Evan Carmichael – Your Invisible Mentor
Interviewee Name: Evan Carmichael
Company Name: EvanCarmichael.com
Website: http://www.evancarmichael.com
Avil Beckford: Tell me a little bit about yourself.
Evan Carmichael: I’m the founder of a website called EvanCarmichael.com and we’re an online resource for entrepreneurs. We have 14 million people who check out the website and we try to give them motivations to keep going in their business and also some strategies to help them grow their companies. Before that I had a biotech software company, built it up, sold it then hooked up with a venture capital company and was raising venture capital for entrepreneurs and the started my website.
Avil Beckford: When you have some down time, how do you spend it?
Evan Carmichael: I do a lot of salsa dancing. It’s how I met my wife – that’s her business. I’ll do a lot of dancing with her and I DJ a lot of the stuff that we do. So it’s part-time salsa dancing and DJ, so that would be how a lot of my downtime is spent.
Avil Beckford: What are five life lessons that you have learned so far?
Evan Carmichael: A lot of it comes from advice from mentors as well.
- Do the right thing.
- Follow your passion.
- Try to be helpful and significant as much as possible.
- If you’re looking on the business side of things, start a service based business before a product based business when starting up because it’s cheaper and you are more likely to continue and sustain it.
- Be persistent, that’s super-important. Nothing was ever accomplished without a lot of hard work. People are going to tell you no, and they are going to tell you that your idea sucks, you are never going to get anywhere, there are tons of naysayers but you need to keep going and always be persistent and move the ball forward. It’s better to spend one hour a day for the next month, instead of spending 30 concentrated hours working on your business because you need to let the time pass to build up the momentum to make your business grow.
Avil Beckford: What process do you use to generate great ideas?
Evan Carmichael: I find a lot of my best ideas come when I’m moving around, so not just sitting down in a chair head buried deep in work. You have to allow time for creativity and flexibility. I now walk to work and that’s something that I changed around in the past year where I moved closer to work. I get a lot of ideas on that walk that helps me to clear my mind and also think about what’s happening. Sometimes in the mornings I’ll do a quick meditation and that gives me ideas as well. And also just being active, doing salsa dancing gives me ideas as well as having dinner with my wife. I get the best ideas when I’m not working on my business. If you’re going crazy hammering out hours and burning yourself out you probably won’t get any great, new ideas. You have to make sure that you have that relaxed time to be able to generate some of those ideas.
Avil Beckford: What’s your favourite quotation and why?
Evan Carmichael: One that I really like by Steve Jobs is “If your time is limited don’t waste it living someone else’s life, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition you somehow already know what to become, everything else is secondary.”
Avil Beckford: How do you define success? And in your opinion what’s the formula for success?
Evan Carmichael: It’s being able to do what you want to do, when you want to do it, so it’s not just about having money, and being tied to a business or a job that doesn’t give you the time to enjoy it [success]. It’s being able to do what you want to do, when you want to do it, is a great end game to go after. To be able to accomplish it you might have to structure your business a little bit differently than you might think. For me, we outsource a lot of stuff and we’re not always in the office so that frees up a lot of my time to spend with family and do relaxing things. But then when I want to work I can also work.
We try to get away every quarter on some kind of vacation, big or small, so we’re still spending time together but outside of regular at-home life. And also being passionate about what you’re doing is an important part. You could work less hours and have that time to do what you want to do in your leisure time, but what you do during your work time should be something that you find fulfilling, something you’ll always be interested in and want to continue to get better at. For me, it’s entrepreneurship, and helping entrepreneurs, I love doing it. That helps me to get through every day,and it makes me successful.
Avil Beckford: What are the steps you took to succeed in your field?
Evan Carmichael:
- I started my business around a business that I had a passion for and was genuinely interested in. I started it out of goodness to try and help people out, without having a business model behind it and that was the famous entrepreneur profiles. Don’t wait to have a plan just get started.
- When the idea gained traction we realized there was a way to actually turn it into an opportunity. After you realize what you’re passionate about, try to figure out a way to help more people. When you can help more people opportunities will come. I really believe that. A lot of the best opportunities that came to me without me going out looking for them. It was more because I was doing a lot to help people, and other people in companies recognized that, and they became attracted to that and wanted to work with me. We have been approached by a number of big companies that want to work with us because of all the great work we’re doing to help entrepreneurs. We didn’t actively go after it, it came to us because of what we’ve been doing.
Avil Beckford: What advice do you have for someone just starting out in your field?
Evan Carmichael: Some of the stuff we talked about already, obviously be passionate about what you are doing, try to be significant, start a service based business instead of a product based one. Just to expand on that a bit, a lot of people are attracted to product based businesses, or businesses that have a high cost. Product based businesses and business that have a high start-up cost are usually the ones with the high failure rate because they are too difficult to sustain. If you have a service based business then at the start you’re trading your time for money, but you do not have any costs, you can work out of your home, maybe you need business cards and a simple website but it’s a lot easier to get started.
On top of that, I would also add to try and build your business around the customer, so don’t sit at home and think, “Here is a great idea. I think it’s going to make me a lot of money.” Start talking to customers and have them tell you what a great idea it is. Find out what their problems are and offer to build a solution that they’ll pay for and you start building your business around your customers.
With my software company, my first one, I made a lot of mistakes on that front where we spent a lot of time thinking amongst ourselves what would be great features to add in, and the one that actually took the most amount of our development time our customers didn’t care about it. That’s because we didn’t ask them and didn’t build our business around them. So if you’re starting a new company you may not be able to afford to spend all that time and energy that could be wasted so start talking to your customers or potential customers and figure out how you can help them and build a service based business around them.
That would be my top advice for entrepreneurs who are just starting out!
Avil Beckford: If trusted friends could introduce you to five people that you’ve always wanted to meet, who would you choose? And what would you say to them?
Evan Carmichael:
- My favourite entrepreneur who I’d like to meet is Amadeo Giannini who is the founder Bank of America. Most people don’t think of banks as being very entrepreneurial but he was a friend of the little guy. I would just want to sit and hear his story. I don’t know if I have a specific question that I would ask him, but I liked how he really cared for his customers, and did as much as he could to help them, and fought for the little guy, and believed in entrepreneurs. That’s something that I can relate well to. I try to help out as much as I can and be a friend as much as I can. Obviously I have limited time and resources, but he is someone who really inspired me and I really enjoy his story thoroughly.
- Other people who I have looked up to for other things – Donald Trump is great for thinking big, I might ask him about thinking big. We’re a media company so I might look at other media companies and try to emulate them – so Ted Turner from CNN, or Martha Stewart – people who have media, if it’s TV, magazines, those are companies and entrepreneurs I might ask specific questions about the media industry.
- Anthony Robbins is another entrepreneur we profiled who has a lot of motivational and inspirational messages – tapping into your passion and taking your business to the next level, which is a message that applies to every business owner.
Avil Beckford: Which one book had a profound impact on your life? What was it about this book that impacted you so deeply?
Evan Carmichael: My favourite book is Tim Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek and that came right at the time when I was trying to plan my schedule with my family life and my work life and trying to make it all work together. There are a lot of messages in there about outsourcing and time management that I found really useful. That really helped me. Another one is Think and Grow Rich
by Napoleon Hill and that includes the concept of Master Mind Groups which I believe in and it is basically getting entrepreneurs together once a month and we talk about our ideas and try to help each other grow our businesses.
Avil Beckford: You are one of the 10 finalists on the reality show, So, How Would You Spend Your Time? Each finalist is placed on separate deserted islands for two years. You have a basic hut on the island and all the tools for survival; you just have to be imaginative and inventive when using them. You are allowed to take five books, one movie and one music CD, and whatever else you take has to fit in one suitcase and a travel on case. What would you take with you and how would you spend the two years? T he prize is worth your while and at this stage in the game there really aren’t any losers among the 10 finalists, since each is guaranteed at least $2 million?
Evan Carmichael: I would be creating content that I think would be really helpful for entrepreneurs, and that ties in to what I’m really passionate about. Sometimes I can get lost in the content that I’m creating, and you know you’re doing the right thing when you can spend hours on something, be fulfilled and know that it’s going to be something that will really help people. Sometimes even now with my business I feel that there is a lot of stuff going on and I might not have days or weeks to set aside to make a great piece of content to then help a lot of people with, but if I had two years on a deserted island I could probably come up with that, as long as I had a computer to help me out.
Avil Beckford: What excites you about life?
Evan Carmichael: A lot of things! If you’re talking about life in general, I’m excited about my son and seeing him develop and grow every day. I’m excited about my wife and the life we have, travel plans, the home we’re building – all that stuff is very exciting.
On the business side I’m excited to be helping entrepreneurs creating useful materials that I know will help them grow their business and get them to where they want to be. I’m excited that what we’re doing is meaningful and not just about making money but about helping people. Business is much more than about profitability it is something you can do to make you feel fulfilled. So all of that really excites me.
Avil Beckford: How do you nurture your soul?
Evan Carmichael: I think getting lost in what I do is very nourishing for me. So that can apply to different things at different points in my life. So if it’s about business, we created a business plan guide and I spent lots of time pouring a lot of energy into it and taking time off from other things to create this document that I know would be really helpful to people who go through it. Throughout that it was enriching and nourishing to think about all the people you’ll be able to help, and you know that it’s useful, valuable, helpful information.
When I’m spending a lot of time with my son and watching him grow and learn new things, that is really nourishing and exciting for me. I can get lost in salsa dancing, picking new songs from my DJ play list and I know that people are going to like it. All that stuff is nourishing and helpful for me. And I think a good way to think about it, at least for me, is the things that you can get lost in and the time seems to go, you don’t keep track, you don’t look at the clock and wonder when it’s going to end because you’re enjoying it so much, and hopefully that comes from both your business and personal life.
Avil Beckford: If you had a personal genie and she gave you one wish, what would you wish for?
Evan Carmichael: I think it would be really useful for entrepreneurs to have the resources they need to grow their businesses, and I think in North America a lot of us have that. They don’t need a lot of money, a lot of start-up capital to get their businesses going. But access to the information to help you overcome your worries, insecurities, beliefs that might have been put on you by friends and families, I think all that would be super helpful. So I think being able to help all the entrepreneurs in the world get that information and let them know that they can be doing more than what they’re doing now and can have a fulfilling life they can be proud of and have something they can pass on to future generations. I think that would be a big wish but something that would really excite me.
Avil Beckford: Complete the following, I am happy when…..
Evan Carmichael: I’m passionately lost in what I’m doing.
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Author Bio: Avil Beckford, an expert interviewer, entrepreneur and published author is passionate about books and professional development, and that's why she founded The Invisible Mentor and the Virtual Literary World Tour to give you your ideal mentors virtually in the palm of your hands by offering book reviews and book summaries, biographies of wise people and interviews of successful people.
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