How to Stay Productive When Waiting

Hustle while you wait. So I talked about this in a previous episode and it was just kind of at the tail end of a video and somebody asked me to expand on it, go a little deeper, and so that's what this video is for. I think a lot of times as entrepreneurs, you can be waiting on other people, right? If you're working on a project of any size, you're gonna involve other people. Other people need to be a part of it. And if, if you're working on a project where there's nobody else involved, then it's probably such a small project that it may not even be worth your time. You know, the big things involve other people. And so one of the challenges of dealing with other people is you gotta wait for them. You gotta wait for things to happen sometimes. Even if you try your hardest and you're as motivated as you can, and you're injecting inspiration in other people, you still have to wait for them to get stuff done, cuz you can't do everything yourself. And delays happen, right? Life gets in the way. Personal issues come up, maybe they go away on vacation or something happens in their life or it's a holiday or something. Something is gonna happen where you are just waiting for a response, you're waiting for something to happen. It's one of the most frustrating things as an entrepreneur because you wanna get stuff done now, right? You're motivated, you're excited, you wanna get something done right now. You'll stay up till 4 in the morning finishing it off. And so you have two options then as an entrepreneur. You can either be the person who says, "You know what? I'm waiting on this person, so I'm going to take it easy. I'm going to relax. I'm going to chill for a little bit. You know, they're not working hard, so why should I work hard?" Or you're the kind of entrepreneur who hustles. Just because you're waiting on somebody else and there's a roadblock there, it doesn't mean you can't take other paths. It doesn't mean you can't continue to hustle and work on that same project but a different path or work on a different project to move it forward. Because the worst-case scenario is that person drops the ball or says no, or you're waiting on a client and the deal doesn't happen, whatever the scenario is. And if all you've been doing is waiting on that person to get back to you and you haven't done anything in the meantime, that one no or one dropped project could be crushing. That could be the end of your business. But if you are doing lots of other things to make sure you're gonna be successful, then one dropped project that that person doesn't get back to you or delays till forever, Who cares? You got tons of other fish that you're working on right now. And so a lot of the things that I work on involve other people outside of my organization where I can't, you know, kind of control a timetable and schedule. And so I will do my best to move it as far along as possible, but whenever it's in their hands, I'm not just waiting on reply. I'm moving forward on another path. So as an example, yesterday was my book. Writing day. I don't have a lot to write for the book because I'm still waiting for feedback from my publisher. And it's kind of frustrating because it's been over 2 weeks since I heard back and I want to get it out, right? Like, I want to hustle. I want to get it out. I want to get marketing this. I'm tired of just being in editing mode. I want to start getting this into people's hands. It's frustrating, right? But instead of just waiting and saying, okay, well, what do I do now? It's book writing day and I don't have anything to do. I started hustling. So I wrote to my publisher, right? I connected with the publisher and said, hey, I want to follow up. These are the most important issues that I feel we got to work on. Let's get an answer. I connected with my literary agent and we talked about the book and what needs to happen and my views on where things are going right now and what's going to happen next. I connected with my main agent and talked about the YouTube channel and talked about what's happening in the business and the growth and how we can kind of promote the book through the different avenues once it's coming out. I set up meetings with other people, so I set up meetings with, uh, 4 YouTubers who are influencers who I made a personal connection with, who, you know, once the book is out, I can connect with them and have them, hopefully, if they like it, talk about it to their audience and help market it. I connected with a video SEO guy who, when I create the content for the books, video content for the book, we can help optimize the content so it gets out and people find the videos. I connected with a marketing consultant who has launched a couple of online channels, apps, a bunch of other things, just talking about the book, what I'm up to, getting her ideas on how I can market and get it out. I connected with two 2 owners of MCNs who have a broad reach into a lot of different online influencers who, again, once the book is out and I have it in my hands, I can give to them. If they like it, they can help me spread my reach to a lot of other people and get it in their hands too. I had my assistant do some tasks for me. I mentioned before, basically taking all of the content that have been interviews or I'm talking to other people and compiling the documents that I can send out to them. And he made a few mistakes on it, so I corrected him and asked him to do it again. So working on getting those packages. Instead of me doing it myself, it's him creating it, and then I'm gonna send it off to the people and get their feedback. I connected with Apple because I need to get some rights for them to use a certain section of content in the book, and there's rules around using their content or not. So I connected with them. I've connected with Brian Tracy and Michael Gerber, who are both kind of heroes and legends in the entrepreneur space, talking about what they're working on and hopefully getting their support to promote the book, maybe do an intro for the book, showcase it, share it, building a relationship. I wrote two more sections for the book that were kind of nagging at me. And, and from feedback that I got from other people, felt like I needed to add a little bit more content in. So I addressed two of the issues that people kept coming back to ask me questions like, "I really like that. And then what happens when I do this?" And so I added that into the book as well. I think it's gonna add a lot of value. I designed a t-shirt. I've been working with a designer on the t-shirt and marketed that, and that's gonna be up soon, so pay attention. And we might be able to have a t-shirt campaign related to the book as well when that comes out. And the advice and experience in kind of launching the t-shirt can help launch the book as well. And of course, I spend a lot of time in the YouTube comments. I feel like the YouTube community, you guys are one of the core reasons why I'm here, of course, why I got the book deal, how I'm gonna spread it and spread awareness for the book. And I think too many YouTubers ignore their audience and don't participate in the comments and aren't there and aren't seen and just create content. And I think one of the strengths of this channel is the feedback in the community and the, the love that happens. A lot of the comments are negative on YouTube channels where it's super positive here. And so I need to spend time in the, in the community. I try to spend time every day in the YouTube community on Believe Nation, on our channel, answering comments and getting back to people. And so that's a productive use of time. So I'm doing all these things while I'm waiting for my publisher to get back to me. Now when the publisher gets back and has some ideas and changes, then I'll go and implement those. But if they don't, then I'll be hustling on other things. And so constantly hustling while you're waiting to get feedback on something. I'm not just sitting around and waiting for someone to get back to me. I'm out moving and you should be too because there are those projects and you're kind of mailing it in on a few of them. There's some things you're like, "Ah, I'm just waiting on that guy," and then you take it easy. You gotta stop that mentality ASAP and get right into hustling on another project. So answering some of the questions that came in from the last video, Nathan was asking, "Hey Evan, love your videos. Had a question for you. I find myself in analysis paralysis often when I'm trying to learn about business-related topics. How do you know what to absorb and what to filter out when you need advice?" That's an interesting comment for me. For one, whenever I'm faced with a challenge, I try to model success. I try to find someone who's already done it and learn from them and apply it to my business. I talked about how Bill Gates saved my business. I learned a strategy from Microsoft. They were a software company. I had a software company. I wanted to model what worked for them and apply it to my company. And that's what helped save my company and get me out of, you know, making no money actually doing something, being successful. And so that's become kind of my default thinking. Anytime I want to try to get better at something, I look at, okay, who can teach me? Who's already done it? And what lessons can I learn from them? At the same time, I also try to just surround myself with greatness as a general rule. So the top 10 videos on my YouTube channel, the Enespresso series that I start the morning with every day, I often pick up different lessons and different, um, ways of thinking that I may not have even had on my radar, but I find interesting. And I, I just like seeing how great entrepreneurs and great innovators and great thinkers and great inventors— I like seeing how they think. And I feel like if you surround yourself with that enough, a little bit of the magic dust rubs off on you. You get a little bit smarter, you think a little bit differently. And so I'll often consume that content more with an aim of being inspired than looking for a specific strategy. So it's both approaches. It's one like, okay, I need to market my book. Who's marketed books really well? What can I learn from them? You know, Ryan Holiday is a master at it. He sent me some of his stuff. I'm gonna be meeting with him in Austin, Texas in the next little bit. And then also just general inspiration, big picture ideas, stuff to kind of get the juices flowing. And then as a little kind of side note on that, I'll often find that watching the same thing over or reading the same book again, I take something different from it. So there are some books that I might read a couple times, a video I might watch. There's a, you know, great Steve Jobs video on marketing that I have on the channel that every time I watch it, I still take— like, I've watched it 100 times plus, I still take a little bit of something new from it. I think it just depends on where you're at, where you, where you're at in your kind of mental frame of mind. So both of those things Model success for something tangible that you're looking to get and then create an environment of greatness that builds you up and inspires you to wanna do something big. Mrs. Doodle Journey wrote in, amazing content here. I always struggled with the idea of hiring people. I would check out Upwork, never heard of it before you mentioned it. I do have a question. Could you introduce us to your team? I'd love to have a deeper look into how many team members you have, including what their titles and responsibilities are. So Upwork used to be odesk. They're probably better known as being oDesk than Upwork, but it's part of their rebrand. I've been a huge fan of them and was a fan of oDesk as well, especially if you have tasks that you don't need to have somebody physically next to you in an office to be able to do. And so who's on my team? Let me think. We got a lot of people on the team. So I have Christina and Sam. Hi. The video editors who create a lot of these videos. There's Nina, who's my wife, who answers a lot of the comments on the channel and is in a lot of the videos. This is the wife. I love her a lot. Jiraiya says has been in a few of the videos and does a lot of kind of high-level strategy and thinking and empire building for the channel. Ivan does a lot of research for the channel and is involved in the, in the comments. Jasmina is my personal assistant. Monzur does a lot of the marketing and background information, more for the website than the YouTube channel. Monzur, Ray, and GT basically are all part of my my website, so they help run evancarmichael.com. Ali is my programmer who runs the programming side of, of my website. Jen does a lot of, uh, copywriting for the content, more again on the website than on the YouTube channel. Marian is my publisher. Nina is— another Nina, N-E-N-A— is my literary agent. Steve is my main agent. Janie is my media coach. Stephanie, my sister, helps run the investments that we make into Kiva, which is funding businesses in Africa. Ed is my server guy and does all the work on our kind of backend for the website. Rizal is my graphic designer, so making some of the icons and making the t-shirts and some of the graphic work. Am I missing anybody? It's a lot, it's a lot of people. I think we're up to 18 people plus me on the team, so 19 people. I'm looking to hire one more person now to help me book a lot of the meetings and hangouts and stuff that I'm doing in my business. So we'll be at 20 soon. It's getting to the point where it's, it's a lot to manage. I don't know at what point I need to have like sub layers. I don't like the idea of kind of losing, I like the personal touch. I like the, I like knowing what people are up to and me being a direct report, but I'm quickly becoming a bottleneck in that process where I think a lot more would happen if everything didn't have to go through me. And so I'm delegating more responsibilities and at some point we'll have to have layers, which I'm not looking forward to, but I'm also looking forward to because it means the company's growing. Julian saying, I gotta come down to Texas, we'll meet up. Yeah, I'll let you know. So he's in Austin and I'm not sure when we're going to do that meetup. I know when the book comes out, we'll probably do more tours and going to different cities and all that stuff. But I'm going to be meeting Ryan. I just got to figure out the schedule. It's really on me. He's ready to meet whenever. It's really on me to figure out when I'm going to go down. I hate traveling. It's part of it. I hate being away from here. I feel less productive. There's so much that happens on a day-to-day basis that I feel, you know, I went to Madrid a couple weeks ago. I came back for a few days and I went to Orlando on a family trip. It's like, I miss so much. I feel so behind. I feel so disconnected from everything that I'm doing that I don't like it. So it's on me. I got to get back to him. We'll figure it out. Khalifi wrote in, hi Evan, I want to know the title of the book and what is the value added for entrepreneurs and what is different from other motivational and personal person development materials. So a lot of that is still classified. I haven't mentioned the name of the book. Jen knows it, but it's not out public yet. And in terms of the added value, you know, I didn't really want to write this book. I wrote it because it didn't exist. I wrote it because I was trying to figure it out, and I had two-thirds of it kind of in my head as a blueprint for what I have done, but I didn't find anybody else who like this book has not been written. And the third section was me going out and interviewing other companies who've applied similar principles that I've used. And I basically wrote the blueprint. Everybody who has been involved in running their business this way has just kind of figured it out on their own, but they haven't— there's never been a manual to turn to to help them. So I wish I didn't have to write the book. I wish it existed so I could just follow it. But, um, you know, like a lot of great products, it's, it's formed out of frustration, right? I started the Top 10 series because I, I wanted to be a consumer of it. I didn't want to have to create the videos. It takes a lot of work to make those videos. I just wanted to be a consumer and enjoy it, not have to make it, but nobody else was doing it. So I did. And so I'm not sure when the title is going to come out. I'm sure once we get into like marketing mode, we're almost, we're almost there. I got to still work with the publisher on a few issues that we're fighting over, but we're almost there. So super exciting. Thank you guys for the questions. For those of you who want to leave a comment in, in the comments below for next week's video, If you have a thought about Hustling While You Wait, if you have a question about my book or the book writing process, leave it in the comments below and I'll answer you in next week's video. Thank you guys so much for watching. Continue to believe, and I'll see you soon.