Evan Carmichael ON: Suicide, Parenting & Belief

I'd like to ship you a free copy of my book Habits of High Performers. If you come and join the 2026 goal setting workshop, I will ship you one of these today. The link is in the notes. Please come and join me to set up the very best 2026 you could imagine. If you've set up goals in the past or New Year's resolutions and they haven't substantiated, I'm here to help you across all the key pillars of your life nail your goals. I'll see you there. Welcome to Life on Purpose. My name is James Laughlin, former seven time world champion musician and now success coach to leaders and high performers. Each week I bring you an inspiring leader or expert to help you live your life on purpose. Thanks for taking the time to connect today and investing in yourself. Enjoy the show.

Napoleon Hill once said, some people dream of success while others wake up and work hard at it. Vincent Van Gogh said, if you hear a voice within you say you cannot paint, then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced. Evan Carmichael believes in entrepreneurs. Gary Vaynerchuk called him the DJ who inspires people. And Ed Mylett called him the modern day Napoleon Hill. At 19, he built and then sold a biotech software company. At 22, he was a venture capitalist raising 500k to 50 million. He now runs a YouTube channel for entrepreneurs with over 2 million subscribers and 300 million views. He's wrote four books and speaks globally. He wants to solve the world's biggest problem. People don't believe in themselves enough. Forbes named him one of the world's top 40 social marketing talents and Inc. Magazine named him one of the hundred great leadership speakers that you need to know. He has set two world records, uses a trampoline and stand up desk, owns Canada's largest salsa dance studio where he met his wife and has a giant Doritos bag in front of him all day long to remind him that he is stronger than the Doritos. Toronto is his home and he's a husband, father and TSM fan. His new book is came out in March 2020 and it's called Built to Serve. Folks. Let's do it. Here we go. Welcome to Evan Carmichael.

Hey. Hey Evan. A massive welcome. Thank you so much for joining me.

Thanks a lot James. Love the energy and great to be here man.

Yeah. Welcome in from Toronto, Canada. In this crazy time of COVID but amazing to see that what you're doing and have been doing for the last year is pumping out amazing inspirational stuff on YouTube you've been writing books. It's just been incredible. And the one thing I read recently was that INC Magazine named you one of the hundred greatest leadership speakers that people have got to know. So the question I had for you there around that was, what have you done to get radically clear on who you are, who you serve, and what your mission is?

I guide people through a process called who I How. It's in my book Built to Serve, and the who is your single most important core value. So, James, you have to pick, like, what's your most important core value as a human?

Love.

Love. Great. Like, already we know a lot about James, and James knows a lot about James, right? So if your most important value, core value is love, and James is looking to get a new YouTube editor or grow his team, right.

He needs to lead with love. Like, the first line of the job description is, I need a video editor who wants to spread more love in this world. And some people would look at that and say, that is the stupidest thing I've ever seen in my life. Great. Like, don't apply. You're not gonna. You're not gonna jam well with James. Right? And other people will say, holy cow, this is amazing. Nobody does this. I hate my job working for this person. Doing video today. Now I want to go work with James. And so you start to now attract the right people into your life as well by leading with your most important core value. Whenever you're not happy, there's a lack of love somewhere in your life. So if James isn't happy right now, he either doesn't love himself enough for something or. Or he's not feeling the love from you guys watching this video. So make sure you drop some love here on this. On this episode or somebody close, right? Maybe lost a loved one, but love is the operating system, which is. Which is great awareness. I think that's more awareness than what most people have in their life. So that's your starting point. That's the blueprint. That's the. That's the roadmap. The roadmap. The happiness is always love. And for everybody, it's slightly different. Mine is believe, but it's always something positive. I've never had somebody's who be death or hate or something. Right. Which also shows me that people are good. I believe people are good. I think deep down we're good. We're just in a lot of pain. And when you're in pain, you may not always do the things that you're most proud of. I haven't Done. If I'm in a lot of pain, I don't always spread as much believe as I would want to, right? And so people are good. They're just in a lot of pain. And that can create a lot of empathy and understanding. And maybe you don't retaliate as so much, but that's. That's the who, then the why is your purpose. And your purpose comes from your pain. You don't have to sit on a Mountain for 10 years meditating or journaling or whatever to figure out your purpose. You struggled, you suffered with something, and you got through it. Where you are now is. It may feel like impossible to compare to who you used to be. Go back to like your five year, five years ago or 10 years ago, and you look at where you're at right now, it's like, I'm not that. I can't be that guy. You're an impossibility. And yet you made it. You did it. There are millions of people who currently are the you from five years ago, and they need your help, and you want to help them. And you're going to do it by love. And other people do it through their own ways. But that's the easiest way to find your purpose. It's the number one question that I get asked, how do I find my purpose? How do I find my passion? It's easy. It comes from your pain. What did you struggle with? Because love just for you is not enough. You have to share it. Right? I was on another interview and the guy said, well, he really cares about momentum. Like, great, you love momentum. But what's even better than you getting momentum is the giving momentum to other people. You want other people to get momentum. As much as it's great for James to feel love himself, he wants you to love yourself more. He wants you to dish more love out into the world. Like, that's the mission he's on. And that'll never get old. James won't be 120 years old all of a sudden saying, you know what? I don't care about love anymore. Not my thing.

If anything, is just going to be more double down on it.

So you know, your who is your most important core value. Your why is your purpose, and your purpose comes from your pain. And then the how is how did. However you got out of the hole that you were in is teachable to other people.

So for me was struggling as an entrepreneur. The thing that saved me was modeling success. And I looked at Bill Gates and how he started his business. I learned from That I applied it to my company. I started to win when before that was just straight losses. And so what have I done for the past 20 years is help other people model success so that they can believe in themselves. Right? So when you figure out those three things, I think it becomes the ultimate unlock for a happy and purposeful life.

That's amazing. Thank you so much for sharing that, Evan. That's just pure gold. And I want you to think about if you could go back to when you were starting out on this aspect of your career. If there's one piece of advice you could have given yourself to help kind of short cut some things or to avoid some pain, what would you say to yourself?

So I used to hate this question because I can't go back, right? It's like one, I'm grateful for where I'm at right now and if you change something, maybe butterfly effect and now I fast forward and we're all robots or something. But two, I can't, I can't go back and talk to 19 year old Evan. But then I ended up loving this question because I realized first off, there's only one answer. The answer is you're who? My message to Evan, younger Evan is to believe in himself more. James message to younger James is to spread more love. Love yourself more and love others more. That's the only message. Like at the end of the day, that's all younger James needs to hear. Love yourself more and love others more and you'll figure out the rest.

Evan. Believe in yourself more and believe in others more. Like that's the only answer that if you had to really, if you're given a thousand years to think about what the message would be, that's what you would come down to. It's not make a YouTube video one year earlier or something, right? But why I love the question is because.

95 year old Evan coming back and talking to 40 year old Evan, it's the same answer.

95 year old James talking to 2021 James. It's the same answer. Mm, it's still James right now in 2021. Love yourself more and love others more. That's powerful and it's practical, right? Because I can't go talk to 19 year old Evan, but I can. But knowing that now is like, man, I still need that. And so now we got the chills as I'm talking about it because it's something that you can actually take action on today. And it's the same for everybody watching or listening, whatever that most important core value is for you. People might say, well, James, but you already have so much love. How can you have more love? Like, you're the love guy, Evan, you're the believe guy. How could you have more believe? But you know that there's. This is not the fullest extent of love and what that means, you know that there's many more layers of self love and many more layers of being able to give love and help others feel the love than what you're doing right now. It doesn't disparage all the work that you've done to get here, but it's knowing that there's still this mountain I need to climb and that's still the lens through which I have to make those decisions. So it ends up being a super practical, super helpful question where I didn't recognize that the first time through when people started asking me that.

Fantastic, thank you. And I love that believe is who you're about. I got emails from you and your team and always at the bottom, believe, team, believe. I love it. You reinforce that value. Now, here in New Zealand, I worked in a school for about 14 years and we had. In New Zealand itself as a country.

What time is it there for you? Right now? It is 10am okay, that's not as bad as I thought. I thought it was like, he's getting up at 5am you got way too much energy.

At 4:30 every morning. I'd happily do an interview with you at five.

All right. Okay, cool. Good. Anyway, welcome from New Zealand. Okay. Sorry to interrupt you.

Not at all. So with the highest teenage suicide rate in the oecd, and it's been that way for a while. And so when I was working at this school, there was a number of kids who committed suicide. And it sent me on this mission. And I thought, okay, I need to find out why, what can I do? How can I help serve? And it came down to. I discovered that fatherhood was one of the most important ingredients in a young person's life to give them meaning, to make them feel loved, to help them understand who they are and believe in themselves. So have you got any advice? Because I know you're a dad. Do you have any advice to other parents out there in terms of how they can help their children believe in themselves?

Step one is tell them, like, tell them that you believe in them. The greatest bit of advice my parents gave me and for the video viewers, they're on the wall behind me here. So I've got five canvases in my office, and in the middle is my Parents and me when I'm 8 or 9 years old, and they would always tell me that you're Evan Strilli Carmichael, you could do anything that you believe that you can. And at the beginning, I don't know. I don't know how much of it sunk in. It's like, okay, yeah, another thing that they're saying. But think about how often parents say the opposite. Like, you're such a dummy. You know, you're never going to get this. What makes you think you could go be a astronaut, Right. Or whatever? And, you know, I wanted to be a baseball player during the season and a police officer in the off season. And my parents never told me that I couldn't. You know, even though it's unrealistic and nobody's done it, they always just say, hey, you're Evangeli Karmica. You can do anything you believe that you can. And it just reinforced it. And then I think the second thing that they did super well. So actually, it's just back to the first one. Before my son goes to sleep, or nieces or nephews will have a ritual where it's for my son, it's like Hayden, his name, Hayden can do. And then he says anything. So I'll say, hayden can do and his anything. And that's like the last thing before he goes to bed. And for my nieces and nephews, they have their own, you know, anything, everything. You know, they're picking their own anything she wants. Like, they're picking their own version. But that's a nighttime ritual that we always go through. And then the second thing I think is just taking an interest in what they're doing and being an active participant in it. You could teach parenting lessons much more through how you're doing it yourself versus what you're saying. Right. There's a great line by Francis Assisi, the saint, who said, I preach the gospel always, and sometimes I use words.

And so your job is to spread your message always. Right. James is going to spread love always. I'm trying to spread believe always. And it's in the everyday tasks that you can do it. So my son likes to play Minecraft.

And so great. What's Minecraft? You know, and I joined Minecraft and we have a server together, and I'm playing Minecraft with him. What's that?

That's so good.

Yeah. And people think video games are a waste of time. Video games are the greatest. Not even video games. Spending quality time with your kids in a. In an environment that's safe and Comfortable for them is the greatest opportunity for you to teach as a parent. It's not just when they've been.

They've been let down or they didn't study, or they snuck chocolate into their bedroom or like, whatever, you know, all the stupid things kids do.

But when I play Minecraft with my son.

What happens when he dies and he loses all of his stuff? You know, does he rage, quit? You know, what happens when we're trying to build a house together? You know, Hey, I need. I need iron. You got some wood? Can I have some wood? No. Let's trade, right? Let's do this together. How do you approach. Because there's life lessons in every single situation. And when you're doing it inside a medium that they care about instead of one that you care about, like, let's watch this educational video together. It's probably not going to fly, right?

Yeah.

And so. But you could. You could teach your message in how you show up and how you do and they see you. And more important is how you're actually living your life. You want your kids to be happy. You want your kids to have love. Love yourself.

Right. I could spread believe as much as I want, but. But I need to believe in myself and I need to show him that I believe in myself. Yeah.

The actions speak louder than the words.

Yeah. And so just try to be involved with them on the things that they care about, because there's lots of. You don't even have to say it. Just watching how you react. Like when I go off and I get my diamond pickaxe with all the enchantments and then I die, how do I react? Do I rage, quit, and, like, throw my computer out of the room and say, this is stupid. I hate this game? It's the worst thing, Right? What do you think they're going to do? They're going to copy this, dad?

Totally.

As opposed to saying, oh, okay, we rebuild. Let's go.

So good.

Yeah, let's go. We rebuild. We rebuild. Let's go. Right.

And when you think about fatherhood, like, what does being a dad mean to you?

Hey, James here. I wanted to take a quick moment to let you know about something. Look, I get asked to deliver keynotes and workshops for teams and companies on all over the world, from London to Antarctica, from America to Australasia, from armies to small businesses to large corporates to sports teams. But I go in and deliver keynotes around the mindset of high performers, around the habits of high performers, about how we navigate change. If you would like me to come and speak to your team or speak at your conference or deliver a bespoke workshop. Please get in touch with my team. Carolinejlochlan.com will be able to help. I also make sure that we put that in the show notes.

What does being a dad mean to me? I think the responsibility to.

Care for somebody, right? Like he's my. I made him, you know, he's a. He's a piece of me and he's my responsibility at least until he gets to be able to look out for himself. He's 11 now, so he's still got some time before he gets to that point. And.

I carry the weight of that responsibility. You know, I think all of us will think, are we good enough? Did we spend enough time? Did we say the right thing? Did we show how we wanted to show up.

When they, when they get into a fight at school or bad grades? Like, did I do the right thing afterwards that I should I have punished him? Should I have gone easier? This is constant judgment. And especially your first time through, you don't know what you're doing. You're doing what your parents did probably. And you may not even like what your parents did, but it's still the only thing you know. So you're repeating the same patterns and habits and loops, right? So I think the thing that helps me is one again through the lens of belief. Does this help him believe in himself more?

Yes or no. And that can be a great.

Benchmark, especially when you're angry or upset and it's easy to be the best you when everything is great and you all slept in and everything's going, you know, super well in business and at home it's when you're tired and the dog was vomiting all night and whatever. Like, are you going to show up as your best self? Probably not. So to try to put the brakes on and say, hey, is this going to help him believe in himself more then that, that eight second question might just give you a moment of clarity or at least a pause that you need from doing something that you might later regret.

And then the second thing is just my intention was good. Like how do you stop the judgment looking backwards? Oh, I wish I did that, or I wish I did this or I hope I don't mess him up or I hope I didn't put him on the wrong path. My intention was good. Like as long as your intention is good, you do the best you can with what you have. If the intention is good, then just trust that the love will come Through.

I love that. That's incredible. I really do. And I want to say, like Ed Mylett put it perfectly, said, you're like the modern day Napoleon Hill. What a compliment. And it's so true. I came across your videos a number of years ago and just been consuming the amazing content. So what was. If there was one person that really inspired you in the thought leadership sphere, in the personal development sphere, who was that one person or that one book that got you on that track?

I mean, my. My easy answer is my parents, but they're not in the personal development sphere.

But they had a huge impact on me as a human. Not. Not as a entrepreneur because they're not teaching me business lessons, but as a human and how to show up and how to treat people. A lot of this, the combination of my mom and my dad together.

You know, apart from that, I just. I pulled different things from different people.

Ed was super generous. Ed. I hadn't met him before. I mean, we knew of each other when connected on Instagram and stuff. But when I came to California, he said, hey, come over to my house. How long you in town for? Come. I was like, I'm only in San Diego for this day. He's like, okay, I'll make it work. And so he pushed his schedule to make time for me to come over to his house and hosted me for the evening. Right? And like, no rush, no, like, okay, I got to get out of here for something else, you know, and generous with his time, generous with his words, with. With compliments like that. So it's like, okay, how do I. How can I be more generous? You know, how do I. Would I have done that? James said, he's going to be here. What I have said, james, come over.

You know, you make it happen, dude.

Right? And so. But everybody teaches me a slightly different lesson of one that need to hear. And I think that's what I've learned the most, is my goal isn't to be the next Steve Jobs or Kanye west or whoever. You. Your goal is to be the best you, but to do that, you pull different pieces. So I want to be a visionary like Steve Jobs, but not a father like Steve Jobs. I want to be a father like my father, but not a visionary like my father. Right? So you're pulling different pieces from different people to help you puzzle together how to be the best you.

And at the beginning, when I started this, I didn't know any of these people. I didn't know Ed or Tony or Brendan or any of these guys. So it's been super fun to actually hang out and spend time together and have them on and do stuff off camera together too. And all of them have taught me slightly different lessons. It's still within the same realm of, again, helping me believe in myself and do great things. But the way they do it, what they say, but also how they act like Ed didn't tell me, evan, you have to be more generous. It was by him being generous that I want to be more generous. Right. It's parenting. It's just micro parenting.

I love it. So, so cool. Look, I've got one last question for you before we wrap up. So the podcast is all about living life on purpose. So what's your definition of purpose? Living a life on purpose?

I'd say it's waking up every day and feeling like the work I'm about to do matters, right? So if you go back and think about your who, I, how and the why is your purpose and your purpose comes from your pain. I want to help 19 year old Evans out there. All the entrepreneurs who are struggling to get going, who feel like they're not good enough, who, you know, don't have the connections or resources to make things happen, and who are worried maybe I made the biggest mistake of my life starting this business instead of going to get a job. Right? That's 19 year old Evan. And there's millions of those people in North America and New Zealand. They're everywhere. That's everybody.

I want to wake up every day and feel like today matters. I want to look at my calendar and say, oh, I'm pumped to talk to James and be on his show and spread the message to New Zealand too. Today it's going to be awesome. I think when people wake up and they feel like today doesn't matter, especially to somebody else, like what I do today doesn't matter to anybody else, nobody will care. My boss won't care. My customers won't care. My husband or wife won't care. My kids won't care. Nobody cares. If that's how you wake up every day, that's the fast path to depression. We talked about depression, talked about suicide. Why? Why are people suicidal? Because they feel like they don't matter, that they don't matter, that they're not doing work that matters, that nobody cares. Nobody ever will care. And so what's the point of even being here, right? The path through is to shift it to say if you could feel like today matter, even if you're going to do one thing today that matters, it matters. It matters if I show up for James or not. It matters if I make a YouTube video or not. It matters if I write a book or not. Like I feel the connection to the purpose, then that's the path to get out of depression, out of suicide and into a meaningful on purpose life that you can be proud of for yourself, but then also to gift to other people. Because as you make your climb out of the hole, other people will be inspired by you and say, huh, he can do it. Maybe I can too. And that will be the ultimate juice of life. Because you're built to serve. You want to help. Doing it for yourself is not enough. You need to do it for other people. And that's a drug that you should get addicted to.

I love that. Guys, please go and grab Built to Serve by Evan Carmichael at his website, Evan Carmichael dot com. What you just said there, Evan, was gold and it comes from the heart and you truly show up. And I want to thank you for showing up on the show today and serving. It was just an incredible, amazing opportunity to connect with you. So thank you.

Awesome. Thanks for having me, James. Appreciate you, man.

Cheers, buddy.

Thank you so much for listening in today and investing in your own personal growth. Please hit that subscribe button and I would love, love, love if you'd leave me a rating and review as it really helps me to impact more people. I've got some amazing guests lined up in the coming weeks and folks, it's that time. Get out there and live life on purpose.

Sam.