The Modern-Day Napoleon Hill: Why Most People Don't Believe in Themselves! Evan Carmichael

0:00If you have the ability, you have the responsibility. If you can, then you must. And so we often think that we don't have a lot of gifts to share. Like nobody cares about your story. And like, why would somebody watch my video? Because you you've been through stuff and people need to know that. And you're going to say in a way that whoever Mel Robbins isn't going to say and Tony Robbins isn't going to say like your background and story and character means a lot. And somebody is going to watch that and they're going to completely change their life.

0:30What would happen if we just told the truth? Welcome to TruthWorks, where we dig into the nitty gritty of leadership and work. And what needs to change. I'm Jessica Neal. And I'm Patti McCord. Our journey together started in HR, but trust us, it's evolved into something wild, honest, and well, a bit rebellious. So throw out the handbook. We're here to redefine rules to work for us, not against us. Let's dive into another episode.

1:08Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of TruthWorks. I'm your host, Jessica Neal, and I'm with my co-host, Jeff Markowitz. Hi, Jeff. How are you today? Hello. Hi. And more importantly, we have a very special guest here today who I'm so excited to learn from. And I'm sure many, many, many, many of our listeners have learned from him already. His name is Evan Carmichael, but Evan is a university dropout, become a founder of a company which sold, become venture capitalist, but then has become an author and a YouTuber and has over 4 million subscribers, which I don't even know how that happens, but I want to know how it happens because, hey, maybe I can have 4 million subscribers.

1:56I don't know. Maybe. And you talk about something a lot that I believe deeply in, which is you have to believe in yourself. And you talk a lot about that. And I want to know why. And I want everybody else to believe in themselves. So welcome to the show, Evan. Thank you for coming. How are you today? Great. Thanks for having me. Great to connect. J &J here in the house. I love it. Yeah, we are J &J. Yeah. a little scared to see what kind of hard truths you're going to ask me. No. But yeah, excited to dive in. I mean, I think lack of belief is the world's number one problem. I know. I've heard you say that.

2:32Yeah. Everything is possible, but people don't do it because they don't believe they can. So you can have the right strategy, right guidance, right mentors, right education, right whatever. And you just like still just don't do it because you don't believe you can. And that's what I wake up every day trying to solve with my channel. If an introvert who hates a spotlight like me can go get 4 million subscribers, you guys definitely can as well. Okay. Well, that's interesting. So because I've read this about you that you are an introvert, but you're out there, really out there. And so how did you believe in yourself so much?

3:09Like, how did you conquer it? And then do you wake up some days where you don't believe in yourself? Yeah. Well, it's a work in progress. Yeah. I don't think we're ever done. Yeah. And so I believe in myself more than I did when I was 19, but I still have a long way to go compared to, you know, 85 year old Evan looking back. Yeah. I think it's a constant work in progress. You know, I used to, one of the most common questions I get asked on podcasts is like, what would you tell your younger self? And I used to not hate, that's a strong word, but I used to not enjoy that question because I don't think backwards.

3:41Like it's, what's the point? I'm not going to go back and tell my younger self anything. So what am I going to work on now? But I realized is whatever you would tell your younger self is actually the same thing that older you is probably telling you right now. And so then it actually becomes practical. Like the thing I would tell my younger self is believe in yourself more, man. Like you can do this. And what's 85-year-old Evan telling, how old am I now? 45-year-old Evan? Same thing. Believe in yourself more, man. You can do this. Like go just believe in bigger things. Yeah. And absolutely, I wake up on days and don't believe in myself.

4:10I mean, that's most days. And so I think it's having the routine to like bring you out of it. So like one of the most powerful things I do every day, I call it a believe walk. I wake up, get outside. Like even just doing that will help. Like wake up, don't go on your phone, just get outside, go for a walk. You can do rucksack if you want, you can run if you want, but like just get outside, get some vitamin D on your eyes and go for a walk. And then what I put on is something in my head, my earphones that will make me believe in myself a little bit more. So for me, I'm in entrepreneurship. So I love listening to successful entrepreneurs, their stories, how they got started.

4:44And every morning I have a different entrepreneur in my ear and learning from them. And by the time I get home, I believe in myself a little bit more to take on the day. And so we've all had those moments where you felt incredible belief and confidence. Maybe it's listening to this podcast for some people, maybe the guests or Jessica or Jeff, you know, they're the ones who inspire you. Great. Put that on in the morning as opposed to being a random accident later on in the week. Evan, what, you know, I always like to hear how people who have made it, you know, they clearly were influenced earlier in their lives by something.

5:19So what did you take from your parents that helped you get to the point where you believed in this? That's a great question. I have a picture of my parents on the wall right there. It's like me when I'm eight or nine years old and then them. And I look at that every day. My mom, she's the ambitious one in the family. And she would always tell me that you're Evan Castrilli Carmichael. My middle name is Castrilli. That's her last name. You can do anything you believe that you can. And I remember used to, I have two sisters. I'm in the middle. And every year around report card time, I guess twice a year, we'd always have to have the talk.

5:55My sisters got straight A's and And I wasn't failing. I got B's and C's, but not the straight A's that my sisters were getting. So we had to have the talk. And they'd always leave with that, that you're having Christophila Carmichael, you can do anything, believe that you can. And I guess I believed it slowly. And so that's, they're not entrepreneurs. They never were. It's not the thing that they do. But I still try to be as nice a human as my dad is and be as forward thinking and as ambitious as my mom is. What'd your mom do? she was the uh so i i had a family newspaper i started when i was eight and i went to family newspaper family yeah i just made my own newspaper for for my family just because and my first interview with my mom and i asked hey mom why are you a lawyer and she corrected me to say i'm not a lawyer i'm a constitutional lawyer like okay what i mean i don't know what the difference it's like lawyers help kind of follow the laws and enforce the laws and constitutional lawyers help create the laws.

6:51So welcome to my mom. So she was a constitutional lawyer. Then she became the chairman of the University of Toronto. And she was the first woman chairman. And then she had them drop the man from the chair. And so she just became the first chair of the University of Toronto. And so that tells you a little bit about my mom. She sounds awesome. She's the power woman. And I have two very, very powerful, motivated sisters as well. And so I was the lone boy in the family. And then my dad's just like the nicest human of all time. It's like, it's really hard to meet a nicer person than my dad. And so I try to, I try as much as possible to take the best of both worlds and turn into Devin Carmichael.

7:33Yeah. It's, it's amazing. Also, I think at a young age, when you have someone that believes in you, you know, and like, you know, it's like, I, I believe in you versus like some kids and And some grow up where they have people that are like, I don't think you can do that. Like, you know, they're not like pushing them. And so I think I think that's important at an early age. And it's interesting because I have a six year old and I try to tell him these things all the time, especially when he's like, I can't. I'm like, hey, you can. You can do it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and that's also why, you know, YouTube is so powerful and the Internet is so powerful, because even if you don't have people in your life who are cheering you on, And you can get that through this podcast.

8:19Like people have never met you and they're inspired by what you guys create and share on a regular basis. And so, you know, if you don't have the best family upbringing or you don't have connections, you don't know anybody, great. You can go online and find it. Even I still do it now. My morning Believe walks, right? I was listening to the story of Bugatti this morning on my walk and how like Enzo Ferrari was inspired by him. And so I'd never met Bugatti. I'm never going to. I never met Enzo. I'm never going to. but I can learn from their stories to help me believe in myself a little bit more.

8:49And I think if you're struggling to believe in yourself, one, that's normal, like welcome to being human. Everybody does. And you can borrow belief from other people, either the people close to you who might have an awesome message like that or just people's stories that you look up to that you may never meet in your life, but you can be inspired by them and say, hey, what they did was inspiring, but it was also the fact that they believed in themselves to do it. And what it does is drop seeds of hope that, okay, if they can do that coming from where they came from, like maybe I can too. and often that's enough to just get us started down the path.

9:19And the hardest step is the first step. Once you start taking momentum, like I don't know how you thought, how long you thought about making a podcast before you started the podcast. And now you're here. Now it's easier to keep going on the podcast versus that first step. Like, what do I do for the first episode? Yeah, yes. You instill so much positivity. What's, I'm curious, what's a tough day for you? I'm pretty emotionally regulated. So I don't have really tough days, but I don't, I also don't have really like amazing days. So I don't, I don't rollercoaster that much. You know, I think the toughest day, the toughest day is just the toughest day of my life was when my dog died.

9:55That might sound, that might sound really rough. I just had it. Awful. Terrible. I mean, I have both my parents. You know, when, when my parents pass, I don't know, I don't know how much of a wreck I'm going to be. So I can't, I haven't gone through that yet, but, and I have my sisters, et cetera. So I haven't had a, a significant family member lost but but my dog toby my family dog for 15 years was was pretty devastating and the i i have filmed every filming day on my channel since i can't remember how long it's been i started in 2009 so we've had a lot of videos going up and i filmed through a broken neck i filmed through concussions i've filmed through vacations i've filmed through a divorce i've through like all sorts of stuff but the only day i couldn't film was the day that that toby died i get it yeah yeah and and uh my dad insisted on being in the room when they put him down yeah i'm like oh my god okay so i didn't want him to be by himself so i went in with him i was just anyway yeah no but the dog lovers it makes sense for the for the non-dog it's like it it's he was basically you know member of the family yeah of course and i just came out and i just made a quick video saying what happened and and like i couldn't i couldn't film video that was that was my filming day and i could not film i could not bring myself to like turn on the camera and film the usual you know believe optimistic hopeful positive leadership content that i like to make yeah and so my team for that week patched together some old things and we still released on schedule not our usual schedule so that was an incredibly tough day but i you know most of the things that are tough, you don't land a deal, your channel's down or whatever.

11:36They're not actually, you know, that major problems. These accidents that you seem to have, like concussions and broken neck, we'll maybe get into that later. But can you take us back to when you started? Like, so, you know, I was reading your story and doing research about you and you joined this company with a couple entrepreneurs and you got a 30 % stake in the company and then you lost like a $40 million, but then you end up selling the company for, I don't know how much, but I'm sure a good amount, but not 40 million. And then you get into venture capital. And then at some point you start this YouTube channel.

12:12And so how, how did all that, how did it happen? Were you just like, I want to do this or it was, it was. Which part that like the YouTube channel? Yeah. Like, so you get through all of that, you know, you go into VC and then you're like, okay, I'm just going to start a YouTube channel. Like how did that? Yeah, it's, it's, it's the whole Steve Jobs, like connected dots looking backwards, but I didn't plan any of it. I think your purpose comes from your pain. So I think whatever you struggled the most with is what you want to help other people with. We've all been through some significant challenges in our lives.

12:45And like, if, Hey, if we can solve the suffering for others, there are millions of people right now who are struggling with the thing that you struggled with and they need you and they need your voice and you can share. And so that's what I started doing. YouTube in 2009, when I started, it was not a thing. Nobody had million subscribers. Entrepreneurs weren't posting. It was, it was not a, it was not a business model for anybody. I'm just a visual learner. I like to see things. So the fact I get that this is, this is an audio podcast for some people, but if I couldn't see you two, it would be a lot harder to have this conversation and have my headphones on and just be super focused.

13:20Cause I, I'm a visual person. And at the time, YouTube was the only visual place to put content. And so I just started making videos. And I was not very effective at the beginning. Introverted, shy, all those things. And I thought you had to be the, loudmouth might be too strong a word, but the extrovert, the Kevin O 'Leary's and the Mark Cuban's and the like in-your-face kind of leaders. I didn't see any people like me out there doing stuff. So I thought, you know what? I'll make content for people like me and maybe somebody will like it. But it wasn't a business model. It wasn't a forward thinking.

13:54How did I know that I didn't know? It was just the only place to make visual content. And I'm a visual learner. And I thought, hey, if a few entrepreneurs can learn from my story and maybe not struggle as much as I did, cool. Like that's pretty awesome. If 50 people saw a video, I was super pumped. Like 50 people saw that video. That's crazy, right? More than zero. It's more than zero. I mean, my first year, my video, the first year I had in my first year, I had three comments on it. My mom, my older sister, and then some random stranger. It was like, somebody, somebody gave a comment on my video.

14:28You know, it's a different world now. But I just did it to try to help, but to try to serve. I mean, that's what gets me out of my introvert shell as well. I think introverts, or at least speaking from my own experience, we actually love helping. And we love serving and we just don't like small talk and we don't need to be famous. But having a deep, meaningful one-on-one conversation is like the best. Having a thousand surface level, how's the weather there conversations is completely draining. Yeah. So I wanted to serve and I wanted to help. And so one other thing my mom used to always tell me was if you have the ability, you have the responsibility.

15:06So if you can, then you must. And so there's a lot of, there's a lot of anima just really kind of flowing through. I use that with my kids. Yeah. You do or you're going to? I'm going to. You're going to, yeah. Yeah, I said it really quickly, but I mean, it's actually a very deeply emotional thing for me. It's like, if you have the ability, you have the responsibility. If you can, then you must. And so we often think that we don't have a lot of gifts to share. Like nobody cares about your story. And like, why would somebody watch my video? And like, does the world need another podcast on whatever?

15:35I'm like, yes. Yes, because you've been through stuff and people need to know that. And you're going to say it in a way that, whoever Mel Robbins isn't going to say and Tony Robbins isn't going to say like your background and story and character means a lot. And somebody is going to watch that and they're going to completely change their life. You know, like you have won. It's so funny you mentioned that because Jessica knows this. I stepped away from day-to-day work in October and have some parental stuff that I need to tend to, but really just wanted to advise and do not much of anything. But you very quickly realize you need a purpose.

16:13I started, I mean, Jessica's writing a book. I started actually writing a book for my own consumption, not for anybody else's consumption. And as I'm writing it, it's like, nobody's going to care about this. Maybe my family will or my kids will, but nobody. Care, Jeff, I'll care. But it's interesting that, you know, that what Evan just said, you could think that, but maybe it's not true. Well, our brains are constantly trying to sabotage us. I don't know why, but they tell you lies all the time. You know, they're like, you know, it's like, you can't, you can't, you can't. But to Evan's point, yeah, you can.

16:52And if you do, it might be really amazing and really great. I don't know. I feel like, so my mom didn't say something as eloquent as your mother said to you, but whenever I would say I can't. My mom would say can't never could. And I grew up in Kentucky. So it was like can't never could. But that's like, if you can't, you never will. You know, that was the point of it. So it was like, yeah, you can. You can go do it. Yeah, I think your brain is designed to keep you safe. Yeah. Right. I don't know that actually sabotages you, but like it's designed to keep you safe and social dynamics are important like if you were the weird one in a group of cavemen and you got kicked out of the tribe like you don't have you're gonna die yeah exactly you die right yeah you know the world has evolved but our brains haven't much and the thing that makes you weird and different is the thing that people end up loving you for uh now you know in this era and And as long as the intent is positive and to help and good, I try to, I say that great ideas flow through me.

18:05And so like great ideas are coming to you. And so you have a responsibility to take that idea and do something with it. As long as you're in a positive state, like the ideas that come to you when you're feeling energetic and bold and you're around awesome people. It's like, I'm going to do blank. Like that energy, we're not living in it daily. But when it comes and we've all felt it, like I think you have a responsibility to then do something with that idea that comes to you. And we often sit on those great ideas and we act impulsively on the stupid ideas. Right. Like somebody cuts you off in traffic.

18:37Right. You got to you got to catch up just to see who this person is. This person who cut you off. Right. It's like this impulse on the negative. OK, it's like breathe on those and the ones that are positive, like lean in faster and harder on it because people need you. And I think as long as I default to service, because you won't, at least for me, I won't do enough for myself. But if I can feel like, hey, if this is going to impact one person and call the service, then you'll find more strength than you had otherwise to then go and do the thing, write the book, make the video, create a podcast, whatever the thing is.

19:10And once you get a taste of service, it's like that's a good kind of addiction. It's like people are watching this podcast. It's not where you want to be. It's never where you want it to be, right? Like you're never where you want to be. Cool. And we can be really grateful for like what we've done and recognize that people do need this and like this. And we have responsibility to get up and do more tomorrow. I love that. So you start the podcast 2009. You're just, you know, you're making some videos. And then when were you like, wow, this is a thing? A big training point came in 2014. So five years in.

19:47I forget how many subscribers I had. I have it on my website. A couple thousand subscribers. It's not a big deal. You know, if you're making videos for five years and you have a couple thousand subscribers, you kind of feel like, what are you doing? But two things happened in 2014. One, I married my wife. And I did not know how important it was to have somebody who was like a cheerleader in your corner. Not like somebody who kind of, it's your thing. And like, okay, yeah, go do your thing. I'm happy for you. Like a passive supporter. but someone who's like an active supporter. So on a relationship spectrum, you've got like active negative.

20:24They're like actively against what you're doing. Then passive negative, those are the worst because it's like the, oh, you're going to do that. Right? It's like passive negative is the worst. But if you're getting a passive positive, like, yeah, it's your thing. Go do it, cheering you on versus like active positive, which is incredible. I didn't realize that I needed it, how incredibly valuable that was. And you may not pick your parents and you pick your family, but you can pick who you marry, hopefully, most of the world at least. And that's incredibly powerful to make sure you pick the right person.

20:55So 2014, I married Nina. And then I also asked for help. And one of my biggest struggles is asking for help. I think for a lot of people, we don't ask for help enough. It took me five years to ask somebody for help. And there's a picture of, if you go to my website, there's Nina, my wife, and then Steve, who is my agent. And he's the one who I asked for help in 2014. And after that, my channel started growing. It went from whatever it was, 7 ,000 to 33 ,000 to, and it just keeps going up. And so it was people in both cases. Like I tried to do everything myself and then having my wife support me on the personal side and Steve on the business side made a huge impact.

21:37Neither of them are YouTube experts, but they both gave me. Yeah, and how did you know Steve? Steve, I met through, an entrepreneur came to me, wanted me to be on his show. 2014 is like early days still. And he said, my agent suggested I talk to you. It's like, you're an agent. You're a business guy. Like, who has an agent? Like a sports star has it. Like, I'm a baseball fan. Baseball player is an agent. So you're just, you're an entrepreneur. What do you mean you have an agent? So yeah, I have an agent. He represents me. He's like, can I meet him? so I don't think I ended up doing anything with the guy.

22:11I think I went on his show once, but, but then I met Steve, who's a New York guy. And, uh, yeah, that's how I met him. And we started working together. What kind of help did you ask for? I don't know. It was like, I, Hey, what does an agent do? I don't know what I didn't know. Yeah. Like I, I, I struggled with even knowing how to ask for help. Like in my first business, um, you talked about a little bit. I was, I was 19. It was a biotech software company. I thought, hey, I'm an entrepreneur. Let's go. Let's go make some money. My first move was I went to the bank and said, okay, I'm here. Ready to go.

22:46How can you help? They're like, do you need a loan? What do you need? Oh, I don't know. I don't. Do I need a loan? You tell me. You guys help entrepreneurs, right? I see all the ads everywhere that you help small business, right? Like, what do I need to do? It's like, well, like we can give you a loan, but how long have your business been around? Like, we just started it. What are you talking about? like well you need three years of history to get a loan or you got to personally guarantee it like can you do that it's like no so i was like i made a complete fool of myself with this and he was a very you know i'm sure he thought it was a giant idiot walking in here and so maybe i got ptsd for asking for help after that experience yeah so when i met up with steve i didn't even know like what does an agent even do and he looked at my channel and he he was used to work with people in major media so he took people from cnn and nbc people who had like media experience and they're great on camera but he helped them find their story and message and create a business around it he said like you're the opposite like you have a great message with believe but you suck on camera like perfect right i've been doing this for five years now at this point it wasn't like i just got started like well thank you steve that's awesome and then he just started he started helping me and he started giving me feedback and advice and he would watch my videos and he gave me he gave me assignments so the first assignment was tell my foundation story and i'd make these 20 to 40 minute videos of my foundation stories like you got to get good at practicing your foundation story okay so i send him one in the morning he'd review it i do it again at lunch he'd review it i do it again at dinner he'd review it and i did that like 40 times and there were like 20 to 40 me these were not little tiny little videos and I slowly got better and it came to the point where I started being used as the best practice in the agency for the other clients to say hey go look at what Evan's doing because they were making one video a month or a week and like struggling to get one a week and I'm doing like three long form a day and so I was the worst one coming in but just effort i didn't also didn't even know any better i didn't know but he gave me feedback i do it again why not do it like my favorite thing is why not right now right next week is like next year what are we waiting for like how about right now so he was really helpful in making me better uh on camera and um he's the one who we fought a lot and fought i don't fight much i'm a canadian so we don't we don't actually have that but yeah as much as a canadian can fight on um he said you have to get famous you got to be famous happens like i have zero interest in being famous like i hate the spotlight i don't want to be famous steve and for a couple years we fought on that uh until he said it in a way and more likely i just matured to be able to hear him probably where he said hey the more people know you the more people hear the message like uh okay so it's again you put it to service i'll do more if it's just about me i don't care as much.

25:47And so that's when I started really turning it up on, okay, me being the brand and me sharing more of my story. I would never come on this show. I was like, what do you want to talk to me for? Go interview whoever. I can give you a list of a hundred people who should share their story more than me. Who cares about my story? But in telling the story, realize, oh, that's actually inspiring. It's not about me. It's about the people that can hopefully learn from the journey. Yeah. Can I ask you about entrepreneurs? Yeah. Great. No, you can't. No. That's the one question you can't ask. Exactly. No, we don't talk entrepreneurs.

26:19Yeah. So Jessica and I have both worked with entrepreneurs a lot. You know, I worked with them for many years at Greylock and then I went to Google and worked for Sundar. So I got to see really small and really big. When you talk to entrepreneurs and you look at the ones that have been really successful, what are the things that they do that you've picked up on that make them successful? I would always start with believe because, of course, but they believe in themselves when they shouldn't, like, quote unquote, shouldn't. Someone like them from their background, their abilities shouldn't be doing this thing, but they just go.

27:02Whether that's naivete and like they don't even think about it or they just have a higher level of ability to fail or confidence, they do it. We just had a, so we do a YouTube mastermind and we meet four times a year in person. We had a member come out. We just finished it last weekend. And he closed a$13 million deal from his YouTube channel and is getting 2 ,200 leads a month from his channel. And when he started with us, he was just getting started. He had like 100 subscribers or something. Now it's like the number one way he's generating business. But the thing that he does that other people don't do, he immediately takes action.

27:39He doesn't second guess. He doesn't, yeah, but he doesn't delay. He just does it. so on day one even at this event we were showing a new thumbnail style like here's a new and i geek out over all youtube things it might be a whole other podcast if you guys want but what's our thumbnail gonna be right it's like your book cover it really matters and we found a new way that's working really well that night he launches 20 new thumbnails in the new style like other people are taking notes and he's in a group of other ambitious people who are also action takers but he's just like the ultra ambitious action taker.