BookThinkers and Evan Carmichael Live

Yeah, so during this conversation, like I was sharing, I think we should talk a little bit about Built to Serve. I finished up the book. I went through every exercise, and it was a really cool experience for me.

Oh, awesome.

I had done some of the exercises in Your One Word, but I think that now, a couple years later, having experienced a lot of personal growth, it was a different experience for me. And I was able to label things and articulate things and journal about things in a different way.

All right, I'm nervous. I'm excited. What do we got? What's the feedback? My voice just cracked.

So let's kick off with your who. So for anybody that's, that's watching right now, your who is really your core value. And Evan, you have a quote right in the beginning of the book actually that says everybody has a Michael Jordan talent at something. And so I thought that was really interesting. I hadn't heard people talk about that before, but we all have a core value. And as I started to reflect a little bit more about my core values, I was thinking that self-education equals happiness. And Evan brings, you know, Evan, you bring us, the readers, through an exercise about what makes us happy as well as what do we hate. And when we go through what do we hate, we're actually looking for the opposite of what do we hate. And so I kind of narrowed in on the word progress. which is also what you used for Tony Robbins. But I used progress as— and, and for those of the, uh, those of you that are watching that aren't very familiar with me or weren't watching some of my earlier content, progress for me matters a lot because I don't like laziness. I don't like unfulfillment. I don't like mediocrity. David Goggins always talks about the fact that it's so easy to be above average now because The bar is set so low. A lot of people accept mediocrity. So Evan, how do you feel about my word, my word progress there? I love it.

And I think why it's eye-opening is it allows you— once you figure out what your most important core value is, your who, it allows you to make smarter decisions going forward. So now you're only going to read books that deal with you gaining progress, which was already probably what you're going to do anyway. I mean, you look at the books behind you, but now you can— it just fine-tunes that lens. If you're going to hire a video editor or Book Thinkers, the new channel that you just launched, they're supporting the people now as you build and scale your business beyond yourself. They have to care about progress too. So it's great that they have video editing capabilities, or it's great that they can do a book review, but do they care about progress? It doesn't necessarily have to be their most important core value, but it has to be a part of them. And so if you were going to do a job ad for video editor, for example, it's like, I want a video editor who wants to bring progress to the world. It's like, that's the first line.

Yeah.

And what progress means to you. And the idea is that you're going to have people who will love that, and want to, want to come work for you, or will hate that and say, this is the stupidest job ad I've ever seen. Awesome.

Yeah.

Like, don't apply because we're not going to work well together. And so people often look at relationships, whether it's bringing a guest onto your show or reading books or hiring somebody or actual relationships, you know, girlfriend, boyfriend, husband, wife kind of thing. People will often look at the people in their life as more, what can you do for me? And like, what skill sets are complementary? And logic, think with the head. As opposed to, no, the most important thing is do we have similar values, because that's going to allow us to stay together for a long period of time.

Yeah, that's a really important reflection to have. And I like the idea of when I'm hiring people, use the word progress. And I've, you know, as, as we kind of go through this conversation, I'll define that a little bit more and talk about my why next. But progress is really important to me, and I think that it stems from a lot of fear and insecurity that I had early in my life. And then I intentionally embraced discomfort, which is something that you actually talk about in the book and we'll get to in a second. But I intentionally embraced discomfort and then I found progress. And my full credo, sort of as it evolved as I was journaling and kind of reworking as I continued to go through the book, was that I like progress in my health, in my wealth, and in my love— defining love as friends, family, and relationships. And so that's what I stand for. That's what I believe in. And that's why I feel fulfilled when I go to sleep at night. And it's really exciting to finally have a word, only as of 2 days ago, that I can use to share and articulate that feeling with other people. So I'm going to start to rebrand or continuously evolve Book Thinkers into more of a progress-based reading environment, which it sort of already was, like you talked about, but now I can help to define my audience a little bit more and talk about that kind of stuff, which is really valuable.

And here's the thing. So anybody in your life would tell you that you're all about progress and that that makes sense. Nick from, you know, 2090, if he was gonna come back and talk to Nick in 2020, 'cause we're gonna live to be super old, is telling you, dude, like more progress.

More progress.

Your biggest strength, your biggest strength is progress and everything you've done in your business and your health and everything, but it's still the greatest thing you need to work on.

Yeah. Yeah.

More progress.

And you kind of talked about that in here when you thought of yourself in the future, it's still believe and it's always going to be believe, you know, which is so important.

Your biggest challenge is you're not progressing enough.

It is. And I deal with that every day, but I love the process so much. I love it. I can't get enough of it. And you also said in here something that I thought was pretty funny. You're like, if, if somebody else was randomly plopped into my day, they should hate it. They should hate the process that I go through because my process, it's what makes me happy. And so when I tell people that, well, I read for hours a day and I work on this social content for hours a day. they think, oh, that's terrible. But I love it. I love it. I truly love it.

Awesome. I love how you keep holding up the book. I feel like I need to be holding it up here too all the time. I'll put it here, everybody. No, it's great. You're— my publisher would be very happy with you.

Yeah, I know. I'm sure. I'm sure. And another thing that you mentioned that you just commented on, which is interesting, is that People always ask me, what's your definition of success? And I talk about ultimate freedom, the ability to travel the world and have fun and support friends and family from, from a financial and security perspective. And they always say, well, you're never going to stop working. You always need to continuously progress in your life. You need to have, you know, milestones that are always growing, but that big lofty milestone isn't ever going to be achievable. And I don't want it to be achievable. It's always just making sure that I get better. You know, and yours is always helping entrepreneurs and believing, which is awesome.

Yeah. Success is progress for you.

Yeah.

As long as you feel like you could have $100 million in your bank account, but if you felt like you're waking up today and we're not progressing, you would not be happy.

Yeah. And a couple of years ago, I didn't realize that. And now I do, which is awesome. So another thing that I wanted to talk about and have you share a little bit with with the audience that's watching today and that will watch this after is the story about 350 videos and how long it took you to become comfortable in front of the camera.

Yeah, I guess talk about progress, right? So I have a YouTube channel, if you don't know my content, and I started 11 years ago, April 15th or something, 16th, 2009 was my first video upload. And I'm an introvert. This is not natural for me. I'm super shy and awkward and don't talk to the people on the airplane next to me. And I wanted to make videos because I'm a visual learner and I wanted to share what I had learned about entrepreneurship to other people, right? I think your purpose comes from your pain. That's in the book, The Why. Your why is whatever you struggled with, you want to help other people who are currently struggling with the same thing. And so I struggled with my own business, making $300 a month, feeling, you know, like a total loser. And what got me out was modeling success and learning from Bill Gates's story. And now I wanted to teach other people how they can model success. And so I made videos because I'm a visual learner, but I hated my first video. Like everybody, I mean, you always hate your first anything.

Yeah.

But I just kept going. You know, that first video is still up on the channel. You can go back and watch video 1, and I've kept every video up. And it took me 350 videos until I wasn't completely embarrassed by myself. Embarrassed. Like, I couldn't watch it back. If you started playing it, I had to shut it off. I couldn't watch anything over again. I just, I hated it. It was brutal. And then 700-something until I inspired myself.

Wow.

Where I watched the video back and like, huh, you know, I'm kind of starting to get good at this thing. 700 videos in. And so I think people, people quit on things way too soon. People quit a lot of times because they don't, they don't value the progress enough. They're looking at the results. They're looking at how many views did I get in my first video. My mom was my first comment. My sister was my second comment. And then some random dude was my third comment. And in a year of that first video being up, one year of a video, I had 3 comments, and those are the 3. And that's— I tell that story in the book too. But I think people just quit too soon on something, which is why having a strong why gives you the courage and the confidence and the boldness to keep going when you're not getting results. And then just trying to understand the progress that you have gotten better, that even though you're not getting the results yet, tying your self-worth to the effort and the progress that you're making Gives you the boldness to, to stay on and keep going.

I love that. And that energizes me so much because I came from a similar place. I didn't have as much of the self-criticism of my first couple of videos. But if we rewind farther back into my life, I had a lot of social anxieties and a fear of public speaking. And it took a lot of intentionally embracing discomfort to get over that. So the time that I started creating videos, you know, they were, they were still pretty rough around the edges. And I always tell people that ask me about this, you can't get to your 100th video without your first 99. And your first 99 are going to be really ugly and really uncomfortable. You're going to have to embrace the discomfort. But every single time you do it, it gets a little bit easier, just a little bit easier. And that's the progress that we're talking about. Which is really important.

Yeah, and I think expect to suck at the start of anything. Yeah, it doesn't mean that you suck as a human. And that's the, that's the gap that a lot of people make a mistake. They, they, I'm gonna make a YouTube video. Awesome. They make the first video, they think they're going to be amazing. They, they're not amazing. And so they never want to touch it again because they associate having a sucky outcome with you being a sucky person. Right? So if you attach yourself more to the progress, to the effort you're putting in, and say, hey, I'm starting to get better, even though the results aren't there yet, that's when you actually start to win. And so, yeah, I mean, I'm pumped that— how many people did I message 2 years ago, 3 years ago about my first book that now aren't around anymore?

Yeah.

You know, it's like they stopped their Instagram account, they stopped their YouTube channel. It's a whole new crop. A lot of the people who are doing it now Weren't around a couple years ago. And Nick's a good example. Like, that's how you start to win, is that even though it might have been a slow growth to that first 1,000 or first 5,000 or first 10,000, it starts to scale up as you do more content and as you get better.

It does. And you profiled Gary Vaynerchuk in the book. And Gary Vee, I consume a lot of his content because— and in some of his books too, he talks about the power of one, the audience of one. As long as you have one person that cares about what you're doing, you have one follower who actually wants to hear your message, you've made it. Every person that you layer on, on top of that, that's fantastic. But somebody cares. And so back when I only had a couple hundred followers and I was putting in just as much effort as I, as I do now, back when I had 100 followers, there were a couple book accounts that had 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 followers. And I thought, wow, How amazing would it be to get to that level someday? And then those accounts aren't even around anymore. And the accounts that I converse with on a daily basis came up with me and they weren't already there. So there's a big recycling of people who give up too soon and who let the insecurities and the fear crush them. And your book is a great platform to help people understand that it is a progress and that it takes time and to be patient. So. I think anybody who's sitting here that has those doubts and insecurities consume Evan's content and consume that book. It's fantastic.

And what I love about you too is that you're— you want everybody to progress with you. Like the amount of love you're showing to other people, whether it's authors or other book accounts. So like, hey, I want, I want, I want to progress myself as a human, but I want everybody to progress alongside me. It's like every time I take a step up, I want to pull somebody else with me and teach and motivate and, and have them learn and progress as well. It's beautiful, dude. I love it.

I love it. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. And it took a long time to get to this point. I mean, I always wanted to help, but it took a while to build this ecosystem. And now, I mean, talking about my why, it's helping people who struggle with those same insecurities and the same fears and anxieties so that they can feel as fulfilled as I do when I go to sleep at night. And then the how is connecting people to the same resources that improved my health and improved my wealth and improved my relationships with friends, family, etc. And it's that change from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset. Do you ever think about fixed versus growth mindsets?

I mean, I know Carol's work. I think I have the book. I'm myself not a huge reader, but I'm super familiar with the concept. Yeah, I think, I think for someone who's ready for a growth mindset, one of the biggest challenges is they're probably the most ambitious person that they know. Like, this is the problem for achievers. Chances are, even in your life, Nick, you're the most ambitious person in your circle, in your friends, your close friends, like who you went to high school with, your family, the people who are like directly around you in your city. You're the most ambitious person that you hang with on a regular basis. That's great, but it's also a problem. Like, who's, who's kicking your butt to say, Nick, dude, like, stop playing small. What are you doing? We got to progress. Let's go. We need more progress. Make it happen. So the people who have a growth mindset often need a push to grow more because their, their, their bar of who they're looking at is too low. They're capable of way more. The people who don't have a fixed mindset There's always the challenge, like, well, how do I give them one? Because I've learned every time you've learned something, you get this growth mindset, you naturally just want to give it to all the people around you. It's like, Mom and Dad and friends, like, why are you not growing? And it often leads to conflict. Like, why are these people not growing?

Exactly.

This can help them. This almost saved my life. Well, it can save your life. And they're not— you're coming in too hot an energy that they're not really willing to listen to or hear.

Yeah.

And so the way around it is thinking about, think about who you used to be before you had the growth mindset. Go back to Nick at whatever, 18 or 20 or whenever it's like Nick was not this Nick. And what would you say to go and talk to that guy to have him make the shift? Because he, that guy doesn't want to listen to 2020 Nick. And that guy doesn't want to listen to, definitely doesn't want to listen to 2020 Evan Carmichael. Way too hot, like way too hot energy level. Like, that guy's just motivational BS. I don't want to hear that guy. That's what he's gonna— but you can connect to that guy in a way that only you can because you've been through the journey. And so a lot of times it's really— it's one, just living your life, just doing your thing and not even trying to convince anybody, just continuously chasing down what you love. You'll often find this little chink in their armor, this little moment of weakness to say, hey man, How do you— how are you doing what you're doing? Because I want some of that too. And in that moment of weakness where they let their arms down, their guard down, that's when you go in and you help them. So the best way to actually help the people around you is to keep shining a bright light and doing amazing work and being happy more than trying to convince them that their life needs to change.

Wow, that's some pretty impactful advice. And that's something that I I do deal with every once in a while is, you know, I come on too strong and I push too much. And I think, let's see, on the back of the book you actually say, think about your 5 closest friends. Are they happy? Do they live lives with purpose? Do you? And that, that saying, the common saying, we're the average of the 5 people that we spend the most time with. Sometimes it's difficult to continuously elevate your circle. If the people that were at, you know, let's just say stage 1, When you move to stage 2, they don't want to come up to stage 2. How do you fill that circle? And for me, it's been books. I spend a lot of time with my, my mentors, my idols, and I read their biographies and books that they've contributed in and research about different subjects and stuff like that. And that's how I've been able to consistently progress in my life and elevate my circle. And you talk about You know, the fact that you're not super social outside of work, and I'm becoming less social outside of work. I love everybody. I want it. I want everybody to improve, but it's energy sucking sometimes for me to spend time with people who don't want to progress because that's what gives me the most fulfillment and that's what makes me the happiest. Does that make sense?

Yeah. And I think if you're going to push somebody, Understanding their who is the most important first step.

Yeah.

Because if I wanted to push you, it's so easy for me to default to belief. Like, Nick, you got to believe in yourself more. Nick, like, here's it. That's, that's the world I live in. But if I want to push you on something, it has to be through progress. Nick, you have to, you have to have more progress.

Yeah. When I read your book, I read it through the lens of myself, not how I can help Other people. And so that's a really interesting takeaway for me.

When I wrote the book, that's what I was writing it for, is a personal tool. But, but people have been buying the book in, in companies and for their teams. Because they send it to— this one guy just bought the book for like 15 people on his team. And I didn't understand why he was doing this because I want to understand what their who and their why and their how was. Because when I understand that, if I know that your most important core value is progress, I know how to talk to you. I know how to push you on the things that you need. Somebody else's who might be loyalty. I talk to them in a totally different way than somebody who really values progress.

Yeah.

It's not that you don't value loyalty. Of course you do. But it's not as important as progress. So if I'm just saying loyalty, loyalty, loyalty, it's not going to actually move the needle. We're back in progress. Now I've hit you right at the core and it will force you into that zone of discomfort that you were talking about earlier.

That's such an interesting adaptation of the book, and I can 100% see how valuable that is, both for me and for other people. So I'm going to, you know, this is definitely a book that I'm going to start gifting to a lot of people around me, and then that'll be a reciprocal relationship where I'm able to help them more efficiently and they're able to help me And understand me more efficiently, both for business partners, for friends, for family, for loved ones, but for total strangers as well. I get a lot of people that— and I know you do too— that ask for help all the time. It's ask, ask, ask. And sometimes it's, it's hard to give just a general blanket statement that's going to apply to somebody without understanding their situation. So having them identify themselves and understand their who more efficiently. That's pretty powerful.

I like that a lot. Yeah, and you can sneak it in. Like, if you— if it's your mom that you're trying to change, if you understood what her most— like, maybe her most important value was family. And like, it's not that you don't care about family, it's just not as— it's not how you see the world. But if you're trying to get her to make a change, if you position it through the lens of family, she's way more likely to listen to you If you're talking about how you want to grow, like if she didn't want you to be an entrepreneur and you're really, you know, struggling with that decision, be an entrepreneur or go get some job, and you know that she filters through family, if you position it as, I need to try this because if I don't, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I might regret it my whole life and, and I don't want that. Like if you position it through that and vulnerability more than, I need to progress, I need to feel like I'm progressing all the time.

Yeah.

And I won't get my progress working at some big company. She's way more likely to hear the conversation and to actually be more supportive. Yeah, it's— it was not intentional. It's not what I designed the book for, but it's super cool to see how people are using it. It makes a lot of sense. It was an accidental surprise that has a huge impact if you want to impact the lives of other people.

It's a better version of the Myers-Briggs or something like that.

Yeah, I think it is. Honestly, I think it is.

I do too.

Yeah, it's, it's like it's love languages, but at a core value level.

Yeah. Wow. That's pretty great. And there's a quote in the book where you kind of title a section, you say, what's the fastest way to learn Italian? Go to Italy. And when I think about what we're— what we were just talking about, it's what's the fastest way to help somebody else? It's To understand their who and understand their why. And that's something that you need to dive into immediately. Otherwise, like learning the language becomes much more difficult. So I really, you know, that, that was a huge, big takeaway for me. So I appreciate that, Evan.

Cool, man. Glad to help.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, that sort of wraps up the conversation that I wanted to have with you today. I know that we started a couple minutes late, but again, just Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me, and I know we'll continue to converse in a work setting, you know, moving forward and stuff like that. And I wish you the ultimate success. And again, just thank you for everything that you've done and for sending me the book, and this is going to help a lot of people.

I love it, man. Now, what, what is a, uh, next level Nick progress activity that you can do in the next 2 weeks that's outside your comfort zone?

Yeah, it's a great question. Well, preface the beginning of my answer, I'll say that embracing discomfort intentionally has allowed me to grow so rapidly. And because I didn't come from a place where I had a ton of hardship— I love my parents, they were amazing to me, I love my friends, school experience was fantastic— I didn't grow up with a lot of the natural grit that other people might experience. So I've had to seek that discomfort intentionally. And I've done everything from, you know, doing pushups in the middle of a bar when one of my friends catches a verbal pause because I'm trying to make— improve my speech and asking for 5% off in the line at Starbucks from The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. A lot of other stuff. Getting on Instagram Live, which is less preparation. That's something that I definitely feel a little bit uncomfortable with. It's Live conversation, not a pre-scripted conversation like I have with a lot of people on Book Thinkers. So those are examples of things that I've done in the past. I don't know how to answer your question right off the bat, but I'll put some good thought into it. Do you have any, maybe any recommendations?

Whatever makes your heart beat quickly. The boom boom boom test. If your heart's going like this, you think of something. I would love— this is My next idea and you're scared of it, that's the thing you have to go off and do. Because everything you've done is great. I love it, man. You're growing. It's amazing. You're progressing way faster than most people, but now it's time to find— you're still just in like 3rd gear. So what's 4th gear?

How do I progress faster? How do I dump more fuel onto the fire? So that's my reflection from our conversation. That's my homework. And I will encourage my friends, family, my network to help push me from a progress standpoint. Because you're right, a lot of people just pat me on the back and that's not helping me. You know, that's not—

Beyond that, you're tapping yourself on the back.

I am.

Which is great, which is great. But in even how I asked you that question, your response was to give me like 4 things that you're proud of that you've done, push-ups and all this. Awesome. You're top— you're celebrating your own small wins, which is awesome. Now you got to be also equally your biggest fan and your biggest push to say, I suck. Like, I, I'm just— I'm in— I'm not even in gear 3. This is gear 1 compared to what I'm gonna be. And, and I have to be in an urgency getting to gear 2. Like, it's not important enough because of where you've gotten and the air is thinner now.

Yeah.

And, and When you, when you love yourself, you have to go harder. When you don't love yourself, you have to love yourself more, right? So like, if you were really down and saying, I'm not progressing enough, then that's the time to pat yourself on the back and say, no, like, look how much I've done. I did the push-ups. But when you're living in the mode of like, I'm amazing, now you got to go harder and say, I suck. I'm just getting started. Let's go.

What a fantastic challenge. So my, my homework will be to Reflect on that and then post a video. I'll tag you in the video and I'll talk about some of the challenges that I'm going to do in the next couple weeks that totally make my heart go wild.

And yeah, yeah, yeah, it's got to be a legit, legit causing you anxiety, heart beating like this.

Yeah.

And then whether, whether you get the result or not, just the fact that you're willing to try and make progress on it is the entire victory. I'm excited, dude. I can't wait.

Me too. I don't know what they are yet, but I'm already getting anxious thinking about it, which is exactly what I need to feel.

Yep.

Evan, again, thank you so much, man. Do you have any other questions for me or any other challenges for me before we jump off?

That's it. No, like within the next 2 weeks, something has to happen.

I promise it will.

And I know it will. I know it will.

I will document it. Cool, man.

Tag me. Can't wait to see it. If I don't comment, then DM me because I always see the DMs. I don't always see the tags because it's crazy. But, um, yeah, man, I'm pumped. I can't wait.

Awesome. Awesome. Well, again, thank you so much. I saw the comments have just been flooding in here, so I'm going to go back through them later today and answer some popular questions, make you aware of anything that we should be aware of. But it looks like we got a really, a really good audience today, a lot of really cool feedback and Now I'm about to get uncomfortable, which I love.

Hey, you know what? I want to throw one more in. Nick will pick an audience member who's going to, who's going to take the Boom Boom Boom test themselves. You're going to do one crazy scary thing that's outside your comfort zone. I'm going to send a signed copy of Built to Serve to. Nick gets to pick. So however you want to pick that, Nick. That's the time.

Everybody, you better, you better send me some uncomfortable things that you're doing. And, uh, yeah, Evan, I'll pick that up.

Send Nick a DM with the uncomfortable thing you're gonna do in the next 2 weeks that makes you scared.

Love it. Awesome, Evan.

Thank you, man. Much love.

Yeah, thank you. Much love. We'll be, we'll be in touch soon.

Sounds good.

Awesome. Take care. Bye.