Evan Carmichael shares two lessons from his twenties: a missed connection in Paris taught him that short-term fear beats lifetime regret, so he quit a banking job to build his company instead. He modeled Bill Gates' approach to land his first $13,500 deal, then built a sales system and YouTube channel around learning from high achievers.
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Through all these experiences that you've had in the past couple of years, is there something that sticks out to you that you— that's been a learning moment or a growing moment that's just, you know, whether it's an event or whether it's just this thought that passed your mind that's really stuck out to you as something formative and directing you to where you're going now?
The two super formative ones for me happened when I was 20-ish. One was I was in Paris and I was a tourist and I'm sitting outside the Notre Dame Cathedral and I have my map. I'm trying to figure out where I'm going next by myself and this French girl comes up to me and asks me for directions and I'm thinking, why is a French girl asking me for directions? It doesn't really— I should ask this girl out. Let's see what she's doing tonight, take her to coffee, something like that, right? And I chicken out, right? Like, I chicken out. I'm worried about my French not being good enough or whatever, whatever reason. So she walks away and I'm pissed that I didn't take my shot. Not that it, like, it would have been amazing, but like, not knowing is worse than the rejection. And so I tried to take her picture, like, from across the river as she was walking by, and she actually kind of walked behind the stall, so I didn't get her. But as soon as I got home, I I put that on my wall. I put that picture on my wall as a reminder to like, the next time I'm afraid, I just gotta do it. I just gotta say yes and figure it out because not knowing is worse than getting a no. Like that short-term no is okay compared to a lifetime of not knowing. Absolutely. And so I looked at that every day and I didn't actually tell the story to my friends, people came over, 'cause again, I was embarrassed and ashamed. They just see this beautiful French riverside picture. But like, to me it's like, I missed my shot, man. Eminem, you got one shot, one opportunity, right? You lose everything you ever wanted, right? You're gonna seize it or not. And so that saved me because I said I wanted to be a banker, and my yearbook said I'm gonna be a banker. I had that opportunity when I'm making $300 a month in my company and just sucking, right? Like not making anything. And I get these opportunities to work at Merrill Lynch and McKinsey Consulting. you know, $80,000 to $100,000 starting salary, flying me to New York, putting me up in the Waldorf Astoria, like the whole deal, wine and dine, like what I thought I wanted, the jobs that my friends weren't getting. And I'm like, what do I do? Do I take this crappy company that's not going anywhere, or do I take this dream job that I always wanted? And I remembered the picture and what am I going to regret? And I would regret not trying the company. I could, I could, I I knew that in a year I could get another job. It may not be that job, but it could be a similar job. Absolutely. But I wouldn't know if I would get this company opportunity again. So I had to go for it and be like, I'm okay with it without working, but I need to know, 'cause I don't wanna live the rest of my life not knowing that, you know what, if I give it a little bit more on that thing, right? Then maybe it would've worked out. And so like that failure in Paris with that girl and putting that picture up on the wall to remind myself of my failure That gave me the spark to then bet on myself the next time and just be okay. And so that's what all of my decisions are through, always trying to minimize regret. Huh. Like, what am I not going to regret? And the fear of regret can help you push through the short-term fear, whatever decision that you need to make short-term. Gotcha. And then the other formative lesson was around the same time coming back, figuring out how to make my business grow. And I told my business partner I quit. It was like worst day of my life. I realized that I'm not the first guy to try to sell software before. And by modeling success, like somebody else has already figured this out. I don't have to come up with all the ideas myself. And I looked at how Bill Gates started Microsoft, Zero to One, like not how he makes an extra million now, but Zero to One. How did he do that? That's what I want to do. And I found the story and I researched it and I was making $300 a month. And within 2 months or so, I made my first deal that was $13,500. And that doesn't sound like a lot of bank, but dude, for me, that was sick. Trust me. That was the deal, man. $13.5K, what? That's crazy. Yeah. Like, this could actually work. Yeah. And more important than that, like, I had a model that I could repeat. Yeah. So it's not just a one-time deal. I could sell it again and again and again. And so that idea of, so first one, like, living with no regrets, trying as much as possible. And then two, whenever I'm faced with a problem I don't know what to do, I try to model success. Find someone who's already done it and what can I learn from that? That's why, like, what am I doing on my YouTube channel? It's just modeling success. It's just finding people who've done great things and it's selfish for me. Like, I would do the YouTube channel even if you guys didn't like it for me. Like, it's my growth and my development. I wanna learn from Kobe and, you know, all these guys that we put up on the channel. So I'm fortunate I get to surround myself with that daily. Thank you guys so much for watching. Thank you to the guys from VNR Media for the awesome interview. The full link is in the description below if you wanna check it out. I'd love to know, what did you think? What are your thoughts? Leave them in the comments below. I'm super curious to find out. Finally, I want to give a quick shout out to Kathy Moore. Kathy, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word. It really, really, really means a lot to me, and I hope you're enjoying reading it. So thank you guys again for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love, I'll see you soon.
