Episode 036: Evan Carmichael

Full Transcript

Rock Thomas: Hey, welcome to another session of the #IAMMovement podcast. In this session, you’re in for a treat because today’s guest is another Canadian like me.

Rock Thomas: He’s very charismatic and he’s very generous with his knowledge, Evan Carmichael believes in entrepreneurship at 19 he built and then sold a biotech software company.

Rock Thomas: At 22 he was a venture capitalist, helping to raise up to $15 million and now in the true theme of being an entrepreneur. He runs Evan Carmichael calm, a popular website for entrepreneurs.

Rock Thomas: He breathes and believes entrepreneurship, in fact he’s obsessed with aiming to help 1 billion entrepreneurs, change the world. He has set two World Records using a stand up desk.

Rock Thomas: And rides a vest bump raises funds for Kiva. He likes to wear five toe shoes and created entrepreneur trading cards. He speaks globally.

Rock Thomas: But Toronto is his home. He loves being married. He’s got a son. He loves salsa dancing. In fact, he owns. I believe the largest salsa dancing club in Canada. He likes DJ league of legends and the Toronto Blue Jays. So without any further ado, let me welcome to today’s podcast Evan Carmichael.

Evan Carmichael: Great to be here. Rock. Thanks for having me.

Rock Thomas: Yeah, my pleasure. So to fellow Canadians loving the personal development field. You’ve met with a lot of people that

Rock Thomas: I’ve met with or that I idolize I’ve been working with Tony for 20 years you got at my last you got a bunch of people, let’s work this backwards. How did you get to where you are today?

Evan Carmichael: Good question. So I think your purpose comes in your pain. So I think whatever you struggle with, The most with

Evan Carmichael: As a human what you felt the most worthless is the thing that you want to then help other people through. And so I struggled so much as an entrepreneur myself in my first business that now I want to help other people build their businesses and become successful entrepreneurs.

Evan Carmichael: My biggest core value is believe it’s my one word. It’s what I built my entire you know business life brand around

Evan Carmichael: And the thing that saved me and my first business was modeling success by I had a software company, but looking at how Bill Gates built his business. I was able to build mine.

Evan Carmichael: And so for the past 20 years I’ve just been teaching other people how they can model success as well and it’s led me to be able to meet some of the people who you still only make videos on so super grateful for.

Rock Thomas: So tell us a little bit about you own the, the biggest dance studio in Canada is it

Evan Carmichael: For salsa yeah I

Evan Carmichael: Know, Dan salsa.

Evan Carmichael: That’s I’m relatively new acquisition. I was an investor in it. And then, and then took over the business and will teach 5000 people a year how to dance salsa so super fun. That’s how I met my wife.

Evan Carmichael: It’s not the typical business, I would get involved in because it’s harder to scale versus an online business.

Evan Carmichael: And as is

Evan Carmichael: Right now in the Corona virus era is shut down because we can’t get social distancing and salsa dancing does not work well together. Yeah.

Evan Carmichael: But I took up salsa dancing, because it’s one of those things that I love, I love the idea of it. I love doing it. I went and didn’t listen to my head.

Evan Carmichael: Yeah, so I on paper didn’t look like I should. I’m too tall. I don’t speak Spanish. I take big steps.

Evan Carmichael: I didn’t learn

Evan Carmichael: Dancing growing up, but I just, I took one class and I loved it and just wanted to keep doing it. And then eventually invest into one of the businesses and then took it over and now grown it up. So it’s more labor of love.

Evan Carmichael: Than anything else. I mean, it’s a profitable business but I’m in it because of how much I genuinely love it.

Rock Thomas: That’s beautiful. Moving the body’s a great thing. Suck a little bit about your build to serve. What’s the, what’s the core message behind that. What do you want people to get from that.

Evan Carmichael: New book just came out built the serve the idea is, humans are built to serve and that if you’re not happy because you’re not serving

Evan Carmichael: Either the world you know rock and I have a big ambition, we want to serve the world we want to serve many people and have a deep impact with them and chances are your listeners.

Evan Carmichael: Your viewers are along the same path, but some people are built to serve the world, other people are just built to serve the 25 closest people to them.

Evan Carmichael: Kind of close knit family, maybe not giant mission but you’re still built the serve if you’re not happy because you’re not serving

Evan Carmichael: They did functional MRI. Some people’s brains and found that when when you’re serving others and helping others it touches the same part of your brain is having food and having sex, which also both pretty important human human

Evan Carmichael: Surviving cancer survival. You know, one, you’re dead without and one, you’re just really not happy with that.

Evan Carmichael: And so the servant is also in there like if you’re not happy and you haven’t been happy for a while. There’s probably been a sustained period of of not serving others and feeling like the work that you do, doesn’t matter to anybody that it’s not

Evan Carmichael: having an impact.

Evan Carmichael: And so the point of the book is to one just shine a light on that put this magnifying glass in your life and say, hey,

Evan Carmichael: You can fix this by serving other people and then giving people a way on how to actually do it. So not all services equal

Evan Carmichael: You know, holding the door for somebody or buying a cup of coffee for the person behind you in line. This is great. It is good.

Evan Carmichael: But it’s knowing they’re nowhere near as good as helping people go through the thing that you went through and seeing the hope and energy enjoy light up in the Rye, so they feel like they can do it too.

Rock Thomas: Yeah, I love that. How much of that weaves into your philosophy around, you know, the fact that people just don’t believe in themselves.

Evan Carmichael: A lot i think it’s it’s the. I call it the world’s number one problem I think the biggest problem in the world is people just don’t believe in themselves enough

Evan Carmichael: I like to say everybody has Michael Jordan level talent. It’s something but they just haven’t found it. I don’t believe in themselves enough to go chase it down.

Evan Carmichael: Whatever other problem, you know, cancer, great. I think the woman who solves cancer is a manager at McDonald’s because she never believed in herself enough to go chase down a career in medicine.

Evan Carmichael: And so I think I mean times into I am as well, like what I am mean and I am believing in myself to go chase down that big thing to say I am something, but then not believe it.

Evan Carmichael: Means you don’t follow through. Right. It’s not actually true to you. And so I was probably why we’re talking here together you invited me on the show that our missions are, you know, aligned. We’re just attacking it from two slightly different points of view.

Rock Thomas: Totally. And the whole idea behind the IM movement is that our loved ones. Our parents are caretakers may have given us a label that we believed

Rock Thomas: But we shouldn’t we should doubt it, but we believe it, and instead we doubt the things that we should believe so we might, you know, believe that we’re ugly or short or too tall or whatever.

Rock Thomas: And instead of leaning into that we end up believing it and becoming really a smaller version of ourselves.

Evan Carmichael: And so it’s so important right now. And sorry to cut you off, just wanted to touch on that for a second because

Rock Thomas: I think

Evan Carmichael: I think your parents. I have a saying where your parents or pilgrims were your parents the opportunities available to you. So I turned 40

Evan Carmichael: In May, so coming up on 40 the opportunities available to me, I’d 40 compared to what my parents had at 40 is vastly different.

Evan Carmichael: And so for people listening, especially if you’re, you know, a younger demographic if you’re 1819 2532 whatever the opportunities available to you.

Evan Carmichael: As a 25 year old compared to what your parents had at 25 is insanely different I’m looking at my son who’s, who’s going to be 11 who’s

Evan Carmichael: Who’s got a laptop and a school you kidding me like I didn’t have a laptop in grade six like this didn’t happen. And so your parents love you probably

Evan Carmichael: Probably is a good chance they love you. They’re just operating them to different operating systems that you’re there.

Evan Carmichael: Pilgrims they just want you to see success but success looks totally different, because they don’t understand the world you’re living in. So actually, with empathy around that before, before moving to

Evan Carmichael: What I’m going to do with my life. Like, people say, well why don’t my parents support me and why don’t these people, they probably love you.

Evan Carmichael: And they think they’re supporting you and so it starts. It’s really hard sometimes for kids to become adults in the relationship. You need to be an adult for your parents.

Evan Carmichael: You need to be the one who takes the higher road, you need to be the one who has empathy for them and stop expecting them to always support you on the things that you want to do, right, it’s really hard to make that mind switching. But when you do you recognize. I’m the adult

Evan Carmichael: Then, then I think that’s actually when you can lean into to believe in yourself. I am to create the new life and future that you want for yourself.

Rock Thomas: I really liked that perspective, because I think a lot of the elderly with Google have been outcasts now used to be that we had to get the wisdom from the elderly and now the young generations tend to lean toward I don’t really need that. Does that make sense?

Evan Carmichael: Yeah, and I think there’s definitely time and place. I think

Evan Carmichael: I have my parents on my wall behind me here. So I’ve got five giant canvases on my wall. These are pretty big canvases. And there’s a picture of me when I’m eight or nine years old, my parents and above me and my parents are still alive, you know, in their 70s.

Evan Carmichael: And they’re still there, still, who I go to for

Evan Carmichael: Their rock intensive belief, right, they would tell me I’m Africa’s really Carmichael, I can do anything that I believe that I can be like the message repeated in my head over and over and over again.

Evan Carmichael: And so far for how to be a human. I think there’s still a lot of great life lessons that you can learn from

Evan Carmichael: From your elders from your parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, people in the community. I think there’s still a lot of value there.

Evan Carmichael: But a lot of the tactics know like, I’m not going to go to my dad to ask him about how to win on YouTube. It’s like he doesn’t understand it. He watches a couple videos.

Evan Carmichael: They’re not going to know how to set up a podcast and how to do zoom calls and right that’s not why I’m going to them and so

Evan Carmichael: It’s, I think it’s really important to model success and you model what you like about different people.

Evan Carmichael: So behind me. I have Steve Jobs on my wall. I also have my parents on my wall. Right. I want to be a father like my father was a father.

Evan Carmichael: I can get a lot of advice and wisdom and knowledge and help from him that I may not be able to find on Google because he can understand me and give me context specific information. I don’t want to be a father like Steve Jobs.

Rock Thomas: Right.

Evan Carmichael: It wasn’t a great father, and that’s something at least that

Evan Carmichael: I want to emulate models, but I want to be a visionary like Steve Jobs.

Evan Carmichael: And I don’t want to be a visionary like my father because he’s not a visionary.

Evan Carmichael: Right, let’s take in different things from different people to say, how do I, the goal is, How do I be the best me. What can I take from rock that I can learn to make me better

Evan Carmichael: Right, and I don’t have to agree with everything rock says, I just have to take one or two things that makes my life better.

Evan Carmichael: And I think that’s where people are falling down as you’re taking the wrong advice from the wrong people. Nobody is a perfect you you need to build the perfect you

Rock Thomas: I agree with that wrong advice from the wrong people speaking of that, you have a bag of Doritos and slash represents a form of self discipline for you. Yes.

Evan Carmichael: I would I would call it self love, but we can go with this.

Rock Thomas: Plan. Okay, so tell us about that beginning it’s significant.

Evan Carmichael: Yeah, so I got it looks, bring it up close to my face. This is pretty. It’s a pretty sizable bag of Doritos. This is not just sometimes

Rock Thomas: Bigger than your hand.

Evan Carmichael: But bigger than my head for sure. Yeah, so

Evan Carmichael: I have a strategy called Dan The Doritos and people ask me, my videos, often are three to sponsoring you like why is there three on your desk. This is a weird duck idea that maybe fits, or maybe is just a little too out there, but

Evan Carmichael: I think when you’re on a diet. The common advice is get the junk food out of the house.

Evan Carmichael: Don’t be, don’t be tempted have have, you know, have have water have, you know, like celery and yeah

Evan Carmichael: What else all this stuff right like has that around you. So you’re not tempted. I think that’s a great first step, but I think ultimately you’re telling yourself that you suck.

Evan Carmichael: And so I see it as if you break your leg. You have a you’re on crutches, great, but your ultimate goal is to get rid of the crutches and walk again.

Evan Carmichael: If you are telling yourself. I can’t handle being around Doritos or cookies or whatever.

Evan Carmichael: Then, the problem is as soon as you leave your perfect environment, you go on a vacation, you go on a cruise ship, you go to an office party. What are you doing, you

Evan Carmichael: You fill your face with all the stuff that you said you weren’t going to do and then you feel terrible. So agenda Doritos. Like, this is my

Evan Carmichael: My weakness. My mouth is watering right now just thinking about these Doritos that are in front of me.

Evan Carmichael: I want to eat them. So I went to Costco and bought something half human sized. The big one and and it just

Evan Carmichael: It usually sits right here, but I’m in Book promotion mode. So it’s my book. So we got them. They’re still here down there, but I see it every day when I walk into the office.

Evan Carmichael: And it’s a reminder, the self talk in my head is I’m awesome. I might even do that today. I think self love self confidence, self respect comes from doing difficult things

Evan Carmichael: And teaching yourself that you do difficult things. So for me this is difficult, you know, for you. You may hate Doritos or be allergic to nachos, or whatever, that’s easy.

Evan Carmichael: But find your own version of it. And so I try to apply what I don’t want to tell myself, here’s an easy way out. I love hacks, I love, I love you know the shortcuts, but not not because from a position of strength not weakness.

Evan Carmichael: Same thing, like the alarm. People say, put the phone in the other room so that you don’t like it in the kitchen. So if they get up. I hate that.

Evan Carmichael: I think I think it means every night. You’re telling yourself. I suck. I’m not capable of just getting out of bed. So I need to have it in the other room.

Evan Carmichael: Right. And this flies in the face of what a lot of people in our industry will talk about and do so I’m just saying this is my perspective for myself. It may not be prescriptive, but I think

Evan Carmichael: Definitely your self love, self respect comes from doing difficult things and I want the inner voice in my head to say, Evan I’m awesome. I’m proud of my effort today.

Rock Thomas: I like it. And I think coaches do just that to bring different perspectives and this is definitely a perspective of choice at the moment, right, as I have the discipline of the choice of the willpower of the desire of the vision of myself at that higher space.

Rock Thomas: So I like it a lot. Let’s talk a little bit about

Rock Thomas: Your journey to meeting a lot of your mentors. It’s not everybody that gets to interview the type of people you’ve interviewed. How did that come about, and who did you enjoy the most

Evan Carmichael: So,

Evan Carmichael: I think as you’re going down your path, how you make the connection to the people that you want to meet is how it’s thinking how can I provide them with value.

Evan Carmichael: The more you can learn to bring people value, the more they’re going to want to work with you be around you help you win and reciprocate so

Evan Carmichael: For me, this, this wasn’t even part of my ambition. When I first started off, creating content.

Evan Carmichael: I, you know, learn from Bill Gates, I built my company off his strategies. I started a YouTube channel that then shared

Evan Carmichael: What I had learned from different entrepreneurs and profiles. A lot of people that I looked up to and respected and

Evan Carmichael: As I started doing that more. Some people shared it so 50 cent shared his video and Floyd Mayweather shared his video and Tyree shared his video and people started sharing the videos I was making about them and

Evan Carmichael: It’s super flattering. It’s not unexpected. I didn’t. I wasn’t surprised, but I also didn’t expect that this was going to happen.

Evan Carmichael: The first person that we started actually doing something with was Tony Tony Robbins. So he said, you’ve been with him for 20 years, me a lot less for years. So I think

Evan Carmichael: We did a top 10 video on him where I break down 10 of his you know rules for success as seen through my eyes.

Evan Carmichael: And then his team put it up in his YouTube channel now I’m working with this team at this point, I don’t know, Tony. Tony is a really busy guy. Tony is not just hanging out on YouTube.

Evan Carmichael: He’s crazy jack full of all sorts of activities in his regular day he maybe didn’t even know I exist at this point, but his team does

Evan Carmichael: And and this can be the step right like how do you provide value to the people around the person that you want to get to know

Evan Carmichael: And so they liked the video, they put it up on his channel. I think it’s still there. If you look at his YouTube channel on the playlist is one of the videos on there.

Evan Carmichael: And then that led to other opportunities that led to more people. I started building more notoriety and opportunities kind of kept falling into place.

Evan Carmichael: It started with a position of I want us. I want to serve. I’m still built to serve every time we do a mash up of a video. It’s always good.

Evan Carmichael: It’s always showing the person in a good light and what I have learned from them. If I did the top 10

Evan Carmichael: stupidest things that Kanye West has said and kindness on my wall back there. I’m sure that it would blow up. It’s just not. I don’t feel good about it, it’s not the things that I want to be putting out into the world.

Evan Carmichael: I’m sure even Tony if I did, if I tried to make Tony look bad and find some clips and edit them to see how Tony is wrong.

Evan Carmichael: I’m sure that video would blow up. People love negativity and more than education. It just doesn’t feel right to me. And so as I started showcasing these people and building up more attention awareness and bringing them value. I started to get more recognition and awareness.

Evan Carmichael: And I honestly need to, I need to own that part for myself a little bit more

Evan Carmichael: I just got invited. I just came back from Puerto Rico, where Brendan Bouchard invited me to join his, his mastermind. But like for him.

Evan Carmichael: I spoke at his event where people are paying 30 to 50 k to be. But then he said, hey, you want to hang out for another week and come to my place.

Evan Carmichael: And I’m bringing my homies to hang out. So it’s like Tom bill you and Russell Brunson and Dean Gretzky OC and David Bach and like his friends for his annual

Evan Carmichael: Mastermind where he’s asking his problems right everybody goes on the table. I’m like oh my god I how I don’t feel like I deserve to be here right I’m just making

Evan Carmichael: Videos on these guys and two years later. Now I’m anyway. So, I still have to work through, you know, that of feeling like, Hey, I got something to contribute as well. But when you’re bringing value to the people.

Evan Carmichael: That you want to get connected with and it’s actual value for them. Not what you just think is valuable, but real value to them and the people around them. Then it bubbles up and in and you’ll find your path through to be able to make the connection.

Rock Thomas: That’s awesome. I love that. I love Brendan Bouchard. Have you done it? He is a great guy, and all those are really smart people.

Rock Thomas: So let’s talk a little bit about what you referenced as you said, you know, you felt like you got invited into that room, and that’s a great room.

Rock Thomas: But how are you going to serve right, you’re built to serve and how are you able to provide value and how are you going to deal with what we all have, on some level, and maybe it’s only a glimpse, for you have no. Am I worthy of being in that room and that’s that you teach other people. Right.

Evan Carmichael: Of course, but but so belief is what I teach and belief is my most important core value. And it’s also the biggest thing I struggle with.

Evan Carmichael: It always is like your most important core value is always the thing that you continue to struggle with. Just at a bigger level, the right belief in myself to make a YouTube video is an easy belief . Sitting at this table is hard, right? And so you’re just capable of slain bigger dragons.

Evan Carmichael: I love the expression beyond, beyond the mountain is more mountains. It’s like, you don’t want to just hit the top of the mountain climbing new mountains. Like, let’s get going. So

Evan Carmichael: My thought going in was, I knew Tom and I knew Dean. I knew that I’d interviewed them. I’ve had them on my channel, most of these people. I’ve already kind of known from afar, but a lot of what I teach is around

Evan Carmichael: Belief, and an entrepreneurship and all this stuff, but I’m gonna go and teach Brendan Bouchard about believing in himself more like it just

Rock Thomas: Like

Evan Carmichael: They’re all teaching the same stuff.

Rock Thomas: Right.

Evan Carmichael: And then often at a higher level than what I’m teaching right it’s like, wow. So what are we going to talk about

Evan Carmichael: And so for me it was now narrowed down to YouTube, right, because I’m great at YouTube. And I can help them at YouTube and and their message needs to be on YouTube, more right and I and even if it’s not them pushing the buttons Brendan’s not uploading his videos to YouTube and you know

Evan Carmichael: You’re not doing it. They have teams, but the strategy behind it is something that I can really help them with to help them grow their impact because they still want to grow their impact and legacy and I think YouTube is right now, the number one place to do it.

Evan Carmichael: And so I ‘m resetting my thought process. So usually when I am brought into entrepreneur groups. I’m talking about starting up and belief and

Evan Carmichael: And finding your purpose and all this stuff is like, I don’t, I’m not going to teach Brendan about finding this purpose.

Evan Carmichael: So it’s rewiring it about oh ok I am I’m here because of YouTube. I am a master at it. I am Brendan Bouchard of YouTube for this. I’m the best at this right and owning that and then be able to step to the table with a lot more confidence.

Evan Carmichael: But still just also acknowledging when it was my turn to go around the table. I acknowledged my insecurities, like, sure.

Evan Carmichael: I’m super anxious and nervous to be here. I feel like I can’t bring you guys a ton of value. I’m going to do my best of the next three days and and even just that little intro got some people after the cup and talk music ham super anxious and nervous to be

Rock Thomas: Yeah.

Evan Carmichael: This woman who just sold their business for $1.3 billion is now coming up to me and saying, Hey, I’m interested. Right, so

Evan Carmichael: I think leaning into the vulnerabilities is still something I’m working on being better at because it just makes you more human and doesn’t take away from the greatness you have at something else.

Rock Thomas: You are familiar with goal cast. Yeah, I know. Go class. So I had a video that came out, it was supposed to be seen by 2 million

Rock Thomas: Okay, it ended up going viral. It’s been seen by 100 million people. Nice. And I have a little bit of that imposter syndrome is like, it’s one of the most successful on the planet. Yeah, and

Rock Thomas: You. What do I do with that I think Tony had one come out that’s been seen by 17 million and I’ve got 100 million

Rock Thomas: The message just clicked. Yeah. And now my brain is like, how do I leverage that to connect with more people. If I was speaking to you in your head right now I’m thinking YouTube probably would be something that I should investigate. That makes sense.

Evan Carmichael: 100% I mean go cost is YouTube and Facebook, right.

Evan Carmichael: At least far as I know. I don’t know if they’re doing anything else but

Evan Carmichael: From a user perspective, YouTube, you would crush on YouTube, but you need to be on YouTube. The biggest reason is YouTube is the only place where your content lives forever.

Evan Carmichael: That that goal cost video was recorded however long ago and it’s still getting views. Now, right.

Rock Thomas: And they make

Rock Thomas: A ton of money off of it.

Evan Carmichael: Oh, sure. I’m like, awesome. I want them to make money because they’re spreading rock Thomas as well. Right.

Rock Thomas: Exactly good vibes and

Evan Carmichael: And the, the, I am movement doesn’t stop in a year. Now, the value of the message is, is for the rest of your life and beyond. Right. And so when you post something on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, two days later, it’s dead. Nobody’s going back on your Instagram from

Evan Carmichael: A day ago, let alone. Five years ago, your video today.

Evan Carmichael: As long as you’re talking about timeless stuff you talk about when I am talking about coronavirus great and five years, people probably won’t care, but I am movement stuff in five years is still relevant. And so you still are getting shown. And so if you

Evan Carmichael: Are a thought leader, an expert great on camera which which you are

Evan Carmichael: YouTube should be the place that you call home and then make 10 minute plus videos and then cut them down to go to the other platforms.

Evan Carmichael: Your podcasts like this should be a YouTube video when you’re bringing on guests, but also you like it’s one thing to be an interviewer, but you don’t want to just be known as the Larry King guy. You have your own

Evan Carmichael: Voice, you have your own very powerful movement and message so so splicing into content so that if you’re doing one interview is also

Evan Carmichael: Either you go on a speech or coach somebody. So you’re the expert. And people are saying, hey, hey. Rock. How do I, how do I build my own movement and then you walk them through the process.

Rock Thomas: Amazing fantastic let’s end it off on the coronavirus. What are your thoughts around that, and how are people going to come through this, I think, some will come through. Great. Some are going to get knocked down. What are your thoughts? I think

Evan Carmichael: Like with anything else life throws punches at all of us and some will come out great. And some will get knocked out. I think it’s a choice.

Evan Carmichael: I think this is a fantastic time for people watching listening to own the leadership role for the people around you.

Evan Carmichael: To step, even though you’re afraid and you don’t have certain Yuval what’s going to happen to make the choice to not be overwhelmed by the news because checking

Evan Carmichael: Death toll updates every 45 minutes is not gonna add any value. Right. I mean, being formed is one thing. Like, don’t be stupid awesome but

Evan Carmichael: But then how are you going to use your time productively to then go off and serve if you think about you as a leader who has a desire to serve.

Evan Carmichael: Especially in chaos and panic. We need your, your voice, your calm your, your support, your service now more than ever. And so I would use it as a rallying call

Evan Carmichael: Not just for yourself but for the people around you, be that your immediate family or your employees and your team or your friends or or your community at large.

Evan Carmichael: To bring some calm to give hope and encouragement and not be overwhelmed by the chaos. Now, is a call to arms to be a great leader for the people around you.

Rock Thomas: All right. And on that note, you will be listening to the I Am movement with Evan Carmichael, and we are incredibly pleased that you decided to come and join us from Toronto, Canada.

Evan Carmichael: Appreciate the love. Thank you. Rock.