The SECRET to Overcoming Limiting Beliefs | Insights with Evan Carmichael

Okay everybody, welcome to another Blab/Hangout. It's great to be here. I'd love to introduce a new friend of mine, Frederick, who runs a blog— sorry, runs a podcast called the Giant Mindset Podcast. And he reached out to me and he said, "Hey, I want to interview you for my podcast." And I said, "Let's do it, but let's do it video too so I can promote your show a little bit and showcase it to my audience." And so he's going to ask me some questions. But before we get into that, Frederick, you want to just give a quick intro about the podcast, what it's about, where people can find you, and then, and then dive in on your usual intro and questions?

Yeah. So the podcast is called The Giant Mindset. It's a podcast that really delves into the mindset of winners, whether it's elite athletes, entrepreneurs, corporate executives, any kind of person that is a peak performer, that's really good at what they do, I try to get them on the show. Even when I talk, if it's a monocast where I'm just talking by myself, I might review a book. I might review something that's, you know, in the news or in the media and just talk about what kind of mindset it takes to be successful, whether it's in that situation or just in general. So that's kind of what the podcast is predicated around. It's about if you want to become a winner, what mindset should you have? And that's divided into several different categories. So, that could be a morning routine. I know you've shot a video about that. It could be how you overcome failure. It could be something like the mindset you had when you were successful, like what steps did you take to become successful. For a certain event, and then how can you replicate that? So those are the kinds of things that we get into, um, in the podcast. And, um, the podcast hasn't launched— excuse me— the podcast hasn't launched. It's launching March 31st. That's the planned date. So you'll see March 2016 as the actual date wherever you go. But I'm collecting interviews. I've interviewed a couple of Olympic athletes. Yesterday I interviewed a Olympic gold medalist. And, you know, we went through the same, same kind of questions that I'm going to ask you. So it's, it's, it's exciting times, guys.

All right, well, let's, let's dive in. Your intro and then let's do it.

All right, so now I'm going to record on my side and we'll get started, guys. This might be new for you, but this is how I do it.

Cool.

All right, everyone. I'm going to redo that because I hadn't pressed record. All right everyone, welcome to the Giant Mindset. This is Frederic Munawa and today I'm so excited to bring you Evan Carmichael. Evan, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me, man. Great to be here.

Great, great. Now for those guys who've never heard about Evan Carmichael, Evan helps entrepreneurs. That's, that's his first major thing. That's first major goal, or his first— I would say, um, the first thing that I read about on your website, on your bio, I really liked that one-word value proposition where you say, I help entrepreneurs. And then you went on to talk about how you want to help 1 billion entrepreneurs. And he was named one of the top 100 great leadership speakers for your next conference by Inc. magazine. He's considered one of the top 40 social marketing talents by Forbes magazine. He's been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal. And I like your story, Evan, because at 19, you built and sold a biotech software company. And we'll talk about how you did that maybe as we delve into the podcast a little bit more. At 22, he worked as a venture capitalist helping to raise millions. He now runs evancarmichael.com. You guys should go out there and visit that site. I watch his YouTube videos every day with my wife and my daughter. And Evan, you like salsa and DJing. We need to talk about that as well. So, that's my short bio. Of who you are. Now let's get into the long version of who's Evan Carmichael.

All right, what do you want to know, man?

Well, I watched a video on your YouTube channel about morning routines. We just chatted about that, and you had people like Tony Robbins, really elite peak performers like Tony Robbins, Brian Tracy. You even had Barack Obama talking about his morning routine. So we know, and you know, that a peak performer usually starts the morning right. What do you do to start the morning? Let's, let's look at the first 2 hours of your day when you wake up. What do you do in the first 2 hours after waking up?

Sure. For me, actually, it even starts the night before, kind of planning as much as you can, getting things ready the night before so that you're not super stressed out in the morning. I think a lot of people wake up and they're not living on purpose. They're just reacting to things and they don't have a routine that sets them up for success. And so for me, what I do is every morning I wake up pretty much at different times. I don't wake up to an alarm clock. I wake up when my body wants me to wake up. If I wake up with my wife, I'll usually— she works a normal job. I'll make her a drink. We have like this vitamin drink she makes us both drink. And if I wake up and she's already gone, I'll just send her a quick message saying, good morning, I love you, something like that. Just to start your day with some kind of gratitude. Doesn't have to take long, just some kind of gratitude, some kind of appreciation of the people around you. So I find that super helpful. I think then the next thing that I really focus on is I want to put some music on. I think music changes your state. And so I have a list called the Believe Playlist. Believe is my one word. It's what I'm all about. And just songs that kind of shake you up and make you move. Because I think too many people, they just mail it in. Like the morning routine is just boring. And you might get inspired one day, right? Like maybe I'm listening to the Giant Mindset Podcast and like I'm on fire. And then the next day I wake up and it's gone, right? So like, how do you keep that going every day? And so I have songs that I'll listen to that just get me moving. Anything that gets you up and moving helps. I'll think about my big why, what's the big thing that I wanna accomplish? What's my big goal? What's the big mission? So to help a billion entrepreneurs. And then I'll focus in on the little whys. And those are the little things that every day kind of keep me going. So right now it's my YouTube comments. I'm fortunate that I get hundreds of YouTube comments every day and I go there and start responding to people. And when somebody tells you, "Hey, the stuff that you're making is changing my life. You know, I watch with my daughter, I watch with my wife and it's really helpful for me." That makes me wanna do more, right? 'Cause it's easy to get isolated. A lot of entrepreneurs, you might just be, you might be in your bedroom, just this is how you're starting your business and you may, think, man, am I actually having an impact? So that really helps. Before, I mean, I'm fortunate now to have so much feedback. Before I did that, I would just collect the emails of people who had messaged me to say, hey Evan, you really changed my life. And I would just look at that every day. So I wasn't getting stuff every day, but I collected some of the best stuff and put it next to me to let me know that people are kind of counting on me. I've had an impact. The work that I'm doing is meaningful and valuable. I think it's especially hard when you're starting something up to feel like you're not doing meaningful enough work. You're not— the stuff you're doing, people don't really care about yet. So it's hard to stay motivated. So I find that that's like a great start. I'll have, you know, from the food that I eat to the beverages that I drink, like putting nutrition in me at the start to give me my energy. And that'll be along with a quick workout. How I start pretty much every day when I'm in the city. If I'm off traveling or doing something else, my schedule kind of changes, but when I'm in the city, I always try to do those things to get me set up. And if I ever— I never book morning stuff. Like, it has to be insanely urgent. You know, Oprah's got to be calling for me to book the morning stuff, because if I fall off my morning routine, then then I'm less likely to follow through on everything else that I was supposed to do when I feel like something is missing. And so you should take pride and ownership of that morning routine to do something. If you wanna do great things, you need to be surrounded by greatness. You need a great environment around you. You need to do the things that make you come alive. And so I don't book anything for any of my days until 12 o'clock on. The morning is my time. I get my stuff done. And, and, and it works. And I think you— for anybody listening, I hope you're kind of inspired and sparked to look at your morning routine and not just do stuff by accident or because somebody else is pressuring you to do it, but design it with intent, with purpose, to help you be the best version of yourself.

Evan, thank you so much for that, for that introduction and that, you know, that introduction to your morning routine. And one thing that I took away that I hadn't considered is not booking anything that interrupts your morning routine. Because sometimes I do that. I have, you know, I have a commitment that I have to attend to that I actually booked because I really wanted it. And it interrupts my morning routine. Of course, you can get up earlier, but then also that interrupts your normal cycles. And that's a really good takeaway for me. I'm not sure, you know, for everybody else that's listening. I think that's really good advice that put that morning routine first, fill yourself up first so that you can fill others up. So, that's actually had a guest talking about that, that you should keep that routine fixed at the same time and really guard it so that you can fill others. So, I really like that, Evan. Thank you so much. Now, this is the part that everybody likes. On the show, the part about success.

Okay.

How they can get to success by following maybe some of the steps that you took. So, what's your greatest success and what was your mindset getting— if it's an event, what was your mindset as you got into that event? Maybe it was a speech, maybe it was just a day that you totally owned, maybe it was a period in your life, but What was your mindset going into that event or achievement?

Yeah, I mean, when you say success, my default territory is to start thinking non-business stuff, like family stuff, you know, my son and his accomplishments and spending time with him and my wife and getting married and all that stuff. But I, you know, I feel like you're asking kind of within a business context. I feel like every major business success I've had is super topical to this show because it's been from breaking a limiting mindset. Because my mindset was keeping me in a box, and so I just stayed in that box. And until I realized that, hey, I'm holding myself back, then I was able to break free. So one example, uh, in my software company that we talked a little bit about, I was 19 years old. I'm selling to guys who are in their 60s or 70s, have multiple PhDs, and I'm just a university student. And I always felt like, well, I'm just a university student, you know, how am I gonna sell to these guys? Why are they gonna listen to me? And I never wanted to see anybody in person. I never wanted to talk on the phone. It was always by email 'cause I felt like I could hide my age. Like nobody would know how old I was. And it wasn't till later on that I discovered that they don't care how old I am. All they care is that I can add value. If I can help them with their experiments, it was scientific software, then that's all they needed to know. And I was kind of frustrated like, well, why didn't I figure that out sooner, right? Like I spent all this time beating myself down, putting myself in this box saying that I can't be successful because I'm too young, because I'm not a scientist, because XYZ, and really it was just in my head. And so that was one of the first things that helped propel that business forward is realizing that I can add value to these guys and my age is not the variable. It's the value is the variable. Another big moment for me came when I was doing a big speech in Brunei. I have this need to add value and I feel like, and it's a good thing, but it can also hold me back in that I always want somebody to feel like I've helped them. I hate wasting people's time. I hate the feeling like you would come and pay money to hear me speak or spend time with me on the phone and you didn't walk away with insane value. It's like I have this need to provide insane value. So I always end up massively overdelivering. But the negative on that is I secretly wish that people will cancel on things because I fear that I won't be able to provide the value that they're looking for. From little things like this interview 5 years ago would have been me saying, oh, you know, I accepted it and they're like, oh, you know, I hope Frederick kind of cancels on me. I hope he gets sick, you know, snowstorm.

Not a chance.

Right, like that would have been me. And even though I know that every other time I've done it, it's been great, it's done, it's been awesome, I'm gonna add value, I still would lock myself up in that way. And so, I was supposed to speak at Brunei, it was a national thing there, it was on their TV stations and tons of people showed up and I was secretly hoping that they would call me like the week before and say, Evan, listen, it's not going to work out or we canceled it. And so that took a long time for me to break that mindset of can I provide enough value? Can I help people out?

Uh, when I first started working, how long did it take you to overcome that?

Um, years, man, years. I think, I don't know, 5 years, maybe more, probably more. You know, I think it was probably up until maybe 3 years ago, 2 years ago, that I fully broke free. And I'm, I'm— how old am I? I'm 35 now. I'm 36 in May. So like 30 years, man. I mean, I just lived with this. And the biggest challenge was I wasn't aware of it. Like when you are aware of your limiting beliefs, then you can break free of them. But most of us, you're not, it's just so subconscious in how you act that until somebody shines a light or you shine a light on yourself, then you don't make changes. I started working with brands and Microsoft was my first, one of my first clients. And I thought, well, why does Microsoft wanna work with me? Like they're Microsoft, I'm one guy. How can I provide value to Microsoft? And I would like, I would push them away and they like insisted on having a meeting. And after meeting with them and understanding their strategy and what they're trying to do, I realized, oh man, these guys need tons of help. Like I can definitely help these guys out. But that fear at the beginning held me back from a lot of other opportunities that I probably don't even remember, just because it was a mindset that was limiting. And now one of the things that really helped, I think, break break me through was a lot of the content that I post on the YouTube channel that you like and other people like is surrounding myself with people who've done amazing, amazing things. So, you know, I have Steve Jobs on the channel and Bill Gates on the channel and Walt Disney on the channel and all these, you know, entrepreneurs and educators and innovators. And a lot of them may even be dead and I don't have a chance to ever meet them, but by listening to how they speak and by watching their stuff every single day, It builds up, uh, my confidence. They become my new circle of friends, and I want to do more. That's great because I wake up every day, and it's easy to be in your comfort zone, and these are the guys who help stretch it. I was— I'm— one of my clients is Sage, and they do accounting software, and I, I coach and work with the CEO. He's got 15,000 employees. It's a huge company, and And I'll send him really hard emails like, what you're doing isn't visionary enough and here are the steps you need to take and like your team here is not good enough and just like really hitting it hard and he appreciates it. And my dad saw one of them and said, well, how do you have, like, where did you get the guts to talk to this CEO like that, right? And it's because I feel like I hang around with people who are much greater. Like, I'm hanging around with, with Oprah and Kanye and Martha Stewart and just revolutionaries. And so I don't feel like it's some big step to— I think if people looked at it from the outside and they see me trying to help this huge CEO, uh, it looks like a big step. But in my mind, I don't see it as a big step. And so the step doesn't exist. And so because I can provide him value, he doesn't see the big step either. right? And so it's always been a mind game. Like, every big breakthrough has been because not of a strategy that I've used or marketing tactic or any of that stuff. It's always been when I break something in here, then I can smash to the next level.

You know, that's powerful because I really believe that that is, like I said, that is the premise behind this podcast. Success starts in the mind. You know, you break yourself free, like you said, you're talking to the CEO and everybody else looks at it and they ask themselves, where do you get the courage to talk to him and to be so frank? But in your mind, because you've broken free, right, it's just, you know, it's just a necessary step. So I really like that. That's really great advice, guys. Anybody that's listening, if you have any limiting beliefs, you have to break through those first to get to the next level. So, really appreciate that piece of advice. Sometimes these are things that we hear from other people, but when you keep hearing it and when you hear it from somebody like, like an Evan who went through it, who at some point had to break free himself, then it becomes real. And you know that it can be done. You know that nobody just starts out successful. We all have to cultivate that mindset to get to where we want to be.

Yeah, and thanks for sharing that. To give you a little more context on there, you know, I grew up in a middle-class family, but my parents weren't entrepreneurs. You know, my parents, they all did the safe thing. My dad got a government job for years and got his pension and retired and all that. And they gave me like the values, they gave me the how to treat people, how to be a human being, you know, how to, how to treat my wife and talk to her and my son and all that. But for business, they They had no idea. So when I started that business, uh, you know, I'm a teenager, I had no connections, and I thought, oh, I'm gonna go talk to the bank because bankers are supposed to support entrepreneurs, right? That's what they're here for. Little did I know, as I walked into the bank and it's like, well, do you need a loan? Like, no, I need help. It's like, I started with nothing, right? Like, it's not that That's another limiting belief. Like, I don't have the connections to do this. I don't have the money to do this. I don't have the whatever, right? I live in the wrong country. You know, whatever the reason is people tell themselves. And as long as you believe that story, then you're going to live that story. And it's the hardest part that I find is first the awareness that you have a limiting belief. You know, somebody left in the comments, you don't have the answers, Sway. I love it. It's true. I love, I love that Kanye. You don't have the answers, Sway. I love it. But the awareness is the biggest piece at the start, 'cause you do so many things subconsciously that you have no idea that holds you back. And maybe it's by watching a video or maybe by listening to this podcast, or maybe it's by a friend shining a light on you. Like who's pushing you, who's challenging you to do something different? Then when you can recognize that, Then it's finding it in your daily life when this is happening. So this is like practical steps to break free of limiting beliefs, right? You recognize it in the moment. That's the hardest part because you often don't recognize it in the moment. You recognize it after you go home and you regret, like, oh, I did it again. Again, I messed up. Again, I shot myself in the foot. Again, I was too afraid to go and do that. But you don't notice it in the moment. And that's okay. That's your step. But you want to try to catch it in the moment. And then when you can, then it's having the courage to do the thing that is scary, the painful thing, the thing that you don't, that you don't want to do, the thing that you're resisting. Do that in the moment. It's feel the fear and do it anyway. It's not conditioning yourself to not be afraid because you're going to be afraid. Understand that fear is normal. I'm afraid of this for a reason, but I'm still going to do it anyway because I want this better life and I want to be a better human being.

I like that because I've never actually— because I've gone through that where, you know, I'm afraid and I don't perform at my best even though I know I can. But because of fear, you know, I kind of hold back and then I go back and, you know, maybe revisit what I did and say, I should have done this, I should have done that next time. So that's very interesting that you mentioned that. Ability to catch that fear in the moment and overcome it in the moment is, is key. Because yeah, that's, that's powerful stuff. I've never actually thought about that.

Yeah, a lot of people don't recognize it. A lot of people, uh, most people I think do the opposite, is that they try something like, I'm going to launch a business, or I'm going to start a podcast, or I'm going to start working out, or whatever it is that you want to do. You try it and it doesn't work. And, and it almost never works at the start. Think of the last time you just tried something and it worked, right? If I tried to be a snowboarder, I'm gonna get on the hill, I'm gonna fall 40 times as I try to get down the hill, right?

Just—

that happened to me. That happened to me. I spent the whole day doing like just falling, falling, falling, right? But anything you like— you ride a bike, you're gonna fall. You wanna, you wanna learn a language, you're gonna suck. You can't just— for most people, you don't just wake up and be awesome at something. And so if you're trying to reach your goal of being an entrepreneur or starting a podcast, whatever it is, your first product is likely going to suck. A lot of people don't realize that. They expect perfection. They have good taste. They know what's good, but they just can't produce at that level. And so they quit and they give up. And then a lot of people, that's the end for them. Like, oh, I'm never going to be a great entrepreneur. I'm never going to be a great musician. Well, really you just didn't put in the heart and the hustle and the time that it takes to get really good. And then some people flip it to that when they realize they can never reach their dreams, another limiting mindset that they've created for themselves, not only is that, you know, their existence, they now bring other people down. You know, because I can't be a successful entrepreneur, then there's no way you're gonna be a successful entrepreneur. And anytime their friends say, oh, I wanna launch a business, all that person is going to do is poke holes and say, ah, it's not going to work because of this and this and this. And who are you to be a successful entrepreneur? And I call that person a little man because we all have the little man in our lives who drags us down, who's too afraid to take a shot at their dream. Uh, and they, you know, you listen to them too often. And sometimes there's a little man inside your head too holding you back. Um, but I find that that's just, it's all about the mindset. And if you have the— if you can create the right mindset and with intention— that's why I love my— like, the videos that, that you love, I love, right? Like, I made them for me. It's selfish. I want to be bigger. I want Walt Disney to challenge me to do something more impressive, right? I want Steve Jobs to mentor me to do something more amazing, because I don't have that level of, of people in my life mentoring me right now. And so I would Instead of saying, I don't know a big successful person to mentor me, I don't have an Uncle Bob who's done amazing things, I'm going to go out and create it. I'm going to hang out with these guys virtually, and that pushes me to want to do more.

So, you know, everybody loves hearing about success. A lot of people believe that the successful people they see have never failed. So somebody might come and look at your videos and look at your website, maybe they never got a chance to read your bio and see some of the stuff that you went through, and they might just say, look, you know, Evan Carmichael is, you know, he's just gifted, man. He can just go out there and do stuff. He's courageous. He's a natural entrepreneur. But they don't realize that you actually had to go through failure to get to success. So what's your biggest failure and how did you overcome that?

Biggest failure probably for me was my first company, we were struggling to get by, uh, you know, I'm making $300 a month, I'm eating beans for lunch every day, uh, I turned down big jobs, like my dream jobs, $80,000 to $100,000 starting salary to do this business. And all my friends thought I was being super successful, and I was really just too embarrassed to tell them, you know, like, I can't come out to beer with you because I don't have— I can't afford $20, man. I just told them I was too busy, but it was really— I, I was too embarrassed and ashamed to tell them the truth, that like I am below poverty line here, uh. And so that, that just got to a point where I felt like I wasn't at any value. I felt like we weren't getting momentum, and I told my business partner that I quit. I told him, I'm like, I need to add value. I need to feel like I'm worth something, 'cause I felt insanely worthless. Like anything else that I applied myself to, as I practiced, I would get better. Here I felt like I was putting insane work in and we just weren't getting any results. And so I told them that I quit. Like, I'm done, I quit, I can't do this, I'm gonna do something else. And then I just, I cried my eyes out and, you know, stuff coming out of my nose, just like, worst night of my life. And I got back up the next day and I went, and basically what I thought was, I don't want to live in regret. Uh, I don't want to live with regret. I want— I don't want to look back 5 years and feel like I made the wrong decision. And so I showed back up on his— we worked out of his apartment, I worked out of his kitchen table. And the next day, and he could have given me a hard time and said, I thought you quit, man, or, you know, you're a traitor, or whatever. And He just opened the door and we were back to work, you know, and like, I'm super appreciative of him for that, for not giving me more of a hard time. So I think that was— it was a failure in that, you know, I was super struggling and the fact that I said that I quit just killed me because I hate quitting on things. And It was a big change in my life in that every other major decision that I've ever made, I look at through the lens of regret. You know, like when I'm 80 and I'm, you know, in the hospital looking back on my life, am I going to regret not taking that interview with Frederick to do the podcast because I was too afraid or because, you know, I wanted to nap or whatever, right? And so that helps me push through any fear that, okay, this is a short-term fear, I can get through this because I don't want to live the rest of my life in regret.

And that's a great point that you brought up. So for everybody that's listening, if you have a fear, if there's something that you're trying to do and you're afraid of the opposite side, which is, you know, losing or just failing, if you're afraid of failure, but it's really something that you want to do or you have ambitions for, just think about the pain of regret. Because the pain of failure, like they say, is always less than the pain of regret. So think about it like Evan said. When you're 80 years old and you look back at your life, maybe you didn't want to stick or stay in a job, a 9-to-5 job all your life, and then you did that. And then you look back and you say to yourself, well, what's— what did I do with my life? You know, I just worked from 9 to 5 for 40 years. I got a pension. Now I'm sitting here and it's too late. I can't grab the dreams that I had and make them a reality anymore. So think about that kind of pain because that's pretty much irreversible. You can't go back in time and change that. But right now, if you fail, you can always change your approach and there's still an option to succeed. So, I like that mindset. I like that piece of advice that you brought in there, that you thought about what you would be at 80 years old if you didn't go after your dream and if you didn't pick yourself up again after quitting. You picked yourself up and you said, you know what, the pain of failure is less than the pain of regret. I'm going to keep pushing. So, anybody that's listening, take Evan's advice and just think about the pain of regret versus the pain of failure.

To address your point earlier about like Evan's naturally gifted as an entrepreneur or whatever, you know, you look at my YouTube channel, you'll just see a bunch of failure. Look at, look at my first— I've done 3,000 videos. 3,000 videos. Uh, it took me 700 videos before I wasn't embarrassed to watch my stuff. Embarrassed. Like, I couldn't watch it. I couldn't watch my video. I would release it and not watch it because, like, I couldn't stand— there was always something I needed to fix. After 700, I could, I could watch it. And then it took me until, I want to say, 1,300 videos before I inspired myself. Like, I watched one of my videos, like, man, I'm getting good. That was— I, I'm— it was a huge brain twist for me that day. But how many people are willing to put in the effort to do 700 videos. Like, go back on the channel and watch how bad I was on camera trying to memorize what my line was. And it's shocking because I see people who maybe they're on their 4th video, you know, and it's already better than my 100th video, and, and they quit and they give up because it, it's too hard. Or, you know, you're— they're comparing their start to my middle. Or somebody else's middle, right? Like, oh, I can't be, I don't know who you're, maybe you look up to somebody in the podcasting world, right? And maybe you look at this guy is the number one podcaster and you look at your first episode like, oh, you know, maybe it's not as good as that guy, but it's your first show, man. It's like, you're already way better than I was. If I was doing your thing right now and this is show like number 5 or whatever for you, you're way ahead. You're way better than I was at that point, right? right? And it's okay. Just like, people get so discouraged because they see these other people and they think, I need to be like that guy or that, that girl, uh, where just keep— if it's something that you love doing, just keep grinding, keep hustling, you'll get better. I sucked, and use my channel as an example. If you go back and find my first 100, 200, 300 videos, they're really bad. Like, the content is good, just the delivery and the confidence and the mindset was bad.

Now I've got, I've got a, I've got a question for you about that. Were people actually commenting, and were people— excuse me— were people getting value from those first really bad 700 videos or whatever? Were they commenting and getting value from them?

Uh, you know, in the early days, if I got one comment a week, that would lift me forever, man. Like, that one comment That one, like, happy face or, or good. Yeah, that, that was amazing that somebody was paying attention, right? That, you know, I— when I first started the videos, it was never because I wanted to be a YouTube sensation or anything. It was people were asking me questions about their business, and, and I would sit there and write responses that would take me 30 to 45 minutes. And like, I don't have the time to do this anymore, so I thought I'll make it as a video. And just share it, and hopefully other people who have the same question can learn from it too. But those videos have, you know, if I hit 100 views, that would be an amazing video for me. If I got one comment, I'd be over the moon. So the metrics have changed, you know. If I get 100 views on a video now, I'm pissed. If I get one comment, But so, I mean, to answer your question, there still was value. There was value. I just didn't believe that there was a lot of value. I didn't embody value. I could have been way more confident in the message that I was spreading. And so some people picked up on it. The content was still good. I wasn't— I only talked about things, and still now I only talk about things that I know about that are true to me. You want to ask me about salsa dancing? We can go deep on that. You want to ask me about cooking or planting flowers or a bunch of anything else, and I have zero knowledge. So the content was always good, just the delivery sucked, the execution sucked, the time to actually get to a point sucked. And I thought about taking the videos down multiple times, but I felt, one, the content was still good and it helps people, and two, it helps just like this, show the journey. 'Cause you may think Evan is great on YouTube, but you can go back and watch hundreds of crappy videos where I just put the hustle in and work to get better.

And that's a point that I wanted to bring to light is that you made some crappy videos, but they still help people. So sometimes if you really have a worthy cause, a worthy dream, and you're not at the level that you're supposed to be at in terms of, you know, presentation and, maybe delivery, it's still valuable content. It'll still help. Even if it's one person that's commenting, that's watched, you've helped somebody. You've got to start somewhere. So, you know, like for me, this is, you know, this is early. This is my fourth or fifth interview. And I remember my first, um, my first interview, you know, it was okay, but I, I went back and listened to it and I was like, wow, that Ah, you know, but then luckily I'm, I'm so— I surround myself with such positive stuff and positive people. I knew that, look, this is my first podcast, and if it's, if it's worth doing, it's worth doing badly at first until you can do it right. Because if it was that easy where, you know, you can just do it perfect the first time, then it's probably not worth anything if it's that easy, right? It's like walking or and even walking. But, you know, if it's that easy that, you know, it's— you can just do it perfectly the first time, then it's probably not worth it. So if it's hard, I just reconditioned and rewired myself and said, you know, if I suck, that means there's a lot of other people that would suck at this too. So it means it'll take effort for me to get better, to provide more value, and then, you know, I get compensated for that, for that effort. And like just like you get compensated now. Like, you've got millions of people watching you now and sending you requests, you know, and people calling you out of the blue to say, hey, come in and do a podcast, you know.

Let's do it.

And, and I think, and I think that's, that's the moral of the story there. It's just that you can do it badly and you can suck, but just keep working at it and you know, aspire to greatness.

So if I can add one more kind of bit of advice for your listeners, the, the comments and the feedback loop are so important to, to anybody who's starting, uh, any kind of new thing. Anybody who's starting on their dream, they have moments of doubting themselves. It happens to everybody. And having One person who says, "I believe in you," or "Great job," makes a huge impact on people's lives. And so if I'm watching somebody's YouTube channel, as an example, if it's a smaller channel and there's very few comments or no comments in the video, I'll make a point to leave a comment and say, "Hey, thanks for the great video, #believe," or whatever. Because I remember being that guy and not getting any views and pouring my love into something And when I got one comment, that was it. And so, like, be that for other people. Be the person that encourages others to keep going on their dream and you'll get more coming back to you. And YouTube and podcasts is easy, right? So, I mean, people who are listening to this podcast, you like this show, leave a comment for Frederick, man. He's gonna see that, he's gonna eat that up and wanna keep making more podcasts for you.

I second that quite strongly.

Show praise and appreciation. And so it's super easy in an online world. It's super easy for a YouTube creator or a podcaster or someone on Twitter or somebody, you know, posting their art on Instagram. It becomes a little more challenging in the offline world, but it's just as important. You know, if a friend of yours is trying to do something that they're trying to chase their dream and think about a lot of people around them are just saying, you're crazy, don't do that. Why are you doing that? You're never going to make it. Like, be the one person who stands up. And even if you don't know how to help them, right? Somebody's starting a flower business, you know, me, you may not have any, like, zero practical advice to give them about running a flower business, but just saying, I'm really excited to see where you can take this, or I can't wait to see the launch, I'm going to show up for your launch day, just like, just something like that, that's juice for people. And I think a reason why a lot of people gravitate to the channel, my channel, is that for a lot of people, I'm the only one who believes in them. You know, they have nobody in their life who builds them up and supports them and makes them want to do bigger things and challenge them to be better. And that's kind of sad. And I think for, for everybody listening, you could think of at least 5 people right now who you could reach out to and just give them a little bit of, of not even like, not even encouragement, not even motivation, just, just saying I'm rooting for you, you know. I think it helps, and I think too many people, uh, don't do that. And we all have the opportunity every day to be that little spark for somebody else.

Now, you talked about in your morning routine, you talked about you exercising, workout. How do you— what do you do? What's your favorite workout, and what do you do when you exercise in the morning?

The morning one is usually a run. I'll usually run on the spot, and I'll watch videos. I find again, I want to do something that gets my blood pumping, so the music gets me moving a little bit, and I only put on songs that make me want to do some kind of dance. And then I'll pop on some videos. Uh, it could be salsa, it could be Eminem, it could be like— it's, it's— the list is public, so anybody can go and watch my Believe. It's just hashtag Believe is the playlist.

It's just everybody try that playlist. Yeah, I should try that.

It's not the magic bullet. I have songs from Pete Seeger on there. There's revolutionary songs, but a lot of the songs may not make sense for most people, and that's cool. Each song means something to me. I think the most important thing is there's songs that get you up. If this song came on, you would get out of your chair and stand up and move. Now, I don't sit down anymore. I'm just stand-up desk. The concept is still there. You would want to get up. There's just some songs that make you move. And so I have that and then I run on the spot while watching videos that inspire me, thought leaders, experts, visionaries, people who are doing something great. And sometimes I get practical knowledge, sometimes like, oh, I'm going to try that and apply that to my business. Most of the time it's just being around great people kind of rubs off on you. A little bit of aura rubs off on you to make you want to do something better. So, um, that, that combination of getting up and being active and then filling the mind with information and wisdom and motivation helps me. And I do that on purpose every single day when I wake up.

You know what, I actually used to think that the whole standing up thing was just, uh, a bunch of baloney. So I went in there because I write about health and fitness and not just peak performance, but health and fitness. And I actually did the research and the research does show that sitting down. So if you sit down at work for 8 hours by, I don't know how many measures they used, but by a certain number of measures, all of those measures, measures show that it increases mortality. That means if you sit down for 8 hours consistently, you actually reduce your lifespan. And it's scientific. The studies have been done, and I've actually blogged about it, and I'll leave a link on my show notes page for this episode with that blog. So when you hear about Evan using a stand-up desk— I'm sitting down, guys. I'm sorry, I don't have a stand-up desk, but I've been thinking about making, you know, like actually thinking about making a business about making a business out of stand-up desks, but I have to stay focused on one thing at a time. But it is— the science is there. It is science-based. Stand-up desks are good for you. In fact, I think it's stand up every 20 minutes, something like that. The guy who actually did some of the studies, but I'll post a link on my blog where you can read about how sitting down can actually reduce your lifespan across multiple different indicators. But I like what you're doing, and I'm going to get a stand-up desk at some point. What kind, what kind do you use? Do you recommend any particular ones, or just standing up?

I built one from IKEA, man. Like, I started off on a bookcase. This was— I've been standing up for 6 or 7 years, maybe more.

Nice. You're ahead of your time.

Well, when I was in my 20s, I had bad back issues. Like, I'm in my 20s and I had to go to the chiropractor every week. It was insane. And most of it's because I'm— I was in a tech company, right? Software. And then I'm, I'm like hunched over like this all the time and just killed my back. And so I read somewhere— now it's way more of a craze than it was before— I read somewhere about a stand-up desk. And so I just tried it. I took a bookcase and I took my laptop to the bookcase and then I was working like this, like just to test it. And you can't just go all in. This is where you're gonna fail because if you're not used to standing up, you can't stand for 8 hours. You're gonna get tired after an hour and you're gonna like, you can't see me, you're gonna put like a foot on your other leg and you're gonna lean against stuff. And so, you know, prepare yourself, do 1 hour and then 2 hours and over a series of a month, you'll get ready to be able to stand up for the full 8 hours. And then I just, I loved it. I get more energy standing up when I'm sitting, just naturally. If you're on a phone call, whenever I did a phone call, I'd always get out of my chair and walk. I pace. I can't just sit. I'd lose so much energy just sitting down on the phone.

I do that too.

Yeah, you get energy standing up. So just naturally you have more energy. At least for me, I found I had more energy standing up. So, so why not stand up more? There's a bunch of scientific studies too that have all come out. I did it mainly because I haven't had to go back to chiropractor. My— maybe I'm only— I'm still only 35, so I may still have issues at some point. There's probably something genetic in there, but it solved that issue at the time, which was awesome. And it gives you more energy. So yeah, I'm a fan. But right now, honestly, I just took a normal desk that I used to work at and I went to IKEA and I got these boxes like these cubbyhole boxes things and just stack them. That's it. You just got to find the right height for your arms so that you're not— but there's so much, there's so much better stuff now. Like, you can, you can get the adjustable ones up and down. There's, there's way more options than when I first started. So, but it's never the gear, you know. People buy the gear. I'm going to start running, but I need to get the running shoes before I can start running. There's never— there's always a way. Start with a bookcase. Just start. You don't have to wait next week until that order from Amazon comes in. Do something right now. Start, right? Go to IKEA and buy something and start and test it, right? People always blame the gear. I'm not going to get on YouTube until I get a video camera. You have a phone. Start recording. Start, right? I'm not going to start a podcast till I get the microphone and get the software and get the whatever. Just start. There's always something that's going to hold you back. Just start.

I love that mentality. You've, you've actually inspired me. I should probably get fix something up and start standing up because I've been thinking about it. And I've been saying, oh, those desks are so expensive. Where am I going to put it? And it just kind of fell by the wayside. So guys, all the giants listening, remember that. Just take action. Take immediate action and then correct course as you go. So, you know, thanks for the work— well, not workout. Yeah, you said you run in the morning. So workout advice, stand-up desk advice. And entrepreneurial advice, just, just get started. So I like that. Now, you know, early in the conversation you talked about Steve Jobs and, and all these guys that you surround yourself with. So I know that you value the, the, the value of a mentor, or you value the value of a mentor. And I'm big on mentorship. So do you have a mentor? Do you have somebody in your life that kind of guided you, whether it's one person or multiple, multiple people? And what, what do you recommend to our listeners in regards to mentorship?

So as I kind of talked a little bit before, my, my mentors— my parents have been my biggest mentors, but more from a just human being level, not, not a business success level. So a lot of it plays off how I treat people, you know, how I respond to questions. All this stuff is there's a piece of them in all of that. From a business point of view, I've never had, you know, maybe one guy in the software business a little bit, but it's been a struggle basically my entire business career. And what has helped me is the discovery of aspirational mentors. These are people who I've never met, I may never meet, you know, maybe they're dead. But I've learned a lot from them. My first one, my favorite entrepreneur is E.P. Giannini, who most people have never even heard of. He's the founder of Bank of America. Oh, you think like a banker, a banker is your favorite entrepreneur? Dude, bankers are like the enemy almost of entrepreneurs. Uh, but he was a guy who, he was the banker for the entrepreneur. He cared about the little guy. There was this huge earthquake in San Francisco and it wiped out a whole bunch of businesses in the city. He went to where his bank was and put two, you know, put a plank of wood across two barrels and sat there and started lending out money to entrepreneurs to rebuild their lives based off a handshake and a look in their eye. That was his criteria. Can you imagine going to a bank and asking for a loan based off of a handshake and a look in your eye? Like, You're gonna get laughed out of the bank. He supported a young entrepreneur named Walt Disney when nobody would take a gamble on making full feature-length cartoons. And so this is the history of AP Giannini, and Bank of America does a terrible job of telling the story. But I, I love that. I love that piece. And so I've learned a lot from him, and I try to apply those strategies and that mentality to what I do in my business. I think the next step up for me was taking different pieces of different things. So there's no one person I want to be like. I want to be the best version of Evan Carmichael. That's what I want to be. I don't want to be Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or Oprah Winfrey or, you know, any of these successful people that I profiled. I can take pieces of them, but I want to be the best version of myself. And what drives me nuts is if I put up a video of somebody that they may not agree with— so you mentioned Barack Obama— I put up a Barack Obama video and instantly gets a lot of hate because it's Barack Obama, because he's a politician. And it blows my mind that people can't get past their political prejudices to learn something from him, even if you don't agree with him. I'm not saying you need to be Barack Obama, but the advice that he gives is helpful. If you could take one of the lessons that he's provided you to make you a better version of yourself, you've learned something. And so I think People are just kind of too locked in on their prejudices and mentality and they stay within that box and they can't grow. Kanye, we talked about earlier on the chat, there's a lot, Kanye does some stupid stuff, but there's a lot you can learn from Kanye. The dude is a genius and people don't give him enough credit for the good stuff that he's done. And you can learn from the good stuff that he's done and not take the stupid stuff that he's done. The fact that somebody only looks at Kanye and says that he's this idiot who just does stupid things, you're missing the whole point. It's like the youngest guy to win that many Grammy Awards and being awesome as a producer and being awesome as a shoe designer and everything that he's done, they just throw away because he says stupid stuff. So don't take the stupid stuff from him and take the genius stuff from him. And so my mentality is you can learn from anybody, like anybody who's achieved that kind of success, Just like your podcast, like, what am I going to learn from an Olympic athlete? I want to build a business. There's a ton you could learn from an Olympic athlete that will help you grow your business, right? And people who can't make that connection, I feel, are really limited. You got me excited.

You know, that's great advice because do you know the quote that really encapsulates what you just said is a quote by Bruce Lee that says, use what's useful. And I'm not quoting it correctly, so please forgive me, guys, but it says something like, take what is useful, discard what is useless. Yeah, because what Bruce Lee used to do was take different forms of martial arts, and then that's how he came up with, um, Jeon Ki Do. And I'm not sure if I'm saying that correctly either, but that's, that's what he did. And today we know Bruce Lee as the greatest martial arts individual, the greatest martial artist of all time. But he did exactly what you're talking about. He said, I am me, I'm Bruce Lee, and I like what these guys are doing in this area and what they're doing in that area. I don't think, you know, that this part is useful, but I think that part is useful. So take everything that is useful, everything that works. If something works, take it, apply it to yourself, make it your own and, and use that. And, and I think when you function as yourself, when you're true to yourself, when you discover your true north, I think you work more efficiently and more effectively, and it's easier for you because you're really aligned to who you are and your true north. Doesn't mean you, you, you, you can't change. It doesn't mean that you can't improve, but it means that you You borrow, you borrow things that work, but things that are aligned to your values and your principles. So I like what you, what you said, and I think I'm in kind of the same position. I have a lot of people that are virtual mentors or sometimes mentors in person, but different people, not one single person. But it doesn't mean that if you don't have one single mentor you can't succeed. Because sometimes I think I've heard entrepreneurs saying you have to have a mentor that's doing exactly what you're doing, and, you know, and then you'll succeed. It's not the only way. It's great, but it's not the only way. So I like your approach to that.

You work with what you got, you know. I don't, I don't have that one mentor who's done what I want to do. And honestly, like, the people I'm working with, I feel, haven't done as great things as I want to do, or I feel like I'm capable of. And I get that, like, people might call that cockiness or attitude or swag or whatever. It's just, you believe it because that's all I hang out with. I hang out with those guys, so that rubs off on me, and I want to do those great things. And you look at someone like Steve Jobs, and people might say, oh, but he was such an ass, he was so mean to people, and, you know, I don't want to be mean like that. So don't be mean like that.

Cool.

Take the good stuff from Steve Jobs, the visionary, take that and then be a nice person too, right? The goal is not to be Steve Jobs, it's to be the best version of yourself.

I like that. Be the best version of yourself. Now, my guiding principle that I've come up with is think big and dream big. What is your guiding principle, Evan?

Believe.

Philosophy.

It's on the wall. Believe.

That's, you know, so that covers two things because I was going to ask you also what's the one word that defines your mindset. I knew the answer to that and I was like, I'm gonna ask him, but for people that were listening that might not, uh, know what, what that is, I don't know who, but And I was like, that's going to be a fun question. So that's your philosophy and that's also your mindset in your one word. So you just killed two birds with one stone.

Everything I do, I look through the eyes, through the lens of belief. So when I'm faced with a tough decision, it's looking at, is this belief? Do I have a belief team? Is this video belief or not? And I think it's something everybody— I believe everybody has one word that defines who they are. It's who you've always been. You know, my favorite movie is Seabiscuit. I don't know if you even heard of it or seen it, but it's about this racehorse that, you know, everybody was down on and the jockey, everybody was down on an owner. And it's a super cheesy movie and it makes me cry. And I've seen it like 30 times and I love the movie. It's about belief. It's about the little guy rising up and doing something amazing. That's what I love doing. And it's a skill that I'm, I'm really good at is supporting and believing in other people. And the lens that I can now impact the world is through entrepreneurship because I actually have some experience and knowledge. If you wanted to go out and be a great florist, I could still believe in you, but I wouldn't know what to tell you beyond just giving encouraging advice. Where if you want to do salsa dancing or you want to do entrepreneurship, I can provide some tactical knowledge to help you. So, I think that's it. That's everything is believe.

And I like that because anyone that's listening, I really think that you should take Evan's advice on that because I watched, I forget which video it is. I watched one of your videos and you said, choose one word that defines you. And I said, what is one word that defines me? And I had this thing on, you know, one word that defines your mindset that I ask my guests. I always ask them what one word defines your mindset. And I thought, what one word defines, you know, not even my mindset, but defines me? And that's how I came up with the word giant. I was like, wow, like giant. Evan just dropped a bomb, like a value bomb. That's something now that I, you know, that I love it.

That's the name of your show, man. I love it.

I said, what's one word? And I thought I couldn't find the word for a long time. And I was like, look, I've got a blog called thegiantedge.com. I've got a podcast called The Giant Mindset. My word is giant. That's the word. And so I just came up with that 2 weeks ago after watching your video. So nice, Evan.

Nice.

Thank you so much for doing that. If you're an entrepreneur out there listening, even if you're not an entrepreneur, if you want to really see who you are, what you stand for, what your values are, look for one word that defines who you are, whether it's your mindset or your philosophy, whatever it is. That really helps you out, flesh out who you are. And that helped me. So, thank you so much for that. So—

Let me take you one level deeper on that for your one word. There's a difference in, at least for me, in what I believe is that there's a difference between the word and then hashtag. So believe on itself versus #Believe with a capital B is different for me in that I get to assign meaning to #Believe, where most people, when you think believe, they just think self-confidence, believe in yourself, which is fine. That's definitely part of it. That's a part of it for me. It's also believe in what you're doing. So the passion to create something amazing, a podcast, a YouTube channel, a flower shop, whatever it is. And then also the third part is believe that it's going to work out. When you don't see anything but darkness around you, that if you just keep doing it, it's eventually going to work out. And so those three concepts make up #belief for me. And so if your one word is giant, then there are some, you know, I have a view of what giant is and it might be like a normal kind of public perception of what giant is, but you can turn #giant to mean a couple of other things. That is, this is like, here's the 3 things that hashtag giant means to Frederick, and this is now a movement that you're then trying to create. And so it might be giant like big, but it could also be giant in 2 other things that make up who you are. Like, be, be a giant in your, in your giving, like caring for others, or contribution is part of being a giant, right? Or whatever whatever, like what is it to be a giant? And you get to define that. And then you can inspire others to also wanna be giants of their own. And if you can add clarity, one, for yourself, then it helps you make decisions on what you're gonna do. But then also it allows your people to spread the message for you. And all of a sudden you got a world of giants, which is awesome.

[Speaker] I like that. I like that. And you know, John Lee Dumas, who is, one of the top podcasters in the world and I've taken his program. So if you're thinking about podcasting, I highly recommend checking out Entrepreneur on Fire, John Lee Dumas. I've used his program. He talks about that, right? His whole thing is fire, you know, on fire, Fire Nation. And he says the same thing, right? You have to define that group of people who you relate to and what your movement is, your values are. And then they'll, if they have the same values and if they feel the same way and they have the same aspirations, they'll take that movement and spread it for you because they're part of that movement and they believe the same thing. So, you know, thank you for going deeper on that. And I'm really gonna, you know, actually take a look at that and add more. You know, I mean, giant for me is think big. And to dream big and just, you know, shoot for the moon. But like you said, you know, you can just make it into something even bigger. Hey, think bigger, dream bigger, make it into give big. And I really like that. So, anybody that's listening, I mean, listen to that, right? Take that one word, really define it, make it a way of life, make it a philosophy, and let other people who share that philosophy help you spread your word, your values, and your principles. So, excellent value bomb like John Lee Dumas would say. Now, I've got a fun philosophical question for you.

Okay.

There's no right or wrong answer. So, here it is. Would you rather lose all of your old memories or never be able to make new ones? Two choices. Which one would you take?

I lose all my old memories, or what was the second option?

Or never be able to make new ones. So you can lose your old memories. So lose your old memories but still be able to make new ones, right? Or never be able to make new memories, but you keep your old memories. Which one would you take?

I would lose my old memories. Yeah, I'm very forward. I'm very forward-thinking. Like, it's easy to— it's easy to put away. I mean, I would be sad But if I had to pick between those two, that's an easy decision. It's always— I forget bad things super easily. And maybe I think entrepreneurs, we do that. You gotta forget the negatives and just dust yourself off. And I think, I think any successful person too, like Olympic athletes, you know, you lose a race, you got to wake up the next day and train more and race again, right? I think it just, it's part of the mindset. If you— for women, they forget how painful pregnancy, the delivering, the that baby was, then they're willing to do it again. You know, for all of these things in life, the people who continue to move on and achieve is gonna be ones who can move past, not let the failures like be these chains that hold them back. So yeah, that's an easy one.

Oh, great. I've had some people struggle with that, but you just said it right. It just came right out. And I was like, yeah, this guy is, This guy knows who he is. Not that you don't know who you are if you don't answer immediately. It is kind of a trick question, uh, philosophical question, but I like that answer. Live in the future. So Evan, I'm about to wrap up. Usually what I do, I ask people, what's the one word that defines your mindset? We already know that believe is the word So anybody that's out there, believe. And for anybody that's listening that doesn't know Evan Carmichael, Evan, how do they get in touch with you? I know how to get in touch with you. I watch you every day. But some people out there who've downloaded this podcast or listen to this podcast might not know who Evan is. How do they get in touch with you?

They just do a search, search Evan Carmichael. If you want to, you can find my YouTube channel if you like videos. I'm on Twitter, Facebook, my website, whatever you like. I'm usually there, so just search, you'll find me.

And what I'll do to everybody that's listening, when I put out the show notes page for this episode, I'll put all the links for Evan Carmichael's YouTube channel, his website, his Twitter handles, and all that stuff, and other good stuff that I'll put on the Giant Edge .com/podcast. Just search for Evan Carmichael, you'll find him there. And I'll put all the links, everything that we've discussed here, all the stuff that we talked about, I'll put all the links and the bullet points. And if you have any questions, feel free to just leave comments, leave questions. I'll be more than happy to answer those questions. So Evan, it's been so great. Taking the time out. Okay, there goes my camera. I told you. So guys, like, like Evan said, even if you're a rookie, these things happen. So Evan, I really appreciate you taking the time out to come, and my camera keeps sliding down.

It's all good, man. It's all good.

But I really appreciate you coming. You know, I'm nobody and you're Evan Carmichael. You know, this guy that I watch all the time.

That's the mindset. That's the box. You're not nobody.

OK, I'm breaking out of the box, guys.

Yeah, man. I'm the giant. Catch that next time. Catch that.

I'm the giant. I'm the giant. But oh, there goes the camera.

There it goes. Frederick doesn't say I'm nobody.

Frederick does not say I'm nobody.

There you go.

Thank you for that. There goes my camera, guys. I'm sorry. It fell off. This is live, as you guys know, but— Thank you so much, Evan. And thanks to everyone for listening. Remember to live like a giant, think like a winner. Thanks, everyone.

Cool.

All right.

All right. There's a few questions. You want to hit some questions?

Yeah. Nope. We can do that. I'm just going to save my file here. Let me just— let me look for that. I don't even know where it fell to.

It's on the floor, bro. It's on the floor. I'm looking at like the— Underneath of a— something yellow. Yeah, there you go. Oh, there's a— I see them. I see them. I see an Apple logo there. There you go.

Okay, okay.

All right, all right, all right. Uh, okay, Sam, uh, wrote in to say, what are you— what's your take on affirmations?

Affirmations, I think, are one of the greatest things ever created. So my morning routine And what's the name of the person that just asked the question?

Sam.

Sam. So Sam, what I do every morning, I pray, I, you know, drink water, eat good stuff, but I do my affirmations. But the way that I do my affirmations is not, you know, I don't just sit there and just, you know, say, you know, I want to be successful, you know, whatever it might be. I actually use my body and my emotion and my visualization. So what I try to do is to involve as many senses as possible. And when you involve as many senses as possible, it helps your subconscious pick up that affirmation and see it as reality, right? Because if you just sit down and say, look, I'm, you know, I'm a successful entrepreneur. I'm a powerful public speaker. And you don't really have the emotion, your subconscious is going to say, no, you're not. But if you embody it, right? So that's the physical aspect. If you actually embody that affirmation and say, I'm a powerful, you know, you move in a powerful, confident way. You visualize yourself as this powerful person, powerful speaker, powerful entrepreneur, and you actually say it, You've just used 3 different senses and you've overwhelmed your subconscious mind and it's going to say, "Hey, this might be true." It might take a few times, but after a while, your subconscious is going to believe that this is true. And in fact, if you've studied NLP, which is Neuro Linguistic Programming, if you— that physical action that you actually do when you're doing your affirmations, If you do that right before an event, whether it's whatever event you're preparing for, whether it's before you go to work or before you do a speech or whatever it is, your subconscious gets triggered and puts you into that same state of mind that you were in as you did that affirmation. So, I strongly encourage affirmations because you've got the little man talking to you and you've got to overpower that little man with as much energy as possible. So, yes. I love affirmations. I don't know about you, Evan, if you, if you're into that.

You know, I think, I think you got to find your cadence. I think you got to find what works for you and test and try different things. You know, I never had success with affirmations. They're not a part of my routine. They're not part of my daily schedule or what I do. I, at the same time, have seen insane growth in my business, in my confidence, in my belief in myself. Again, through what we've been talking about of surrounding myself with those successful. And it started off as entrepreneurs, but then it became singers and athletes and musicians. And just people have been requesting. We have, we have over 1,000 requests from the channel of people wanting these top 10 rules videos. So that's, that's more than, than that's 3 years worth of stuff of requests that we could put out. And I learned, there's people I've never heard of before that I'm learning from on a daily basis and just seeing how they act and how they interact and how they think. And their mindset. You know, I'm looking at in my city, Toronto, I want Toronto to be a place, repping in here, you got the Blue Jays. I want Toronto to be a home for entrepreneurs, right? I want Toronto to be a place where a lot of Canadian entrepreneurs are like, I gotta go to the US, right? I gotta go to New York, I gotta go to LA. And I want, Toronto's the 4th biggest city in North America. I want this to be a city that people wanna come to because I love this city. Because I'm here, that's why I want to do it. And, and then I look at videos of, you know, I watched a video recently, we made a compilation of Elon Musk interviews. Elon Musk, founder of Tesla, uh, and SpaceX. SpaceX is starting PayPal. SpaceX, he's, he wants to colonize Mars. This is one of his dreams, is he wants to colonize Mars. Not just send people to Mars, but a colony, like people live on Mars because he wants a backup plan for the Earth because he thinks we're going to kill ourselves here and he wants to have a place to be able to go to just in case we self-destruct. It's like, I thought I was thinking big about making Toronto something awesome. Dude's on like a whole other level, right? And so it's just interesting. And Elon Musk is one of the worst speakers of all time. His interviews are painful to sit through because he stumbles and he's not clear. And this is interesting, he'll often say, "I don't know." He'll go on CNN and do these interviews and not have answers to these questions. And like, do you have the guts to do that? If you went on CNN and somebody asked you a question and you actually didn't know, would you say, "I don't know," or would you stumble and try to find an answer, right? Right. I love the— I love that. Like, he's so confident in himself that he will— he can go on and say, I don't know, on CNN, and he's thinking big thoughts about the planet and the future and where we're going to go. And so these people are the ones that, whether you like Elon Musk or not, you know, whether you agree with all his personal decisions, whatever, how he treats his staff, you know, you don't have to look up to all that stuff. But the big thinking is just insane for me. And so those are kind of, I guess, my affirmations by watching. I guess it's not me saying I can be powerful and rich and a big thinker, but more by surrounding myself with these people every day. A bit of it rubs off on me and I start to question Why am I not doing more? Like, how can I be more like that? How do I think bigger than what I'm doing right now? Because I thought I'm already thinking bigger than most of the people in my immediate circle, which sucks because I'm always driving things to go faster and further and bigger. So it's nice to have someone who's doing like even way more. And so I guess that's my form of affirmation, but I don't get up I don't hate it. I think it's just you find what works for you. You know, I've never been able to get a meditation routine down. Some people, they swear by it. There's tons of science that says it's great and amazing. I, in 10 years, I might be like the biggest advocate of meditation, but right now I've never been able to get a routine down. So I don't do it. I think, I think it's worth experimenting. I think, you know, if it's not working for you, don't feel like it has to work. Maybe the time and the place, just this isn't the time for place right now. Move on and try something else. So I know it works for a lot of people. Tony Robbins calls it incantations when you do more action, more than just telling yourself.

I should have included that. Yep. I use— I, I do kind of— I kind of do what, what he, what, what he recommends. But to your point, um, Evan, it's not— it's not like, like you said, tools, right? It's just a tool. And you can have a toolbox, and one tool doesn't work, and then you can use another tool. The main thing is cultivating confidence. And I think that's one of the questions that I asked you. How do you overcome fear? How do you cultivate confidence? And you said, you know, catch yourself, right? Don't say I'm a nobody. Catch yourself. You know, that's another tool. So, you know, it's a tool. And it might work for some, some people, some people that say it doesn't work. Actually, Tony Robbins said just affirmations work, but right, his incantations are affirmations.

Catching yourself, right? So like we did that just now, I caught that for you, and hopefully the next time you remember it and that snaps. You know, for me it might be somebody who, who points out something on me and then that makes me think the next time, whether it's my wife who just walked in the room, hey or, or, or, you know, somebody else in my network, or looking up to like an Elon, seeing what he's doing. And then that makes me realize that when somebody says, oh, you're thinking really big, like, I'm not. This is nothing, guys. This is, this is, this is the minor leagues that I'm playing in right now. This is like, we got to get higher. How do I get there? Um, bigger. Yeah, giant, man. Be a giant. That's what it's about. Okay. Next, uh, Lude or Loud— Loud— Lude, I can't read. Um, I have a silly but curious question. If there was a platform where you could monetize from your live broadcast, would you join that platform if they offer you a 60/40 split pay?

So is that question for me or is that for—

yeah, both, both. Go.

Well, you know, for me, it's, it's possible. I could, I could do something like that. But, um, I'm, I'm the kind of person that likes to sit back and write my thoughts out and plan stuff. And, um, it wouldn't be my first choice. I know you're a little bit, uh, you know, more spontaneous. Maybe you are. I'm assuming that. But for me, not so. It wouldn't be my first, my first choice to get onto a live platform. And even if I could make money from it, my first choice would be, you know, blogging and podcasting where I can actually distill my thoughts, distill my research, and then give it out to, to the people. But there is something to be said about being live, and some people like that spontaneity. Some people like that live interaction and that's where we're going. That's why Blab is so big. And so I think it has to be part of your offering. It has to be part of your platform. For some people, it might be the major platform. For some people, it might be the not so major platform. But I think it's got to be— you've got to be able to interact with people as much as possible because the people make your business. So I would— definitely incorporate that. As Evan is teaching me now, this is my first Blab, right? It's good to have, and I see feedback and I'm like, okay, this is good feedback, or if it's bad feedback, I get it immediately. So I think it's always good to have that live component. Right now, would I do it? Probably not, but I'll definitely keep it as part of my platform building strategy. What do you think, Evan?

This is an easy one for me. I'd say no, because the decisions that I make are never based on money. It's impact. So, you know, the reason why I'm YouTube, I'm all in on YouTube is because it's the place where I can have the biggest impact. The combination of what I'm good at combined with where the audience is, that's, that's the magic recipe for me to have success. And so That's where I spend most of my time. For the live stuff, I'm a big believer in live. This is my 4th thing already today that I've done that's live. I think it's, I mean, 2016, 2017 is gonna be more live. It's gonna be people wanna see the live stuff and be able to interact, right? This is the fun part, where you can interact and ask questions. I love Blab as a platform because I can, we can see here, we can ask questions, The interaction is great. I'm gonna get way more lift on this video when I upload it to YouTube than what we get here in this Blab. I like Blab for the technology. The technology will change a lot. You know, there's Google Hangouts, there's Blab, there's Meerkat, there's Periscope, and there's gonna be 1,000 other ones. Whoever ends up winning, I don't know. But would I join your system because you're giving me a 60/40 split on the pay? No, because I don't, that's not what I care about, right? Can you tell me I'm going to be able to reach millions of people if I join your platform? Then I'm interested. But the payout alone, it's not, it's not a reason for me to do anything. And I've turned down huge deals because all they wanted was giving me money for something that I wasn't necessarily comfortable with. My number one default impact is always— that's, that's it. Impact. Can I have impact?

So if, so if, so if this live platform let's say, you know, not necessarily the platform that, that, that they've put on there, but let's say if it was some kind of platform that would have major impact, you would— you would you defer to that over— you like, would you choose that over YouTube if this platform—

you would? Yeah, I want to help a billion entrepreneurs. That's the goal. I don't care about YouTube. If it's entrepreneurs through SchmooTube, that's where I'm going. You know, I want to reach a billion entrepreneurs. Um, so that's it.

So platform is just a tool.

Yeah, it's just a tool, man. I'm not attached to the tool. Loud Radio, you got a new platform that's going to help me reach my goal, that's where I'm at. You're going to take 100% of the revenue, I don't care. I want to reach a billion entrepreneurs, help me do that. Yeah, I mean, I'm writing a book right now, and the only reason why I did it was because I wanted to— all the projects that I'm working on has to have the ability to reach millions of people, or I'm not interested. You know, like even doing this podcast, uh, one, I'm doing it because I want to help you and your show. Two, I'm doing it because I want to, I want to share it to my audience. You know, if you said, if you said no, I don't want to be on your channel, I don't want the promotion, it'd be a lot harder decision for me to come on and do the show because I love helping people out, you know, one at a time. But Everything. I have to be conscious of my time. The things that I spend my time on, I want to be able to have a big impact. And so I don't want to write a book to write a book. I don't care about writing the book. I don't need a book to open doors. I don't need a book for my, my ego or prestige or resume or any of that stuff. So I have no interest in self-publishing, zero, because it's not about, yes, I can make more money self-publishing a book. Awesome. But I'm not going to reach as many people as if I had a major publisher behind me helping promote it. So I'm taking a huge haircut on what I could make from money-wise by going with Penguin Random House, who's my publisher. But it's not— it's never what it's been about. It's about how can I— how can I get this book into a million people's hands? That's what I want to do.

There's actually something that, that, you know, that I was thinking about the other day because, you know, I was listening to Pat Flynn and, and how he's done his book launch. Um, I'm not sure if you know, he just launched a book, a book, Will It Fly or whatever.

Yeah.

And, and he talks about why he chose the independent publishing route versus the, um, the traditional route. But, you know, somebody else, Michael Hyatt, always talks about how going the traditional route, you reach so many more people and you really widen your platform. And for someone like you who wants a bigger platform to impact more people, to reach that billion entrepreneur mark, that's really critical. So that's a fantastic choice.

Just depends on your goals, right? Like, if some people just want to have a book to show their kids, I wrote a book, great, do it. Like, that's an awesome motivation. There's nothing wrong with that. You can self-publish and have a book in your hands and it has your name on it. Or some people need it for credibility to go out and do speaking gigs or do a podcast or book guests to say that you have a book really helps them. That's awesome too. Some people do it for the money. Like you can make more money self-publishing than you go with a publisher. Awesome. It's like those things I don't care about. That's not, it's never the main intention. And so I think having, just knowing what you want, right? If your goal is to help a billion entrepreneurs, not just some, woo, one day I hope I can do this. That's a real tangible thing that I'm striving for. I have to really value where I'm spending my time to go out and accomplish that goal. Um, so you keep count—

do you keep count of the entrepreneurs that you're impacting? How do you keep that?

Uh, so it used to be visitors to my website, uh, and I'm probably going to change it around now to be more on the YouTube since that's where I put all my focus. But it's not so much— this is another big mistake I think a lot of people make— it's not about hitting that goal. It's the journey, like, it's the climb. It's enjoying what I'm doing. It's enjoying reaching people, a lot of people, in a meaningful way. So it's not that, oh, I got a billion views on my YouTube channel, or I have a billion subscribers, I mean, okay, I'm done, you know, I hit my goal, great, right? No, it's like, more, you gotta— I got a bigger impact. I want to change the world. This— so, so just it's It changes the mentality. The bigger thing is not how do I know when I hit that goal? I don't wanna hit that goal. I wanna keep striving to do more. You hit your goal, then you get depressed. I wanna keep having something more to go and accomplish. So if I get a billion views on YouTube, great. I want a billion subscribers on YouTube, right? Like it's just always, it's just a reminder that the things that I spend my time on have to have a major impact or really need to question if I should be doing those things or not. 'Cause that's opportunity costs from doing something else where I could be reaching more people.

I like that. I like, I like that mind. You know what, we should have— this should have been part of the podcast.

It's recorded, bro. It's all recorded. It's recorded, clean audio. You can add it in later. It's going to go up on the YouTube channel. You got it, you're good.

You know, well, I mean, I was, I was recording. I stopped recording, um, but I mean, these conversations are like so juicy, so good.

You got, you got enough for 3 shows, man. Um, okay, I, I mean, I need to wrap up. It's 6 o'clock here. Just quickly, uh, I mean, sorry we couldn't get to, to, uh, have you actually on the show. With Blab, just so you know, um, Frederick, you can have people call in too, right? And then they can come in and out. So we both called in, but other people can call in too. And I saw Eileen trying to do it. Just— this is supposed to be half an hour. It's been an hour and a half, but it's, it's fine. It's good. Like, I'm not complaining, just We don't have time for kind of calling guests. And, um, and Raghav, uh, the book is still— the title is still related to a lot of the stuff we talked about though. So if you like the show, you'll like the book. And we're looking at a December 6th, just announced. That's like breaking news right here on the podcast. Just announced December 6th is what we're looking at as a launch date.

So, oh, you know what, you know what we should do is before, you know, when you launch it, when you're doing your, you know, when you're kind of drumming up publicity for that book, we should have you back again and talk about your book.

You're going to be an even bigger giant, man. I love it.

Yeah. Yeah. By that time, the podcast will have launched. I'll have done all the marketing. It's going to be great, man. So, well, there we go.

Cool. Well, for everybody watching, thank you for your time, Fredrik. Really appreciate it. I will link up— oh, it's not launched yet. Where can they go?

Right now they can't, they can't go anywhere. They can go to thegiantedge.com, which is my blog.

Okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take a note. thegiantedge.com. Okay, I'll put that link in the description so you guys can go check out Frederick, all the stuff he's doing. And when the podcast launches, he'll have something on the Giant Edge with the link. I'll probably tweet me out, I'll tweet it too, we'll share it.

Anyway, I'll definitely get in touch with you as the podcast launches. What I have to do is I have to record all these interviews and then launch and drip them out on a daily basis while I'm recording more. So a month's worth of interviews. So that's— I've been interviewing all these Olympic athletes and it's, uh, it's, you know, it's, it's, it's a lot of work, but I love it. Worth it.

So Zeno just wrote, I'm following you on Twitter and looking forward to the podcast. Keep it up, this was awesome. You got responsibility now. Now people are counting on you, bro. They're counting on you. You got to deliver now. Giant.

Thank you so much, Evan, and all your fans, everybody that tuned in. Um, so, so grateful, man, that you're trying to do, you know, this thing, um, about reaching a billion entrepreneurs. You've got one, that's for sure.

You've got one that you've—

yeah, that you've impacted deeply. So, you know, I appreciate it, man. Thank you for your time. I know I took an extra hour, but I think it was worth it. What do you think?

It's fun, man. I could, I could, I could do it all, bro, man. This is what I live for. It's what I live for.

Yeah, yeah. Excellent stuff, man. I'll be in touch when the book launches and when I launch this podcast. I'll be in touch.

Love it. Thanks, man. All right, thank you.

All right, bye.