Make sure you moving forward EVERY SINGLE DAY - #EvansBook ep. 5

Some days you run, some days you walk, just make sure you're moving forward every day. It's my book writing day and last week I tried writing from Starbucks and walking to the Starbucks and running back and it worked out great and I thought, "Hey, you know what? I'm gonna try this again." There's a problem though. You hear the wind picking up? Last night I didn't sleep until 5 in the morning. There was this crazy thunderstorm. The remnants are still here with this crazy wind.

Although it's a bright sunny day.

Went to bed at 5 in the morning, waking up tossing and turning, going back to bed, and I woke up at 8:30. So I'm not functioning on a lot of sleep today. And it could have been super easy for me to say, I'm tired, you know, I'm not, I'm not feeling like going to Starbucks, I'm not gonna go there, and just cash in the day. But it's important to remember that some days you run and some days you walk. Just make sure you're moving forward every single day. And I think a lot of people just find excuses for not getting stuff done. You say, "Well, it's not the perfect timing." And it's never the perfect time. It's like saying it's the perfect time to have a baby, right? It's never the perfect timing. You can always find something, some reason for you not to go and do the uncomfortable thing, the thing that you need to do to help grow your business. So that's the message for today. Some days you run, some days you walk, some days maybe you crawl. but just make sure you're moving forward every single day. Okay, so it's Q&A time. Last week I went on a rant saying how all you guys wanted to talk about was my beard and I wanted questions and now you guys delivered.

You gave me questions and it's gonna grow a little bit of that beard back.

Don't worry, it's not gonna get to the epic stage it was at before. So here are your questions. Okay, so I'm really pissed off. Uh, one of the downsides of recording with an iPad, what I realized is that if you switch to another application, It stops recording. I didn't notice. So I've just spent the past 20 minutes answering questions as I'm walking to the Starbucks, and none of them recorded because I was tabbing out to go to the Evernote file I saved them in and then coming back. So I'm pissed off. I don't want to answer them again right now. Maybe on the way back. Maybe next week's episode. We'll see. I'm gonna get to Starbucks. Thank you guys for the support. I promise I will get to those questions at some point. Believe.

And I'll see you soon. Okay, so the walk calmed me down a little bit. I'm close to the Starbucks and there's this little park that's along the way. I thought I'd pull in and quickly answer the questions a second time because the first time it didn't work. And, you know, last name Carmichael, we have our own crest, and under the crest it says "toujours prêt," which is French for "always ready." So like a good Carmichael, I also have all the questions printed out here that I'm gonna go through quickly. I'm gonna go faster than I did before because I feel like I've already done this before. So first question: Jarhead6, cool shoes, bro. Thank you, sir. We're using your iPad. Follow-up from Sensei Ryan. I'd like to know this as well. The sound was really good. What we're using for the sound, all I'm doing is using my iPad, uh, have the camera facing towards me, you know, flip it, and then when I'm walking, I'm just holding it out like this with two hands so it's not as shaky. And now I'm just resting on a park bench. That's it.

Sounds decent.

It's a little bit windier today, um, So, I guess we'll see how the audio turns out. When I film normally, I live on a long street before you get to the main street, so it's typically pretty quiet. And I'll film there, the Q&A part, so that I don't have as much background noise. But now I'm closer to the main street, so I don't know. We'll see how it works out. Another question from Sensei Ryan: Speaking of the book, have you ever considered speaking into an audio player, then having someone transcribe it for you? From here you can edit it. So basically the rough draft would be read instead of written. What are your thoughts? Believe. I love that, and I wish I could do that. My biggest challenge with that is I'm a much better writer than I am a speaker. Speaking, I'm not fantastic off the cuff unless I am just super passionate and excited about something in the moment, but typically I'm a more reserved, thoughtful— I think about what I say before I say it for the most part, and I'm just a much better writer than I am a talker. So it makes more sense, even though I'm not a huge fan of the process, to write it down instead of just talking. But I appreciate the love. I'm feeling the love. Thank you so much, Sensei Ryan, for the suggestion. Next up, Stike96 talking about scheduling because I talked about scheduling last week. My issue with schedules is that I can't seem to have set schedules through the week because I have loads of random things popping up all the time, such as going out somewhere or something my dad wants help with, stuff like that. Is there any way to set a schedule in a lifestyle where things just pop, where things just in this pop up like that. Also, if you don't do something one day, it wouldn't affect all the following days and everything would have to move down a day. Until now, I don't have set timings for things, so I'd love to hear your thoughts about the topic. This is fantastic. I have a lot of thoughts on scheduling. I'll try to keep it brief. Specifically to this, I believe in running a no-crisis business and a no-crisis life as much as possible. I hate putting out fires. I hate being in reactionary mode. I hate always having to just respond to things instead of being proactive, instead of managing my time, protecting my time, which is important to me and training the people in my life and in my business to respect my time as well. It starts with you respecting your time first though. And so I've hired people who can take on projects instead of tasks. I have set times for things where people know not to distract me unless it's super important. I don't have a cell phone at all. I don't have data on my iPad. I don't have a phone at the office except an answering machine. That's it. I don't want people calling. It's funny, my book agent saying, "But what's your cell number?" in case, you know, there's an issue that I need to get a hold of you. It's like, well, I don't have a cell phone, and she's blown away that I don't have a cell phone. Anyway, it's because I want to run a no-crisis business. I told her the problem with having a cell phone is that people call you, and I don't want other people calling me on my time because unscheduled phone calls is one of the biggest distractions that you have in your life. And so I choose not to have them in my life, and for emergencies I have Facebook open, so that's my go-to. If you're my friend, my family, you're on my Facebook friend page. I'm on there all the time, and if there's ever an emergency, that's the fastest way to reach me. But again, my friends, my family know not to disturb me during the day because I'm busy working. So you have to set rules, you have to set boundaries, you have to not always be in reactionary mode, and that has saved so much of my time and my energy and allows me to get a lot of stuff done. In terms of what happens if you fall off track one day, what happens to the next day? For me, what I do is I have different days for different things. So, you know, Tuesday is my writing day, Wednesday is my video day, Thursday is my meeting day. Today is my writing day. If, you know, if I don't get my writing done because something happens, you know, some huge emergency, then I don't do writing for that week. I don't let that fall into the rest of my week. And I try as much as possible to, like I said at the start of the show, You run, you walk, and then if needed, you crawl, right? I don't want to lose the entire day, so, you know, I'm a little tired today. I won't get as much writing done as I normally do on a Tuesday, but I'm still going to get some done, right? And I don't let that bleed into the rest of the week. Next question, Carmichael1: Hey Evan, which job or industry is good for students from Europe to obtain as much possible experience in Canada? Listen, I want to answer questions about the book and what I'm talking about in the last episode, but I'll be nice on this one. You know, this is a standard answer. The industry that you want to get into is the one where you are most passionate about, the one where you're going to provide the most value to, the one that makes you come alive and you're excited about. Don't look for a job, don't look for an industry, don't look to start a business in a field that you think you can make a lot of money in or have success with. It's, it's not going to work. The best way is to find something that you are excited about and you love doing, and that's where the opportunities will open themselves up to you. There's a bunch of schools in Canada that you can work with where you come as an intern. I've had a number of students intern at my company from other countries and, and they get work experience in Canada because you can only be here for so long without the right visas. And I've ended up hiring a lot of those people to continue on with my business. So I think it'll work, but again, follow your passion. Dante, surprise you got Vibrams, wearing them for only 5 years and forever. Dante, love my 5 fingers. I used to, I used to have bad backs, I used to have bad knees, and it was debilitating. Like in my 20s, I had terrible knees and a bad back because I sat at the computer all day long. And the two things that changed: one, I use a stand-up desk, which really helped, and two, I wear these Vibrams as much as possible. Not always possible in Toronto, Canada, because we have winter and I can't get my feet into the winter version of these things. Maybe I'll try again this year. But literally saved my knees, saved my back, almost no problems anymore. And Vibrams and stand-up desk, man, big fan. Next, 02337755, that, that's the YouTube name of the day. Hey man, what are your thoughts on negative family friends? More importantly, when they act like you need to prove yourself to them. So I've talked a lot about having a supportive environment. If you want to achieve great things, you have to have a great environment, right? And, and the problem is, just like the schedule, too many people are reactionary in their environment. You are reactionary to the friends and family in your life and the media you consume and your daily routine and your schedule, where now you have to take control. You have to be in charge. You have to be proactive. And if your friends and your family aren't supportive of what you do, then you have to go create new friends, right? You gotta surround yourself with people who wanna build you up, who see greatness in you. You wanna achieve great things, you need to be surrounded by great ideas and great people and people who make that greatness come out, not the people who hold you back, not the little man in your life, okay? In terms of the expectations, this is a really important decision and this is something that a lot of people don't necessarily do, but you have to decide if you are going to live your version of your life or someone else's version of your life. You know, they tell you, no, you can't do it, it's not possible, and that gets you fired up. That's fuel for you to go and do it, right? If somebody tells me that it's not possible, your big dream can't happen, you're never going to be able to do this, that lights a fire on me, right? That gets me excited. That makes me want to go and do it. That, ah, that gives me drive and energy. But if it's, if it's that people have these expectations of you to do something that you don't want to do, right, like you're supposed to join the family business, or you're supposed to go be a doctor or a lawyer or a dentist or an accountant or whatever, and that's not what you want to do and you feel you need to live up to them, you gotta, you gotta release yourself from the chains because you are not living your life. You're living somebody else's version of your life and you're never going to achieve great things, you're never going to be really happy, you're never going to be a massively productive citizen of your community if you're not doing things that make you come alive and you're excited by. So you have to make the mental shift right now to say, I'm living my version of my life and not someone else's version of my life. And when you make that shift, things start to happen. Next up, hey Evan, what are some examples of researching for your book? Just curious to know some sneak peek information of what could, may appear in the book. XNaruto1, thank you for the book question, much appreciated. So in the book, I'm outlining a lot of strategies that I've used and I've seen to help me grow my business, and it's helped the businesses of people around me. What I want to do now with the book is show how you can apply these strategies to grow a business to various stages. So I'm interviewing a guy who used my strategies to get to $50,000 full-time income business, right? Respectable, doesn't have to have a job anymore. Then a company that's taking it to quarter million, then a company's taking it to $1 million, then a company's taking it to $5 million, then a company's taken it to $150 million. So no matter where you are on the spectrum, no matter where you are on the growth path, these strategies can work. Just the application of them are slightly different depending on where you are on your path. And so what I've been doing is interviewing people on my channel with the Hangouts. If you go back to look at some some of the hangouts to see some interviews. But now I got to do more research on them to see if they're justified to be in the book, and I have to understand more about their business and their philosophies because I can only pull out so much in half an hour. So an example, let me pull it out here. This is Mission in a Bottle, Seth Goldman. And Seth Goldman has a company called Honest Tea. They sell natural, very low-sweet teas, and hundreds of millions of dollars in sales. They sold their business to Coca-Cola. Seth Goldman's the founder. I interviewed him on my channel. We can link that up. It's a Google Hangout. You know, I don't know if I'm going to include him in the book or not. Like, I got to do a little more research. It could be he could have one page in the book or he could have a chapter in the book. And so I have to understand more about him. And so he wrote a book, and so I should read the book, right? This is actually a pretty cool book. If you look at it, it's his story, but it's all told in comic book format. Comic book format. So I've never seen a book like that in a hardcover hardcover version. I took off the jacket so it's easier to travel with and I won't get it damaged. I don't have a set time in my schedule to read. I read blogs and I read news and I read my feeds on Feedly, but I don't have a set time to read books. And, you know, being an author, it's good to read books and to do research. And so on my walk here, it takes about 40 minutes. What I usually do is start recording my answers to your questions, and then I start reading the books. And I'll, you know, write notes and I'll fold the pages, and so I have something to go back to. So thank you for the question. That's what I'm doing. And then the last one was Tanjib. I hope I pronounced that right. The schedule is good. You're right to follow the flow. Good luck on the book. Thank you, Tanjib. I appreciate the good luck. And that's it for this week. So I'm here at the Starbucks. I'm almost there. I'm gonna write. I hope I have a fantastic day. I hope you have a fantastic day. Run, walk, crawl, but make sure you're moving forward every single day. Thank you guys for watching. If you have a question that you want me to answer next week, make it related to the book or book writing process or something I talked about today. That'd be much appreciated. Leave it in the comments below. I'll see you guys next week. Continue to believe.