Evan Carmichael shares his breakdown running his first software company: living on beans, lying to friends, quitting in tears. His mother's comfort and love for the work brought him back the next day. He argues passion is what keeps you going when everything feels broken.
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I'm broken. I got a really sad message on YouTube from one of my viewers. Love you guys. And I wanted to share with you and also tell you a story. Bangi wrote in to say, I'm frustrated to level. I want to just— I don't even know why I'm even writing this. I'm really broken up. I really feel for Bangi. You know, running a business is hard. Nobody tells you how hard it is. Nobody tells you that they're thinking of giving up and quitting. And the reality is, Benji, you're not alone. Every entrepreneur has thought about giving up and quitting. Every entrepreneur has thought about it. We never talk about it. You know, we don't go to events and networking events and family functions, and people ask us, hey, how you doing? We don't say, I don't know what I'm doing with my life. I don't know what's happening, right? You You talk about the good stuff, but everybody's thought about it. Everybody's been in your shoes where you are right now, and congratulations on having the courage to air it in such a public forum like YouTube. I want to share my story with you quickly, and I've told it a few times before, but I think it would be helpful here. When I had my first software company, I turned down high-paying jobs to do this thing, and it wasn't working. and I was frustrated, and I tried everything that I thought would work, and I was confident. You know, we had a great product that was helping people, and I was confident it was going to work, and I was, you know, I felt we were smart people, we had abilities, and I was making $300 a month. You know, that was not enough to survive. I was surviving on beans for lunch every day, and I couldn't go to my friends' events, and, you know, I lied. I lied to my friends. I was invited out to, you know, a birthday party, and I'd say, I was busy working, but really I just couldn't afford to go, you know? $20— I couldn't afford that $20 to go and have drinks with somebody because it wasn't making anything. And you can only handle that for so long, right? Like month after month after month after month of trying and failing and trying and failing. And like how do you keep going? It got to the point where I was so down on myself, so depressed, so feeling like a failure Where my whole life I had been pretty successful with whatever I tried to do. And here I was, I couldn't make this thing happen. I felt defeated and I felt like I lost my confidence in myself and what I was doing. And normally, my two business partners, I got along with them very well. But you can only handle so much defeat and failure and just not seeing any progress. And it all came to a head one day. I was at a family function. I was at my mom's house. I forget what it was, and I hopped on a call with my business partner for some reason, and we just had different visions now for— well, we had the same vision, we had different directions of where we want to take it, right? You know, we were fighting. I wanted to do this, he wanted to do something else, and You start fighting when you're not making money. And I told him, you know what, I'm done, I quit. You know, I don't respect myself anymore. I can't keep doing this and not making any money. I quit, I'm out, I'm done. And I hung up the phone angrily and, and I just cried, cried. Like, I'm generally not a huge crier, but I just cried. I bawled my eyes out. I was just so— like, hearing myself say that I quit and giving up on something that I believed in. I felt defeated. I felt broken. I felt broken. That's a good word. And my mom heard me crying and she came upstairs and I don't even know what she said to me. She put her hand on my shoulder and I was just so lost in my tears and my pain and tears are bawling out, you know, coming out of my nose. It was just one of the worst days of my life. And that's where things— that's where you get tested, you know. That's where you get tested if you're doing the right thing or not, if you are meant to do this, if this is something you're really passionate about or not. I remember reading famous stories of entrepreneurs and how they started their business and all the crap they had to go through. I think about Milton Hershey, who started a business 4 different times and failed 4 different times in different cities. And he borrowed some money from his aunt to get it started, and when he came home, he was bankrupt. Nothing, no money, nothing. And his parents said, you, you can't live with us, you can't stay here, we disown you as a son. And he had to stay with one of his first employees at his place on his couch just to not be homeless. You think about all these problems that people go through as famous entrepreneurs when they were nothing, when they were just getting started, and something kept them going, you know, despite all of this crap, despite thinking about quitting and giving up, something kept them going. It's because they loved what they did. This is why I harp on it, guys, you know, you gotta love what you do. It's got to be part of you. It's got to be something that you want to keep doing even when all this stuff happens to you, when you're not making money. Because if it's not that important to you, you're going to quit. When, when you get to the point where you're broken, you will quit unless you love what you're doing. So I told my partner I quit. You know, I didn't sleep much at all that night. And the next day I got up and went back to work because I loved what I was doing. And I was, I was frustrated and broken and wanted to quit, but deep deep down I loved what I was doing and I had to find a way to make it work. And I eventually did through modeling success, through learning what other people had done in my industry and in the software business. I learned their strategy and applied it to make it work. I made it work eventually. But it's only because I loved it. If I didn't, I would have quit. I would have quit way sooner. So I understand that you're broken. And for anybody watching who, you know, didn't write in and you're feeling the same way, this normal, guys. This is normal. Businesses don't just start up and they're hugely successful and didn't have any problems along the way. It's normal to want to quit, to give up, to feel broken. And I encourage you to really look inside and think about what you're doing and understand, is this what you love? Is this something that you want to dedicate your life to? If it's not, then then find it. And it's scary and heartbreaking and hard, but when you find what is right for you, when you find your path, when you find the thing that makes you come alive, you'll feel so good. I promise you. You know, it's reminded me of people who— if you break up with somebody, right? You break up with somebody who you know is not right for you, but you still feel like crap, right? You feel like, I'm not gonna find anybody, I'm not gonna— I'm so down on myself, this isn't, you know, how I thought I'd live my life. And you may even do desperate things. You may, you know, just date the wrong person or go crazy on online dating or whatever it is. You just do crazy stupid things because you're feeling so hurt and so much in pain. But when you do find that right person, Your life changes and you become really happy and you feel fulfilled. The same thing happens in business when you find that right idea. Even though it's— it may be painful, cause you a lot of stress, and you're not making money yet, if it's right for you, if in your heart you know this is what you're meant to do, then you have to find a way to keep going. Maybe you're taking jobs on the side. Whatever it is, you have to find a way to keep going. And if you haven't found that yet, Keep searching. Your heart will know when you found the right opportunity. Believe. For those of you watching, like the video, let me know. Please give it a thumbs up, it means a lot to me. Let me know what you think. Tell me about the hard times you've had with your business. Tell me how you've gotten through. Please leave a comment below, they mean a lot to me. And if you have a question for me, I'll make a video response if you leave a comment. And you want to see more videos like this, you can click on my face, subscribe to the channel. Thank you so much. I'll see you soon.
