In this solo video, Evan Carmichael answers a newsletter reader’s question about losing passion for her business. He explains that burnout and apathy are common among long‑time entrepreneurs and argues that the key to reigniting excitement is to weave one’s personal interests and core belief into the business. He walks through his own evolution—from writing entrepreneur stories, to recruiting thousands of contributors, to launching a newsletter and then video content—showing how each shift was driven by a new personal passion. He highlights the importance of identifying a single, deeply held word or belief (for him, “Believe”) that can serve as a north‑star across any venture. He also stresses giving yourself time and freedom to explore new activities without the pressure of them becoming the next big thing, using his experience with salsa dancing (which later turned into an investment) as an illustration. The video ends with two concrete homework assignments: (1) discover your core word/belief and embed it in everything you do, and (2) schedule exploratory time to try new things, trusting that success will follow. He invites viewers to comment, like, and request further brainstorming.
Chapters
How can I spark myself and my business up? It's a question that came in from one of my newsletter readers, Susie. Susie, thanks for writing in. She basically wrote in to say she's been running this business. She said, I feel I used to be on fire about my business, but I've gradually sunk into a certain amount of apathy and bland averageness. So I want to learn how to spark both my business and myself up again. Susie, first of all, I want you to know that this is very common. This isn't something that a lot of entrepreneurs talk about. Nobody really told me about this, but it's very common. If you've had a business for a while, it's really common to lose touch with it, to lose the passion, to lose the excitement. You need to always be putting something new into the company to stay motivated, to stay excited. What I found to be the best result for me is to try to tie my personal interests as much as possible into the business. So when I first started this business, it was all about the famous entrepreneur stories because that's how I learned. I learned through the success of other famous entrepreneurs, applied their strategies to make it work for me, and my whole website was basically just me sharing stories of famous entrepreneurs. It wasn't even about me. I wasn't on there. It was just writing. And learning from these successful entrepreneurs. And it evolved. I started to get other people to write content for me. I stopped loving the writing. I didn't want to write anymore. And that could have been the end of my business. I could have said, you know, this sucks. I don't want to do this anymore. I'm bored. I'm tired. I'm not motivated anymore. So I had to find something different. So then I became interested in getting other people to write for me. And I went out and I recruited almost 8,000 people to write for my website. From business coaches, marketing consultants, up to Donald Trump. And that was exciting for a while. And then that became boring. You know, Trump was my big fish. I wanted to go and get him, and I was really excited. And then once we landed him, people just started to come on their own because we had so much momentum. And I needed to find another thing to get me going. And that could have been the end of my business there too, right? The next thing I started to do was respond to people on newsletters. So I created my newsletter. People started writing in with questions. And then I quickly got bombarded again with, with questions, and I was writing again, and it was great for a while, but then it became too much and overwhelming, and I lost the passion for doing that. So I started with the videos, and now I'm doing the videos, and I love doing the videos, and so far so good. I still love doing the videos, but if I lose interest in the videos, then I'll move on to do something else, and I keep trying to bring what I believe in, what I'm excited and passionate about into my business. The whole core of everything I do is still about believing in entrepreneurs. And so wherever that takes me, I'm always growing my business in different directions. And the projects that have worked out, I either continue by having somebody on my team do, or by, by dropping, and I move on to something else. You need to find What you are strongly and deeply passionate about personally, and then bring that into your business more. And that may change and evolve, and then your business evolves with it. The more of a personal connection you bring to your company, the more fun you're going to have, the more you're going to attract ideal customers, the more passion you're going to bring to your company, the more money you're going to make. I got into salsa. I make that part of my business. I talk about salsa. Anything that you're interested in, bring it into your company and see how it flies. Come up with the one thing that you stand for. For me, it's believe. I say it in a lot of my videos. It's an uplifting message. It's something that I strongly am, am proud of. It's part of me, and whatever business I went into, it would still be about belief. If I was selling shoes, it'd be about Believe with shoes. If I was selling apartments, it would be about Believe with apartments. And I love helping entrepreneurs. So everything that I do, everybody on my team, they believe in Believe and they believe in entrepreneurs, and we build out from there. So you've got to find the one thing that is core to you, not to your business, but to you, and then bring that into everything that you do. And I know it can be hard, especially if you've done the same thing for years and years and years, and it gets frustrating and you don't know how to break the cycle and, and it's a habit now. It's a habit that you wake up every day and you're not excited about what you're doing. Give yourself some time to think. Free up your schedule a little bit to focus on something new that you can do, even if it's not related to your business, because you can find a way to bring it in. A quick example: I am an investor in a salsa dancing company. I talked a little bit about it. When I first joined salsa, it wasn't to try to find my next big opportunity. If you're always looking for the next big thing, then you're rarely going to find it because you're forcing it. You've got to let it come to you. I started salsa dancing. If I looked at it as a business opportunity, it wouldn't have made any sense and I would have quit it because I was learning too late, my steps were ginormous, I didn't understand the music, I couldn't commit to doing this on a full-time basis. There were so many strikes against me, it didn't make sense. Why would I get into salsa? I had no background in this, and I would have quit if I was just looking at it as a business opportunity. But I started doing it just out of the desire to explore, to learn more about myself and do something different. And I loved it, and I fell in love, and now I'm an investor in the business. I'll teach some classes, I'll DJ 3 times a week at our events. I love doing it. It's part of me now. It became a business opportunity because I wasn't out there trying to ram every thought I had into creating this new idea. So homework for you and everybody watching: number 1 is find what's core to you. Find the one word, the one thought, the one belief that means something to you, that, that you read it and it gets you excited. One word, and then try to bring that into everything that you're doing. And number 2, if you're looking for new opportunities, you're looking for something different, give yourself the time, the freedom, the flexibility to go out and try new things without having the pressure of it having to be the next big thing. If you do that Success will be yours. And if you have any problems in this, if you want to help brainstorm this, you, you want to share your philosophy with me on your business, I will help guide you through the process because I want to see you become successful. Believe. For those of you watching, you like the video, you know the drill, thumbs up below please. And I want to hear what you have to think. Leave a comment underneath, let me know what you think. You have a question for your business, Let me know below. You want to brainstorm with me? Put your thoughts down below and I'll make a video response. Thank you so much and I'll see you soon.
