Evan Carmichael and Alex argue entrepreneurs don't need to be naturally extroverted. Instead, identify your strength—marketing or sales—and lean into it while genuinely caring about people. Alex's tactic: project enthusiasm in every conversation, even fake it at first, to build rapport and steer discussions.
Chapters
On today's edition of Lunch and Earn, Jason, my videographer, is gonna surprise us with a question. Does social skills matter as an entrepreneur?
Absolutely. You're in the business of customer service in any kind of business that you are in, right? Even when you're in an online business and you do retail, just online. So social skills matter not only to the frontline customers, but It also matters for your employees, making them happy, and just everyone around you happy, right?
I think you have to know what you're good at and go all in on that. As an example, with Toronto Dance Salsa, the company that we're at now, right, we work together at, Alex has much better social skills than I do. He's the talker, he's the guy who can like chat your ear off. I'm much more the marketing guy than the sales guy. And so I spend my time doing things that are business building, strategy building. If it relied on me making sales calls, the business would tank. And so I think it's understanding what your strengths are and what you're really good at and what you enjoy doing. I think there's just an element of you don't have to have really great social skills. I think you just have to, you have to care, right? Like I can still talk to people. I don't talk to them the same way Alex would, but I still care about them, right? And I care about their success and I want them to have a good experience. When they're working with me or working with my company. And so if you are the kind of person who is not a Type A personality, I wouldn't freak out and think I can't be a successful entrepreneur because I see Donald Trump and Richard Branson, all these guys killing it, right? They're doing well at what they're doing because that's their great skill set. You're gonna see Alex kicking up a ton of noise, being in a ton of media, you know, making tons of partnerships and striking up insane relationships because that's what he's really good at. I hope that he does that, right? If he doesn't, then, then then we're screwed.
Are you allowed to say that on YouTube?
I can say that. It's my channel. I can say what I want to say. And so there's a bunch of other entrepreneurs that you've never heard of where if you look at the richest people in the world, a lot of them are entrepreneurs and a lot of them you've never heard of because they went in on their strengths, which aren't being the Type A personality. So I don't think you have to stress out too much. I think it's important that you care and that you treat people well, but you don't have to be a super Type A personality, friendly, over-the-top personality to be able to be a successful entrepreneur.
I think that's a great point. You don't have to be Type A or, you know, extroverted, going out with clients all the time and whatnot. I think the biggest thing is, and this is something you can learn, is just when you're talking to them, I find the most positive responses when sort of I light up. Like when someone's talking and they're talking to me and I'm like, really? Like I'm excited about listening to it, right? It's something that you can sort of fake at least at the beginning if you're not, that's not something, you know, that you're used to doing. But not fake in the sense of I don't want to listen to them, I'm not going to acknowledge them, but more of like bring that out, right? I think some social skills are, you know, you're born with and others you can learn and you can pick up. It's not something where if you're not a type A or not that you can't have those qualities, right? The whole point is to improve yourself as just as a person, right, on your path to being a great entrepreneur. So just for me, in my experience, that's what I find. Every time someone's talking to me, I just put energy into the conversation. And even when I'm exhausted, I force myself to do it, right? When I don't want to, when I'm not in the mood, I'm in a bad mood, if I'm talking to someone, it's like I'm on stage, I'm in front of the camera, and I'm like, "Hey, how's it going?" Right? And that just feeds into them, and people always are more responsive, whether or not on the inside I'm not maybe feeling that today.
Cool. So there you have it, that's our impromptu answer from the question from Jason. And I'm gonna give Alex an impromptu question to ask you guys to leave in the comments below.
What's the best way to change the flow of a conversation if it's going down?
Okay, I like it. Leave in the comments, we'll join the discussion. Thank you guys for watching, continue to believe, and we'll see you soon.
