The TRUTH About Mediocrity that the PROS Know!

Believe playlist. Get ready for the Ask Evan Show. I still believe in your rhymes. Featuring— I don't know what this is. It looks like beets. Welcome to the Ask Evan Show, episode number 8. I'm ready. This is fun. I've got my tomato plant here, and I'm going to lead off with a question for you guys. This might be part of a usual segment now where I'm asking you something. Christina didn't want my orchid in the last video, so now instead we have something that looks way worse. But I've got this tomato plant that is almost dead that I'm trying to survive. I had it, I had it by the window, and, uh, I think it was getting too cold from the air because it's getting wintry here in Toronto. So I brought it, I brought it closer inside under the lights, and hopefully that works. So keeping it nice and hydrated. But if you have tomato plant care tips to fix this thing, to get it growing so I get some nice cherry tomatoes, let me know. Okay, to the questions! Onye Buchi writes in from the newsletter: "Did you see me in a horoscope? This article completely represents me and my situation." This is an article talking about mediocrity. "Could you please offer me practical assistance?" This is a great one. The article is about living mediocre lives. A lot of us live mediocre lives, right? We may have a dream to do something Rather than go out and try, we continue to live in mediocrity. We have this environment that holds us back, and we're scared to take even a little step out. I've had a lot of conversations this past week about sharing and trying and just doing something. There's this big resistance and a big fear. If you want to avoid your mediocre lifestyle, then you got to change it up, right? If you keep doing the same thing that you've been doing, you're not going to get any greater results, right? That's the definition of insanity, right? It's thinking that you're going to get better results by doing the exact same thing over and over and over again. So what I want you to do is for one day, one hour, have a little bit of courage, have a little bit of boldness, do the thing that you know you need to do that you're afraid of and put it out there. If you, if you're a photographer, put out your pictures. If you're a singer, Put out a cover song of a band that just recently came out. Put up something. Share. And you know, you may think, "I've never done this before. I'm scared. What will people say? What will my friends think?" Stop caring about other people. Stop worrying about what they're going to judge you on and just put it out there. And all you need is that 1 hour of bravery, of boldness to step outside your comfort zone because unless you do that, you're going to continue to live in mediocrity. And it doesn't sound like that's where you want to be, and I hope that's not where you want to be. And when you do, when you put that up, when you share something that you love, that you're trying to make a difference in the world, I want you to share with me too. You get some extra little EC love in on there to keep it going. Thanks for the question. Okay, next up is one of my YouTube viewers, Prem. Love you guys. Writes in to say, "Sir, I have a good idea in mind." Alright, let's see what you got. The idea which I have is useful to people and saves time, but the problem is how do I get investors for my idea because I'm a low-class person, so where should I go and present my idea? It seems like every episode we've got somebody asking questions with these limiting personal beliefs, right? So, so because you're a low-class person, you adopt a low-class mentality, and that's the difference. Because investors don't care what your background is, they want to see an opportunity that they can make a lot of money from. There's a lot of people who come from high-class backgrounds that never get funded because their ideas suck. Even though you come from a low-class background, it doesn't mean you have the low-class mentality. And I would first off start question, do you even need the funding? Now this is maybe not what you want to hear, but when you are launching a business, that early stage, that's the worst time to get funding because they're going to take a huge chunk of your business because that's the riskiest time to be involved. What you want to do is build momentum. Bootstrap. Get some customers. Get some feedback. Get some momentum. Show that people are actually willing to pay for what it is that you have. Then when you go to an investor, you're looking to raise marketing capital, you're looking to raise expansion capital, it's way easier. And they're not going to care where you came from. It's funny, when I was in the VC business, we had so many people submit their business plans who were PhDs. And that actually counted as a strike against you. The VCs that I was working with, if you were a PhD, they thought that you were so book smart and had no street smarts that it counted against you for your business, right? It was one of those things like, okay, he's a PhD, so maybe we don't want to see him, right? That's the mentality of investors. So it doesn't matter where you come from. It doesn't matter what your background is. It doesn't matter what country you're from or who your parents are. People want to see good ideas. If you have a good idea and you're executing against it, you're saving people time and money, you can show me, not just tell me on paper, but you can show me people who are getting tangible results from using whatever product or service you have, that's all you need. That's your ticket in. You just got to get on your hustle and start building some momentum. Okay, next question comes from a Twitter follower, @WillAGMartel, who wrote in to say, @EvanCarmichael, looking for an entertainment agent. Thanks for responding. Keep up the awesome job, bro. Bro, thank you for the great question. So I've had an agent for, I guess, just over a year, year and a half, something like that. And finding the agent is not that difficult, right? You can do a Google search and find an agent. How I found mine was actually through somebody who was already at the agency, and I talked to, you know, their client and said, "I wonder if this would be a fit for me. I wonder if I need an agent. I wonder if that's the right route for me." And he opened up the door. But you can find these guys. They do just do a simple Google search. The hard part is showing that you have something worthwhile, right? That you have momentum, that you have traction, because an agent, they make their money from selling you, right? From selling you into a book deal, from getting you radio show deals, TV deals, partnerships, collaborations, whatever it is. They take 20 to 30% of everything that they help sell for you. They're out there marketing you, but you got to give them something worth marketing. And it's a combination of one, Having great content. So I don't know what your area of expertise is, but you have to have strong, powerful opinions that mean something to people, that move people, that you have this platform that you believe in will make the world a better place. How are you doing that, right? You have to stand for something. And 2, you have already some traction. They don't want to work with people who are just starting up, who have zero traction, zero momentum. Just like book publishers or publishing agents, they don't want to work with first-time authors who who have no audience, who have no momentum behind them. So you want to show that you're killing it on Twitter, you know, you've got YouTube videos. If you're trying to get an agent, you've got to be on YouTube. You have to have great videos showing you speaking, showing you doing your thing, because they can see, hey, this guy really knows what he's talking about, and you have that traction. So again, the agent part of it is not the difficult equation. It's having a case to show them that you have something behind you, both from a content point of view and from a traction, user-based momentum point of view. All right, next up, another newsletter reader, Kijana, who wrote in to say, "Hey Evan, hope you are doing well. Myself, I'm okay." Good to know. "Is it possible for a normal person with no job to commence a business without any source of income? If so, how? Thanks, dear friend, for your cooperation." Kijana. That's a great question, and a lot of people have it in their heads that in order to be successful in business, you have to have XYZ, right? You have to have X amount of capital, you have to have Y amount of experience, you have to have come from, you know, certain education. None of that stuff matters. You look at the most successful entrepreneurs of all time, go look at whoever your famous entrepreneur is, your favorite famous entrepreneur, the person you look up to and respect, look at how they started. And chances are they didn't come from a wealthy family. They didn't come from having a strong educational background, right? A lot of these guys started with nothing, had all the odds against them, but they got on their hustle and they started. And there's a lot of people who have all the advantages in the world. They went to the best schools and have rich parents and, you know, had all the education and money behind them in the world, and they don't start anything. It's the guys who are hungry who make it. And so the how— look at any famous entrepreneur. Look at how they got started. They got started by starting. It's not about what you don't have, it's about what you do with what you do have. So whatever business you're trying to get started— you didn't tell me here what kind of company you want to start— whatever it is, find an easy way to start. Start talking to customers, start servicing them. If you don't have money to launch a product, start with a service. You don't need any money to start. You don't need an office, you don't need business cards, you don't need a phone line, you don't need to spend anything. Just go out and start talking to potential customers and give them value. Get close to them. Get to know them. Get to know what problems they have. Get to know how you can help them solve those problems. Start making some money and put it back into your business and put it into developing products and put it into expansion and growth. You know, I did this video on Marriott not too long ago. J. Willard Marriott— Christina, let's pop that link up there. He started as the son of a poor sheepherder. Who didn't finish his schooling, who came back from being a missionary, came back home, and his father went broke. He had all the odds against him, and he invested in himself to say, you know, my family, the surrounding that I'm in right now isn't conducive to me being a successful entrepreneur because I have no role models. I have nobody to look up to here. Nobody in my family has ever done it before. We're poor. We're broke. We're raising sheep for a living. You know, I wasn't supposed to finish my education, all the odds against him, and he invested in himself and just got started. And the plan that you start with isn't going to be the plan that you finish with. So don't worry about having the perfect plan, and instead get out and start doing. Find the smallest way to start this business up, start talking to customers, start making some money in, and grow from there. But start, do something. And when you do, send me a note. I want to know what your first step is. Commit. Commit and get this thing going. I believe. Okay, next up, instead of a question, I'm doing a shout out to Thoratam. On Twitter is @dekdenThoratam. She is a sharer. She is awesome. I recently put out a page on my website to support artists. I love artists. I want to support artists. I want to help them with their music, their visual art, whatever it is. I have a lot of ways that I help artists because artists create beautiful things that make people laugh and cry and feel joy and excitement and happiness, and the world would be such a sad place without art. And so I put up this page and I put it to my newsletter and said, hey, if you guys are artists, if you know artists, let them know. Let's find a way to collaborate because I want to help give them exposure. And Thora awesomely tweeted that out. She said, hey artists, if you guys, you know, are interested, check out this page from Evan. And then she went out and she tweeted personally a number of artists that she knew in her network who might be able to collaborate with me and sent it out to them. This is important because you don't want to just consume information, right? You got to be on the lookout to help other people as well. She shared that page to her audience, which added value for them, and then she took the time to write to individual people in her network who she thought could benefit from it. And they're going to remember, right? You got to, you know, Thora, I didn't know before this, Thorah, if we've communicated, please excuse my forgetfulness, but I remember you now because you're out sharing awesome stuff, right? She's adding value to the people in her network. You got to do the same thing. You find an article that you read that you find interesting, share it with other people. Add value to their lives, right? You could be that person they continue to remember, and then the next time, you know, they're trying to add value to somebody else's life, they're going to think, Thorah, Thorah is amazing. So shout out to you, props. Awesome work. Thank you so much. All right, last question of the day comes from another YouTube viewer. 593Alpha writes in to say, "Hi, I had a question about your recommendation to submit 2 job postings." This is on oDesk. "One public, one private, but didn't notice where you explained why. Really enjoyed the video. Going to post a job now. Thanks." Hey, this is awesome. So I believe that fundamentally the way people hire is broken, does not work, and that's why people don't stick with your business, and that's why you hire the wrong people, and that's why you get frustrated and think, "I'm going to just do this myself." Christina, pop that video of the egg, the hiring process is broken, because entrepreneurs need to watch that. So part of what I do is when I'm posting a job, and this is specifically to oDesk, I'll post a public job and that's for everybody, right? I'll post a job ad, people will apply, and then I'll post a private job. And the reason for doing that is because I don't care about your resume. I don't read your resume. I don't read your work experience. I don't read your references, I don't read any of that because that stuff to me is BS because I don't care where you've worked before, I don't care how good your resume looks, that's not the skill I'm hiring for. I'm hiring for people who are passionate, who love what they're doing, who wanna work with me on my mission to make the world a better place and support a billion entrepreneurs, and I want people who are on fire. And the best way to do that is to actually work with somebody and skip the whole process of interviewing resumes and all that because it takes up so much time and then by the time you go through that you've committed to somebody that you really need to make it work out with that person and if it doesn't work out you're screwed because you got to go all the way back to the start again. Instead, instead of hiring them, one person and forcing it to try to make it work and then they quit on you, hire lots of people at the start. So before I read a resume, before I do any kind of interviews which I don't really do at ever anyway. I will hire people from my first job posting. So that first job posting will be one big, long, ugly, nasty paragraph. In the middle, I'll put a question like, how many Twitter followers do I have? You gotta answer that question right up front. You don't answer that question, I'm not talking to you. I don't care how good your references are, your work experience. From there, everybody who answers that question, I will create a private job and hire them. So it's all of the winners, all the people who, who took the time to read my job posting, they actually cared enough to read it all the way through, are detail-oriented enough to find that question in the middle and then go out and do a little tiny bit of work to submit it to me, I'll hire them on a job that I think should take them 2 hours to do that's reflective of the job that they'll actually be doing when they work for me, but I give them 5 hours to do it. And it's a private job because I'm only inviting those people in who answered that first question. And out of that group, I'll have people who fall out, who don't do the job, who milk me for the full 5 hours instead of doing you know, doing it in the Tude, I think it'll take— who don't work well with me, who ask a million questions, who don't ask any questions, who make wrong assumptions, who aren't hustling. And you learn by working with them, right? By working with the people instead of relying on their resumes and cover letters and interviews. By working with them, you get a sense if they're going to be a good fit for you or not. And you'll end up letting a lot of people go, which is fine. And you end up with the best person. Often that best person almost always is the person that doesn't look fantastic on paper, whose resume isn't great, whose work experience isn't great, but they are hungry, they're on fire, they work well with you, they're pouring energy, ideas, fuel into you to make that project take off. And those are the kind of employees we need to have. And that's why you have two job postings, one private, one public. Believe. Thanks for another episode. Love you guys so much. Let me know about the tomato plant. I need the feedback. Leave it in the questions below, the comments. Tell me how to make this thing live and be awesome. Thank you guys so much for watching. You want to see more videos like this? Subscribe to the channel. I will see you soon. I will fly away. I'll fly with you. Psst, make sure to check out my newsletter. You're gonna love it. Hi, I'm Jason J. Ros Fonseca of RosOnline.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.