The Mindset Behind Great Writing Skills

Welcome everybody to another edition of Ask Evan, episode number 4. We're going to get to your questions on how to help grow your business, so let's jump right in. First up, Gregory Groves, who wrote in to say, "Question: One of your tips is to work for someone, go find a job with someone I respect, even if it's to volunteer, which is good advice, but one concern I have is what if I don't have time to do that? I'm married with a young son." "and I'm already a small business owner. I run a personal training group training business, so I just don't have any time to do this. Any advice?" So modeling success is one of the best, fastest ways to grow your business. And it always surprises me when entrepreneurs say, "You don't have enough time to do this. I don't have time to do that." And it makes sense. You know, you're an entrepreneur, fine. You have your family, you've got your son. I have a family, I have a son. If something's important to you, then you have to make time to do it. How important is learning from someone who's already done it? Is your business growing? Are you having a lot of success in it? Are you just at a certain level and you're plateauing and you're not getting the kind of income you want from it? You got to figure that out for yourself, right? Mentorship is one of the most important things that you could do for your business. So you either make time for it or not. And it's going to be the same thing for anything important in your life, right? If your wife is important to you, Are you going to say, "Oh, I'm too busy with all this other stuff. I don't have time for you." That's going to lead to a divorce pretty quickly, right? So big things is this exercise that— I forget which consultant does it, but you have a bucket and then you have big rocks, little rocks, and then sand. And if you put the sand in first and the little rocks and then the big rock, it doesn't fit. It overflows. And that's how most people live their life and they don't— they don't have space for the big rocks anymore. Where what you want to do is put the big rocks in first, then put in the little rocks, and then put in the sand, and they'll all find their way to make it into that bucket properly. That's what you need to do with your business. That's what you need to do with your life. So is getting mentorship important to you? Is it a big rock? Because if it's a big rock, you try to put it on last, it's not going to happen. You're going to feel stressed out, overwhelmed, just like you do now. If it is, important, if it is part of what you see as an important part of your path, then put it in first. Put your rock, put your wife, put your business, whatever are your big rocks, that's in there, and then you put in more. Okay, and the little things will work themselves out. On top of that, I just like to say that, you know, the mentorship, the learning from somebody doesn't always have to come from working with them one-on-one. I've learned a lot from reading biographies, from watching YouTube videos, from learning from people in my own time, reading books. You know, I consider Donald Trump and Steve Jobs and Richard Branson, AP Giannini to be some of my mentors, and I've never met them, and some of them are dead, and they continue to inspire and motivate me. And so you can also learn from others and imagine what it would like to be with them by consuming the media that they create. On top of going out and working for somebody who's close to you. Okay, next up we're hopping over to Twitter. Question coming in from @torrefsland who writes to say, "Thanks Evan Carmichael for being so down to earth and helping us entrepreneurs. You work 20 hours a week. What is your number one time management tip?" So I have 5 main time management tips, but you're asking for my number one. So I'm going to get just to that one, and that's eliminate. You are doing too much, man. You are doing too much in your business and it's not yielding enough results. You have to be the CEO of your business. You need to focus on what you do best. You should be walking to your office, walking to your bedroom, wherever it is that you have your office, the building, a home office, the basement, the garage, the street, Starbucks, wherever your business is operating from, You want to walk there asking yourself, "What's the most value that I could bring to my business today?" And chances are, whatever the answer to that question is, you're not currently doing it because you have too much other crap in your life. Things that you think are important that aren't. Things that you think are important that aren't yielding enough results. What are you the best in the world at and how can you bring that to your business today and eliminate the rest? My number one tip. Okay, next up, Justin, the Think Link Champion, who wrote in to say, "Hey Evan, I watch a lot of your videos. I really love all your videos. You have a ton of energy. I can tell you put a lot of time in helping people develop themselves. I know self-esteem and self-confidence was something I struggled with in my life, but ever since I started developing myself, my life has changed." Congratulations. "Do you have a blog? I'd subscribe for sure." I don't really do a blog, but I do a newsletter. Christina, let's pop that link up. Newsletters are awesome. I was wondering, would you have any tips for me on my writing skills? I know you're probably a busy person, but if you have 5 minutes, I'd really value your opinion on how I could become a better writer. Thank you. So, like anything else, if you want to be a great writer, if you want to be great at whatever you're doing, the number one rule in my mind is you have to inject passion into it. You know, if you're writing, there's a lot of different styles, a lot of different schools of thought, there's a lot of different ways to do it. You know, I have my writing style, okay? I like short. I like punchy. I like in-your-face. I like things that make you think. That's my style. It works for me. When I'm reading other people's books or content, that's what I like to read. I don't like long narratives. I don't like huge long chunks of paragraphs. I like it short, digestible. Bam! That's what I like, and that's what I like to write. But it's not for everybody, and that's cool. For me to start trying to write in a different style wouldn't work. But what works for me is the passion, and that's going to be for you, it's going to be for any writer, is passion. You've got to be passionate about what you're writing, right? What you write has to be of extreme importance. And one thing I imagine is, you know, I want this to be a legacy for me, okay? And this should be for you. You should be proud of what you're creating. This isn't just another piece of content that you're throwing out there. And for those who aren't writers, it's not just another product you're making, not just another service you're making. This is your legacy. This is what you're going to be known for. And so, you know, I'm in the process of writing my book right now. I don't want it just to be another book. I want it to be one of the best business books of all time. And so going in with that approach changes how you write. When I sit down and write my newsletter that you're going to be a subscriber of now, thank you very much, you know, I imagine before I write that somebody that I look up to— so I might say, okay, today I'm going to imagine that Steve Jobs is going to read my newsletter. Donald Trump is going to read this newsletter. Richard Branson is going to read this newsletter. Anthony Robbins is going to read this newsletter. I imagine that one of these people are going to read my newsletter. So what's my message? You know, it's not just Joe Schmo that I've never heard of. And when you go with that mindset, it increases the importance. It makes it more it makes it more important for you to create something amazing. I want to write things that my grandkids will be proud of. I want to be able to show it to them and say, 'Look what your grandfather wrote.' It's got to be that important. And whatever you do in your business, you have to bring that level of importance. So when you're writing, inject your passion into it. Make it more important. You're not just writing a piece of content. You're not just writing a blog. You're writing something that's going to change somebody's life. It has to be that important. Otherwise, it's not going to take off. And imagine one of your mentors, whoever it is, if you love self-development, maybe it's Tony Robbins. Imagine Tony Robbins is going to read your next post. How does that change what you're going to write? Make it more important. All right, next up is Devin Heiner who wrote in to say, "Hello Evan, thank you for sharing how you had a humble beginning in the mindset webinar invite email 2 days ago. I would love to hear how someone like you who is well-known and established can possibly manage the overflow of information 'Coming into your email. Cheers, Devin.' Ooh, email. Email's a fun question. It's not just email, it's social media. Keeping on top of everything is tough, is challenging, and so here's how I do it. So for email, I get a lot of email. My email's on my website. If you go to my About page, you can find my email. I'm a pretty accessible guy. I have two email inboxes. I have one that is my priority email. My family goes there, you know, my wife is there, my parents are there, my, my big customers are there, my important media contacts are there, my movement students are there. Christina, pop a link to the movement program up here. That I check at least once a day. I used to set up— so I used to chunk my time where I have 90-minute chunks. I still do this. 90-minute chunks, break, 90-minute chunk, break, 90-minute chunk, break. I used to have one chunk every day just for email. And then I decided I'm going to try to eliminate that chunk on email and just do email when I have time. And I discovered this. I thought about this when I was at— I was grocery shopping. There's a video, maybe Christine could pop it up here. There's a video of me in the grocery store doing one of my least favorite things, grocery shopping, and I'm doing like a selfie on my video camera and talking about my new email strategy. And it's worked. And so what I do is every morning I'll check my priority email inbox. Every morning after I check my YouTube comments from you guys, I check my priority email and see what has to be done. And it's usually not overwhelming. It's usually 5 to 10 minutes of just checking that email inbox. The rest takes a while. And, you know, when I send out a newsletter, it's going out to almost 100,000 people. A lot of people write back to me, and I love it, and it's awesome, and it's great, but I don't have a set time. So I'm answering my email on my phone when I have time, and it could be when I'm in the line, when I'm at the dentist, when I'm waiting for my license plate to be renewed. You know, there's a lot of stuff that you do in your daily life that is boring, that you're just waiting there. And so instead of doing, you know, playing Candy Crush or whatever it is, I open up my email and I start responding to people. I don't have a data plan, so when I come home, it connects to Wi-Fi and it sends them all out. And I usually find that within a week, I can catch up and send it to people. Or if I'm on the airplane traveling somewhere, I'll load up my phone, quickly answer all the emails that are outstanding. and I usually get back to most people. I try to. I'm not always the greatest, but I usually try to get back. I could see it getting to the point where it's just too overwhelming, too crazy. If I can't catch up within a 2-week period and I'm not getting back to people, I'll need to give that to my assistant. But I hate— I hate having others talk for me. You know, I don't— everything on social, everything in my email, that's me. I may only send you a smiley face back, but that's me doing it. I don't want other people talking for me. And so that's how I handle it. I put the most important people to my business and my life in one folder, everybody else in the others. Those important people get daily, everybody else gets when I have time. Alright, last up is Natesh who writes in to say, "Dear Evan, how are you doing?" Well, I am fine, thank you. Good to know. "Thank you so much once again. It's always great to receive your videos and sharing. It is really driven to learning. I'm learning a lot." Awesome. The reason I'm here today is seeking advice from you. I'm looking forward to start an image consulting business. I'm working on building my website, the one that suits me best in my business. Could you give me advice on how to write my vision, mission statement, and who we are? Looking forward to hearing from you soon. Thank you. Warm regards, Nitesh. So Nitesh, this is a great question. Most people's mission, vision, Purpose. You read that on a website. You see that— you look at a company's mission statement. It's boring. It doesn't have passion. It doesn't inspire anything. Look at any big company. Look at their mission. A mission is supposed to be something that wants you to go drive forward on an important mission, right? Most people's missions are super boring. They're corporate talk. Most people's values, they have a list of 20 core values. I bet if you ask the CEO of any of these big companies, to list their 20 values, they couldn't name it. A lot of it is BS. And what you have to do is make it important. And it starts by making it important to you. How I believe is the way to go is you start around your one word, right? Mine is believe. You find the one word that means something to you and figure out why are you starting this? Like, why do you wanna be an image consultant? Why is this important to you? Tell me a story. What is the positive change that you want to make in the world? That's what I want to hear. How do you want to make the world a better place? And it doesn't matter so much about the words that you use. It's more the tone and the passion coming through. If I feel you, if I feel like what you're doing is important to you, then it's going to be a little bit more important to me. Your vision. Well, What do you want the world to look like? How is starting an image consulting business going to change the world for the better? Make me feel that. Tell me why you're doing this, right? And you should read this. You should read your mission, your vision, your values, whatever it is, your one word. You should read that and get excited and get inspired. If you read it and say, "Yeah, that's what I do. Yeah, that's a factual statement of what I do, then you're screwed. Nobody's going to be inspired by it. If you can't get inspired by it, then how can you expect others to be inspired by it? So write something that makes you come alive. Put that into words, and it may not come out perfectly the first time. That's okay. You practice. You get better at it. But it's got to make you feel a spark to when you see that, you're like, "Yes! That's what I want to do!" because other people who believe in the same thing you do will be ignited by that and will want to learn from you and will want to come to your website and will want to work with you and will want to spread the word for you. So make it important. Make it feel something to you. And maybe share it when you've done it. See if I feel anything. Be excited to see. Anyway, that wraps up another edition of the Ask Evan Show, Episode 4. Thank you guys so much for watching. You have a question for me, you want me to answer it, leave it in the comments below and I'll do my best best, make it a good one. And you like this video, you want to see more? Subscribe to the channel. Thank you guys so much for watching. I really appreciate it, and I'll see you soon. Don't forget to sign up for my free newsletter. It's energy in your inbox every single week. Hi, I'm Jason J. Ros Fonseca of RiseOnline.com, and I want to say Evan Carmichael's newsletter is consistent fun, inspiring, and it's the only newsletter I prioritize and look forward to. Period.