How to Transform Your Life in 23 Minutes | Evan Carmichael

I got this.

Present, and it reads, to Evan Carmichael, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, with lots of love from Believe Nation.

Do you want to watch it?

Nice. These are my—

no, not yet.

Evan, you want to watch it?

I'm a little scared.

He's a former venture capitalist, radio host, YouTube personality and entrepreneur.

He sold his first company at 19.

He set 2 world records.

He aimed to help 1 billion entrepreneurs.

He's Evan Carmichael, and here are his top 10 rules for success.

When I was growing up in grade 2, grade 3, grade 4, I used to have a lot of nervous tics. Some of them were really embarrassing. I used to blink a lot, constantly. I used to do this with my neck and then have to adjust with my shoulder. When I was walking, I used to always have to step on the lines or completely avoid the lines on the sidewalk. One of the most embarrassing ones was I used to always try to kick my own butt, where I would always have the— I'd have to push my leg up and I wouldn't be happy until the heel hit my butt. And I have to do that a couple times before I can move on with the rest of my day. I was also getting into a lot of fights at my school. So seeing this, my parents were really worried and they took me to go see a child psychologist. I didn't know she was a psychologist. My parents had said I was gonna go play games with somebody, and we had some games together, and she showed me these inkblots and told me, what do you see in these pictures? And she asked me a bunch of questions. The immediate recommendation was that I switch schools right away. And so in grade 5, I transferred to a new school called Crescent and ended up staying there from grade 5 all the way to graduating high school. And the tics got better. For the most part, they went away completely. To this day, I still have a few minor ones where if I'm thinking or if I'm stressed or if I'm tired, I'm tired, you could see my ears move. But other than that, they're gone. What it really made me think about was the importance of your environment. So your environment is either something that builds you up, that lifts your spirits, that helps you go chase your dreams, or something that squashes you down, that makes you shrink, that makes you accept a lesser life. So think about the people that you surround yourself with. Think about the TV shows you're watching and the media that you're consuming and the place that you go to work. Does your environment build you up or squash you down? Changing my environment had a dramatic impact on the quality of my life and the contribution to my success as an entrepreneur, and changing yours can have the same impact for you. Add more value. If you want to be able to charge what you're worth, if you want to be able to build a successful company, you need to add a ton of value. The amount of money that you make will be directly related to how much value you're providing for your customers, how much you're helping them out. It's a pretty simple equation. Executing it is difficult, but the concept is simple to understand. If you want to make more money, add more value and stop competing on price. When you compete on price alone, it's a loser's game. You're not gonna bring on ideal clients. You're constantly gonna be struggling to get by. You're not gonna be able to hire great people for your team. You have to stop competing on price, start adding more value, and you're gonna love your business more, you're gonna have more fun, you're gonna attract much better clients. You wanna work with people who understand the value you provide and not just cater to the guys who have no budget, who are barely paying you a tiny profit for what you're doing.

I believe everybody has one word that they stand for, and when you figure out what that one word is, your life and your business will change. And it's not just for marketing, it's not just how you promote yourself, but it's who you surround yourself with, the team that you attract yourself to, the products and services that you launch. When I accompanied and embraced believe as my one word, my business started to take off. My videos started doing insanely better. I started attracting the right people into my team. I started launching products that made sense for people and people really embraced. And so I'm a huge believer in it. And I'm going to give you a quick method to how to figure out your one word. The first step is you think about what makes you happy. What are the things that make you come alive? What are the things that you love doing? And just don't even think about what your one word is yet. Just think about all the things that you love doing, things you could do all day long, the things that fill your life with joy. Write those things down. And this isn't just a business thing. This is you personally, because you want to make this personal for your business to be successful. The second thing is then look at what connects them. What are all the things that connect those things that make you happy? What's the connective tissue? And try to figure out, is there one word that can bring all those things together? So think about what your favorite movie is, your favorite book, your favorite, your best friend growing up, what you love about your parents. You know, what businesses you've been attracted to, the hobbies that you love doing, what connects them all together. For me, it's believe. You know, I love Seabiscuit as a movie, which is about this underdog horse and underdog jockey and underdog trainer and underdog owner and how they all work together to then win a whole bunch of races. The songs I listen to are always the uplifting, believe, kind of positive ones. Those are the ones that I gravitate towards. What I love about my parents is that they always believed in me and told me that I was a Costello Carmichael and I could do anything that I wanted. Even if they didn't give me the, the ideas of how to start a business, they always believed that whatever I did, I would be successful at and taught me to believe in myself. And so it's really important. And so all of those things that I've done across my life have been about belief. And when I encompassed that, it allowed me to start living my life on purpose with direction instead of just being reacting to it.

The thing is, in every industry is competitive, right? Every industry is competitive. And the key is you got to be you. The key thing that's going to make you stand out from everybody else is you. I'm trying to cross the street as I'm saying this. That's a differentiator. That's your market advantage. And so you've got to figure out, yes, you can model success. Yes, you can look at people who are big in the beauty industry and look at how they rose. And those are great examples. You got to take what worked for them and then make it your own. You've got to find a way to make this your business, and people will be attracted to your personality. Not everybody, but a certain group of people. And what I found the best way to do it is to combine your passions. So if you love beauty, that's amazing, that's awesome. What else do you love, and how can you mix those two things? So for example, say you love dancing, right? You love dancing, that's your passion besides beauty. Be the beauty person for dancers, right? The next time they're doing a photo shoot, the next time they're getting ready for a performance, the next time they're out there Getting into a movie, I almost got run over by that guy. Holy cow. They're gonna call you, right? You're making videos, you're making blog posts, you're tweeting about makeup and beauty and dancing. And so that's the key, that's how you do it. A couple examples that I've used before in the video. One, you know, if you like being a photographer, photographers are super competitive too. But say you love bowling, then you can be the photographer for bowlers. And you're gonna be the default person they go to because they need people to be able to take pictures and they want somebody who's passionate about bowling. If you love dancing, they need people who can do makeup, but they want people who are passionate about dancing as well, and you can speak both languages.

That's the key.

I got a buddy of mine, I've used this example before, named Steve, who's a financial planner. Man, financial planner, how many financial planners are there out there?

Tons.

But he has a passion for hockey. He loves hockey, he obsesses over it, he watches it, you know, as much as he can, watches the same replay 20 times. He could just watch hockey day in, day out. He became the financial planner for hockey players. And so when he's talking to hockey players now, he can speak their language, he can talk about hockey, he can talk about investments, and he's one of them, right? A lot of these hockey players, you know, the goal in financial planning is to target the high net worth individuals, right? The people who have a lot of money.

Those are the people you want to work with.

And so he's able to do that by combining his passions. And so make it your own, right? Find a way to be able to tie whatever other passions you have into the beauty business, and that's how you're going to stand out. I want to see more Lissa. I want to see your passion. I want to see your personality, your character, what you believe in, all of that.

That's got to be real.

It's got to be you.

It's got to be human, and that connection to you and everything that you stand for and believe in is what's going to make me want to come to you as opposed to everybody else. That's how you stand out.

So one of the most important lessons that I've learned in business, and I guess in life, is you need to follow your flow. And sometimes there are external pressures that force you into following your flow. You may get a big media opportunity, you may get a new partnership, you may get a new— a big customer that kind of is a huge, big opportunity for your business. And sometimes following your flow, I find, comes from internal reasons, internal pressures. Maybe you wake up one day and you really want to go try something out, or you're on a walk, or you're in the shower and a new thing comes to your mind. And I found that by following my flow and by following that idea, it's always in my best interest. One, because probably magic is going to happen If magic is going to happen, it's going to come from a source of inspiration, not just being, you know, doing your day-to-day-to-day-to-day. And two, I didn't want to live with regret, you know? Don't want to have this big list of to-dos, this big list of ideas that just builds and builds and builds, and this Evernote file that just keeps growing and I never actually take action on stuff, right?

You have an idea, you want to try something, go and take action on it.

So yesterday, this relates to my book, Yesterday, I had a full day planned. Monday is my busy day. I'm recording this on Tuesdays. Mondays are my busiest day of the week and I had a full day planned and then I just— it all exploded on me from an external source, from 50 Cent. So I made a video and 50 Cent saw it and he called it good shit and he posted on his Facebook page and he posted it to his Twitter account He posted a blog about it. He kind of went crazy promoting this, and as a result, the traffic exploded on my video. Comments were coming out of everywhere. People were tweeting me. They're signing up for my newsletter. They're engaging with the video. It was just insane, and I had a choice of, hey, I can either go with this, right? Or I could just do all the work that I had planned for the day, and I chose to go with it. On top of it, it was pretty cool, right? 50 Cent likes my stuff and is sharing it. And I spent a good amount of time just with my team, just having fun in the moment, looking at the numbers, seeing where it was being shared. It's kind of a big celebration and a win for everybody on the team. So we're all kind of super pumped and excited, and I spent the day responding to everybody, and as a result, got nothing done that I was supposed to get done for the day. Hello, Believe Nation!

I've talked a lot about on this channel how when you're first starting something, you're going to suck at it, right? Any new skill that you're trying to pick up, You're going to suck whether it's learning a language, picking up a new sport, picking up a new skill, learning a video game, trying to understand marketing or accounting, whatever it is you're trying to understand, you will suck at the start. And a story I've told a couple times on these videos is look back on my channel, look back on my old videos and see the progress, right? 2,500 videos later, you can see how I've grown and I've gotten better and I sucked at the start and hopefully suck a little bit less now. But one thing that, that struck me as I was watching through my channel was the Entpresso series. I started that a couple months ago, and the first one that I did was of Dame Dash, and it was a selfish project for me because I wanted something in the morning to kind of get me excited, get me inspired, make me think bigger. But when I started it, I didn't have it all planned out, and I think this is something that's really critical for a lot of you entrepreneurs is you want to not overplan and expect to suck at the start, and it's okay because you're gonna get better and better and better and better. I remember when I had my first company, I really struggled at the beginning. I was making $300 a month, not enough to survive. Almost gave up repeatedly and, uh, was willing to try anything. I felt like I tried everything and and nothing was working out. I had a great product and I couldn't understand why this was so hard because the books I read and the websites I visited and the shows I watched, everything seemed to be so easy. Like, follow these 8 steps and you'll be successful. Well, I followed those 8 steps a million times and I wasn't successful. And one of the big breakthroughs for me came when I realized that I wasn't the first guy to try to do this before. My first company was a software company, and I had no background in software before apart from using, you know, a computer, but I wasn't a software designer. And the breakthrough moment came when I did realize that I'm not the first guy to try to sell software before, and I went and I modeled some of the largest and most successful software companies in the world, and one in particular was Microsoft. And again, I don't care how Bill Gates makes money now, but how did he go from from nothing, from that idea, to getting his first customer. What did he do? What did he say? What were his actions? What was his mindset? Who did he need to connect with? And I took those strategies and applied them to my business, and I finally started to see results. For him, it was through partnerships. So he made partnerships. He had software, he partnered with hardware companies. His big deal came with IBM, was a $7 million deal, that first one with IBM. That really put the company on the map. But before that, he still made partnerships with other hardware companies and they sold their products as a bundle. And so I applied that strategy and within the first month I closed my first partnership deal and I made $13,500. Now that may not seem like a lot of money to you, $13K, but to me, I'm making $300 a month, this was like eureka! Oh my God, I struck it rich! This is amazing. Somebody actually believes in what I'm doing. I'm seeing some positive momentum finally after all this failure and struggling. And I just kept copying that again and I applied it again and again and again and closed more partnerships and more partnerships and continued to grow my business and eventually got acquired by someone who was a potential partner. They loved us so much that they wanted to buy my business. And I wish I had discovered it earlier. I wish I had discovered the strategy so much earlier because I almost shut down. Like, I almost quit my business and thought maybe I should listen to my friends and go back and get a job. And I'm so grateful that I didn't, but I came close many times to having to do that. And so if you're struggling with your business right now, if you don't have a lot of experience in, in the field and it's a first-time thing for you, you can't get this thing off the ground, model success. Find someone who has done it, who's had have success in your field. Look at the cosmetic lines company, see how they did it, learn from their mistakes so you don't have to make all the mistakes yourself. And you crunch down your learning curve, so instead of it taking you years and years and years to achieve success, you can do it a lot faster because you're modeling things that work. That's the test. You know, when you are excited by something, when you are passionate about something, when you're willing to set an alarm for something and then wake up even before that alarm goes off that tells you that you're on the right path. Because too many people try to plan it all out, right? Try to make, make it make sense up here in your head, right? It's got to make total logical sense before I launch. And your assumptions are always going to be wrong, and it's never going to work out like you think it will. And you spend so much time planning that you don't spend any time doing. And what you need to do is follow your passion, even when it sounds crazy. You know, I don't know how this I don't know if it's going to be with videos. I don't know if it's going to be through an agency, through tournaments, through representing players. I don't know what it's going to be. But what I do know is if I don't do anything, nothing's going to happen. And so by following my passion and by waking up early and setting that alarm clock and getting excited about something, we'll explore, we'll try, we'll fail, we'll make mistakes, and we'll get better and we'll find our path. And you need to do the same thing too. If there's something that you are excited about, something that you want to try, then start. Start even if it doesn't make any sense, because by trying and making mistakes and figuring it out, you'll land on the perfect business model to help you explode and grow when everybody else thought you were crazy. One of the things that I fundamentally believe is that entrepreneurs make the world a better place. This is We are the people that drive forward progress. We are the people that create the change. And one of the main reasons why I make these videos and I'm so passionate about helping entrepreneurs is because you guys are the ones that's going to go out and create that better future for, for my kids and for my grandkids.

And so just as a reminder, if you're struggling to—

I know there's like the short-term cash flow crunch and you want to make money now, you're trying to figure out how to survive. Survival is important, but the way to get to becoming a successful entrepreneur is by impacting people. And some people have a big vision like Walt Disney and want to create new cities, and other entrepreneurs have a smaller vision and all you want to do is help your local community and help your customers who are buying from you. But at the core of every successful business is a desire to do good and to make the world a better place. It's what drives me. I want to, I want to have a big impact. And I know I can help people on a small scale. I know I can help you with the videos, and the videos are taking off, and everything I've done is, you know, it's growing quickly. But I want it to be bigger, right? I want it to be life-changing on a world scale. And I don't always believe that I can do it because I've never done it before, because it seems like such a big goal. And I'm writing a book right now, and it's— I want it to be an important I want to be one of the, the top 10 most read, most valuable business books of all time. And that's an easy goal to say, right? Anybody can say, I want to have this book to be the top 10 book. Anybody can say that. But who actually believes that, right? Do I actually believe that I can write that book? Because if I don't, I'm not going to write that book. And when I'm talking to people, I'm not going to get them excited. And there's a fine line between confidence and arrogance or cockiness, but that's the challenge that I'm going through right now, is believing that I can create this amazing book. And when I'm talking to Jessica Alba and saying, hey, you're, you know, you're a superhero in the movies, but you should be a superhero in real life as well. You could be a superhero for entrepreneurs and help them and be a model for success through your honest company, I have to do that with a lot of confidence. I have to do that believing that this is truth.

Thank you so much for watching.

Yo, we made this video because we love you so much, Evan Carmichael, and his fans asked us to.

We'd also like to know which of Evan's top 10 rules meant the most to you.

Leave it in the comments.

We will join you in the discussion.

Thank you so much for watching.

Continue to believe.

And we'll see you soon.

Bonus! Uh-oh, what's in the bonus?

Are you serious?

Jesus Christ.

Can you stand up a little bit more?

Oh man, yummy. Mmm, the red wine sauce?

Mm-hmm.

The red wine makes it.

Okay, thank you for watching this video. If you like the video, please give a thumbs up and enjoy. Subscribe.

Bye!

Believe!

Why are you looking at me?

It's great!

Oh, stop it!

Baby, can you help me? Are you too far? Are you too tall? The stem pack.

It's good, very fresh.

Two thumbs up, high five.

Ready? Oh, it's really good. Ready? Oh my God. Okay. You're gonna break this thing.

Just jump.

Okay, come. Are you okay?

Before we go in, I've gotta give props to Tim Hortons.

They changed their straw on their Ice Caps. It's this red thing now, but it's way stronger. So when you mix the drink, it's a lot easier and the straw doesn't bend. So Nina will demonstrate because I have a hand.

Look.

You have a hand. I know you have a hand.

Look.

See, the straw doesn't bend. Props to you, Tim Hortons.

Amazing work. These are the kinds of things you learn on the Evan Carmichael channel. Sandra, listen to me. You need to get out of there. Was that good? Sandra, listen to me. You need to get out of there. Was that close? So if you want to tell me how Americans say out differently than Canadians, and maybe give your own example, please subscribe to the channel and leave.

Bye!

Okay, say bye. Okay.

Bye!

So, um, oh, I forgot what I want to say. I forgot now.

Okay, stop it.

You're interacting. You're interfering with my thought.

Okay, here we go.

1, 2.

Nothing. Squeeze the bottle.

Just like that, and you're done.

Thank you, amazing. Continue to believe.

I really appreciate it.

I was waiting for someone to step up and do it. I was waiting.

I challenged people in the comments a couple times, so it's great that it's an awesome Christmas present. Feeling the love. I know a lot of work went into that, so thank you guys, and we'll have an amazing 2016 together.