How to FINISH That Dream Project | Tips From Evan's 13-Minute Talk

Be open. So in today's book update video, I want to talk about what happened, uh, on my book writing day. I wasn't able to write anything because I had a really special event with Stephen Kelly at the CN Tower, which is one of our landmarks here in Canada. And it was a really important event, and I've talked about it before. If there's something that is really huge, then it's worth changing your schedule around for. And he's, uh, CEO of Sage. It's a multi-billion dollar company. Tens of thousands of employees, and we did a Hangout. He came to Toronto to meet with me and do something together at the top of the CN Tower. So it was pretty cool, took up the whole day. And I want to talk about being open because usually when I work with brands on deals, I have companies say, "You can only say this, and you can't say that, and you should be, you know, make sure you don't ask these kinds of questions." And when I went to the CN Tower, they sent me an email to say, "Make sure that you don't say This is the world's tallest Google Hangout and all of these stipulations of what I can't say. I said, "This is so ridiculous." First of all, I wasn't even thinking about saying that. Second of all, why wouldn't you want me to say that so I'm helping promote what you're doing? It's just ridiculous. Then I get an email from Stephen Kelly's team to say— it's the complete opposite— to say, "Hey, if there's anybody who's using our software that they're having issues with, problems with," complaints about, make sure it makes it into the live Hangout, right? The exact opposite of what the CN Tower was saying. And I absolutely respect and admire that because you don't know what kind of questions that you're going to get asked in a live session, and he wanted them. He wanted to make sure we gave them to him. And you got the CN Tower being total douchebags and saying what we can and can't say. Anyway, I think you gotta be open. You have to be open with your business. You gotta be open with your— if you're writing a book, your book writing process. That's why I'm doing this. You guys can see Every week, the behind the scenes, what goes into creating the book. And so I'd encourage you to listen to your customers and encourage you to get feedback from the people who watch you on YouTube and in social media. And don't be afraid of that. Yes, it— some of it will be negative. Some of them is, is a lesson for you to be able to get better and provide a better experience to the people that you're serving. And that only comes when you're listening and you're open. So a bit of a rant today. Yesterday was an insane day. CN Tower, I had to deal with 4 different security checks and didn't have anything ready for us when we got there and just a huge headache. But the session was awesome. We can link that up here. You guys can check it out. It was super fun to do. So I want to get to your questions. That's what we're doing here. So first up, J-Rise, "What percentage of the book would you see as complete?" First draft is complete. Did I make that announcement yet? I put it on social, but I don't think I talked about it. Yeah, so the first draft is complete. Ah! So excited, super happy. And now we've got to do some editing, right? It's going back, looking at what needs to be improved, edited, edited. But I'm so, so happy that the first draft is complete. And now we got to see the editing process. I don't know what percentage that is, but 100% on the draft and 0% on the editing. Next, Yogesh85: Fake it before you make it. Ready to buy your book. So I appreciate the support for the book. In terms of the fake it before you make it message, it's in reference to my video last week. We can link that up where I was talking about whenever I am doing things, I try to imagine that important people are watching, right? Whenever I'm making these videos, I already imagine that millions of people are watching it. And whenever I'm on the radio show, I imagine that my mentors are listening. It ups the stakes and makes you do a better job. I would caution you though, because I don't consider that faking it until I'm making it. I don't want the advice to come across as I think you should try to be somebody else, I think you should try to fake it that you're this expert when you're not. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm trying to encourage you to do is be the best version of yourself. What would version you look like when you have this live broadcast to millions of people? Be that person. It's still you. It's not faking it, trying to be somebody else. I really wanted to draw that line 'cause I'm actually not a huge fan of faking it until you make it. And I don't want that to be the message that I put across. And so I apologize for any confusion of before. It's more being the best version of yourself. And again, just imagining that I have all these people who are paying attention to me It just makes you do a better job. It increases the importance. It's not just you sitting there in front of a computer writing a book. It's not just you sitting in front of a camera making a video, right? It's just me and Jason here making a video, but I know that it's being broadcast to a lot of people, and so that makes me want to do a better job. Next, A Durst, "Thanks for another great message." I appreciate that. "I would really love to hear how you will be marketing your book once it's written. I think that would be a great spin-off. I would also love to see anything that was edited out. Both are great ideas." Cool, yeah, so I am kind of thinking about what do I do with this series once the book has been submitted and I don't have to write anymore. So those are the two that I'm going with. How do I market it? How I'm building up the campaigns to get the word out? And then also if something gets left off the editing floor, doing something fun with it. So I'll keep you posted. If you have other ideas, things you'd like to see, let me know in the comments because I do pay attention to those and maybe we could do something. Next, Johanizer: Nice message, but are you applying it yourself? Is this the kind of video quality you put out when you know the big shots are watching you? Yeah, absolutely. First of all, I only talk about things that I'm actually doing. I'm only talking about things that I have knowledge about. I don't, I don't come on and try to talk about things that I have no idea about, and I'm just honestly sharing my opinions on how something should be done. And so whenever I'm sharing advice, it's because I'm using it. I've sent some of these videos to people in the publishing world and to entrepreneurs that I look up to and to my mentors and to my coaches to look at, and it's way less about I'm happy to send out an iPad video to someone who's important because it's way less about the quality of the video and way more about the content of it. This one, I wasn't able, I didn't have time yesterday to do one here, so Jason is filming it with me here. You may say, "Well, that's higher quality. That's a great video to send out." But if I sucked on camera, Jason couldn't save me. Jason has a lot of skills, but he could not save me if I sucked. Sucked on camera, where I could produce a way better video coming off of my iPad than he could bringing in some newbie who has no idea what they're talking about, right? So the content is always going to be super important, and it's the mindset, right? Going into every video, everything I make, it's having that mindset that this is going to be seen by millions of people and my mentors, and that just adjusts your focus. And so, yeah, absolutely, I do it all the time, and I— Everything I talk about with you guys, as part of being open, is stuff I actually believe in and I'm doing myself in my business. Next, Shafmed, congratulations for your book, I'm ready to buy it. Thank you, appreciate that, man. Next up, Malik, couple questions. I find writing for video to be actually harder than writing a book. I think it's because things have to be so much tighter in a video. It's different to compare the two mediums because books require much higher word count, but I'm curious if you found writing for your book easier than writing for video. I'm the complete opposite. I write very little for my videos. I'm writing nothing for this. I just read the question and I'm answering it. There is zero writing that's happening. For most of the other videos, we've done a little bit of research, and so I might— for the top 10, I might be memorizing part of a script. For the Enespresso series, on the end of it, I'm just going off some riff. I might write 1 or 2 words down. I might write "failure" down, or "being ashamed," or "striving for success," or whatever it is, whatever the topic is, just as something to jog my memory. And that's it. So I don't write anything down for those ones, and I find writing for a book a lot harder for those reasons. How did you identify and contact the people that you interviewed and profiled in the book? Identifying them was hard. The strategies that I'm talking about, not many people are using them. And so I did a couple things. One, I did a Google News alert. So anytime certain key phrases that I'm looking for were mentioned in a business context, I would flag them and be able to see them. And that introduced me to some people. And two, just paying attention. Like, when you have a goal, things become much clearer to you. I found some people just by going to a bookstore and seeing what books were being written. And now that I knew what I was looking for, I found these people. And so just being aware I think helps. And then setting the news alerts helped me out as well. And talking to people, right? I'm looking for this. Like, tell people what you're looking for. If you're specific, right? Not just, I'm looking for somebody to interview, but I'm looking for entrepreneurs in the manufacturing industry to interview, as an example. It immediately lets me think of, can I help you or not? Can I give you off to somebody? In terms of reaching out to them, mostly it was through Twitter. I love Twitter as a way to reach out to people. People typically check their @messages. A lot of entrepreneurs are on. The people I'm interviewing are entrepreneurs, so a lot of entrepreneurs are on. A lot of executives are on as well. A lot of them aren't very popular. They're using Twitter, but they don't really know how to use Twitter. They're on Twitter because somebody told them they need to be on Twitter. And so they really check all of their @messages, and it's a great way to be able to reach out. If I was trying to reach some of these people through traditional routes, picking up a phone and dealing with secretary after secretary, trying to find their email address somehow or guess at it, be a hard lengthy process. As of right now, Twitter is my favorite way to reach out to people. "As you've been writing this book, have you gotten lots of ideas for other books?" I ask because that happens to me, which makes it difficult to finish any writing project because I want to start with a new idea before I even complete the original one. Yes, I've had other ideas for different books. Some of them might be a book, some of them might be a video series. I have ideas all the time. I have a list of ideas that I want to work on. I think what helps in this case is one, identifying the projects you're working on, right? Like I have a list of ideas and then I have lists of my priorities. Here are the projects that I'm working on that are important to me. I need to get these done before moving on to other things. That list changes if the things I'm working on aren't interesting to me anymore, right? If I look at that list and say, "Oh, I don't want to do those things," and that happens for a week at a time, then like, "Ah, you know what? I just got to drop it." Drop and move on to something that you are excited about. Also, I have a team of people who are helping me and they removed a lot of the pain points that I don't enjoy. And help me stay focused and push me to, to get it done, right? And so I find that if you're just doing things on your own and you haven't committed to anybody else, it could be a lot harder to complete the project. Or if you have committed to someone else, you're much more likely to follow through. Just like going to the gym, right? You commit to somebody else, you're more likely to go and finish. Lynn just writes, great questions, I'm anxious to read the book. Thank you, Lynn, for the support. Paula, it's so nice to watch another person's dream become a reality. That's cool. I like that you're happy with the journey and me sharing it. That's part of being open back to the message at the top. I'd say maybe there's a teachable lesson here for you as well, that people might want to watch your journey. You're enjoying watching mine and learning from it and seeing my stumbles and failures and also the victories and successes. And if you're enjoying that, then chances are people would also enjoy watching you in what you're doing, whether you're doing a video through YouTube, you're writing blog posts, doing tweets on Facebook. People like being part of the journey. People like being able to help out, offer opinions, advice. Learn things from them. And so I would highly encourage you, Paula, and everybody watching to start to document your story and share it. And you may think people don't care about me, people aren't interested in me, but they will, and you'd be surprised. And it helps keep you accountable, helps get you on track, and I think most importantly can help inspire other people to do something great as well. Two more. Paul Chan: I will buy your book definitely. I've been learning something daily. Thanks. Thank you, Paul. I appreciate that. Last up, Revolution97: I'm 18 and all I do is watch and listen to motivational speakers, audiobooks, successful entrepreneurs, but I feel like I'm doing nothing big yet to reach my goals. Kind of upsetting. What can I do to change this feeling? The key is to start doing, start taking action. You can, you can think about things as much as you want. You can read and listen and watch videos. You know, I love being able to provide videos for you guys to be able to watch and get inspired from and motivated from and get ideas from. But I don't want you sitting at home just watching my videos all day long, right? That doesn't make me happy. What makes me happy is you going out and doing something with that advice and wisdom and inspiration. So whatever gets you all pumped up, if it's something in the morning that you listen to Tony Robbins or you watch Enespresso or Top 10 or this series, whatever, that gets you fired up, great, then take action. And as long as you are not taking action and just thinking about it, then you're never going to be happy. And all the motivational books and all that stuff is not going to help you until you actually start doing something. So make your list of things that you want to work on and then find a small way to start doing it. Don't make it something so big that say I'm going to reach for the stars and you don't know how to go from here to here. It's fine to have that big goal, but then what's your next step? Like, what can you do today? The next time you find yourself super motivated and excited and all pumped up, what can you do right now? Don't leave the sight of a goal without taking some kind of immediate action towards attaining it. And so that's what I would do. I would start taking insane action. Find the things that you're excited about, and whenever you feel motivated, you're out there doing something on that action. If you want to make any of the people that you're listening to— Tony Robbins and Les Brown and me and whoever you're listening to— you want to make them happy, we get fulfilled by seeing that you took our advice and you did something to make the world a better place. So that's it. Start taking action. So thank you guys, lots of questions. I love to know what you think about being open. I love to answer your questions on that for next week. And if you have any thoughts, questions, comments about my book, your book, the book writing process, any other questions you might have, leave them below and I'll answer them in next week's video. Thank you so much for watching. Continue to believe, and I'll see you soon.