Passion Meaning - I don't know what my passion is - Ask Evan

Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. Welcome to another edition of Ask Evan. In today's episode, I'm going to answer a question from one of my YouTube viewers, Hafiz, who watched one of my videos that I suggested people follow their passion and wrote in saying that, you know, didn't know what their passion was and wanted some advice on how to find it. So, thank you for the question. It's a great one. A lot of people do struggle to find what their passion is and be able to turn that into a business. So, my best advice comes from, you know, my own personal experience, and hopefully that can help you as you try to figure what your passion is. When you're struggling to find out what your passion is, it can be an exciting time because it could be anything, right? The options are infinite. You could do whatever you want as an entrepreneur. When I sold my first software company, I was stuck in the place where I had to figure out what to do next. I didn't have to go out and work because I had money from the sale, but I wanted to do something with my life. I wanted to still give back and provide value and have a lot of fun, but I didn't know really what to do next. Whenever you're starting a business, you want to try to offer as much value as you can, and the money you're going to make from that and the fulfillment that you're going to get from that is going to come from how much value you give people and how helpful you can be. So you want to start a business around something that you feel you can help others with. So turning what you're excited about, what you're passionate about, and turning that into ways to be able to help people. So as your first kind of brainstorming exercise, look at what do you do that you can help people with, and where do you help people and they really appreciate it, you get a lot of excitement and energy and joy from. As I sold that business, what I started to do as I was trying to figure out what to do next I kept a little journal of what I was doing on a day in, day out, and tried to think about the, the moments in my professional career that got me really excited, where I got a lot of high. And from there, you know, you can try to design a business around it. So ideally, as an entrepreneur, you can structure the company however you want to structure the company, and you want to make it around something that gives you a lot of excitement and enjoyment. So I found that creating that journal really helped me for that period of time in my life where I was able to record what I really liked doing and what I didn't really like doing. Me so much. And around what I really enjoyed doing was helping entrepreneurs, connecting with entrepreneurs, meeting people, you know, knowing that I was able to help their businesses. And from there, I was able to build a new business out of that. So hopefully that helps you. The other thing that I found was you don't have to commit to something right away. So after I sold my business, I didn't know what I was going to do next. I, you know, was looking at a couple of opportunities. What I was interested in at the time was raising capital because, you know, we hadn't really done it for our business. Everything was bootstrapped from the beginning, but I was interested in the process of raising capital. So I connected with a venture capital company in my city and started helping them raise capital for entrepreneurs and learning about that process. And that was something that was interesting for me. I didn't know if it was going to be a new career choice or a new business. It was just something that was interesting. So I was just following one of my potential passions, and I was curious to learn more about it. And that led me to eventually starting evancarmichael.com, where I was sharing resources and information, and I was able to leave the venture capital business after a couple years to want to start my own business all over again. Now, that happened because I wasn't committed to starting a new business right away. I didn't know what I wanted to do, and the best thing to do when you're trying to figure that out is try lots of different things and see what sticks. So if you're interested in something, you think you might be able to help people in a certain way, just start trying it and see if you enjoy it, see if you get a lot of pleasure from it, see if you are able to help people out. So you don't have to make this huge big plan at the beginning. A lot of people get stuck in the planning phases and then don't actually end up ever doing anything. And you can get stuck planning for so long, you create this fantastic plan, and then you launch your business and you don't like what you're doing, or it doesn't work out the way you think it was going to work out. And it never works out the way you think it's going to work out. So the best way is just start Start small, fail small, see if you like it. If you like it a little bit, try it a little bit more, see if you like that more, see if you're able to help people. And from there, you'll eventually hit something that you really enjoy doing, that you are able to add a lot of value to people's lives, and you want to pursue more. You want to make it your life's mission, you want to start a business around it and continue to move forward with it. So don't be afraid of starting small and trying something that you're kind of interested in, but you don't have to commit yourself to doing. Go once, try it, see if you like it or not, and kind of build build from there and eventually start hitting on points that you find are really interesting for you and you're able to help a lot of people with. So hopefully that helps. For those watching, I'd love to hear what you have to think. I'd love to hear how you found your passion and how you started your business. If you want to leave a comment under the video or if you have a question as well, you can leave it in the comments. And if you like the video, please give it a thumbs up. It encourages me to want to make more of these videos for you guys. So please give the video a thumbs up and we'll see you on the next episode.