Evan Carmichael explains how to filter opportunities: does it advance your core purpose and excite you personally? He warns against chasing shiny objects like an arsonist lighting fires everywhere, and suggests dedicating one afternoon a week to exploration while keeping your main mission in focus.
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Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. Welcome to another edition of Ask Evan. In today's episode, I'm going to focus on focus, and it's a question from Obioma, who's one of our Facebook readers, and he wrote in saying, uh, as an entrepreneur, there's opportunities abound. How do you determine the areas to focus on and then determine the things You shouldn't let get in your way of doing the things that are important. What do you focus on? So thanks for the question. I think it's a really common challenge a lot of entrepreneurs face. We like to see things happen quickly, right? I think that's a common trait for a lot of entrepreneurs and we get frustrated when things don't go the way we want and, and move at a snail's pace, which is very common, especially when you're starting up a new business. So how do you focus on the opportunities that will make the most sense for you and not get distracted by the other shiny objects around you? I think for me, what I've done that I found really helpful is you connect it to your purpose. So you identify what it is that you want to stand for as a business owner. And why did you start your business? What do you want to accomplish? What is it beyond making money that excites you about your business? For me, it's helping entrepreneurs. And we have a goal to help a billion entrepreneurs, and it's a big goal. It's going to take a long time to get to, but that's our goal. And that's what excites me. That's, that's what I get up every day wanting to do and going out and helping more entrepreneurs. So it's why I do these videos, even though a lot of times and most of the time it's not paid. It's just because that's part of what I love to do. That's part of my passion and it's important that you are building a business around something you're really excited about. So whenever we have a situation where we have opportunities coming at us, and I think you'll find as you get more successful you'll get more opportunities thrown at you and it's harder to figure out which ones to go for or not. Whenever you're in that kind of situation, you tie it back to your purpose. So for me, whenever I get new opportunities, I ask myself, is this gonna help entrepreneurs? Is this, is this gonna help me get to my 1 billion entrepreneur goal or not? And I go after the ones that I think have a greater opportunity. So it ties more into my purpose than the other ones. And that I always find helps me. It's easy to get caught up in the excitement of something, but you'll find that that shine quickly wears off as you get into it and you found you've wasted your time on something that doesn't really tie into what you should be focusing on. So try to, you know, step back a little bit, not get too excited about it, and think, does it tie into what your core passion is and your core purpose is or not? From there, if you have a couple of opportunities that are, you know, equal, you say, well, both of them would help me with my core purpose, then I would think about what am I more excited about? With any opportunities is going to come a healthy dose of excitement, hopefully. If you're not excited about it, don't do it. You know, do the things that do get you excited. The more excited about it you are, the more of your heart you're going to pour into it, and the better quality outcome you're going to get. So combine those two things: how does it impact the purpose that I'm trying to accomplish as an entrepreneur, and how excited am I about this opportunity? The ones that have high scores on both— you know, I'm excited about it and it ties well into my core purpose— then those are the ones that I go after. And it's daily, like I get opportunities daily. People email me all the time asking me to get involved in whatever projects, and I have to pick what I'm gonna do. And mostly it's saying no to the things that don't fit in with where I should be going. And I'm sure you face that problem on an ongoing basis, and I think a lot of people watching face that problem too. A lot of entrepreneurs are like arsonists. They like lighting little fires all over the place. But they don't follow through on anything, and so they can never build anything really significant. And that's a challenge. You know, you can only make so much money and only have so much success and feel so fulfilled if you're just starting and stopping all these little projects. It's really worth taking a few steps back, thinking about what you want to accomplish as a person. You know, what do you want your legacy to be? And then focus in on those things that you're really good at and you feel you can have a strong impact on your market. And stay focused on that. You know, don't give up on that dream. Don't just jump on something because you can think you can make a quick buck. Focus in on the long term. Take steps every day to move forward on that and try to put the blinders on. I know it's hard, but try not to get distracted. And hopefully you can use that model of staying true to your core purpose and also following the things that you are really excited about to let you stay on path and not get too distracted. If you find that you are getting, you know, you really want to try other things as well, maybe set aside one day to go go out and try new opportunities that are not related to business. Part of being an entrepreneur is also having the lifestyle and flexibility that you want. And you don't want your company to be something that you're angry at, right? If you're not able to do something, you're not able to take the day off and go to the beach if you really, really wanted to because of your business, then your business will start to become a drag. And you won't enjoy it, and you've bought yourself a job, and that's not the point of being an entrepreneur. So if you have found that, you know, you really like what you're doing, you've got your core purpose down, you know what you want to go after, but there are other things that you want to try just out of curiosity because you really want to go for it, then maybe set aside one day or maybe an afternoon. Maybe Friday afternoon is your time to go after other projects just to work on yourself as a person or learn new skills or potentially new opportunity. Just don't let it overwhelm what you're really trying to do, right? You don't want your business to get in the way of you having fun and being able to enjoy your life. But at the same time, you wanna make sure you're spending enough time to be able to build something significant, lasting, that provides value ongoing, that you can be proud of and really hang your hat on at the end of the day, say, "I made this." So hopefully that helps. That's how I approach it at least. If you guys like the video, please give it a thumbs up below. I love making these videos for you guys and I love seeing those thumbs ups come in, so I really appreciate it. And if you have a question for me about the same topic or different question about your business, feel free to leave it in the comments below. I always read those and I try to get to everybody as quickly as I can. So thank you and I'll see you on the next episode. Thank you.
