In this short "Famous Friday" episode, Evan Carmichael explains how entrepreneurs can accelerate brand growth by partnering with well‑known personalities. He begins with the historical example of Joyce Clyde Hall, founder of Hallmark Cards, who jump‑started the greeting‑card industry by collaborating with celebrities such as Norman Rockwell, Winston Churchill and Jackie Kennedy, using their fame to lend credibility to his new product line. Carmichael then shares his own experience: after launching evancarmichael.com, he deliberately reached out to recognizable bloggers and business authors—Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin, Michael Gerber, Zig Ziglar, Jack Canfield—and later secured Donald Trump’s participation. By showcasing a growing roster of respected names, he created a tipping‑point effect where additional influencers were eager to join without extra promotion. He advises viewers to start small, progressively targeting increasingly prominent figures, and to use each new endorsement as leverage for the next. The video ends with a call to subscribe, comment, and support the channel.
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Welcome to another edition of Famous Friday where we model the success of famous entrepreneurs to help you accomplish your goals. Today's lesson is leverage others, and it comes from Joyce Clyde Hall, who's the founder of Hallmark Cards. Now, when Hall was getting started with Hallmark, the greeting card industry was really just getting started. It wasn't something that people gave to each other. You didn't have birthday cards and Christmas cards and Valentine's Day cards, and what helped really make it his company take off and launch this entire industry was collaborations with celebrities of the day. So he partnered up with artists and musicians and writers and people who were well-known, known quantities, and he leveraged their name to make his company grow. So he partnered up with Norman Rockwell and Winston Churchill and Jackie Kennedy, and they all created their own cards, and he leveraged their brand to create his own. And pretty soon Hallmark became known as a source of excellence, as the standard company to go to. And so you want to do the same thing with your business. If you're just getting started and you don't know, you know, how to launch it, you don't know how to get any exposure, you are trying to build a brand, leverage the names of other people, have their credibility help you grow. Here's how I did it when I was first launching my business. I had EvanCarmichael.com, it was a website, and I shared my own thoughts and opinions and other people started contributing their thoughts and their stories and their wisdom, but nobody really knew who some of these people were. You know, business coaches, marketing consultants, but no big names. And I thought, you know what, I need to get some big names attached to this so that if people see their names on it, say, "Oh, I gotta join that. I gotta be a part of it because this person is a part of it." And so I started by reaching out to Guy Kawasaki and Seth Godin, who were both well-known bloggers at the time, and they agreed. And then I used their names to leverage to get other people involved. And we got Michael Gerber and Zig Ziglar and Jack Canfield and tons of other people who are well known in the entrepreneur circle. And I made my way up to getting Donald Trump involved as well. And when we made the pitch to him, he saw all these other people who were involved and he said yes, he wanted to share his content. And once I got him and all these other people, I stopped having to promote it because the authors look at it and say, hey, all these people are involved in it, I want to jump on board that train as well. And that's kind of where we hit a tipping point. So that's how to practically apply it to your business. You may not be able to start right now at base and go after somebody like Donald Trump. Hey, you may be able to. Go for it if you think you can, you know, take that shot. But if it's too big a shot, then start smaller and work your way up. You know, get somebody who's a little bit ahead of you and use their name to get somebody a little bit ahead of them and continue to build up. And by the time you get to that Donald Trump or whoever it is that you're trying to reach, you can show them all the people that are involved in this project and make it a lot more appealing to them. So to build your brand And a fast way to do it, instead of just trying to do it all yourself, is leverage other people's name recognition. Get them involved through collaborations with you to help your company grow. Believe. For those of you who watch this video, you like it, you can support me by subscribing below. Click on the link in the description to support me and leave a comment. Let me know what you think. Your comments mean a lot to me and I appreciate them. Thank you so much. Believe.
