How to Fix Your Business Mindset | 50 Minutes with Expertise

Hey guys, it's Mike Michalowicz here, author of The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur, The Pumpkin Plan, and now Profit First.

You are listening to the best show for entrepreneurs ever, The Chris Sarrone Show.

Enjoy it.

Episode 40.

You're listening to The Chris Sarrone Show, inspiring interviews with entrepreneurs and awesome people that will motivate you to take action now. Now, your host, Chris Sarrone.

Hello, welcome back, episode 40. Now to find the show notes for this particular episode, make sure you go to soronshow.com/40. And my next guest is absolutely amazing. You are going to hear not only such a phenomenal story, but well, the guy, he's, he's kind of a big deal.

Okay.

He runs a massive entrepreneur site. It is literally like the library for entrepreneurs. He's worked with major people. He's had Donald Trump participate on his site, Guy Kawasaki. I, you know what, I just cannot say enough great things and we really had a great time. So before I say any more, I want to save it for this next episode. However, because it is the big 4-0, I want to celebrate. I want to give away something. My friends over at Nomad, They gave me this awesome— it's called the ChargeKey, and now it's for iPhone users, specifically iPhone 5, 5S, 5C. I have a Nomad ChargeKey to give you. For all my iPhone users out there, all you have to do is share this episode. Share this particular episode on Twitter, on Facebook, it doesn't matter. Make sure you tag me though so I know it came from you, and I will pick a winner at random. So if you have an iPhone, if you specifically have an iPhone 5, make sure you share this episode. Win this fantastic ChargeKey by Nomad. Fits on your keychain, it's super small. I actually have one, I love it. I will send this to you. Now don't forget, soronshow.com/40 for the show notes. That's all I have. Let's get into it.

Right when I said let's get into it, I literally saw there was 2 seconds left of the song. I just had to let it play out.

Now let's get into it.

How do you start a business and do it right? What if you don't have enough money? Do you still even try? How do you get your company to stand out in a competitive market? Now I can go on and on with this line of questioning, but instead I'd rather have a great guest on talking about these things. So when you're working out, driving in your car, doing the dishes, or whatever you do while listening to this podcast, you get the information you need to fill in that missing piece that really has probably been bugging you for a while. Well, today is no exception, and I have just the perfect guest for you. At 19, he built and sold a biotech company, and at 22 was a venture capitalist helping raise between $500,000 and $15 million. As an entrepreneur expert, he's been featured in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Mashable, and so many other major media outlets. Currently, He runs one of the world's most popular websites for entrepreneurs that, despite the fact has more celebrity authors than one can count, he has over 70,000 helpful articles from buying a business, finance, sales, productivity, even work-life balance. He is a salsa dancer, baseball fan, life hacker, an avid Vespa rider. Evan Carmichael, how are you?

I'm great. Thanks for the great intro there, Chris.

I get that a lot, and I really try hard because I value every single one of my guests doing this show, and I really want to give them the intro they deserve. You know, I don't want to just say, hey Evan, why don't you— you know, not to knock anybody, but I want to say, hey Evan, why don't you just tell us about yourself?

I like it, man. I think this is why everybody listens to Chris's podcast here. You got the energy flowing.

Well, you need it. I mean, if, if you and I sat and talked here and we just kind of sounded like this and, "Yay, entrepreneurship!" I mean, what value would that bring? What would anybody even get out of something like that? You know?

I love it, man. I love it.

Now, that's why I actually like your YouTube videos. On your YouTube channel, you deal with such a wide variety of topics, but every single one, they connect the dots. I mean, it's not just an entrepreneur how-to. You go into like, how do you support the crazies and, you know, just do it, follow your heart, all that other stuff. Originally when you started on YouTube, and we'll get into your background and we'll get into your site and all that, but I'm really curious about the YouTube piece. When you originally got into it, was it a passion for video? Was it a passion to get your message out there?

That's a great question. When I first started on YouTube, you know, I'm a visual learner, so I like watching things more than reading things or hearing things. And so video always appealed to me, but I never figured out a way to turn it into a business. So I just started. It took me a while to kind of get it going, but the very first videos were me just with my camera and my DSLR, and it's shaking all over the place and out of focus and just brutal stuff. And it started with me wanting to share the stories of famous entrepreneurs. I found when I had my biotech software company, I was struggling and I was 19 and I had 2 business partners and we felt like we had a really great product and we put a lot of love and a lot of effort, a lot of heart into making this product happen and we just weren't getting results. We were just not making sales. I was pulling out $300 a month from the company. You can't survive on that. I was eating beans for lunch every day. It was so hard because I really felt like I had something special. It's just why can't we connect the dots and make this thing work? Why am I struggling so much to get this thing off the ground? The thing that saved my business, that prevented me from going to get a job or quitting, was when I realized I am not the first guy to try to sell software before. There was no big leader in specifically what we're doing, biotech software, but I realized I'm not the first guy to try to do this. Somebody has solved this problem. Why am I trying to come up with every answer myself?

Yeah. Why are you trying to reinvent the wheel? It's not needed.

Yeah. I wish I knew that sooner because I almost quit. I looked at guys like Bill Gates from Microsoft. I looked at McAfee. I looked at Intuit. I looked at how they got started. How did they make their first million? How can I do that? That's all I wanted to do. I don't care how Bill Gates makes a million dollars now, but Zero to One, like idea to first million. That's what I wanted to learn. I started applying those strategies to my business and we finally started actually getting some momentum. When I sold my company, we built it up from nothing, like $300 a month I was pulling out to a couple of years, 3 years, I had huge clients, NASA, Johnson Johnson. We were in over 30 countries and we got acquired.

Real major stuff happened for you during that time.

Yeah, and modeling the success of those guys, that's what helped save my business from being like poverty line to having an exit with my company. I just wanted to share that. I felt like there are other entrepreneurs out there who are facing the same problems that I was facing, and I wanted to share what I had learned from these successful entrepreneurs and just help them. There wasn't a business model. There wasn't a, "Here's my next idea." It was just I wanted to help other people not face the same suffering that I had launching this thing. That was the intention behind my first videos, and they were terrible quality. It was just really bad. I want to pull them down. I look back on that stuff. I just want to pull them down, but they're still getting views and likes and comments. Enjoy them. So okay, we'll keep it up. But that was the incentive, the motivation for starting my channel. So all the early stuff is around the famous entrepreneurs. And then people started asking me questions. And they said, Evan, how would you handle this? Evan, what would you do in this situation? And so now most of my videos are just responding to questions that come in from people who've asked them.

I love that you do that, by the way. I mean, you'll actually give the person a shout out. One of the videos I watched and I don't remember how far back in the timeline it was. It was about someone who created an app and how to get it out there. And you gave him a shout-out and you answered his question. But what I love that you did was in your answer, you said, you know, tell everybody about it, blah, blah, blah, blah. But then you called the person out in a fun way and you said, hey, why didn't you tell me what the app was? Why didn't you tell me what it did? I could have been reading it right now on my YouTube channel telling the world about it. So even things like that, I mean, it's just so informative and helpful for people.

Yeah, it's trying to help that person as well as help everybody else who has that same kind of question, because not everybody will have the guts to write in, put themselves on the line like that. And I used to do this all by email. I used to respond to everybody by email, and it just became time-consuming. Again, I thought if I made a video of this, then I'm not only just helping that one person. If I do email, I'm only helping that one person. With video, I'm helping everybody else who has the same problem. The goal was just to help entrepreneurs and overcome their struggle because it's— man, you know. You're fighting the fight. It's hard, man. It's hard.

Yeah, it is.

Absolutely.

That's why I'm listening to your podcast. Let's kind of go back in time for a second because you touched on you're a young guy. You built a company.

Were you—

like, was your background being an entrepreneur? I mean, did you kind of learn that from your parents or your upbringing, or was that kind of something that you stumbled on and said, "Hey, I like this"?

Yeah, that's a great question. I feel like I've always had a part of it in me. My first thing that I can remember as an entrepreneurial venture was I was 5 years old and I convinced my 3-year-old sister to draw pictures with me and we sold them door-to-door. Through my life, I've had various little ventures, baseball cards, online businesses, a whole bunch of little stuff. Nothing really took off. I never thought I'd be an entrepreneur as a career. I don't know, things that I dabbled in. My parents were not entrepreneurs. My family wasn't entrepreneurs. They supported everything I did, but I didn't grow up with entrepreneurs around me. When I graduated high school in my yearbook, I looked back recently and it said, "What do you want to be in 10 years?" or "Where do you see yourself in 10 years?" and I wrote, "A VP at a bank." I always thought I would be in the banking world, something like that.

Something in finance.

Yeah, you know, when I played Monopoly, I was always the banker. I always had to be the banker, and so I figured I'd end up somewhere in there. Then when I got to university, my life kind of changed. I met up with these two founders of this software company and they had this great product, but they couldn't figure out how to sell it. They were the programmers. They were the creative geniuses. They just wanted to sit in front of their computer and code and they needed help on the business side. Not that I had a ton of experience. I was 19. I didn't really know what I was doing either. It was more interesting for me. They didn't want to learn it, whereas I did. And I joined them, and an interesting thing happened in my last year. I got opportunities to work with two of the biggest and most well-known companies in my field. It was Merrill Lynch on the investment banking side and McKinsey Consulting, one of the biggest strategic consulting firms in the world. And two years ago, that would have been my dream job. Like, are you kidding me? You guys want me to come and work for you? This is what I signed up for. This is amazing. And all my friends were kind of dying to get those kinds of jobs. And they flew me to New York and they put me up in the Waldorf Astoria and they put me through the whole interview process. They wanted me to join, but it just didn't feel right for some reason. And at that time, things didn't really make sense. Like, I have this company that I'm doing that I'm not making anything on, $300 a month. Meanwhile, Merrill Lynch, McKinsey, they're offering $80,000 to $100,000 starting salary, traveling around the world, and yet for some reason I'm geared towards doing my business, my own thing. And it didn't make any sense. My friends thought I was crazy, and I don't know, I just felt like I would regret it. I would regret it if I didn't try. I had to try. The way I got the courage to do that was to say, "I'm going to take a year." Some of my friends graduating from university took a year off to travel or whatever. I said, "I'm going to take a year. I'm going to try this thing, and I'm going to try to make it work." Just to let that— so I won't live my life with regrets. That's how I summoned the courage to do it because it didn't make any logical sense to do this and forget this amazing job. I never looked back. The year, it worked out and just kept building from there. It was a pivotal time in my life, but I never thought I was going to be an entrepreneur.

That's awesome. Most people, when they were— if they're ever presented with a fantastic opportunity like that, how could you turn it down? I imagine some people probably thought you were nuts when you made that decision, but I understand that. As you know, prior to hitting record, you and I were talking. I kind of went through something similar. and you can't put your finger on it. You just know that you're drawn to doing your own thing or whatever it is. I mean, look, you probably could have been real happy at that position, right? You probably could have made a lot of money, rose in the ranks, and really done well for yourself. But it sounds like there was that one thing in the pit of your stomach that's saying, "You know what? Let me just do this first. Before I get all gung-ho and I landed the job of my dreams, let me just try this first." Let me give myself enough time, enough runway, and give it an honest go. Because at the end of the day, you probably wouldn't have been able to live with yourself if you didn't at least try. Am I correct?

Yeah. Yeah. The funny thing is my friends who kind of made fun of me and said, "What are you doing?" 10 years later, come back and they're in those jobs and they hate their lives. They come back and they meet with me and they say, Evan, I gotta get out of this. I want to start my own business. What do you recommend? And I'm just so grateful that I did not go down that path.

That probably has to feel really good. I mean, deep down, selfishly, like, you probably, you probably feel really, I don't know, fulfilled, accomplished. I mean, really, you probably feel excellent, right?

Yeah, you know, it's a full circle moment because these are the guys giving me a hard time. And, and, you know, they were, they weren't bashing on me. They weren't saying you're stupid. They just didn't understand it. They thought— they didn't want me to make a mistake. It was out of love more than anything else because they wouldn't have done that themselves. I am not happy to see my friends suffering.

Who does, really?

Once that year was up, I was glad. Once my company started to take off, I was glad that I didn't go. I didn't regret it. I didn't regret going for my business instead of taking on the job.

Yeah. And then from there you went into becoming a venture capitalist. You did all this stuff in, in tech and in that space, but something led you to start your own website where now hosts— I mean, talk about a library of information. Now, did all this come from a lot of the stuff that you personally went through and you personally learned in kind of going back to what you said about the email? You realized, hey, I can help my friends, I can give advice, I can write an email. But I'm only helping 1 to maybe 10 people by doing that. If I create a website in a home base, you know, so to speak, for an entrepreneur, I could help tens of millions of people. Did it originally start like that with that vision, or did you just kind of want to have a place to, to, you know, host all your great content?

Yeah, I wish I could say this was my genius idea. Let's all find out, but it's nowhere close.

Yeah.

I didn't know what I was doing, to be honest. I sold my business. I bought my domain name. The site's off my name. It's not Small Business Success or something like that. It's off of my name.

Real quick, it's evancarmichael.com. So the site that we're talking about, go check it out, evancarmichael.com. Genius named after yourself. I don't know if you did that on purpose, but— sorry, go right ahead.

Yeah, and I started it. After I sold my business, I was 22, 23, I was asked to do a lot of speaking in North America and abroad, just telling my story and helping out other entrepreneurs. And so I used the website just as a place to say, "Here's where I'm going to be speaking and here's what I'm talking about." There were no articles, there was nothing on there. I built it up to start sharing some content around the Famous Entrepreneur, so I started with the videos and I started writing articles as well. Then I was at the point where I didn't know what to do with my life. I didn't know what to do next. I sold my business. It was a great high for me, but then everything I had worked towards for those years was gone. I didn't know what I was supposed to do next. I was in a period of just exploring and seeing what I wanted to do. The idea of venture capital was always intriguing to me. I didn't take venture capital for my business. We thought about it, but we didn't need it. So I wanted to just learn. If you don't know what you want to do next, go out and learn. Just try stuff and see what sticks. Don't put pressure on yourself that you have to find the one thing right now. I connected with a company and the 4 principal founders were all in their 60s or 70s, had learned a lot in their career, and I joined them. They took me on as kind of an apprentice. And I helped bring in deals and they taught me about the venture capital world. We were raising $500,000 to $15 million for companies. I used my website just as lead generation. I started writing articles. This is kind of earlier days of the web. I started writing articles and people would find my site and I would use it to introduce them to the venture capital world. Then people just started writing to me and saying, "Hey Evan, I love your site. I'm a marketing consultant. Do you mind if I write an article on marketing?" and I read it and said it looked good and said sure. I wasn't charging them, I wasn't making money from it, but it was helping my readers, so I thought why not? And more and more people just started contacting me wanting to contribute and they had great stuff to share, so I thought why not? And we slowly built up the site and once I realized, hey, maybe this could be a revenue opportunity, maybe this is a business here, then I focused on it and got more and more people to contribute to the site. But the early days, there wasn't this grand vision and said, "Here's what I'm going to do." It just kind of happened.

Just kind of evolved into what it is today.

I was excited by it. I was learning about it. By following my passion, it led to this.

Now, a lot of the early contributors to your website, I imagine you vetted them out pretty good. I mean, you didn't just— someone wrote in and said, "Hey, I could talk about this," and you're like, "Yeah, come on." Let's go.

Yeah, there were people that I knew or people who had read something that I wrote about venture capital or a famous entrepreneur, and they usually sent in something. They sent in an article and said, "Hey, here's what I would like to add on your site. Are you okay with it?" I read it over and it looked good, so I thought, "Why not?" The first person— I forget who the first person was who wrote in, but I didn't know if I wanted to do it at the start. Well, this is my site. It's my name. Why would I put somebody else's stuff up on here? But I read the article and I thought it was good. It gave me some insight, so I thought, well, why not? I mean, the site's about helping entrepreneurs, so I might as well help spread that message.

So it originally started with the angel investors and venture capitalists and all that, correct? Originally.

Yeah, a combination of— the very first content was the famous entrepreneur stuff. I was just sharing it to share it. There was no model at all, and then I evolved it to also include some more on the venture capital side than angel, but how to raise capital and use that as a lead gen for the venture capital business that I was in. There was more of a purpose with that content. That's kind of the evolution. Then people started to write to me.

Yeah, and then fast forward to today. I mean, you have— take money out of the picture. You have advertising, book reviews, business plans. Business, travel, retail, sales. I mean, just literally like the Swiss Army knife of information. So no matter what you're doing, whatever your business is, be it online or offline, you can go to this, this resource and just pick what you need and, and, and run with it.

Yeah, it's been a lot of fun building. We have the largest collection of famous entrepreneur stories online and That is what kind of keeps me inspired and motivated, reading those stories and how they failed and they sucked at the early days and they built up something great. That's what helped me keep going. I think as people read those articles, they wanted to contribute. Everybody on the site, we have, I don't know, 8,000 authors, something like that. Everybody is an expert in their field and they share advice to help entrepreneurs solve whatever problems they're facing.

Yeah, I mean, you even have on the master section Wolfgang Puck, Sean "Diddy" Combs. I mean, these are some— Donald Trump. These are some major, major, major people.

Yeah, it was fun putting that together. A lot of that came from readers who said, I'd love to have something on Jennifer Lopez or, you know, Henry Ford or whoever it is. And so we, we got to work and started creating content.

That's awesome. Now that, I imagine, has helped your site and your brand kind of propel it to the next level just by having that social credibility, that social proof, right?

Yeah, you know, when I was going after authors, when I decided, hey, this is a business and we need to go start getting people so it's not just rely on the, you know, one or two a month, the people who are writing into me. I had to go and make this a business and get lots of content. My goal was to get Donald Trump on the site. At the time, The Apprentice had just come out, like the first season of The Apprentice. I don't know if you watched that show, but—

I did.

Yeah, I was a huge fan. I had parties at my house, people watching The Apprentice. He was the biggest name in entrepreneurship, and I said I wanted to get him on my site, but I didn't want to go right to him because I didn't really have much on my site yet. I kind of figured out a plan how I'm going to get to Donald Trump. And start working with some smaller guys and move my way up. So the first two kind of bigger name people who I brought on board were Seth Godin and Guy Kawasaki, who you probably know, they're known kind of in the online world, but offline maybe not too much. They're both bigger now than they were when I first contacted them, and they said yes, which is great. I just wrote to them out of the blue and they said yes. Then I used their names to bring in slowly bigger and bigger and bigger people. We brought in Zig Ziglar and Jack Canfield and Michael Gerber, who wrote The E-Myth, and then used all those names to then pull in Donald Trump, where it's hard for them to say no when they see all this momentum that's been built up. Then once we got Trump, I stopped having to reach out. Outreach basically stopped. After Trump, because we had hit the tipping point where people now wanted to become part of our site because we had all these big name authors like Donald Trump. And so it's just kind of grown from there.

Isn't that funny how you would think asking somebody for help, no matter how big or famous they are, how highly respected they are in their field, a lot of people are fearful of just taking that first step and saying, hey, I want Donald Trump. Let me reach out to— I want Guy Kawasaki. Let me reach out to him. Once you start doing those things, I mean, wouldn't you agree it's a lot easier than you think? You know, getting that— maybe that big name, or maybe it's not an interview, maybe it's not content, maybe it's, you know, you want the head of some distribution company for your t-shirt company. You know what I mean? Like, once you actually just start reaching out to these people, you realize it's not that bad. It's not that hard.

Yeah, I think if you can show your passion and your excitement, then that gets infectious and people will want to work with you in whatever capacity it is. If it's just being a mentor to you or a half-hour phone call or if you want to partner up on something, you need to show that infectious enthusiasm and that passion for what you're doing. If you can do that, then it's a lot easier to get people on board.

Well, yeah, and not only that, but you actually have to have something legit. I mean, you got to have some type of value that you're doing. I mean, you can't just reach out to a Donald Trump and say, "Hey, I'm selling my weight loss pills. Would you give me a testimonial?" or whatever. I mean, it's got to be something of value.

Yeah, yeah. I agree. I mean, sometimes the value can just be giving back. A lot of entrepreneurs are happy to give back and help out other entrepreneurs if you feel like they're actually going to listen to you and take the advice. I remember one person who wrote in who was an entrepreneur who was on my list or YouTube views or whatever it was. I'm pretty protective with my time. There's only so much to go around. I'm happy to do video responses, but this person really wanted to meet, and that takes like half an hour or an hour out of my day instead of 5 minutes to make a video. And the way she wrote in was just so passionate, and she said, you know, even if even if it's 5 minutes as you walk into your car, you know, I will be there and I'll bring a treat for you to eat. And it's just like so much passion came out of that correspondence that I felt like, you know what, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta meet her. And what did I get from— like, she's not paying me, I'm not part of her business, we're not recording, this isn't going anywhere, it's just helping her. But I Helping her helps me, you know, because I felt like she was gonna listen and take that advice, and that feeling of giving back is something that made me feel good. And so I would, I would do it even though there's maybe no financial or other gain that I would get.

Well, so it's somehow in the way she constructed her email or whatever, you got the sense of, okay, this isn't just, you know, some fan or maybe some crazy psycho. Like, this is a person actually invested in what she's doing. And if I gave her the couple minutes of my time, like you said, off camera, off audio, it wasn't a PR move. You knew that whatever discussion that you guys were going to have, whatever advice you were going to give this person, that they would not only listen to it, but they would value it and it would probably change their life. And if you can do something like that for somebody, selfishly for you, then it's almost like paying it forward. You're going to feel great. You're going to help somebody. That's it.

That's it. And that passion shone through. And so, you know, people are willing to help you if you reach out. Like, you reached out to me about this show and you were excited in your email and looked interesting. And so, you know, I said, yeah, let's do it. Let's do this and help entrepreneurs. So when you're When you're reaching out to people and asking for help, if you genuinely show that you are excited by this, it's infectious. People want to be a part of it.

It comes out of you almost. You just sense it, right?

Yeah, and it's not what you say, it's how you say it. You could say the same words with no enthusiasm, just like you talked about at the beginning of the show. We were talking about how great you are leading off the show. You could say those same words and everybody's going to tune out because it's not exciting, but you love what you're doing. This is what you love doing, and that shows, and that brings out quality and brings out great guests.

Absolutely. So let's talk about, you know, love what you're doing, because you are a big fan of you have to have passion for what you're doing. You can't just jump into something for the money or for the fame. One of your videos you mentioned, I think it was a network marketing video, and you mentioned the fact that a lot of people get into that or other similar things because they, they have shiny object syndrome, right? They just want to do it. Or no, no, no, I'm sorry, it was the eBay. They wanted to start an eBay business because they wanted to just buy low, sell high, make a lot of money. And you're really not a fan of that. Like, you have to have some type of passion or love for what it is.

Yeah, it's true. And I get it, you know, so many people are in such serious financial situations You know, you're in debt, you don't know how you're going to pay your bills, and so you're desperate to find something that was going to make you money. You know, you got to eat, you got to pay rent, and so you jump on something and somebody promises you, "Here's the way to make money," and so you start doing it. And it's never the right decision. If you look at famous successful entrepreneurs, pick anyone, pick your favorite famous entrepreneur, look at how they got started. It was never for the money. These guys do not start their business for the money. They started it to have an impact because they love what they were doing. They wanted to help people in some capacity, and that's why they started. Money is a part of it. I'm not saying be a charity.

Yeah.

Money comes from offering value. The more value you give somebody, the more they're going to pay you, but it's never the main reason. You look at the most successful, richest people, they made a lot of money, but it wasn't their goal to make a ton of money. One of my favorite examples is George Lucas. He started Lucasfilm, made the Star Wars franchise, Indiana Jones franchise, and he got into film school at a time where if you went into film school, you basically weren't making any money. There were no jobs in the film industry. He decided to go out on his own, do his own business, and for the first 6 years, he had nothing. No results. Failure. One failure after another for 6 years.

That's a long time, by the way.

Could you last? Right? Like, how many people give up on their dreams too soon? You try for 3 months and they quit.

Yeah.

Right? Like, 6 years of nothing. Total failure. And he kept thinking constantly, "I don't know if I'm— maybe I should go back and get a job. I don't know if I want to keep doing this." Right? That's the biggest misconception amongst entrepreneurs is that we never doubt ourselves. Like, every entrepreneur thinks that, you know, they're not doing a good enough job, and we have a crisis of confidence a lot where we think, you know, maybe I should just go back and get a job because this is really hard. When he created Star Wars, he thought it was too wacky for the general public. He thought nobody would watch this, but he just had a passion for it, so he built it. And so he lasted through all of this, all of these failures, when it didn't make any sense to keep going. What gets you through is that passion for your project, passion for what you're doing. That's the only thing that's going to get you through because otherwise you're crazy. You have to be a little bit crazy to do this because it's going to take everything you've got to get you through. Now George Lucas is worth over $4 billion and it's easy to say, you look back on their stories, oh, he did this, this, this, this, and this, whatever, but it was hard and he struggled and he failed and that's the story for most people. Most successful entrepreneurs, they have to go through this massive period of darkness where they don't know how it's going to work out and they just keep going believing that somehow it's going to work because they love what they're doing.

Yeah, and for some it may take a year. For others, it may take 6 years. But let's put this in perspective. 6 years is a very long time. I can almost guarantee he probably had thoughts of doubt like almost every 10 minutes at some points, you know? And he pushed through it, he broke through it, and now he is who he is today. But on the grand scale of life, I bet you now he probably doesn't even remember what it was like to struggle. He put in his dues. He can now enjoy the fruition of what he does and everything he's created. So when people are really struggling and it's been a long time, yeah, you go through that, but Once you finally hit on that thing that makes you successful and your business is growing, down the line, it's not really that bad. It's only a certain period out of your life, out of your whole life that you had to go through that, right?

Yeah, I mean, it's true. I think back, I still think back to my early days, like that $300 a month, that eating beans for lunch every day. We celebrated a big win by going to McDonald's and getting French fries. I had no money. That's still painful. What's painful is I almost quit that business. If I did, I wouldn't be here today. I remember telling my partner on the phone, I've had it. This is enough. We're not making any money. My talents are not being used. I deserve better than this. I'm done. I quit. I hung up the phone and I cried for 20 minutes. My mom came up and I don't even know what I told her. But the next day I got up and I went back to work.

Just hit the reset button and you just kept, kept doing it every day. You just reset. Let me just start over. I'm here for this and this is what I believe in and this is what I'm gonna do.

Yeah, and the only thing that gets you through is your, is your passion. If you're in it just for the money, you won't go through all that. You're gonna quit. Like, it is too hard.

You, you won't get all the great things that come with the sweat equity. I mean, I'm almost willing to bet that you appreciate and value celebrating at McDonald's and all those struggles you went through because you probably learned a lot. One, not only about business but yourself, but two, you learned about what works and what doesn't for that business. You can't effectively get a proper education on your own thing if you don't go through some of those trials and tribulations. Am I correct?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know what, I'm now— I'm a little zoned out. I'm thinking back now to my early days and the frustration and the pain. You put me in a painful period here, Chris.

You know what, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do that, but I mean, it's important because your story is extremely inspiring. For one. Two, I'm in a sick way happy you just said that because that just grounds the— of how much of a great human being that you are. You didn't blow up in, you know, biotech company and I'm gonna help a billion people and now I'm a rock star and I know everything. I mean, if I got that impression, I wouldn't have had you on my show, you know what I mean? But I think a lot of people can learn from that.

I hope so. I mean, that's the goal. Absolutely.

So someone's starting a business right now. Yeah, they, they have no money. Yeah, a lot of people are in the entrepreneur space are very DIY. They, they don't want to release whatever thing it is from those talons of theirs because they're afraid that it's gonna cost too much. No one could do it better than me. You know, I have to do this myself. No one knows how to do this but me, and that is The biggest misconception that you portray, and I actually agree with, I mean, someone right now, they can start a business with no money and delegate and still be successful, correct?

Yeah, yeah, and I get that it's, you know, you don't want to spend money, but the first person I hired— you're talking about delegation— the first person I hired was for 1 hour a day.

Uh-huh.

And I was so sick of doing this database entry stuff that was not what I was good at. And didn't help grow my business. And so I hired a guy for an hour a day who actually got way more done than I could in that hour, and it just freed up an hour of my day to do something that was helping me grow my business. You cannot do everything yourself. You can't. Like, you're good at some things. That's what you need to focus on. If you try to be everything, then you're never going to build a great business. And so, um, it doesn't mean— this still impacts me today. I hate doing things that I'm not good at and are not helping me grow my company. On my walk into the office every day, I say to myself, "What's the thing that I can do today that's going to add the most value to my business?" and then I try to go and do that.

Yeah, you want that time freed up for you to focus on what you're truly good at and truly passionate about, right?

Yeah, I call it CEO time.

I like that.

You have to block out CEO time Hopefully every day, but you know, for those of us who are crazy busy and haven't figured anything out yet, start with once a week. Like CEO time. This is time to focus on building your business projects. You're the CEO of your company. You got to start acting like it and not just be everything from the salesman down to the janitor. You got to carve it out. Carve out that time. You know, Monday afternoons, Tuesday mornings, whatever it is, CEO time.

Yeah, I mean, look at every successful entrepreneur. They're not a one-man show or one-woman show. They have people help them. So going back to the no money thing now, a lot of people think that they need to have all this huge reserves of cash to start their product or their online business. I mean, that's not necessarily the case. You probably have seen countless amount of people who started from nothing and didn't have that money, but they also didn't let that hinder their business either.

Yeah, you know, most entrepreneurs don't have that rich uncle to fund their company. I didn't have that. I certainly didn't have that. If that's you, then that's awesome, but you know, I don't know what advice to give you because you're in a great situation.

I was—

I come from the struggling to get by, can barely survive camp. I think the most important thing when you're first getting started is you need to figure out how to get to survival. Survival means you have enough money to pay your bills, to eat, to pay your electricity. It's not a glamorous lifestyle, but it's survival and it means you don't have to go back and get a job. So how do you get there? And I want entrepreneurs to think about your big vision, your big picture, how I'm going to change the world. That's amazing, but how do you get to survival at the start? What's the fastest path to get me to survival? And that may even mean having a job. I'm not from the camp where you have to quit everything and jump in and do your business full-time because you have limited runway. If you run out of funds, you know, 3 months in, you lose all the momentum with your business and go get a job. I'm okay if you're doing it part-time. I think though, if you're going to take a job, the reason to take a job is to learn. So whatever business that you're trying to start up in, if you're trying to start a magazine, Go work for a magazine. What are you doing driving a truck? Go work for a magazine. Like, find a company that has 10 employees, a small business, and get a job there and learn the ropes and learn the business and make your mistakes while getting paid by somebody else.

Yeah.

And in your off hours, start your own business, and you're making contacts and you're developing your skills and getting the training while getting paid. You're getting paid to to learn about your business.

It's a beautiful concept.

Yeah. Then when you launch your company, you already have a little bit of funds because you started it on the side and built that up. What can happen is if you just start up and you run out of money and you go back and get a job, you've lost all the momentum that you've built up. I love entrepreneurship, but yeah, sometimes the path is getting the job that supports it and then that helps you transition to be a full-time entrepreneur.

Now for a lot of those people who are in the thick of it, another key thing to focus on is like me time. It's, it's that work-life balance, which you talk about a lot. I mean, one of your videos was don't forget to eat.

Yeah.

And people forget these things though.

I haven't eaten lunch. It's almost 2 o'clock here. I haven't eaten lunch. I know I forget it too. I pack my days. No, it's true. Um, I, you know, I think this also depends on your situation, your family situation. Now being, being a father, There's a lot more demands on my time than before, and I like to have clearly defined lines between my work and my life. I set out— I have a very scheduled day, and I'll chunk my time and say, okay, this is my CEO time, this is my interview with Chris time, this is— I'll have it all blocked out, and then when I have family time, I I do—

Totally disconnect, right?

Yeah, yeah. I'm not— I mean, I think as entrepreneurs, I don't know if you can absolutely totally disconnect because I'm always coming up with ideas for my business. I'm sure we all are. You know, you noodle something. You see how a retail store is operating. You see a commercial on TV and you get an idea. I'll just keep it to myself, right? Because I don't want to be up all night thinking about this idea and I don't want to forget this tomorrow. I'll just email myself and it's out of my head. I make the family time as important as my business time as well.

Didn't you just recently within the past couple months get a new place? It looked like a new condo.

Yeah, I got a new condo.

Congratulations, by the way. The thing is beautiful. Go on YouTube, check it out. Nice hardwood floors and one of the greatest views I've ever seen.

It's fun, yeah. I went from— so after I sold my business, I decided I wanted to build a house. I built a house from scratch. And it was 5,000 square feet and gorgeous modern interior. And just, I realized that the maintenance on this is ridiculous. I'm a low maintenance guy and way too much space for what I needed. So I sold it and moved into a condo where I don't have to do anything. So I went like, I had an apartment and then I had a townhouse. I bought a townhouse. Then I built that huge monster home. And then I sold that and now I'm back into a condo.

Well, the reason why I bring that up is because you want, I mean, talk about work-life balance, you want time to enjoy your new place. You want to pick out furniture and, you know, hang stuff on the wall and just be involved. I mean, it's really tough to pull away, but at the same time, like doing certain things, like, I don't know, maybe it was buying a new TV for your place or a rug, like that kind of stuff gets you invigorated. It makes you more creative so when you do go back to work, you're 100% self. Do you notice that?

Yeah, and I think having hobbies and having other things outside of work will— it gives you the creative time and it also gives you ideas for what to do with your business. I rarely get great business ideas when I'm in my office pounding away on work. That's not when I get my ideas. It's when I'm in the shower. It's when I'm salsa dancing, it's when I'm out on the street, like having that free time, that's when I get my ideas. Opening up space to allow you to have that creativity is important.

Absolutely. Now, the future, 2014 and beyond, I mean, what kind of stuff is getting you excited these days? I mean, we're kind of almost up on our time here, but I want to know, like, what's getting you fired up these days? What's something that you're looking forward to?

Yeah, so my goal is to help a billion entrepreneurs. That's kind of my driving force. I'm spending a lot of my time on YouTube. The best part of my day is waking up every day, I pull up my lentils, I start eating breakfast, and I load up my comments on YouTube. It's like 40 or 50 comments a day, and just seeing how people have enjoyed the videos and their lives are being changed. That's what I love doing, so I'm spending a lot of time and effort on my YouTube page. New projects that are coming up, I'm working on a t-shirt line, I'm working on a book deal, working on a TV deal. You know what, it's hard to say. I'm not the, "Here's where I'm going to be in 5 years." Look how that worked out for me in high school. I don't know, and it's okay not to know. I'm continually following things that I'm passionate about. And my business is always going to be a reflection of what I'm into at the moment.

Well, it sounds like that— what you just said right there is what you're excited about. It's the excitement of the unknown. It's the excitement of what else could I learn and what else could I go into on my current passions and where that's going to take me, who knows? But just the fact that I know that I can pursue it and learn is just exciting enough. Is that kind of where you're at?

Yeah, I end up in short-term projects. So like I have bursts. I know what I'm gonna do for the next 6 months or next year, but beyond that, I don't know what's happening.

That's awesome. So go on his website, evancarmichael.com. Like I said, wealth of knowledge. There's so many different— I was playing around with it over the, the weekend just kind of doing my homework for this show, but I ended up getting sucked into reading about stuff for my own business. Definitely go to his YouTube channel. I mean, you'll hear tons of great tips, tons of great stuff to do for your business, but you'll also see some fun stuff. You'll see the tour of his new place that we just talked about. You'll find out why it's so important that you need to eat which, if I were you, I'd eat after this interview, by the way. So definitely check all that out. Evan, I, I just had a great time. Thank you so, so much.

Thanks, Chris. It's been a lot of fun.

And to find out more, I know I just plugged it, but I'm gonna say it again: evancarmichael.com. And that's it.

Take care.

Such an amazing guest, a great chat. It was inspiring, is entertaining. It was education via audio, all those things. At least it was for me. Thank you, Mr. Evan Carmichael, for such a wonderful episode. Now do not forget, I am giving away the Nomad Charge Key. You must be an iPhone user. You must be an iPhone 5 user. Share this episode, soronshow.com/40. Make sure you tag me in whatever you share, whether it's Twitter, whether it's Facebook, YouTube, it doesn't matter. I have to know that you, you shared it so I can give you credit. Anyway, that's all I have. Thank you so much for listening, and I will talk to you guys later.