(B) Feeling Bold, Powerful, Confident, and Alive with Evan Carmichael

In this episode, we share how to feel bold, powerful, confident, and alive and get the motivation you need to finally take action and make your goals and dreams a reality. Learn to believe in yourself with our guest Evan Carmichael.

At 19 Evan Carmichael built and then sold a biotech software company. At 22, he is a venture capitalist, and he runs a YouTube channel for entrepreneurs with over 2 million subscribers and 300 million views. Forbes called him one of the world's top 40 social marketing talents and Inc. called him one of the 100 great leadership speakers and 25 social media keynote speakers you need to know.

Everybody has Michael Jordan level talent at SOMETHING.. but they don’t believe in themselves.
Why don’t people believe in themselves?
- We are surrounded by people who don’t believe in themselves.
Awareness is powerful.
Why are people too afraid to take action towards their goals?
We have moments of boldness, moments of courage
Scary, difficult, hard, afraid = you have to do it.
Make yourself go from idea to action ASAP.
Tie your self worth to the PROCESS and the EFFORT, not the RESULTS
Pat yourself on the back for trying
Overcome fear by creating a greater fear of regret
Make it an inside game. Be proud of your effort.
How can we start believing in ourselves more?
- Eliminate the negativity in your life.
- Eliminate the people that bring negative energy into your life.
- Create boundaries with these negative people in your life.
- Fill that void with positivity.. go to events, listen to podcasts, meet new people
Find the thing that makes you feel BOLD, POWERFUL, CONFIDENT, ALIVE, and make it a part of your day every day.
People have a routine that sets them up for success by having the right motivation every single day
Switch to MOTIVATION from education
Your purpose comes from your pain. Whatever you struggle with the most as a human... whenever you’ve felt the lowest… there are tons of people who currently are where you used to be.
We are built to serve - serving and helping others this the same part of your brain as having food and having sex. We like giving more than we like receiving. Most people just don’t know how to serve.
How do you serve other people?
- WHO?
  - What’s your one word / one idea that is your CORE belief?
  - What’s your most important core value?
  - What’s the rock to stand on?
- WHY?
  - Your purpose comes from your pain. Whatever you struggled the most with, that’s where your purpose comes from.
- HOW?
  - How I got out of it is TEACHABLE, so now go teach it to other people.
  - The "how" will change many times. Don’t get tied to the mechanism.
If you’re mission-driven, you keep finding ways to do it.
Momentum is the thing that most people are missing.
Believing that you’re here to have an impact is how you start to get momentum.
To continue your journey you HAVE TO HELP OTHERS
Your brand is an EMOTION. What is that one word? What is that emotion?
Homework: Find one person who is struggling with the thing that you’ve struggled with and offer to help.

Thank you so much for listening!

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This week's episode of The Science of Success is brought to you by Best Fiends.

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This weeks episode is brought to you by our partners at Brilliant! Brilliant is math and science enrichment learning. Learn concepts by solving fascinating, challenging problems. Brilliant explores probability, computer science, machine learning, physics of the everyday, complex algebra, and much more. Dive into an addictive interactive experience enjoyed by over 5 million students, professionals, and enthusiasts around the world.

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Want To Dig In More?! - Here’s The Show Notes, Links, & Research

General

Evan’s Website
Evan’s LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook

Media

Medium - “My Interview With YouTube Star Evan Carmichael” by Jas Takhar
The Techie Guy - “Stop reading the Top 10 Rules for Success by Evan Carmichael” by Liron Segev (loved this one!)
SalesPop! - “Developing Self-Awareness” by John Golden
ProductiveMag - “Interview with Evan Carmichael” by Michael Sliwinski
FreshGigs - “Don’t Fool Yourself with Evan Carmichael” by Emma Bullen
Observer - “The Four Limiting Beliefs Stopping You From Creating a Business and Life You Want” By Evan Carmichael
Forbes - “The One-Word Secret To Creating A Life That Matters” by Kevin Kruse
- “The Big Why And The Little Why With Evan Carmichael” by Murray Newlands
Crunchbase Profile - Evan Carmichael
[Podcast] Underdog Empowerment - UE 205 – EVAN CARMICHAEL – BUILDING AN AUDIENCE OF OVER 2M
[Podcast] Don't Keep Your Day Job - 200th Must Listen To Episode! with Evan Carmichael
[Podcast] Monumental w/ Evan Holladay - ADDING MASSIVE VALUE TO CREATE 2 MILLION YOUTUBE SUBS WITH EVAN CARMICHAEL
[Podcast] EOFire - How Evan Carmichael Will Help 1 Billion Entrepreneurs and Change the World

Videos

Books

Built to Serve: Find Your Purpose and Become the Leader You Were Born to Be by Evan Carmichael
Your One Word: The Powerful Secret to Creating a Business and Life That Matter by Evan Carmichael
The Top 10 Rules for Success: Rules to Succeed in Business and Life from Titans, Billionaires, & Leaders who Changed the World by Evan Carmichael
254 Confidence: Your daily guide to building unstoppable confidence in your life, work, and relationships. by Evan Carmichael
3 Point Landing Journal: Your powerful companion to go from just watching another video to actually taking action in your life. by Evan Carmichael

Episode Transcript

[00:00:04.4] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Science of Success. Introducing your host, Matt Bodnar.

[0:00:11.8] MB: Hey, it’s Matt. I’m here in the studio with Austin and we’re excited to bring you another business episode of the Science of Success. We just launched season 2 of our business episodes. If you want to learn more about what these are and why we’re doing them, be sure to check out the season 2 teaser that we recently released.

With that, Austin, tell us a little bit about how these episodes are different than our traditional Science of Success episode.

[0:00:35.7] AF: Yeah. It's important to note that you're still going to get all the great content you've come to know and love from the Science of Success every Thursday. These are bonus episodes with added value, specifically centered around business. We've interviewed some true titans of business in multiple industries from multiple walks of life. What we're going to focus on are the habits, routines and mindsets that made them successful titans they are today.

That said, these are lessons, routines, stories, best practices that anyone can learn from and apply their life. You don't have to be a business owner. You can be an employee, you can be a student, or you can of course, be a business owner, but come check them out. You're going to come away with a ton of valuable takeaways. We do have a bit of a business focus on these specific business episodes in season 2.

[0:01:19.4] MB: With that, let's get into the episode.

[0:01:23.0] MB: Welcome to the Science of Success, the number one evidence-based growth podcast on the Internet with more than 5 million downloads and listeners in over a hundred countries.

In this episode, we share how to feel bold, powerful, confident and alive and get the motivation you need to finally take action and make your goals and dreams a reality, learn to believe in yourself with our guest, Evan Carmichael.

Are you a fan of the show and have you been enjoying the content that we put together for you? If you have, I would love it if you signed up for our e-mail list. We have some amazing content on there, along with a really great free course that we put a ton of time into called How To Create Time for What Matters Most In Your Life. If that sounds exciting and interesting and you want a bunch of other free goodies and giveaways along with that, just go to successpodcast.com. You can sign up right on the homepage. That’s successpodcast.com. Or if you’re on your phone right now, all you have to do is text the word smarter, that’s S-M-A-R-T-E-R to the number 44-222.

In our previous episode, we shared how to face down your fears and we uncovered what happens when you do. We heard the incredible story of how our previous guest, Michelle Poler spent 100 days facing down her biggest fears and showed you what you could take away from her journey.

Now, for our interview with Evan.

[0:02:51.8] MB: At 19, Evan Carmichael built and then sold a biotech software company. At 22, he became a venture capitalist and now he runs a YouTube channel for entrepreneurs with over 2 million subscribers and 300 million views. Forbes has called him one of the world's top 40 social marketing talents and Inc. has called him one of the 100 great leadership speakers, as well as one of the 25 social media keynote speakers that you need to know.

Evan, welcome to the Science of Success.

[0:03:21.7] EC: Thanks a lot, Matt. Great to be here, man.

[0:03:23.9] MB: Well, we're really excited to have you on the show today. There's so many things I want to dig into. For starters, I was looking at one of your bios recently when we were doing some research for the show. I noticed that you said that the biggest problem that humans face is that we have so much untapped human potential. I thought that was so interesting, because our mission for the show for years has been to unleash human potential.

I really wanted to start the conversation with that, because in many ways, we are on this common journey together to try and help people become unstuck, to help them unleash all that potential that they have, but they're often not realizing.

[0:03:59.9] EC: Yeah. I think people just don't believe in themselves enough. I think everybody has what I call Michael Jordan level talent at something. You're the greatest in the world at something, but chances are it's not what your parents did, or what's currently happening in your community or the people around you, and so people fall into two camps; one, they don't believe that they're the greatest in the world at something, and so they continue on with their life and never chasing down anything big. Or two, they do believe in it, but they're too afraid to actually go chase it down.

Whatever you think the world's biggest problem might be, people listening; cancer, great. I think the woman who solves cancer right now is a manager at McDonald's, because she didn't believe in herself enough to chase it down.

[0:04:42.8] MB: I love that. Such a great example. Let's dig into both of those things. Why don't people believe in themselves?

[0:04:49.7] EC: I think one, we're surrounded by people who also don't believe in themselves. If you think about who your parents are and the people at your school and how you're grown up, are you around people who are living their purpose and absolutely believe in themselves? Probably not. Which is why successpodcast.com, right? It's like, why we're trying to change that. You're trying to change that. I'm trying to change that. We're trying to be a voice to say, “Hey, the people around you, even though they're not living their best life, you can go live yours too.”

One is just awareness that is possible, because most people don't think that it's possible. Just planting a seed can be really important. Then two, is having the courage to do something about it. The more that you can nurture that seed, if somebody's listened to your podcast and they're coming on and every week they're listening and downloading more episodes, if they listen to an episode every week for the next year, they're going to grow. It's impossible not to grow, from all the people that you're bringing on, and advice that you're sharing.

If you make Matt a part of your regular routine, you're going to start to think a little bit more like Matt and the guests that he has on his shows. Most people don't do that enough. If they think they have talent at something and they believe in themselves a little bit, it's in these start and stop moments. I can do something more, but then now I'm too afraid and I fall back. You have these moments of boldness and courageousness and greatness and then you fall back to your regular life, where the people who continue to succeed and continue to go off and do great things, they demand that excellence from them on a daily basis.

[0:06:21.3] MB: That's such a great point. One of the things that I've found really interesting about your work and everything that you do is the emphasis on taking action, right? Capturing those moments of boldness when the inspiration strikes, because the reality is even the people who are really successful, they have those moments too, where they have doubt, they have fear, they don't know what they should do next. They don't feel like doing anything. Sometimes they feel like everything's falling apart, but they take action despite all that stuff.

[0:06:51.6] EC: Yeah. I think fear is fantastic. I think if there's nothing in your calendar that makes you afraid, you hate your life. It means you're just photocopying the same day over and over and over again. That's unfortunately most of America. We wake up and just photocopy their life over and over and over again, you know you can build more, but you're not doing enough to actually do something.

I've tried to train myself that scary, difficult, hard, afraid. If I hear myself saying that, then I have to do it, just because and teaching yourself to go from idea to action and tying yourself worth to the effort that you're putting in, as opposed to did you get results the first time out. When you can make that shift, because most of us tie our self-worth to the results, did I get X number of downloads on my episode? Did I get X number of likes, or comments, or revenue, or whatever you're chasing down?

When you don't do it, you feel like a failure. If you only chase down results and you're going to do the things that you know you're going to get a result at, therefore you place them all for life. If you tie your self-worth to the effort that you're putting in every single day, you'll end up failing a whole bunch, but accomplishing way, way, way, way, way more than the people around you.

[0:07:56.9] MB: Another piece of that too that you just touched on that's really important is if you want to take big swings, if you want to see big results, you almost glossed over this part that you're going to fail a whole bunch in that process and you have to be able and willing to fail.

[0:08:12.4] EC: Yeah. It's tying it again back to I was willing to try. People are out there making fun of people who are failing. I'm willing to try. I'm willing to go off and do it. I pat myself on the back for trying. If I'm coming on this podcast and I'm afraid and I'm nervous to be on this podcast, one, I'll tell myself, “This is going to be the greatest podcast in my life. This podcast is going to be the thing that blows up my career and takes it to the next step. If I don't do it, I'm going to regret it forever,” right?

Overcome the fear by creating a greater fear of future regret. Then two, even if I come on the podcast and I just blank out the whole time and I bring no value and I vomit on my microphone, it's the total disaster of an interview, I'm still going back, patting myself on the shoulder saying, “I'm so glad that I tried.” Because if you woke up every day and put out your max effort, you're proud of you, not what people are saying about you – it's an inside game. Are you proud of what you did today, the effort you put out? Because if every day you woke up and you were proud of your effort, even though it means failing a lot, are you proud of the effort in the failures? Because you're going to end up doing such amazing things. Most people aren't proud of themselves, because they don't believe in themselves.

[0:09:29.6] AF: What’s going on, everyone? This episode in the Science of Success is brought to you our incredible sponsor, Best Fiends. That's Best F-I-E-N-D-S. Just like friends, but without the R. I am absolutely in love with this game. If you're looking for a fun way to pass the time while engaging your brain and enjoying some truly breathtaking visuals in a gripping story, Best Fiends is perfect for you.

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[0:10:56.8] MB: You touched on this and many of the things we've already talked about, tie into this, but I want to come back to this idea of how we can start believing in ourselves more. Tell me how to do that.

[0:11:08.8] EC: One, the environment makes a giant difference. It starts with eliminating the negativity in your life. Who are the people that are bringing you down, that make you feel low-energy, that tell you that you can't do certain things? Sometimes, you just have to let go of them. Just because you are friends with somebody in high school or elementary school doesn't mean that you should still be friends with them now.

A lot of us are in a relationships out of convenience, as opposed to developing a life for ourselves. We're just afraid of making new friends and trying to get new circles. Those negative people maybe your parents. In that case, you may not want to get rid of your parents, although some people do that, but just limit access to topics, set up boundaries. We don't talk about certain things. I'm not talking about this with you. You stick to the topics that you know you can knock it into fights and arguments about.

Once you eliminate the negativity, now you have a void and people are afraid of the void. We'd rather stick with friends who bring us down, because at least we have friends. We don't want to be lonely and have nobody. You need to fill that void with positivity, like listening to this podcast, like watching my YouTube channel, like going to events and trying to meet new people. Filling it with positivity and then making that consistent.

It's great that maybe you listen to this one episode and you're fired up and crushing it, tomorrow you're going to fall back. What are you going to do tomorrow to stay on top of your game? Most people just aren't consistent enough. When you find a thing that makes you feel bold, you've had moments. Everybody listening has had moments, where you felt bold, powerful, confident, alive. What led to that? Then finding a way to put that as a part of your daily routine, so you start your day with it.

Nobody wakes up. Matt doesn't do it. Austin doesn't do it. I don't do it. We wake up it’s like, “Yes! Today is going to be amazing!” Right? That's not how people wake up. The difference is people have a routine that sets them up for success, because you've reverse engineered what is the thing that makes you feel bold, powerful, confident, alive and you demand excellence on a daily basis.

[0:13:08.3] MB: Such a piece of advice and tying that back into figuring out in your own life, what makes you feel bold and powerful and confident and then tying that back into your routines on a daily basis. One of the things and I'm curious if you've thought about this that was really a – it's weird, because I've been doing this podcast, been into personal development for years and years and years and I made the shift 6 to 8 months ago, of thinking about personal development content less from a form of education, because I feel like a lot of the stuff is pretty simple at the end of the day; take action in the face of fear, get comfortable with discomfort, all that stuff.

It's not thinking about personal development content in the sense of educating yourself, but really switching the context and being like, I could listen to the same thing 10 times as long as it's motivational. Really using it as fuel and that I listen to a certain piece of content, or a certain podcast, or YouTube, or whatever and then that fuels me to be like, “All right, now I'm ready to go crush it, because I'm fueled up.” Baking that into your life, that was a really big revelation for me personally.

[0:14:04.8] EC: Yeah. If I could add a layer on to that, I would say baking in service to feel like you're here not because of listening to Matt do an interview, but you're here to serve, you're here to try to help other people. This is something that can help get people unstuck is understanding that your purpose comes from your pain. That whatever you struggled with the most as a human, where you felt the lowest self-esteem, self-worth, understand that there are tons of people who currently are what you used to be and they need help. They could see you as hope, as inspiration that it's possible, that even though you're not done growing, you're still on your path. Every time you take a step up, you can reach back and pull somebody up to the level that you're at.

If you can default the thinking about service, so that today – I mean, you're sitting there in your studio recording. I'm here in Toronto recording here. We're just by ourselves, but there's an audience of people listening. If you felt like every day the work you were doing was meaningful to somebody, made a difference, was having an impact on their life, that gives you courage and confidence and the willingness to step forward, even though you're afraid.

[0:15:16.4] MB: Let's touch on that a little bit more. I know you've got a new book coming out, Built to Serve, that really talks about how we can find our purpose. I get probably one of the most frequent questions I get from listeners of the podcast are all around that same topic of hey, I don't know what to do with my life. I'm not sure what to do next. I'm confused. I'm distraught. I don't know where I should be going from here. How do you think about and what would you say to people who really need help?

Because I think everybody is bought in on this idea, yes, you should find your purpose, but how do you actually from a really concrete perspective start to actually do that and really not only discover it, but then live it?

[0:15:56.9] EC: Yeah. I mean, I wish everybody had bought in under the idea that you have a purpose. This audience for sure, you're not listening to Matt without having bought in on that, but I think most of America hasn't bought in on that yet, so I'm trying to change that narrative. If you have, understand that the book is called Built to Serve, because humans are built to serve. Serving others, helping others hits the same part in your brain that did functional MRIs on people's brains and serving others hits the same part of your brain as having food and having sex, which are also both pretty important as humans.

We like giving more than we like receiving. Most people just don't know how to serve. I found that there's two types. One is the group that likes to serve the world. You and I want to have a big message. We want to impact the world. We want to touch millions and billions of lives. Chances are your audience is mostly in that camp as well. That's the entrepreneurial, big ambitious people. The other group though are the people who don't have a big mission, but they want to serve the 25 closest people to them, people like my wife. No giant mission, but love, staying in touch with people from elementary school and still helping them and showing them love.

If you're not happy, it's because you're not serving, either the world or the 25 closest people to you, whether it's 20 or 25 or 30, just that inner circle. Now how do you serve? Well, concrete steps. It starts with one, figuring out – I go through a process, that’s who, why, how. Who, your one most important core value. If you had to guess, Matt, what's your most important core value as a human?

[0:17:25.7] MB: Wow, that's a good question. Honestly, I know your whole big focus on the one word. I don't know that I have a good answer for it. Let's say my one core value would be unleashing human potential based on what we're here on the show.

[0:17:38.0] EC: Awesome. Just take potential as an example. Anybody who now you're going to bring onboard your company, has to believe in potential. You could have the greatest producer, the greatest editor, the greatest website developer, but if they just have the skillset but they don't have that same belief system as you, you're just not going to get along. That's great. That's fantastic to know, like that should be part of the process. You want to be around people. You're bringing on guests who believe on unleashing potential. You're bringing on a team that believes in unleashing potential. You want to have friends, relationships who believe in unleashing potential, right?

Even just having that awareness is more than 99% of America. If you feel like you're constantly pulled in a lot of different directions, it's because other people have an agenda for your time and you don't know what to say yes or no to, because you don't have the rock to stand on, right? Your most important core value, your who is the rock to stand on. If it's going to help unleash potential in the world, Matt's in. If it's not, he doesn't care. Having that boundary makes it a lot easier to make decisions. That's the who.

The next is the why. Why is personal development so important to you? You've been doing this for a while. This isn't your first episode here and what you're doing even before the podcast, why personal development? Who cares? How did it save you?

[0:18:56.1] MB: I mean, I think for me, I was lost, I was struggling. I didn't know where to turn and I just picked up a couple random personal development books and over the course of 10 or 15 years, radically transformed my emotions, my life, my health, my happiness, everything.

[0:19:11.1] EC: What was the worst moment inside that being lost for you?

[0:19:14.6] MB: Dealing with a bunch of anxiety and depression and fear and not knowing what to do, or where to turn.

[0:19:21.0] EC: That's the thing, right? How long ago was that? 10 years ago? Seven years ago?

[0:19:25.6] MB: Yeah, something like that.

[0:19:26.8] EC: That's going to fill you up for life. You're going to be 95-years-old and somebody who's even around the same age going to come back, who's in their 20s, feels lost, has anxiety, has depression, feel like there's no hope, they're going to talk to you. You're going to in a conversation, shift the perspective, you're going to see their eyes light up and now there's hope, you're still going to get a high off of that when you're 95-years-old.

Your purpose comes from your pain. Whatever you struggle the most with, you want to help other people through. Everybody's been through some pain. Everybody's had these moments. Now you've built this amazing community up and you've got your podcast and everything else that you're doing, awesome. In 10 years, maybe it's on a podcast. Maybe Matt's beaming into your living room with holograms and virtual reality, but the purpose doesn't change. That's going to fill him up for life.

It's the same for everybody listening. You can follow the process. Whatever you struggle the most with – There are lots of people who were like Matt who don't get out. They are like Matt and they never get out. That depression and anxiety leads to a lifetime of regret, hatred, maybe suicide and just that one interaction with Matt could be the flip that ignites the switch for them to go off and make a change in their life.

Having that clarity about both those two, like the who and the why, the unleashing potential and helping people who are lost and have anxiety and depression will never get old for the rest of your life. I want to help people get that clarity.

[0:20:59.6] MB: Yeah, that's such a great piece of advice. It's funny. I mean, without getting into it, I can just see in my behavior and the way I react or interact with certain people that there's absolutely things that fit into that mold that I'll just spend countless amount of time or energy on, even one fan or one listener, whatever, if they have an issue, I'll spend as much time as possible to help them with it. Then I’ll be like, “Oh, my God. What was I just doing?” But it makes total sense. The third piece of that, you said was how. Tell me how the how it plays into that, or is that where you're talking about the podcast is the how now, but it may change?

[0:21:30.9] EC: Yeah. How you got out of it is not just some random thing that happened just to Matt. How you got out of it is teachable. You got out of it by studying success, by reading certain books. Well, it's no surprise that if you go to successpodcast.com, there's a link at the top that says Bookshelf, right? How you got out of it is teachable. You've got your books, you've got your podcast, you've got all the advice that you're giving. A lot of people think, “Well, I was just a fluke how I did it.” It’s like, no. That's something that you can now show other people the process, so that they can get out of it as well.

On your journey, you've learned so much, you've developed so many skills. Helping somebody launch a podcast, for example, will be fun for you. You have a lot of knowledge and domain expertise and you can really help somebody launching a podcast. If somebody comes up and they're facing anxiety and depression and they feel lost and you can spend 15 minutes to talk to them and you see the eyes light up, that's going to fill you up so much more than just helping somebody launch their podcast.

We're built to serve. We love helping other people. But there's a big difference between just holding the door open for somebody, or helping them with their podcast, or buying the coffee for the person behind you in line to these little moments, versus actually deep down, seeing that person's life change, because they're going through the thing you went through and you just inspired them.

[0:22:48.9] MB: That's such a great way of framing it. I've always thought that podcasting is the medium that I fell into and happened to be doing, but it was always the vehicle and not the end game. I didn't approach it from the perspective of, “Oh, hey. I really want to start a podcast. By the way, it's going to be about this.” I was super into this stuff and then someone was like, “Hey, we should start a podcast and talk about it.”

[0:23:10.1] EC: Yeah. If you're mission-driven, you're going to want to unleash potential for the rest of your life. There's no way you're 75-years-old and you're like, “You know what? I'm done with unleashing potential. I'm just going to sit on my rocking chair for the next 20 years.” That's not going to happen. There's no way. That's not going to be Matt. That's not going to happen.

Not being tied to the mechanism, right? The how is going to change many times between now and when you reach 95-years-old, and so being able to adjust because all you care about is unleashing potential and helping people through anxiety and depression and people who feel lost. In 2020, a podcast is a fantastic way to do it and then 2030 is going to be something else.

[0:23:51.6] MB: This episode of the Science of Success is brought to you once again, by our incredible sponsors at Brilliant. Go to www.brilliant.org/scienceofsuccess to learn more. For a limited time, the first 200 of our listeners to sign up get 20% off an annual premium subscription. Brilliant is a math and science learning platform and their mission is to inspire and develop people to achieve their goals in STEM learning. I love it.

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[0:25:19.4] MB: The other beauty of this system that you put together in really a lot of your content and your work is taking these principles and making it extremely simple and actionable, right? If you have one word as a core belief that sometimes you think, “Oh, I got to figure out what are my values, my beliefs and put together this half-day seminar and workshop and do all this stuff.” There's a real beauty in making it super simple to really crystallize it.

[0:25:41.9] EC: Yeah. I mean, in the book goes through the process of figuring out what your who is, your one word, whether yours is potential or something else, it's not going to be the opposite of potential. You're not that far off picking something like potential. I think momentum is just the thing that most people are missing. Finding your purpose doesn't have to be some crazy 18-year journey with meditation and journaling. You can figure it out right now and start making momentum immediately happen. The biggest thing missing for most people is just lack of momentum.

[0:26:13.2] MB: Your contention is that finding your purpose helps you start to build that momentum.

[0:26:18.7] EC: Believing that you are here to have an impact. You already know it. Everybody knows the love that they feel when they've helped somebody out, but believing that you could have a bigger impact and help people who are like you, you may not believe that you can save the world yet. There's a lot of people who may not feel like, “I can go and have this life-changing mission.” You know there's a lot of people who also have what you have. If Matt was just getting started and just got through the early stages of now he's not in the depths of depression, and just seeing you help one other person will light that spark.

If you look at AA, Alcoholics Anonymous, they have their 12-step program. One of the 12 steps is you have to be a sponsor for somebody else. The change doesn't stick, unless you're serving and helping other people who are behind you. For you to continue your journey, me to continue my journey, we have to give back and help. When you figure out what that thing is that you struggled with and then you see yourself helping somebody else, that gives you energy, that gives you momentum, that gives you hope, that helps you believe that you can continue and do more.

[0:27:25.7] MB: That's a great piece of advice. The whole idea of having to help somebody else in the journey the AA example is great. I mean, even if you look at things like the way they do, training and med schools and that stuff, it's all about teaching other people and helping other people is a great way to really internalize that learning, internalize those things. That's a really powerful piece of advice.

[0:27:48.8] EC: Yeah. It's not that hard to find a lot of people who are struggling with what you struggle with. If you're helping people with anxiety and depression, okay, how many people in America have anxiety and depression and feel lost? A giant crap ton of people. How you then end up going through it, so for you it was learning from successful people in books and that started giving you the spark.

For somebody else, maybe it was going to the gym and working out. For somebody else, maybe it was picking up soccer, or learning how to play the piano. It could be any number of things. If it was learning soccer, that's the thing that got you more confidence and got you having friends and changing your life, then you could go and become a soccer coach and start a soccer business, where you're not just teaching people how to dribble, you're teaching people how to change their life and have more confidence. It's having a purpose-driven business, purpose-driven life, because you are built to serve and how you got out of it is teachable to other people.

[0:28:46.6] MB: Such a great piece of advice. I love the soccer analogy, because you can just see it and feel it that some – I can envision the soccer coach teaching kids and instilling all these wisdom and values and everything and it's not about the soccer. It could be karate, it could be art, it could be anything. It's really about helping people build confidence and passing on what you've learned and helping other people on the journey.

[0:29:07.2] EC: Your brand is an emotion. The emotion should be your who, your one word. Anything that Matt touches has to be through unleashing potential. Even if Matt launches a course on how to start a podcast, something super practical, tangible, he's got experience, he knows what he's doing, it's all going to be wrapped in to unleashing your potential. You have insane potential, you have a message. I'm going to help unlock that. Here's a tool to use, it's called the podcast, right?

Same thing for any business. I own the largest salsa dancing school in Canada, maybe North America, and it's about belonging. It’s about giving people a place to come to where they can belong. The guy who I brought in to run it, that's his most important core value, because he never felt like he had anywhere to go where he could belong.

Yes, you're going to learn steps, you're going to come out of the classes learning how to dance salsa, but we're not really teaching salsa. We're teaching you how to belong and gain confidence and feel better about yourself.

[0:30:04.3] MB: Amazing. Evan, what would one action step be that you would give for listeners to start concretely taking action on the things we've learned about today?

[0:30:15.1] EC: I would try to find one person who is struggling with the thing that you struggled with and offer to help. Maybe you know somebody already, maybe you just post to Facebook and you tell your story. Say, “Guys, I've never talked about this, but for the past 20 years, I actually struggled with depression and boom, boom, boom, boom, boom,” and you tell your story and see what comes back and then hop on a call, or go for a coffee with somebody who is currently struggling with that and just feel your heart light up. For some people listening, that may be the first time ever that you felt your heart light up so much, go find somebody who is struggling with the thing you struggled with and help them.

[0:30:53.6] MB: Great piece of advice. Evan, where can listeners find you and all of your content and all of your work online?

[0:30:59.7] EC: If you want the book, just go to Amazon. Easy to spot. Otherwise, Evan Carmichael on any social media platform and I'm there.

[0:31:07.6] MB: Well Evan, thank you so much for coming on the show, for sharing all this wisdom. We packed a lot into a 30-minute interview. It's so many great pieces of advice and tactics and strategies for the listeners.

[0:31:18.4] EC: Appreciate you, man. Great questions and I'm pumped to see you continue to expand your journey as well. Thank you for having me on. It's been an honor.

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