Hey, everyone. Welcome to Tales from the Pros. And this is Michael Georgiou, your host and cofounder of Imagine Ovation. I have an amazing guest with me here today. He's a serial entrepreneur, social media influencer with over 1,500,000 subscribers on YouTube.
He speaks around the world and the author of 4 books. And he also owns Canada's largest salsa dance studio, which I wanna talk about because I'm a salcero myself. I love it. And he's also working to solve the world's biggest problem, which is untapped human potential and has occupied the hashtag believe around the world. This is tales from the pros where business leaders and influencers share their stories of inspiration, struggles, and successes.
And I'm your host, Michael Georgiou. Please welcome the awesome Evan Carmichael. Evan, I'm so humbled and grateful for you to be on the show, man. I really, really appreciate it.
Thanks for the love, Michael.
Great to be here, man. So just to kinda kick things off, Evan, just, you know, if you wanna give us a little background on your story and essentially how you got to where you are today as a business and thought leader?
Sure. So I think your purpose comes from your pain. I struggled so much as an entrepreneur in the early days of my company. I was 19 years old, turned down my dream job to earn 30% of a company and make $300 a month and struggled a lot and faced a lot of self doubt, lack of belief, and just felt worthless as a human being. It was, you know, the worst days of my life.
And then I told my partner that I quit and and almost turned my back on the whole thing. But I told myself I didn't wanna live with regret, that I could deal with failure, but I could do I couldn't deal with not knowing. And so I hadn't given it my all, so I stuck with it, but I had to find a different way to stand. And so the lightning bulb moment came when I said, I'm not the 1st guy to try to build a software company before. Mhmm.
That was my first company. Somebody's done this. Who's done it before? The first person I thought of was Bill Gates. He's kind of the only person that I kinda knew in the software space.
I don't know him personally, but Right. Know his story. So I researched him deeper and, learned from his success, applied what worked for him to my company, started closing some deals and and gaining growth. And again, your purpose comes from your pain. I struggled so much getting started that I now wanna help entrepreneurs around the world, not struggle as much as I did.
Awesome. And is that really your is that really what guided you to, coaching entrepreneurs and just being so passionate with them and and helping them get off the ground is because of your, the obstacles that you went through, the struggles you went through. Is that is that really what's guided you to to get to this point right now?
I think I think it's what Yep. Guides everyone. I think whatever you struggled with, your purpose will be to help other people who are currently going through that same struggle. Helping those people will fill you up more than I can express. And so I think if anybody's listening and they wanna be leaders and they're trying to figure out what their purpose is or what they should be doing with their life, think about what you've had to overcome already in your life.
Helping other people who are currently facing those challenges will be the most fulfilling thing of
Absolutely. And, Evan, you being a passionate advocate for entrepreneurs and, you know, also being a successful entrepreneur yourself, In your experience, what do you feel their biggest challenges are and how they should overcome them in terms of just business owners, entrepreneurs?
I think the first one is people often pick the wrong business to start with. People pick a business because they're just trying to make money. Money is important. It's got to be in your top five but it can't be number 1. The people who make the most money don't have money surprisingly as their number one motive, but it has to be in your top 5.
Then I think just consistently showing up for doing a thing. When we have a boss, you have somebody looking over your shoulder and telling you what to do. And if you don't show up to work or put in your effort, you know, somebody's going to call you or or you're going to get fired. And so you're always trying to make that person happy. When you're an entrepreneur, you are your own boss.
And that's great, but it also lacks accountability. And so it's super common for entrepreneurs to not stay consistent in their motivation, in their productivity, in their output, which is why this podcast is great. People can hopefully listen to this episode and the rest of your shows and get inspired and say, you know, this is holding me accountable. I want to be a leader. I want to play a bigger game.
There's too much of a roller coaster at times I think in motivation for entrepreneurs where they're on fire for one day and then the next day they fall back to earth and staying motivated and staying consistent is super important.
No. I definitely agree and I I deal with a lot of, startups myself and just entrepreneurs and it's it's, it's it's crazy because, you know, I find that I I deal with the a lot of the, startups I deal with, they will say, like, oh, I don't have the next Facebook. I don't have the next Twitter. I'm like, you don't you know, to be an entrepreneur, you don't need to have the next essentially the next best idea. You can have a pizza shop with a unique process or the way you treat customers differently or or something that's different about yourself that can make you entrepreneurial.
You know, at least from my opinion, it's, you know, I don't think someone needs to really have a something, you know, like a Facebook or Uber to be an entrepreneur. You know what I mean? There's so so many, It's so subjective, I think. Right?
Yeah. And look at Facebook. Facebook started off as just a social network for Harvard and then became the social network for and at the time, a social network wasn't even a thing. It was just a thing a place for students to hang up online for Harvard and then became for Yale and Princeton and Stanford and the Ivy League Schools and then it became for every university and then it went down to high schools and then so it expanded. But at the start, even Facebook wasn't Facebook.
The start Facebook was an idea that Mark Zuckerberg came up with and started coding. And so any idea, you don't have to have it figured out all the way to the end. I think that actually hurts your success Because even if you say, if you're gonna example the pizza shop, maybe you're the next Domino's. Yeah. I don't know.
Like, maybe you could take your concept and turn it into a global brand. You could, but it starts with creating your first store, creating your first location. Domino's was was one shop before it became Domino's.
So true. It's just I I think a big part of it is just staying focused. And like you said, believe in what you're doing, have passion, do things for the right reasons. You know, I I coach a lot of people on on having the right intent and motive behind what you're doing. I think that's very, very powerful.
You know? So I definitely love that. And and just kind of your experience, Evan, as well, what do you feel is your best advice on how someone can inspire others and build a strong community around them on and off social media? You know, I mean, you have such a huge reach around just the name Evan Carmichael on social media, and I've been following you for years. I love your content, man.
It's it's amazing and very inspiring. It's helped me a lot in in some tough days as well. And I I feel, you know, with nowadays, especially just with Facebook, Instagram, these social platforms, they're so cluttered. You know what I mean? There's so much noise. So how do you feel someone can really try to help somebody else on social and build that community? What's your, advice on that?
What's what's your most important core value?
You're asking me personally?
Yeah.
Me, my core value is helping people. And I I have a few, but for me, it's purpose and and my faith and and, and essentially helping people and and making a positive impact.
Sure. So so, you know, let's take purpose as an example from there. That's what you're going to help people with. How do you stand out in a cluttered world online? It's going to be through a purpose.
Like you mentioned in your intro that I own the hashtag belief. You know, I think within a within a community maybe, within the entrepreneur world, I'm probably known for that, maybe not globally yet. But that that's what I do. I try to spread belief in everything that I do because it's not just a marketing thing. It's who I am.
And so if people were to hang around you, they would want to live a more purposeful life. They just would just by you being you. The more you are you, the more you are a 100% you and you're doing everything that makes you feel bold and come alive and feel powerful and want to be a leader and want to help just by you being you. You will inspire the people around you to want to have more purpose in their life too because they'll see what you're doing and they want to have more purpose too. So, I inspire people to believe in themselves more.
If you're gonna if you're hanging around me, you will leave feeling more belief in yourself. It's just gonna happen. And so everybody I think has a core value. I call it your one word. I wrote a book about it but I think everybody has a single most important core value.
How do you stand out? It's through that thing. And so you can if you're a leader of a small group or you're just a leader with a family, then you'll lead the people around you, you lead the people in your organization, you lead the people at home, you'll see what you're doing, You'll lead far more effectively through example than by giving a speech. And if you wanna then take the message of social media and lead a bigger group and have a bigger influence, what What kind of content do you make? Well, for you, it would be content that would make you feel your purpose.
So it could be quotes, it could be interviews, it could be, you know, whatever messages you have, pictures, videos, audio versions like this. I should anytime I'm I'm in a room with you or online following you, feel like I wanna live my purpose. And if I'm ever in doubt, if I'm ever feeling low on motivation, low on energy, feeling like I'm not I'm not feeling my purpose today, I should be able to see what, see what Michael's doing on social and get inspired again to go live my purpose.
And do you do you feel like there's a, there should be a high level of consistency with the content that's being distributed? You think it should be I mean, not looking for, like, an exact number, obviously, but is it, you know, in terms of just the videos that should be created or the types of quotes or the just the types of blogs written? Do you think there should be a high level of consistency to try to increase that reach so people can actually hear your voice, hear your opinion, hear your expertise, and who you are?
You need a high level of consistency for success in any endeavor. So you want to be a good podcaster? You have to do a lot of podcasts. You know, if you do one podcast every month, you're just you're never gonna you won't get good at it. You won't develop a talent for it, and you'll never build momentum.
You know, if you if you're a pizza shop and you're making pizza only on Sundays, it's gonna really hurt your businesses. So same thing for social, you you need to be making content every day. I think the quantity leads to the quality. I think the more you do, the better you get. If I'm looking only at a social media context, I think 80% of success on social is daily fire content.
If you're not winning on social media, you are either not posting daily or your content is not good enough yet. How do you get better? Practice. Keep going. Keep putting in the effort, and keep honing your message. So I should look at your your piece of content and feel purposeful. If you get that, then it's easy for me to share, right? That people are looking at our content and they're not sharing it. Why? It's not good enough yet. That's okay. Keep working. Get better.
Trial and error. Right? That's what it's about. Just keep doing it. Keep executing. Keep trying new things.
Trial and error and modeling success. Like somebody listening to this might say, I wanna have my own podcast. Michael asked great questions. I'm gonna try asking that question to my guest and see how it goes. They try on the Michael hat, and it won't quite fit perfectly because that's the Michael hat.
That's not their hat. But you can make some tweaks and adjustments to it. So I love modeling success. I love learning things with different people who are having success. If you wanna grow on Instagram, look at what the top Instagram people are doing.
Try on their hat, and then and then customize it. So you can see, you know, see what Michael's doing around purpose, but your thing is freedom. Great. Now how can you take what Michael's doing and apply freedom to it and create some content around that?
And that and, you know, and that that's perfect, Evan, because that leads into my next question. From just all the successful people you've interviewed and engaged and collaborated with and the content you've created for, what are your what are Evan's top rules for success? Are there certain things that have really, you know, made you think, you know, these are this is my top ten or top I see a lot of your top 10 on YouTube. Right? Or do you have, like, a top 5 or kind of what are your best rules for success?
For me, believe will always be the number 1. I think if you don't believe in what you're doing, you're never going to win. You could have all the logical reasons to start something. But if you don't actually believe in it, you're just never going to win. And that's consistent across entrepreneurs, athletes, musicians, every walk of life, you have to believe in what you're doing.
The second I would say is to model success that if you don't know what to do, somebody else has done it. And that can take you 80% of the way. You should be looking at who has done this before. You want to be a great, interviewer, then you study Oprah Winfrey and you study Larry King and you study Tim Ferris, and you study these people, and you see, what can I learn from them to make me better? And then if I had to pick a third one, I would say, just living my life through the lens of not regretting my life when I'm 95.
So the thing that keeps me going or the thing that pushes me through, painful moments or when I'm afraid is that if I'm 95, looking back on this moment in my life, am I gonna regret not taking action? Because it's very rare that the things that we do that we that we regret, it's it's the actions not taken. It's the things we're too afraid to do, but then we look back in our life and said, I should've taken my shot. I don't wanna be that, and so I try to live my life that way.
Yeah. It seems that it's pretty cool. I I like what you said about, you know, your top rules because it seems like you have a lot in common with, the belief system of Gary Vaynerchuk. I'm sure you you know Gary. Right? Or you spoken to Gary before, but, seems like you have some some a lot of similar, you know, beliefs. I love that.
Yeah. I I mean, I love what Gary's doing. It's great. He's been a big supporter of what I've done, promoted some of the things I've been working on a a bunch of times. I first connected with Gary way back when he was still doing his his wine stuff.
And, I was doing a a line of trading cards for entrepreneurs, because I thought I was a big baseball fan growing up. And so I thought, why don't entrepreneurs have trading cards as well? They're they're heroes. And so we raised 6 figures for, for local charity. Oh, wow.
And, I asked different influencers at the time would they be involved, and Gary said he'd be involved. So that's when we first started connecting. It's great to see where he's gone, and, it's been a fun journey. I'm a big Gary Vee fan.
Yeah. And you you love you agree with all the things he talks about with patients as well. I love the patient factor. It seems like so many people are in a rush, right? They're they're always wanna get thing they they want instant gratification.
They want things done now. They want success now, but they gotta realize, at least from my opinion, I I I believe that someone who wants to achieve something great in their lives, it takes time. It takes a lot of effort and grind and fight and and pain, essentially, a lot of obstacles to overcome to get to to that point. You know what I mean?
I like to flip patients and impatience against most people. I think most people they're very, impatient with the results, but they're patient with themselves. I wanna flip it. So I'm patient with the results. I know that for me to get to 10,000,000 subscribers, my next goal on YouTube is gonna take time, you know, I'm at just about 2 right now.
It's gonna take some time to get there. But I'm massively impatient with myself like today has to matter. This interview has to matter. How I'm spending my time today needs to matter, needs to mean something. I may not deliver on it. You know, may maybe my entire day sucks. Maybe this is the worst interview of all time. I don't know. But my intent going in is this has to matter. And so I think if you flip that, if you say, I'm gonna be patient with my results.
I know that if I put in a lot of effort every day, it's gonna come. And then being impatient with yourself that every day that you wake up has to matter, has to make you move closer towards achieving your goals.
Just really live and embrace the moment.
Yeah. And and I think it's also figuring out what this balance look like for you. So, you know, we compare ourselves to other people's version of balance. You need to figure out what it looks like for you. How much time do you wanna spend with your parents?
How much time do you wanna spend sleeping? How much time do you wanna spend working? How much time do you wanna spend, you know, working out with your husband, wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, you know, kids? And then when you figure that out, then you go live your life.
Right.
Where a lot of people are are constantly judging themselves against somebody else's balance. You know, The Rock works out 4 hours a day. You can't do that unless you dedicate your time to doing that and you make it enough of priority. So you can't work out for half an hour a day and then expect to look like The Rock, right? So your actions have to map to your ambitions.
You have ambitions for life not just for business. Ambitions, this is what you want. This is what a perfect life looks like for you. And then look at your calendar and do the actions that you're putting in map to you achieving those results.
Consistently, right?
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You are what you consistently do.
So true.
In one off, it doesn't matter.
And Evan, did you have any you know, during your entrepreneurial journey, your career, do you have any mentors or anyone that's really inspired you? You know, not just with maybe the content you've done, but just essentially people that you've interacted with, any, mentors that have helped have helped you with your career?
So I think my parents are my ultimate mentors. Got a giant picture on the of them on my wall behind me when I was 8 or 9 years old. Awesome. So leave That word comes from them. They didn't teach me about entrepreneurship as much as they taught me how to be a human.
And then I bring that to my business. Apart from that, I I have learned the most through aspirational mentors. That's what I call them. So Bill Gates, right, saved my first company even though I haven't met him yet. And everybody that I profile my channel for people who may not, you know, be familiar with what I do, I do these profiles of successful people on my YouTube channel, break down what made them successful, and I don't make a video unless I've learned something from that person.
And so I've constantly got Steve Jobs and Elon Musk and Oprah Winfrey in my ear. And they mentor me, and it sounds weird. They guide me, when I'm questioning myself, or when I'm thinking about what I should be doing next. They're in my ear. And so I think you need to be around success.
You need to be around people who push you, And that can take form in terms of an actual physical mentorship, 1 on 1, face to face over coffee Right. Or it could also be aspirational mentors that you're surrounded by daily.
Yeah. My my parents are my mentors as well. They gave me the foundation. So, yeah, that's that's awesome, man. And, you know, just, you know, Evan, with someone like myself as a, you know, business owner, CMO, podcaster, I know you you touched on this, the, you know, the one word, the hashtag. I I know you you do a lot of, you know, trainings and coaching, around the world. I think you have, something coming up in Toronto. Is that true?
Yeah. I have a workshop I do, 2 times a year. It's more for thought leaders who are trying to make money from their ideas. So how do I make money as an author, as a speaker? How do I build my social footprint? But you have to wanna do it as a thought leader. So I've got ideas. I have a message that I need to get out.
And how do you when you're coaching someone, how do you guide them, or coach them, or even train them to create that one word? I know you touched on it a little bit, but that hashtag, that one word, I love it, man. That's why I keep asking this. I keep, you know, come back to this this question. It's it's so cool because I feel like that one word, you could that's gonna establish your focus of how you're gonna represent yourself in the world.
You know what I mean? Like, for you, your belief. You have this, this, core value of belief and belief and and that that's really what you, you know, that's that's how you portray yourself. So what what do you do for people? How do you guide them to find that one word and hashtag?
Sure. Well, when it's a quick thing like like we just did, then I'll just do what we just did. So hey, pick something, you know. Your one word maybe purpose and maybe something else but it's not gonna be that far from purpose. Right?
It's not like you're the you're gonna be the anti purpose guy. It's not gonna be the opposite of it. So purpose is related if it's not the thing. The best way that I found to do it is to start stringing together your past and realize what were the what were the magical moments that made you come alive the most and then what connects them. So as an example, who was your favorite teacher growing up?
Oh, man. I have probably a few of them. I would say maybe mister Harris in college.
Yep. Great. Mister Harris, what did he teach you? What what what subject?
He taught me, because I majored at at UNC Pembroke in, you know, as a Mass Comm. So it's a public relations and advertising.
Okay. Great. Yep. Why you like him is not because he taught you advertising. What is it about mister Harris that you like so much?
Probably that he took time to listen to me. Every time I spoke to him, he was very, or actually, mister Harrison. It's been a long time. Mister Harrison, that's it. Mister Harrison.
Yeah. So the reason I like mister Harrison is because he took time to listen to me, and sit down with me when I needed help, and he was very he was just always in the moment when I talked to him. I went to his office, and I had questions for him. And I was in a bunch of, you know, marketing and advertising committees in college. And I remember he would just sit down with me and just listen and and engage with me, and he he took a lot of time with me, you know, and he was very interested in where my future was gonna go.
And he gave me a lot of compliments and just my and just my my own passion in marketing because I love marketing. It's my, you know, it's it's just I love it. I absolutely love everything about marketing. And, you know, he could see that, and he was really trying to help me reach my potential. So I think that's that was a a core core part of why, I chose him.
Yeah. And there's a lot of similarities now. Right? If you think about why you like him, you've had lots of lots of teachers all the way through, you know, high elementary, junior high, high, university, college. You talk about him wanting to help you.
You talk about him wanting to find your potential. You talk about him now even into the how of listen. Like, if you wanna help people find their potential, you wanna help people find their purpose, their passion, then listening to them, caring for them, asking great questions is something that you can learn from, Professor Harrison to bring to your own life. And so now if you repeat that process, you look at what's your favorite book, and what's your favorite movie, and who are your favorite artists, and what's your favorite song? What did you love most about your parents?
You know, may not obviously be everything, but there's things about your parents that you really love. Why? What is it? And so, if you connect all of these things in the past that made you come alive, that made you feel amazing, you'll find that there's a common thread. So if you pick 3 words for mister Harrison and 3 words your favorite song and 3 words from your parents, you'll find that the same word tends to pop up over and over and over and over and over and over again.
That's your one word. And what that allows you to do is now not just look backwards, but to look forwards to evaluate your life and say what needs to change to allow me to now live this life. Like if you find out that you know, you said the word help a lot, you said that is your as I asked you what your most important core value was and then you said it a bunch of times when you talk about mister Harrison. You know, if you're if you're one word is help, then it forces self examination. It forces you to look at your life and say, where am I not helping?
Like, how can I help more? And for someone like you, then if you're ever unhappy, it's gonna come down to because you're not helping people enough.
I love that. Well, you got me thinking about a lot of things. I love how you did that. That's cool, man. I think that's great. And it seems like that's how you came up with your word believe. Right? You you you follow the same process it seems.
Kind of. I mean, for me, it was I didn't even know about I made up the one word concept. I didn't even know about it. Right? So for me, it was it was a process of of self discovery for me that I wish somebody did for me what I just did for you.
Like, I wish it was faster, but I had to design it. And first doing it myself and then doing it for people, around me and then doing it for Everything just started taking off for me once I once I settled on belief. Everything just started taking off for me once I once I settled on belief.
Awesome. Sounds great. And just to kind of, close things out here, Evan, I always ask this last three questions. I call it the three how's. So essentially, how would you define failure? How do you define business? And how do you define success?
Interesting. Because I hate definition questions. Okay. Mostly because like why does this matter? Why does this how does this make your life better?
But but we'll play along. How do I define failure? Not doing not doing work that I love, not impacting people, not believing in people, the opposite of everything I stand for. How do I define business, doing things in service of others in a way that makes money? And then how do I find success doing work that I love, that serves others, that, allows me to help people unlock their potential and believe in them.
Awesome. I really appreciate it, Evan. And then, you know, the definition questions is I always find it different. It's like, should I word them differently? But, you know, it's it's cool because it it I I I've interviewed so many different people, and they all have very different, opinions and all these, you know, these three words. So it's cool to to to kind of get that, opinion. So I find it very interesting at least for me. So, Evan, where can everyone find you?
Wherever you're hanging out. If you want the books, Amazon, easiest place. Otherwise, on social, I'm on the whatever. Wherever you're hanging out, I'm probably there. Just look for Evan Carmichael.
Perfect. And, Evan, I'm I'm truly humbled again, and and thank you so much. I'm I know you're a super busy guy and doing a, you know, a bunch of things, and, just very excited for people to hear this episode. I think they're gonna get a lot of great insight from it. And like I said, I'm very humbled and grateful for you to be on the show, and thank you so much. I really, really appreciate it.
Appreciate the love, man. Cheering for you. Good luck with the show.
Absolutely. Thank you. Okay. Alright, everyone. Really appreciate it. Thank you so much for listening, and this is your host, Michael Georgio, on Tales From the Pros. And until next time. Thanks, guys. Time. Thanks, guys. Time. Thanks, guys. It's time. Thanks, guys.