The John and Jani Show - Episode 2 with Evan Carmichael

Hey everybody, welcome back to the John and Janie Show. This is episode number 2.

Woo-hoo!

Somebody's dancing. I'm your host, John Corry, founder of Likwik.com and author of a new book, Quanology, coming out soon. And with me is Janie Moon.

Hello, I'm calling from New York City, a media coach there making you a star in your life and in the media. So happy to be here again, John.

Thanks for being with us, Jenny.

Yes.

And this show is all about cool people doing cool things. We want to show our audience how people achieve the things they want to achieve in their lives. And today we've got Evan Carmichael with us from www.EvanCarmichael.com, spelled just like you think. And he's going to show us how to build up your YouTube following. Evan has built up a nice YouTube following, and hopefully he's going to take us through the steps to to get that. And so we're gonna show you a clip of Evan right now with one of his YouTube videos. Roll the clip, Jenny.

Rolling the clip. I'm the technical person, bear with me. Here we go. This is one of my favorite clips of Evan. I love it. I think it speaks for itself.

How to get through hard times. A buddy of mine is going through a hard time in his life right now, and I sent him a message today to encourage him and to support him. And I realized that what I wrote in that message, I've never really shared with people before, and I haven't shared it with you. And I thought that the message might help you if you're going through a hard time in your life right now. And it's sharing my story from what happened to me last year. Last year was a really hard year for me, both from a business perspective and a personal perspective. On the business side, I was growing less and less happy with what I was doing. Most of my money came from advertising. I had a popular website, had over 20 million people visit my site, and so you can sell advertising against that and make money from it. The problem for me there was I was creating content that would just generate a lot of views. So I could sell a lot of advertising and it wasn't necessarily stuff that I was proud of or would really help entrepreneurs which was my passion. And so I felt increasingly disconnected from my business and as a result last year totally changed my model, took off all the ads on my site and took my biggest revenue source and brought it to zero which was really stressful. Basically, it was starting over, starting over with a new business model to help entrepreneurs. On a personal level, my life was falling apart in a lot of different areas. I went through a divorce, which was the most stressful thing that I've ever had to go through in my life, and I hope that you never have to go through that. I spent $1.6 million building my dream house and then had to sell it. I basically cost, so I didn't make a profit on it. I gained 15 pounds and for the first time in my life had to watch what I was eating and pay attention to that where I never had to worry before. I started losing my hair for the first time in my life too from all the stress and craziness. And people in my family passed away and that created more stress. And it was a tough year. And it's funny how in life sometimes when something is going wrong Everything seems to go wrong at once. And just when you think something is, you know, you're just getting better, something hits you in the stomach even harder. That's kind of how the pattern goes. And the advice that I gave to my friend was what helped me get through it, because it was a really challenging, tough year. But what helped me get through was feeling like I was doing something important. It was making these videos, helping you guys, answering your questions, feeling like I was giving back and helping people through the only way that I knew how. Which is through entrepreneurship. And by helping you guys and by seeing the responses on the videos and by knowing that I've helped your business get better, I've helped you become a better entrepreneur, and you're out taking that knowledge and helping more people, that's making me feel like I was doing something important.

Okay, so you get the gist, huh?

I get the gist. I'm pretty moved by that, to be quite honest.

I know, right? How awesome is he? That's a great example.

That's pretty impressive, yeah. Well, let's bring Evan on. Is he done with his— is he ready for us?

Evan Carmichael, come on down!

There he is.

Whoo!

Evan, I do have to say that was a pretty courageous video. Do you want to tell us about that? Oh, you're on mute, buddy. Hold on a sec. Am I— do I have him on mute?

Evan, can you hear me? Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, that was a pretty raw one. A buddy of mine was going through something basically pretty similar. He was in a divorce and his business was totally falling apart and I just wrote him an email to let him know that, hey, I went through the same thing and here's how I overcame it. And he was so overwhelmed with that that I thought, hey, I got to share this and help other people who might be going through the same thing.

And so did all this start when you, as you said— do people hear me? Yep. Did all this start when you said you took down all that advertising off your site and you started to make the videos? Is that where this real change came in your whole YouTube sort of thing? Or this was the beginning of your YouTube thing is when you stopped with the ads on your site. And started making the videos?

No, that wasn't the start. I was growing more and more disillusioned with my website, and as a result, I was trying to— I started doing videos as my passion outlet, and so I spent my time there where my team was spending time on the website. And I started doing the videos because I got a lot of questions that people were asking me, and I would always respond by email, and I spent a lot of time writing the people back on email. I don't get anything from it other than personal satisfaction. But I figured that, you know, if these people had this question, other people would have the same. And if I made a video, then I could help them as well as help a lot of other people who had that same question. So that was the start of the video channel, and I've been working with this awesome connection coach named Jenny Moon. Who's helped me make the videos a lot better, and she encouraged me to take risks and be vulnerable, and that was part of what, you know, that quote came out in that video that we just saw.

Only a woman would give such advice.

That video is one of my favorite videos because it exemplifies why so many people love Evan Carmichael. They believe in him because he speaks with such truth, vulnerability, and heart.

And that is in contrast to a lot of this stuff that you see on websites and stuff where people are sort of producing content that they know is just going to kind of prickle people and just bring in good SEO or whatever and bring in a lot of visitors but doesn't really offer a whole lot of stuff. I guess that is a big contrast right there.

Yeah, and even if you look at SEO, it's moving towards brands. It's less about the keywords and more about the brands, and so how do you build up— I don't know who your audience is, but if they're entrepreneurs, how do you build up a personal brand, or how can you build up a corporate brand that connects with people. If you can make that connection with people, you're going to get more links and you're going to get the SEO. So now SEO isn't about keywords, it's about building up yourself as a brand, and this is a great strategy to help you.

And how does that work? Can you explain that a little bit? Because what if people go to Google and then they— because normally it would be you go to Google and you search for stuff like entrepreneurship, and they would come up with a site— sorry, one of the results would be your site then, for instance.

Typically, Google used to be very keyword focused, and the common advice was create content with these keywords or buy the— it's called an exact match domain. You want the domain with your keywords in it. So you want entrepreneur-website.com so you can rank for entrepreneur website. Google's moving far away from that now where they realize so many people were just scamming the results. Google's really— what they want is they want quality information. You want searchers to be happy, right? If I type in whatever search, I want to be satisfied with the result. And Google has, over the past number of years, really updated their algorithm to focus on working and showing companies that are— they consider bigger brands, even if they don't have as much keyword optimization.

Right. More of a total presence.

Everyone is dying to know, like everyone, because everyone, America, the world wants to know because you just said it, right? We all have to build our personal brand. John, the John and Janie Show, we're building our personal brand on this show. You're helping entrepreneurs build their personal brand. How do they do it through YouTube? How do they— what are your tips?

This is a great tip already you just said. I think it's a great idea is the fact that a lot of people get a lot of email, a lot of people, the people that follow buildings that get a lot of emails, and I feel like that is in a sense a waste of time— not a waste of time in a sense, but you're not maximizing that content because you're putting good content into an email. So I've even considered the idea, when you respond to emails, post them all on your website. And you're basically doing that in a sort of sense, but through YouTube videos.

Yeah, and I think people— I'm a visual learner. I think most people are visual learners, and if you can see a picture and you can see that person talking to you, it helps them understand your message better than just reading it, and it ties them to you. I get so many people write to me and they say, you know, Evan, thank you so much, I feel like I know you, and they bring up something that I might have said in my videos, and the first time it happened, it's kind of creepy, like people, they're calling me their friend, and they're bringing up stuff from my past, and and like, I have no idea who you are. But I got more and more used to it. But if you're just getting started on YouTube, how I started was just answering questions. So you may not even have an audience yet, and you're just trying to get started. So you don't have people asking you questions yet, but you can think about your interactions with your customers and prospects and people in your network, and the common problems that they have and use that as a question. Say, "Here's something that happened," and start sharing. And the first step is really just providing helpful advice. I think where my videos started getting a lot better was injecting— and this is, you know, big credit to Jenny for helping with this— is injecting your story and, you know, your passion into the video. So if somebody asks me How do I do SEO for my company? I would get on and say, okay, here's how you do SEO, and I'm comfortable talking about the topic, and here are the 5 things you need to do, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that's great, that's great content, but it doesn't tie people to me yet. And what really adds to it is me sharing my story too about SEO and the pains that I went through and showing a little bit of vulnerability. Basically getting people to feel something, right? I want people to see every video that I create and feel something, because that ties them to my brand and makes them want to watch another video and another video and another video.

And I guess you said the right word there, a little keyword in all of this is a process. So you said it's kind of weird, it was kind of creepy at first that people start to— I'll tell you what was creepy for me because I also worked with Jani. The first thing that's weird is to just film yourself. In the first place, just film yourself. That is the weirdest thing in the world. Is it not? But apparently you're used to this now.

Yeah.

That's a great question. Evan, answer that because John, I remember in the beginning, it had issues around filming and a lot of people do. A lot of people, that's one of the main reasons why they don't even start a YouTube channel. How do you overcome those obstacles of filming and seeing yourself on camera?

It's scary. It's so scary and your first videos suck. Like, it's just knowing that your video is going to suck and it's a process and it'll get better. My first video, I didn't want to spend money on a camera, so I used my DSLR, but it didn't focus properly. So it didn't autofocus, so I had to have somebody focus it for me. So I had my sister, I had some of my staff come into the room, focus it, and then leave, because I couldn't have them in the room while I was doing the video, because I was too— not even like me, I'm thinking of anybody else in the room, right? It's too scary. The first videos that I did, it took me like the whole day, the whole day to do one video, and the video sucked. You know, it was decent content, whatever, but it wasn't anything that I'm massively proud of. I still put it up, and I got some good feedback on it. I look at that video, and you can see it on my channel if you go back to the beginning, and I'm embarrassed by it. I look at that like, oh man, I want to take that down. So bad. But people still like it, and it's fun to see kind of the progress that you've made. Now I'm at the point where I've got, I don't know, I've got 1,200 videos recorded.

1,200 videos?

Yeah, man.

So you've gotten used to it? Is that what you're telling us?

I'll sit down on a Wednesday and I'll film between 10 to 20 videos on one Wednesday afternoon. Well, before that used to take me an entire day.

About what?

About what?

I mean, because look, so you got 5 steps for SEO or whatever, but 1,200 videos, that's a lot of—

Yeah.

What are we talking about then?

It's a lot of work.

Creative. So you've gotten really creative in your videos now too. You're showing all sides of who you are.

Yeah. Most of the videos— so this is for those of you looking at a video strategy, there's a great one that YouTube suggests called hero and hygiene, where hero is your big videos. That's the one that you're hoping goes viral, your big, you know, thought-provoking, you spend a lot of time working on. And I have one video that has almost half a million views that we spent a lot of time on. And the hygiene is your daily stuff, right? Like you brush your teeth every day, you wash your face every day. So the hygiene is daily, regular content that you put up on your site, where the hero is maybe once a year or every 6 months.

So let me get that down. Brush your teeth.

Yes.

Every day. I got that now.

Your video will go viral, John, just brushing your teeth. Changing diapers. Yeah, John just had a baby, so you can show that. You can do a whole video series on being a dad for the third time now.

Excellent.

The hygiene content, most of it is answering people's questions. So, hey, I got a great question from John from Arizona, and here's his question, and then I answer it. That's most of it. But on top of that, I'll also add some fun videos. I have a series I call the Raw Series where if I'm upset about something, kind of in the moment, I'll pull out my phone and just record something. And the quality sucks on it, but it's a passionate message coming out. I may film something fun. I just did some— organic sprouting for the first time, so I'm filming myself going through that process. I'm learning, so you're learning with me as the audience.

I think the message, Evan, that you're pointing out is that you get people to fall in love with you because you are showing so many different sides of who you are. You're not just showing this one-dimensional Evan, you're showing all these dimensions of you, and so then you build a following.

And those videos are more for the hardcore audience. So I did that video, like Evan Goes to Florida, and I took my family to Orlando. We went on all the rides and we're singing the songs and all that stuff. And there's some funny moments in there, but like, why would you watch that Evan's vacation video? Like, who cares?

I was about to ask that. How many people are watching this stuff?

Uh, so those videos don't get as many views as the how-to practical knowledge stuff, but the people who watch it are the hardcore audience. and then they want to go out and watch more, because I've brought them in so they feel really connected to me, and then they want to go watch everything else. And so most of the views that I get on my videos are related videos. So they watch one, and then they watch another one, and another one, and another one. So they keep watching more and more of my videos, and they subscribe, and then new ones come out, they keep watching those. So it's good to have a mix of the personal ones in there as well. And it's up to you how much you want to share. I don't get usually too deep and personal into some of the stuff, but 80%, 85% is straight up business stuff with my stories, and then that extra 15, 20 is going to be the fun side of me. And it brings people in. It makes them feel like they know this guy, and when they're looking for business advice, they're going to come to me instead of somebody else.

What do your friends think of all this? This is what I'm thinking. What do your friends think of that?

A lot of them want to know how to do it.

Really? That's funny.

Yeah, they want help. And I've helped a few people through the process. Some of them have been on the videos. Like when I went to Orlando, I went with a friend of mine, and he's on some of the videos. And I don't know, they're used to it by now, I guess, too. I edit ours too, I think.

It was fun. So Evan, for all the Evan fans out there, for all the entrepreneurs, for all the people who are wanting to build their brand on their YouTube channel, what are some specific nuts and bolts tips that someone starting out can do? Because I know like you're very consistent, you have a whole little, you know, bag of tricks of things that you do that have gotten you success. What are those tips?

So let me start with a quick story. So I'm at— so 2MarketMedia is the client where Jenny's been working with me on helping my videos. And when I first talked to them, the owner, he tells me, Evan, I don't think you're going to be a good fit for our channel because you've got great content, but you kind of suck on camera. And like, what are you— What? I thought I was good on camera, man. I've already done like 500 videos. How could I suck on camera? And he said, you know, most of the people we get, they're already media coached. They're already on CNN. They're already on CNBC. They're already these experts. And so he took a flyer on me, and we started working together. And that's when I met Janine. And we started working together, and from that point, I started doing 2 videos every day. 2 videos go up on my channel every single day of the week. And through crazy repetition and building that muscle and getting advice and feedback, I've made the videos better to the point where now they're— my channel's being referenced as a best practice. Where these other people have a hard time posting once a week, here I am now, the best case scenario for people to model. Are you kidding me? I was like the worst person 3 months ago, and I almost wasn't even accepted in, and now it's the best one. So it's just through a lot of work that we got there. But to Janie's question of specific steps of what you can do, the first one is figure out what your story is. And you don't have to be a super outgoing person. Like, I'm actually a really shy person. You may not get that. Talking to me right now, but I'm not the guy who goes up and meets people at events and introduces myself and hands out my business card and talks to the guy on the airplane. That's not me. But you got to get— just because you're shy, it doesn't mean you're not passionate about what you're doing. So it's figuring out how to tell your story in a passionate way. So like, you work on your first video, that's your very first video, practical hands-on steps. Make your first video that tells your story, why you do what you do, what made you start this thing that you're doing, why it means something to you. And don't worry if it's not edited properly, and, you know, don't worry about any of that stuff. It can be off your phone, right? Don't let these excuses get in the way of you getting started. That's your first one, and then regular, consistent videos. And think about problems that people are facing, questions that you get asked from your customers or from your friends or prospects. or if you're hanging out in chats and you see people talking about something, or if there's something in the news that you have an opinion on, create a quick video that talks about that. And just get in the habit, put it in your schedule once a week or whatever it is, set aside time, this is my video production day, and know that your first ones are going to suck, and that's okay, and you're going to be nervous, and that's okay, and you're going to get better. They're going to get better each time, and once you start seeing feedback come in, somebody says, "Wow, great video," it makes you feel so good. Like, the best part of my day is waking up, I grab my lentils for breakfast, and spinach and lentils, start mixing them together, and I start looking at my comments on YouTube, and it's always all these great, wonderful things, and that just gets me all geared up for the day ahead. I gave a lot of tips, I kind of rambled, but—

No, it's good.

You want a tip, so tell your story, right? Tell your story, schedule it in once a week, set aside time, know that they're going to suck and that's okay, and don't be too worried about them being super professionally done.

And what has it gotten you? Because you've gotten some accolades, not only the awesome comments, but your YouTube channel has gotten you some gigs.

Yeah, I recently came back from Malaysia where I was asked to do a speech on social media.

In Malaysia?

Yeah, they awarded me social media speaker of the year or something, I don't know, I don't even know how they found out about me. And I asked them.

They found out on YouTube?

Yeah, that's what they said, right? I asked them, and I don't know any Malaysians, I have no Malaysia connections. and they flew me over there and paid my fee and hotel and airfare and all that stuff, and they said they just found me through my YouTube videos and said, "We got to get this guy here." How did that work?

So these people just write to you and say, "We want you to come speak?" Yeah. And you had no idea who they were?

Right, but they feel like they know me from watching all my videos.

Wow, and how did you find out they were legit? Maybe I'm going too deep into this.

No, it's cool. Curiosity leads to good questions. Before I book anything in my calendar—

They're going over there, they're going to kill you or something, you know, they're going to kidnap you or something.

And it did look kind of sketchy, and I was worried, you know, some opportunity, but before I book anything in, I need to get a deposit, and for my speaking gigs, it's at least 50% upfront, so they wired the money into my bank account, and that was the first step, so I was like, okay, these guys are for real, they paid for my ticket.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it has spurred, I mean, all of this has happened because of his YouTube channel and his following. He got this amazing workshop and now they're just coming, right? It's all, it's like a snowball effect, all because of his passionate videos.

Yeah, yeah, I'm doing another one next month in Orlando at a national conference for a company and again they just found me through my YouTube channel. One of the guys who's going to be attending there recommended it to the CEO of the company and had a call with him and he saw my videos too and deals are just happening. People are just finding it from the audience that I've built. Wow.

That's amazing. Evan, thank you so much for joining us. How can people get in touch with you?

EvanCarmichael.com, that's the website. You can find me on YouTube, the channel is Modeling the Masters, and you'll find me, you'll find me.

You can't miss him, 1,200 videos, you can't miss those.

Evan, thank you so much, really, you're an inspiration, your passion, your vulnerability, your creativity, and what you're doing on YouTube is absolutely amazing, top notch.

Thanks for being here, buddy.

Thanks, guys.

Evan Carmichael, everybody. Hang on with us, we're going to have a little talk. Bye-bye, Evan.

Bye, Evan.

So, hey, we're back. We weren't there the whole time, but that's okay. I mean, he's the star of the show.

I love that guy. He is doing—

I can see why.

You saw in that video, he has so much heart and passion for what he is trying to do in helping entrepreneurs. And I think like that's the most important thing. You just have to have— you've got to People have to know that you care.

That's a great tip that he gives though, I think, about being shy and everything because I think some people just feel like you're totally not made for this. I'm shy.

When's your video series coming out, John?

See, it's making me think about that stuff. Shit, I can't do that. But the point what he says is that, okay, you're shy or whatever, but you got to find that passion inside and say, okay, well, that's coming out in this form, you know, despite that. And this is something I struggle with a lot, is that whole idea that it's gonna suck and you gotta get used to it. So that was a big thing too.

So what's your first video going to be? You have a book coming out, Chronology.

I know, so I do have a book coming out.

Come on! This is all good if we apply it.

When I'm in the shower, I should just take videos in the shower because when I'm in the shower I'm a genius, I'm a speaking wizard. That's when you're like totally relaxed and everything comes. I don't know, see, I don't know. I'll have a million excuses why not to do it, but it probably is right. You probably should just do this sort of thing, right?

You have to just do it. You have to just do it because if you don't, then you're going to come up with excuse after excuse.

Missed opportunities, yeah. But I've really enjoyed this. Get used to it, figure out your story, all these great tips. I just disappeared.

You're frozen, John. You're frozen in TV land. You're frozen. So John, we can't end until you commit to one video. Which one is it going to be?

I'm going to introduce a book. How does that sound?

Awesome. I just did a video before we did our show, so I have that one. Alright, so you're going to do a video on your book?

I'm going to do a video on the book.

Alright, Evan Carmichael, thank you because this was inspired by you.

Yeah, thanks Evan for coming on the show. We're going to post the transcript of this on the website, on one of our websites. We'll post it on YouTube and on Google+. Everybody, thanks for coming in. Jan, you want to roll the—

Thank you.

Thanks for visiting us. We'll see you soon.