In this instructional video, Evan Carmichael explains that the most important factor in hiring and paying employees is not salary or benefits, but giving people a compelling reason to work for your company. He argues that entrepreneurs should first define a clear mission and values that attract people who believe in the same purpose, because passion drives performance and loyalty. Carmichael shares personal anecdotes—such as hiring people who love entrepreneurship and a partnership with a translator named Arturo—to illustrate how mission‑driven hiring creates enthusiastic, volunteer‑like team members. He advises startups to begin with part‑time arrangements, scaling up as they learn what roles and workloads are needed, and to treat equity like a marriage, granting it only after a deep, proven partnership. The video concludes with a call to action for viewers to like, comment, and ask further questions.
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How to pay your employees. If you're first getting started and you're thinking about bringing on a team, it's a great step because you gotta realize you cannot do everything yourself. And if you want to achieve your big goals, you have to have people under you who can help. Most people, though, get this question wrong. When they ask me, "How do I pay my employees?" they're thinking about what salary should I pay them, should I give them equity, should I give them time off, should I, you you know, what should I give them medical leave and benefits, all of the specific aspects of paying them. You have to first think about giving them a reason to come and be motivated to work at your business. And this is what most people miss. Okay, most people end up going to— you look at your workers, okay, they can work anywhere. Why should they work with you? If it's just because of money and benefits, you're gonna lose. Because you're— as an entrepreneur, you can't afford to pay the highest rates and to have the best benefits and to have a gym in the office and cater all their lunches. Can you? Maybe I'm delusional, but if you have that kind of cash sitting around, then fine, go for it. But most entrepreneurs, we don't have that kind of cash. Okay, when you're starting up a business, you do not have huge money. So if you are just competing on salary, you're gonna lose. The main reason people will come to work for you is you give them a reason to work for you. What do you stand for? What are you trying to accomplish? Most people go to a job and they hate what they're doing. 90% of America wakes up, drives to a job that they hate, can't wait for the day to end so they can drive home and spend time with their family. Give people a reason to get excited about the work that they're doing. What are they going to do at your company? What does your company stand for? What big problem in the world are you trying to change, and how can they help? If your company stands for something, you're going to be a much better target for employees to want to come and work for you. And from there, you can figure out how much you're going to pay them and how many hours and all that stuff. Most people miss that big picture. So here's an example. In my business, I only bring on people who believe in entrepreneurs. If you don't like entrepreneurs, if you don't believe that entrepreneurs can change the world for the better, you're not going to have fun at my company. You're not going to enjoy what you're doing. You're working there just to get paid, and I don't want those kinds of people. And you're not going to stick with the business. But if you love entrepreneurship and you love helping entrepreneurs, if you love giving entrepreneurs tools, resources, ideas, and you see that change in their mood when you've helped them, and you see that now they believe in themselves again, and you see that they're off making huge changes and building great businesses, and you did that, you helped them do that. That's life-changing, that's awesome stuff, that's what gets me excited every day, and who wouldn't want to work for that kind of company? Those are the kinds of people that you need to bring, and it only happens when you stand for something. Another great example, thinking about my team, all of my team, they would work for me, they would volunteer for me, because they love the work that we're doing. I pay them. I pay them, but they would work for me, they would volunteer because they love it. And when you can tap into somebody's passion, you're not just getting their body in a room, you're not just getting their brain, you're getting their heart and their soul. You're getting something deep and meaningful, and you're gonna get their best work, and they're gonna give you things that you never even thought was possible. You're getting their art. That's what you need for your business, especially an entrepreneur startup, because you've got to take on huge projects and you need a team who's not just going to do specific tasks but can take on projects for you. I got a response from one of my YouTube viewers, Arturo. Hey Arturo! Arturo watches all my videos, so he's watching this. How you doing, Arturo? Hope you're okay. Arturo wrote to me He has a translation service. He helps people who are going to, I think mostly the Dominican, translate from English to Spanish and Spanish to English so people who are on business trips can get by, can get their business done, right? Arturo is the man to call if you have a question. Arturo loves my videos and he writes me to say, "Evan, I run a translation company. I want to partner with you to translate your videos from from English to Spanish. We'll put your video up, and I'm going to create subtitles. We'll create a new channel. I'll take care of all that stuff. I'll promote my website in there, but I want to do this because I love the videos that you're creating, and this could help so many people in the Spanish communities who can't understand English. And I had a quick chat with him, and I'm like, this is fantastic! Why not? Why not expand the reach? I don't know Spanish. I can understand maybe a little bit, but I cannot talk in Spanish. I love helping entrepreneurs. I get involved in projects that help entrepreneurs. This is another great way to do it. I'm benefiting from it, Arturo's benefiting from it, and we're helping tons of people in the process. And he came to me, I didn't reach out, this wasn't part of my plan. He came to me because my company stands for something. Because when you watch these videos, there's passion in it, right? Can you feel my passion? There's passion in these videos. I'm helping people, and people want to be a part of that. People who believe in entrepreneurship and in helping business owners out— it's definitely not for everybody— but people who love that stuff, they want to work with me because that's what I'm all about. And that's what you need for your business too. What are you all about? Who are you helping? And the people who you're bringing on, you're not just bringing on a programmer, you're not just bringing on a salesperson, you're bringing on somebody who doesn't just have the skills you need, But believe in the same thing you're all about and have the passion to work for your company. And I'd much rather hire somebody who is— in— crazy— insanely passionate about what we're doing, love the mission of the business, but don't have all the necessary skills, because you can teach them the skills. They can learn the skills. And if they're excited about something, think about when you were excited about something. How quickly can you get better at something you're excited about? Versus when you're forced to learn something. How much of the stuff do you learn from your school? From high school when you were forced to read history books and then write a test? All that stuff is gone. At least for me, it's gone. I don't remember any of that stuff. But things that I got passionate about, things that I wanted to learn myself, my skills jumped dramatically. Salsa, snowboarding, famous entrepreneur information, I eat that stuff up. And it sticks and I get better at it. And I can put into everything that I'm doing. So those are the people you need to bring on above the skills. Now you get to how to pay them, but it's not as big an issue. This is all in response to a question that come from one of my readers on YouTube, viewers on YouTube. Love you guys. His name is Ejetin. Hope I pronounce that properly. Anyway, he's 18 years old, young entrepreneur, love it. He's starting a furniture company and wants to know, "How do I pay my employees?" So the key here to start is you're not just selling furniture. What are you doing? What are you trying— what big problem in the world are you trying to solve? And you want to bring on people who believe in that mission as well, and the way that you're going to do it is by selling furniture. You look at Apple, you look at Steve Jobs, how it became so successful. Apple doesn't just sell computers. Apple wants and believes that people who think differently and who are brave enough to change the status quo can change the world. That's what they believe in. And they just happen to create tools to help people do that. So you're not just selling furniture, okay? If you're selling furniture, you're up against every other single furniture company, of which there are tons, and it's gonna be hard to stand out unless you drop your price, which I don't want you to do. You have to stand out with something else. What do you believe in? What's passionate to you? And those people, those workers are going to come on board. That's your number one thing, okay? I hope you've taken that from this video, right? I hope this is the message that you are taking. That's the most important thing. From there, okay, assuming you got the right person in the job who passionately believes in what you're doing and has skills to help your business, then how do you pay them? If you're first getting started out, I wouldn't recommend paying them full-time. Start part-time because you don't really even know what you need and you've never even hired and worked with people before. So there's going to be a whole lot of failures, a whole lot of communication issues you're going to have to work on. There's going to be a lot of mistakes that you're going to make, and so better to start small and work your way up. Start part-time. The first guy I hired was for an hour a day, and I built up from there. And eventually hired people for half days and then full days and then a few days a week and then, and then full-time. You build your way up. At some point you have to discuss if somebody is worth giving equity to or not in the business. And if you're going to think about that, be really careful. This is like getting married, okay? This is a partnership that's going to last a long time and you have to make sure that you love working with this person, they believe in the same thing that you're doing, and they're as committed to it, right? If you can Think about your relationships and how you date before you get married. This is the same thing. You gotta really know this person, know their personality, know you can work with them, know you can get through the tough times. Anybody can get through the easy times. Can you get through the tough times with this person? Because you're gonna have them with your business. And then think about potentially giving them equity. So that's my quick, in a nutshell solution. But number one, most important, you're bringing people on who believe in what you're all about. That comes from you standing for something. Then number 2, start part-time. Give them whatever, down to an hour a day, a couple hours a day, whatever it is. Start part-time, make your mistakes, learn what you really need, move towards full-time, and think about equity only if you really think that this person is a long-term cornerstone to your business and you can really, really work well for them. Exciting times ahead for you. I'm excited for you. Believe. For those of you who like this video, you're watching, you're thinking, "This is great, I love it," please give it a thumbs up below. I love seeing those come in, they really make my day, keep me going, keep me energized, keep me wanting to do more videos for you. And if you have a question about bringing on a team or another question for your business, leave it in the comments below. I love reading those, I always do, I read every comment that comes in and I will make a video response for you if you ask a question. So thank you and I'll see you soon.
