. And I was like, you know, I don't care. I don't really need a book. It's not that big a deal, but you want to go pitch a book and we get a good vibe and opportunity, sure, I'm all for it. So we pitched the book initially around modeling success, and it's a concept that I'm, you know, that is core to what I'm all about. But I wasn't passionate about writing that book, so we started talking to a literary agent, and she was on board because she liked me. She liked me, she liked the audience, she liked what we could do, and that was the initial idea. And then halfway through making the pitch and the sample chapter for that, I came up with the idea for the book that I wanted to write. Like, oh, this is the book I want to write.

Change the pitch.

Yeah. And I'm like, I remember this, man. Nina— Nina's my wife, and Nina's also my— N-E-N-A is my media— not my media. Well, you got me thinking. Literary agent. I'm like, Nina, we're switching it. This is the book that I want to write. And again, her and, uh My other agent didn't think it was a book, but I managed to show them— back to the topic— that it was. And then when I was thinking of it, I didn't have it all worked out. I had— there's 3 sections to the book. I had 1 and 2 pretty well worked out. There was some extra research I needed to do, extra stories I needed to tell, but I knew what I wanted to write for the most part for the first 2 sections. That was, you know, us working on the business and discussions and things that I would be interested in for a number of— for the past year plus, and plus my story coming into it. Section 3, I had no idea, and that actually got created by me going out and meeting people and interviewing people and seeing how they were doing some things, and that helped shape how I created the book because The book that I'm writing is how to build a certain kind of company, and nobody has ever really built this kind of company before, and so there is no handbook. They built like parts of this kind of company, but nobody's gone through it methodically because there was no guidebook. There's no handbook, and so people were doing it on their own and just kind of struggling their way to find their success. And so I thought, well, by bringing all these different pieces from different people together, we can build the ultimate company. That is not the title of the book, but it's interesting. Tagline?

Back jacket?

I don't like that we're giving stuff away.

Marketing Secrets!

No, no, no, no, we're not using that. Anyway, so I didn't promise that I knew exactly what the sections were going to be. I just kind of gave an overview, and when you're pitching a book, you have to give an overview, and then they want a sample chapter. So I did that based on what I already knew I was going to write and just gave an overview of what I wanted in Section 3, but had no idea what the breakdown was going to be. And the parts that I wrote in were maybe half accurate of what actually made it into the book, but it didn't matter for the pitch. And then once we We got the calls with the publishers and we got an agreement. It wasn't a big deal. And then I went and figured it out. I had a good idea of what I wanted to do and how I would do it, but there were still chunks, well, a third of the book that was missing. I think I just take that approach a lot with stuff in general, right? You have an idea, but you don't— as entrepreneurs, we don't have it all worked out. We don't know exactly how it's going to play out. You just, you start and then you You figure out parts of it as you go along.

And you use placeholders.

Yeah, you adjust. You make it better.

When you're creating anything, you just, ah, chorus here, verse here, uh, I think it's gonna have a bridge, and you move stuff around. It's like building blocks.

I think this is where perfectionism can kill businesses, because you think you need to have the whole thing figured out from the start. And that was me in my first business, where I spent 3 months working on the perfect business plan, when I thought it was perfect. And then as soon as I went out and tried to sell stuff, it was wrong. So you can't build the perfect plan. It doesn't mean have no plan and just, woo, do whatever. You start with an intention and you start with, you know, what you have in your head. You start with creating something. You always have to figure some of it out as you go, and don't let the perfectionism kill you.

I did it with my recent checklist. Start writing, add the story, cut the story, throw it out, try again next year. I like it.

Solid episode. Boom! Okay, let me know what you guys think. Let me know what you think about the topic. What was the topic? Show them. Demonstrate. Prove it. Let me know what you guys think of that topic, if you have questions. And if you have any thoughts or questions about my book, the book writing process, marketing the book, I'd love to hear from you. Leave in the comments below. Thank you guys for watching. Continue to believe. And we'll see you soon.