Evan Carmichael explains why passion matters more than money when starting a business. He shares a three-list exercise to find your idea: what you love doing daily, what you wish you had time for, and problems you've solved. The intersection of passion and helping others is where profit lives.
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You have to start a business around something that you are passionate about or you're going to fail. It's important to make money, and I want you to make a lot of money, and that comes from starting a business that helps people and is around something that you love to do. If you're only chasing the dollars, they're not going to come. I'm Evan Carmichael, your friend in all things entrepreneurship, and today I want to answer a question from one of our Facebook fans, Vixen, who wrote in to say, "I don't know what to do." So Vixen wants to start a business. Thank you for writing in. I feel your pain. It's a common question I get asked, and it's, it's a great question to ask because too many entrepreneurs jump into a business because they're trying to make a lot of money and they end up broke and they end up tired and frustrated and wasting all their energy going down the wrong path on something that they thought would help get them rich quick. You gotta start a business around something that you love to do. Here's how I started mine, this business of helping entrepreneurs. I just sold my company and I got asked to do some speaking. The YMCA asked me to come and talk to their entrepreneurs, say, can you help our young group of entrepreneurs entrepreneurs develop and share your lessons. Hey, this is great. Why not? I'll do it. And I spent weeks preparing for it and promoting it, and they were promoting it. And the day came. I was so excited, my heart was pumping. Remember walking into the doors and going up to the elevator and going into the room, this big room full of chairs, and my heart sank for a second, and I took a big swallow. Because after all that preparation, all that promotion for this free event, only 3 people showed up to this event. 3 people. And it was so sad, so disappointing, so looking forward to doing this. And I continued on because there were still 3 people and the show must go on. And it was awesome. It was so much fun And I touched those 3 people that day. I helped them. I knew they would go home different people than when they came. You could see the looks on their faces as we talked, that now they had renewed energy and hope and ideas of ways to grow their business. And I knew that I had to continue doing this even if I couldn't find a way to make it scale. I had to keep doing this. This is what I was born to do. And you've got to find that for yourself. Even if I wasn't getting paid to do it, even if I couldn't find a way to make money, even if I had to go find a job to support myself so I can keep doing this on the side, I had to find a way to keep doing it. And that's when you know you're on the right path. There's a famous entrepreneur, George Lucas, started the Star Wars franchise, is worth over $4 billion today. And if you read his story and how he got started, he says that his first 6 years in business were a failure. He didn't know what he was doing. He thought about giving up. He thought about quitting. He thought about going back and getting a real job to support himself and just survive. His friends and family thought he was nuts, but he kept going. He kept going because he felt he had to, because he loved what he was doing. He had a passion for filmmaking that You can only understand if you have that same passion. If he didn't love what he was doing so much, he would have quit because it's too hard. But he kept at it, and he's worth over $4 billion today. So you've got to start a business around something that you are intensely passionate about. Now, how do you find it? My favorite way is I started to make a list, and I made 3 different lists. The first list looks at things that you're really excited about doing. What do you like to do in your day-to-day life? You know, what do you like to do that helps people? So it's not things like sitting on my couch and watch TV, because that's just a stress outlet. You couldn't do that all day long and be happy with your life. What do you do in your life that makes you happy? That's your first list. Then you think about things that you want to do, things you wish you could do, things you wish you could spend more time on. And you write down those ideas. And then the third list is things that have frustrated you in the past that you solved. You found the solution for something that was really bugging you, because if it was bugging you, it's probably going to bug somebody else, and you could probably help them with it. Make those three lists and see what jumps off that page. See what potential business opportunities there are on there, the amount of money you're going to make is going to be directly related to: 1, how much you love what you're doing, and 2, how much you're helping people. So you want to look at that list and think about how much you love all those ideas and how much you can use those ideas to help other people. That's the beginning of your opportunity to find your dream business. I have a worksheet that explains all that and then the next steps in a lot more detail that you can check out on the website. But the first part really is finding a business that you are extremely passionate about and you love doing. That's step number 1. All the business advice in the world is not gonna help you unless you've got that part figured out. So good luck. You're asking the right question, Vixen. You're on the right path. And for anybody in the same situation, it's really worth spending the time to figure that out before you just jump into any opportunity because you're probably gonna go broke end up frustrated and angry if you end up into the wrong business. So good luck, keep us posted. I want to hear about your progress. For those of you watching, if you liked the video, please give it a thumbs up below. Makes me want to do more for you, and I'd love to hear what you have to think if you want to leave a comment under the video. I love seeing those and I always read them. So thank you, and I'll see you on the next episode.
