How Evan Carmichael Built A YouTube Channel By Serving First

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We dig into how Evan Carmichael went from years of slow YouTube growth to building a massive channel by staying mission-led and publishing anyway. We talk through belief, service, support systems, and practical business moves that help creators stop stalling and start building something sustainable. 
• Evan’s path from entrepreneurship into YouTube education 
• Early-channel reality checks and why small audiences still matter 
• Creating for “younger you” to clarify message and niche 
• The growth impact of active support and asking for help 
• Built to serve as an antidote to burnout and algorithm chasing 
• Treating a channel like a business without making money the only goal 
• Starting monetisation with coaching and learning the “yeah, but” objections 
• Team leverage, batching, and scheduling a dedicated YouTube day 
• Procrastination, fear of sucking, and why imperfect reps win 
• One-word branding and how “Believe” becomes a content filter 
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Transcript

Cold Open And Big Energy

SPEAKER_00 0:00

If your first video doesn't stop, then you stop. Like then you should have posted five years ago. I love that one. That's fire. But this podcast has bridged the gap between all the analytical advice and given you the glue in between those things to push you forward because YouTube content creation isn't just about the numbers, it's about everything in between. And this podcast has literally told you that part. Hey, welcome back to the only podcast that always tells you that you should believe. I'm Travis, and I'm here every single week, and I can't wait to introduce you to a guy that I kind of consider a friend a little bit. Maybe I'm I'm overreaching, but a guy I've known for a long time, Evan Carmichael. Believe. How are you doing, my friend?

SPEAKER_02 0:42

Dude, that I can I get that as my alarm clock in the morning. That was great. That's some energy. I'm uh whatever you drank this morning. I want some of it. That's great.

SPEAKER_00 0:49

I got a got an Arizona Iced T that I am on right now. And uh, but I'm always like this on this podcast because this podcast is to help you grow your YouTube channel. If you're new here, welcome, welcome, welcome. We do this in a couple ways. Sometimes we answer your questions. A lot of times we have people on, like Evan, to talk about the YouTube journey they've been through. So if you're new here, hit that subscribe button. And if you're listening to the audio only podcast, there will be notes in the show notes, of course, in the description on YouTube. So Evan, bro, my friend, the guy, the man, the myth the legend, the guy who's been around for a long time. If you've been a YouTube creator on uh if you've been a YouTube creator for any length of time, you've come across Evan at some point, um, inspirationally or or or whatever it is, like he's been around forever. But I I I want to know more about you and how you started because this is something I don't know. Like I know the Evan Carmichael that's the dude on YouTube that uh I mean, when I first started, I was watching your videos, and the inspirational portion of what you did was the thing that always touched me. The believe is always something I've I've I I I love. But I don't know what happened before. There's like, how did who was Evan before YouTube?

Evan’s Pre-YouTube Origin Story

Starting In 2009 With Tiny Results

SPEAKER_02 1:53

Wow, okay. Are we getting on the couch? I mean, uh, the therapy side. I don't know how far back you want to go. Uh, I mean, I had entrepreneurial tendencies my whole life. Uh, I I thought I wanted to be a banker though. I mean, I'm how old am I now? I'm 45, I'm 46 this year. So growing up, uh, entrepreneurship wasn't a thing. And so I thought I wanted to be a banker. And then I connected with two entrepreneurs in university and um joined their business, took a 30% ownership and made 300 bucks a month. Uh, turned down the you know, six-figure job to do that, and quit on my partner uh for a day and came back. But it's like the worst time of my life. Uh, and then uh obviously built it, sold it, uh, had an exit. Great. Um, and then I I never knew how to raise money, so I joined a VC firm to learn how to raise money. And ultimately, like I think your purpose comes from your pain. I think whatever you struggle the most with is what you want to help other people through. And so I struggled so much as an entrepreneur and in believing in myself that I wanted to try to help others on their entrepreneur journey, not struggle as much as I did. Because I I quit and luckily I came back, but a lot of people quit and then that's it, and they they never get back on the horse. And so I wanted to make the journey a little bit easier. And uh YouTube was still relatively new. Uh, I started in 2009. Nobody was making educational video. I made a six-minute video, Travis, and people were telling me it's too long, nobody's gonna watch this, it's crazy, right? It's like it's guys YouTube has evolved a lot since uh since I first started. I know when you uploaded your first video, but it's definitely evolved. Yeah. Uh my first year, well, even the beginning, I opened my account in 2008 and did nothing with it. You know, I sat on it for like six months before I even uploaded a video. So there's that. Um, and then in my first year, I got 25 subscribers. Uh, my first video uh in a year of it being up, I had three comments on it. One was my mom, one was my older sister, and one was some random guy. And like, yes, like hey, it's working. Somebody like saw my video and it's working. And it took what five years to get to the 2,000 subscribers or something. Like, I was I was I but I suck, dude. And I never asked for help. And I this podcast didn't exist for me to listen to, and I was shy and introverted and thought I would never win. And I I just kept going, I just kept creating. Um, if 50 people watched my video, I'm like, that's 50 people who saw my video. You know, I just I think I just always focus on who I was serving instead of who I wasn't, because the who you're not serving is a never-ending game, right? It's like, why? I mean, we're at four, whatever, a million subscribers. Why is it not 10? Why is it not 40? Why, you know, that game never ends. But people, you know, 50 people sat in a in a coffee shop to listen to you. That's crazy, right? I mean, that's how I always thought. And like maybe for one person out of those 50, this video is a life-changing video for them. Um, and so that was what kept me going, is I just thought, hey, for at least one person, this is gonna be something special. I hope. At least I was what I what I told myself. Um, and when people ask, like, how did you know YouTube was gonna do well? I I didn't know. I'm not I'm not that special. Um, it's just was the only I'm a visual guy, so I like to see things. If this was an audio-only podcast and I couldn't see you, it'd be really hard. I just have to focus really hard. Uh, so I like video first, and so I just started making content. Uh, and for anybody on the on the you know, thought process, like should I start or not, is like make videos for younger you. Think about who you used to be and the struggles that you went through and what you had to overcome to get to where you're at, and then go make videos for that person because there are millions of people right now who are struggling with the thing that you struggled with, and uh, you can help.

SPEAKER_00 5:39

That's actually powerful. Um, making it for younger you because then you have the answers to some of the questions that might come up. So I I actually love that. It's mind-blowing, actually. I never really thought about it like that. But let's talk about before you first of all, YouTube was way different when you started. It was like 17 years ago, no YouTube shorts, no live streaming, none of the things we see, none of the big uh analytics you get in the back end. I mean, nothing like that. It was a completely different platform. Talk to me about when you first started uploading on YouTube, what your expectations were, why did you, what was your like niche? Like, what were you thinking when you first went into it? Was it like, I'm just gonna throw up some random uh videos or what what was your whole process then?

SPEAKER_02 6:16

Yeah, so yeah, live streaming not a thing, shorts not a thing, analytics was uh there was some, but definitely not uh advanced. I mean, vidIQ tools, if it existed, I didn't know about it. Um I just wanted to help, man. I mean, even the same thing now. We've done what 8,000 public videos, I think, on the main channel and all in at least 10,000 videos across different channels and unlisted videos, etc. Like, how do you not burn out from doing that? Uh, because I I like it. You know, like I want to help. I like I don't need to be famous. I don't like the spotlight actually. Like, I'm an introvert, it's shy guy. It doesn't come across in interviews like this. Um, but I want to serve, I want to want to help. And when you actually enjoy the process of the thing that you're doing, uh like I see YouTube Day on my calendar, like, this is awesome. I can't wait to go and like make some videos because somebody hopefully can learn from it. So I didn't know YouTube was gonna be a big thing. I I I mean, you could look at back of the channel and maybe throw some b-roll in and see my first video, and um I'm in a suit. Uh, I'm trying to memorize every line. I had hair back then. Um so it's it took me a whole day to make. I had my friend come and film with me because he was he was a professional videographer and I was too afraid to do it, you know, without him. Um, and so all the usual kind of mistakes or overthinking and and just being afraid of doing something and posting. And then after that first video, I don't remember how long it took me to post my second video, but it wasn't like I just started, I know this is gonna work, and I'm gonna post every day until I make it work, right? It was like it was also a different game back then. Um, and just expectations were I don't know, I just want to help. Like I've really just made videos like, hey, if if this existed for me, I would love it. And I hope there's someone out there like me who can love it as well. And I never would have expected to have four million subscribers or whatever, a million subscribers, a hundred thousand subscribers. It's like I hope I can help a few people and just share some stories that inspire me.

SPEAKER_00 8:17

I love that. And I think the thing about it is, is like we were saying, like you were saying earlier, there was no, there were like famous YouTubers and stuff when you started, obviously. There, you know, there have been big YouTubers for a long time, but the creator economy was way different back then it is now. It's completely different. Um, sponsorships are different, like everything about everything is different. At what point did you were you making videos where you're like, actually, I want to do this not just every so often? Because, like you said, you know, there were some big skips between you know video to video, that this became more of a passion. Um, because like you said, you want to help people, but you can help people in a lot of different ways. When did this start to take off for you? And you go, you know what, I want to actually spend more time on my YouTube channel.

Create For Younger You

SPEAKER_02 8:57

So on my website, I show my year-over-year growth. Um, and you can maybe show that here because people like to compare. Uh they they message me like, I'm ahead of you on year two. Like, year two, I had 107 subscribers, man. Like, go for it. I love it. That's great. Uh, it was what uh on my sixth year, I guess, in six years of making content. Um, two big things happened. One, I married my wife. Um, and I didn't I didn't realize how big a deal that would be. And Nina is not a YouTuber, she's doing anything about YouTube. I mean, she's learned a lot now over the past years, but when I married her, she was doing payroll at some company. Uh, but just the support was incredible. Um, just having somebody who, you know, in relationships, you either have the people who are like actively negative against you, then you have the people and like eliminate those people, then you have the passively negative people. So, like, oh, you're gonna do, oh, you're gonna start a channel, huh? Oh, are you sure? Like, like they're passively negative, and so that might be friends. It's like you don't want to you want to spend less time with them, and if they're your your parents, like maybe not talk about that subject to them. But if it's your your partner, your spouse, and are like a passively passive aggressive towards your dream, like that's a problem. Um, then you have the passively supportive. It's like, oh, it's your thing, oh congrats, like good job. And that's great. And those were my previous relationships, like passive supportive. But then I'm at Nina and she's like active supportive, which was I wasn't used to it. She's like, so she would watch my videos and and tell me I did a good job, or she would want to come and hear me speak at events. It's like, what you don't you don't need to come. I'm gonna talk about entrepreneurship. It's like boring, like she's she doesn't care about that stuff. It's like, no, no, I want to, I want to just see you. Like, oh, okay, whatever. Yeah, come. I was just more worried. She's gonna be bored, but then seeing her in the front row with a big smile on her face, it's like it, oh, that's what it feels like. I didn't even know that I needed this. Um, so just you know, having somebody in your life who uh is an active supporter of what you're doing, man, made a huge difference. You can see I jumped from I think it was like 9,000 subscribers to almost 40,000 subscribers that next year. So that was one thing in that year. Um, the same the same year, the the other thing I did was I started asking for help. Um, and I uh I have an agent who helped me. Uh, he looked at my videos and gave me feedback. I mean, this stuff you guys do as well, like you break down channels and you give feedback. And um I've joined so many VidIQ live streams where you guys are doing channel audits and submit your channel and giving great feedback. And uh, I was just always too afraid to ask anybody for help. I don't know. Uh maybe it's a Canadian in me or just uh the shy or introvert or whatever. I just always tried to figure things things out for myself. I would never join any groups, I would never go to any events, I would never, I would just watch some stuff and try to learn on my own. Um, but then that year, the year I married Nina, I also started asking for help. And then that's when you know we went from 9,000 to 40,000 to like 300,000 to almost 700,000 to 1.3 to you know started growing.

SPEAKER_00 12:08

What were some of the things that changed there besides asking for help? Like what were those things that were like that were holding you back you didn't know uh about, or what were the things that you learned that were like, oh, this is like the magic switch for me to kind of start hitting the next level?

Growth Shift Through Support And Help

SPEAKER_02 12:20

Yeah, that's a great question. So on the personal side, just having somebody cheering you on feels good. And so my output started to go up. I could make more videos, and just feeling like I wasn't alone on my journey. And I'm the kind of entrepreneur who'll just do it regardless. But again, when you have somebody cheering you on, you just I don't know, it feels better. It's just like when somebody asks about the is it the journey or the destination? Um, I don't know if you ever do uh if you ever watch shows and you see somebody um ask a question and you think, huh, I wonder how I would answer that question. And what I do I have this weird thing where I do that all the time. And somebody asks the question, like journey or destination, like, okay, that's a boring question. Like, of course, it's the the journey, not the destination. But the the guy said something different. He said, Neither. It's not the journey or the destination, it's the company you keep along the way. And like, oh man, that's I like that. That's cool. Um, so you know, Nina then became just a huge emotional boost. And a lot of times we have every logical reason why we should do something, and then we convince ourselves that we shouldn't, and we can't, and we're not good enough, and all of these things, and it's just having somebody believe in you uh where you can borrow their belief, I think is incredibly important. So that I don't there's no tangible Nina didn't teach me about like YouTube thumbnails or something, but just having somebody in your corner who believes in you makes a huge difference. Um, and then Steve, he he doesn't come from the YouTube world, but uh he came from the speaker world, um, authors, speakers, presenters, and he really helped me fix my messaging and get more comfortable and confident on camera and in helping people and having more powerful opinions and just wrapping my expertise up in uh a better package, uh, where before I'd start all the videos, hey guys, welcome back. It's me, Evan, and anyway, so you can start to see me practicing and actually getting better at the skill. So, like the skill set training plus the emotional support, uh, just started having compound effects. Um, and then from Steve, I also started I started going to events. I mean, I met you guys uh at an event and you know, learned about VidIQ and started using it and did some interviews on the channel from a bunch of years ago. So I started going places, started learning. So it wasn't just me by myself at home trying to figure things out.

SPEAKER_00 14:41

I I I love that you talked about this because I'm very passionate about community when it comes to creation, because for the most part, most content creators are looking into a camera and don't have a connection with anyone else. And the conversations we have with other creators are super powerful. And when you feel like you're talking to someone who understands everything you're saying, because for the most part, our family and friends have no idea what it's like to be a creator, they're just being supportive because they support us. But it's different, it's different when you talk to someone who's been through the same struggles as you. And this is something that I actually had when I was coming up. Uh, I had a private Discord with a couple of friends who were YouTubers coming up, and I thought it'd be a great idea to have that same thing. So a couple of years ago, we launched a Discord for VidIQ. It's absolutely free. There's a link in the description. If you don't have like people that are in the same uh either niche or even forget about that, that are creators that you talk about on talk to on a daily uh basis, you have no idea how powerful that is. Free link in the description. Meet your friends, meet your tribe. I love that you talked about that. Uh, Evan, and the funny thing is, is the first time like I ever came in contact with you was what you just said. Like you were in the other live streams of a lot of other um channels and and growth. Uh, I think I'm even talking about like Nick Niman streams because I'm always Nick streams and certainly Vid IQ. It's it's it's cool to see you. You were always in these streams, even though you didn't have to be. You were established by the time that I saw you there. And it seems to me that you have this passion inside of you to help others in a world that is progressively more me, me, me. Because as a content creator, it's like, you know, me, let me get this thing out there. But you seem to not worry so much about that and really want to help others. This obviously, just based on what you said before, came before YouTube. It's something that's inside of you. Was that like your upbringing, or is that just something you you as you grew up, you just wanted to help other people, or did someone help you along the way? What's where does this passion come from?

SPEAKER_02 16:31

Uh, I think that's in everybody. I think people are built to serve. Humans are built to serve. I wrote a book called Built to Serve. I think humans are built to serve. I think if you're not happy, it's because you're not serving. And some of us want to serve uh, like my wife, Nina, right? Wants to serve the 25 closest people to her. She's the glue for our family, remembers everybody's birthdays and knows what everybody's up to. And so, but like I forget all that stuff. If we had to organize like a party for the family or something, I would be terrible. But but Nina is the glue. Um, and then some people, you know, like us, we want to we want to impact a lot of people. We want to serve at a at a bigger scale. Um, and this is why I think people burn out is because uh I don't know that the world has gotten more uh me, me, me, but I think there's um it's easy to fall into that trap. And when people are making videos just trying to rank or just trying to make money or just trying to accomplish some goal and they don't actually have any heart in it and they can't connect to service, they're gonna burn out and they're gonna quit. Um, you know, I look at my channel, you mentioned some of the inspirational stuff that I've done. Uh, one of the series that did well for us, uh, especially earlier on, is I broke down success rules from uh very famous entrepreneurs. Here's 10 things you can learn from Ray Dalio or whoever. Um if I if I made those negative, like here's the 10 stupidest things about whoever, 10 worst things, 10 things to never follow from Elon Musk or whatever, those videos would do better. Like those videos, people love that. People love watching a car crash, a train wreck. They would objectively do better. I just it would make me feel gross, right? It's like I just don't want to do it. Uh, and so I think your your heart needs to be the ultimate deciding factor. Um, and so I don't know, when I look at YouTube day and making videos, however many thousands of videos deep we're in, I like it. Like it's on my calendar 17 years later, and I still look forward to doing it because I like the content that I'm creating. Uh, and I hope that it serves and helps people. And I think people burn out uh just because they're just going down, I'm I'm doing this just for the algorithm, or you end up selling a little bit of your soul. It's usually not all at once, it's like a little bit at a time. Like you make this one video and then it does really well. Like, oh my god, if I just did that, the you start calculating, if I just did more of those videos, but now you've like bought yourself this job and you don't even like that niche anymore. And it was like this one random one-off that you did, and and then you start to hate what you're doing more and more and more. Um, and you even using the word creators, like you cannot create uh and win uh Nick Peterson's sense, you can't win a race you don't want to be in. And so it's like if you're creating and you don't want to create that things, you're you're just never gonna be really great at it. You're gonna burn out, you're gonna lose. But I think everybody is built to serve. I think it's like it's huge, it's a human thing. We all wanna feel like what we do today is gonna matter in some way to to some people. Um and so I think YouTube gives you an amazing opportunity to be able to do that, but you just have to constantly check yourself against whatever your most important core value is. Um, and it's it's not that hard to gut check. It's like if you're not happy, it's because you don't feel like you're actually serving or making a difference.

Built To Serve And Avoid Burnout

SPEAKER_00 19:53

That's that's that's kind of mind-blowing stuff if you really think about it. Um, one thing I will ask is uh, I mean, first of all, a lot of the content you do is still about uh entrepreneurial, um kind of that's how you use the inspiration. I think that's really important because content creators think of themselves as artists a lot of times, but you're also a business owner. I mean, obviously your channel is your business. A lot of people don't think of it that way, but really you do have to think of it that way. Because ultimately, if you want to be able to create um full time, which is what a lot of the YouTubers that are listening to this want to do, you need to have a business behind it. Um, and being an uh an entrepreneur, um, what are the things that you looked at your channel in that spirit and in that mindset that I think a lot of creators now don't uh think about their channel? Like, what are the things that you as an entrepreneur and as a business person look at a YouTube channel that I may not? Because I'm not very business minded. I I want to hear this. Like, I'm I'm here, I'm sitting at the table ready to take notes.

SPEAKER_02 20:46

Yeah, no, I love it, Travis. Um how I would do it now is different than how I did it. Okay. Uh, because it took me a long time. I mean, I made so many mistakes, and like five years in, still having 2,000 subscribers, you know, it's like I I screwed up so many times. So how I would do it would be different. I remember going to an event, and um there was a YouTuber who was one of the keynotes or the keynote, and he had a couple million subscribers already, and I only had like a hundred thousand or something. That was only. I mean, but compared to him, I was you know, nothing. Yeah, and I'm like, what does your team look like? Like, how many people do you have? And like, how are you creating video? And he's like, Oh, yeah, we just hired our first VA. Wow, wow. You have like a couple million subscribers, and you just hired your first VA.

SPEAKER_01 21:29

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 21:30

Uh, like a lot of people are not thinking about the business side fast enough. Because if you for all of like the mission talk that I just gave, it's incredibly important. And money needs to be in your top five. It just can't be number one. Like, if not if money or views is number one, you're gonna lose, but uh, or hate your life. But but it can't be number a thousand either, right? It's gotta be in your top five, but like mission is number one. So I'm always thinking, and maybe that's just the entrepreneur and me or capitalist and me or whatever. These are problems I like to solve. Like, how can we start making money from this thing as quickly as possible? Because if you can do that, then you can sustain it more. If you're actually mission driven, how much more could you do if you had a team of five people helping you or 50 people helping you instead of just you part-time evenings, weekends? And so if you're building your channel and hoping that um, you know, AdSense takes over, you're gonna likely be waiting a long time, not to discourage people, uh, but also just to set up a game plan for you to have success. Because the faster you can make money and get out of your job and hire your team and expand, the more money you make, the more impact you have, the more um you provide for your family, etc. Right. So in every channel that I'm helping, I'm also just looking, okay, what's the fastest way that we can start to make some money off of this as well? How can you serve at a higher capacity and get paid to do it so that you can expand your reach uh and then whatever their goal is? I mean, we work with people who then want to have New York Times by selling books and tour the world, yada, yada, yada. And other people is, I just want to replace my full-time income and have a great life for my family, right? I mean, there's no right or wrong. It's just, I think a content strategy said should match your objective. So, like, what is your like creating itself is great. Being creative is awesome. I love it. And if we can match it inside either a life goal or business goal that you're trying to accomplish, then your content can help guide you towards that thing as opposed to them being uh just some hobby that you're doing kind of on the side. I mean, I guess it's better than knitting or something. No, no, no shade to the knitters out there. Um, but I think if you can be a little more strategically aligned to help you accomplish your goals, so usually then it's figuring out, okay, well, what is the content that can attract the right people who then might hire me? Right. Like usually your step one is some kind of consulting, coaching, service, something that you can do for people. Uh you're trading your time for money, yes. Um, and I think it's your best first start instead of doing an ebook or uh a course. If you think about what a book is or a course, you're basically coaching at scale with no feedback.

SPEAKER_01 24:13

Yeah, yeah.

Treat YouTube Like A Business

SPEAKER_02 24:14

If you're gonna get on stage, at least you can see people's reactions. But if you're gonna do a book, I mean like my first book was with Penguin Random House. We've done four books total. Um a book or an ebook or course is you giving advice at scale with no feedback. Like you don't hear feedback until the book is done and it's up on Amazon and you're seeing the reviews. And so a lot of times people spend all this time making a course or a book or something, and then it doesn't hit. It's like you release it and nobody buys. Well, because you haven't done the one-on-one work to know what the objections are gonna be. So when you're coaching people, if you're gonna help people start a podcast, right? Okay, Travis is starting a business, I'm gonna help people start a podcast. You could list your uh here are the eight things you need to do to start a podcast. And step number one might be uh figure out your niche. And I'm just you know, if I'm totally off, you can tell me. But we'll just we're role-playing here. Uh step number one is figure out your niche, and you're gonna outline your steps of how to figure out a niche. Great, send. That's gonna be module one in your course or your book or whatever. The challenge is there's gonna be a lot of yabuts. Yeah, but Travis, I'm too old. Yeah, but Travis, that doesn't work for me. Yeah, but Travis, you don't understand. I've got a I've got a mortgage that I need to pay. Yeah, but Travis, and so like you don't know what the Yabuts are until you actually start helping people one-on-one and you hear the Yabuts feedback. And if you don't incorporate the Yabuts into your course or into your book or into your scale product, uh it's likely gonna flop because I might have the good information, but you're not addressing the Yabuts that people have in their mind. And some of them might, you'd be like, What? How are you even thinking that way? I didn't even think that was an objection. And so I always recommend as much as possible, if you want to build, like if you want to be a great speaker on stage, and I mean I've shared the stage with some, you know, big names, but you want to be a great speaker on stage, you need to speak to people one-on-one to understand their reactions to things and the things that's going on in their mind. Because that the one-on-one gives you the direct feedback, which then allows you to make better videos, better content, better books, better products, better speeches, et cetera. And so I'd always try to think, okay, what can you sell your time for at the beginning to one make money? Because you'll make more money selling um your time than a couple books or a couple courses at the beginning that gets you as close to your clients as possible or customers, or if you're not business-minded, uh, I don't know what you want to call them. Um, but I guess you know, customers, like you have a business now, you know, they're they're paying members, get as close to them as possible, understand what they're really struggling with. And then that thing that they're struggling the most with becomes your first program that you end up selling. And you'll end up making way more off of the community and the people watching your videos than you will from AdSense, uh, especially in the early days of growing your channel. Um, if you're an established entrepreneur, that's a whole other thing. Um we're talking, I'm talking specifically about entrepreneurs or creators who maybe have a job and are trying to figure out how to replace their income. If you already have a business, there's a lot more things you can do with it too.

SPEAKER_00 27:22

Yeah, there's other things you can do, especially things like funnels and stuff, which are the way to bring uh more people into your business through your YouTube channel. Um, Evan, like how about how big is your team? I'm curious because I have a question about that.

SPEAKER_02 27:34

62 right now.

SPEAKER_00 27:36

Whoa, that's a big team.

SPEAKER_02 27:37

So of that only content, right? Like I have businesses that spawn for the city.

SPEAKER_00 27:42

I want to talk about that. Yeah, I do want to talk about that a little bit later. But I of that team, how many are like the quote brain trust that you deal with for content ideas? Like how many people do you talk to within that team about like content ideas?

SPEAKER_02 27:57

That's a great question.

SPEAKER_00 27:59

Uh I got a follow-up for it. So uh three okay. Now this is the this is the reason I asked that question. Yeah. You are Evan Carmichael, you are the face of the channel. Ultimately, anything that goes on that channel or anything in your brand goes through you, you are the final say. Do you have someone on your team that feels as though they can push back against any ideas you that they think are bad, and do you take them at face value? Because I feel like a not just for the sake of being, you know, contrarian, but like, do you have someone that's a trusted source that's like, no, Evan, that is a terrible idea. We need to go this direction instead. And you go, Oh, yeah, maybe you're right because you've been right in the past.

SPEAKER_02 28:38

That's some interesting framing. Um I don't I don't know. Uh so here's where I struggle with that question. Uh if anything, I'm I'm too collaborative, uh, and like try to try to make it like I had a video, there's a video right now that one of one of the people, my thumbnail designer, uh, suggested.

SPEAKER_01 29:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 29:01

And I did not like the idea. I didn't like the idea. Okay. I thought it was okay. I didn't I didn't I didn't hate the idea. I did like, okay, whatever, cool. But we also do daily videos, right? I mean, I have a team to help me with all that, of course. So uh, but she gave the idea. She'd never given me an idea before for a video. It wasn't asked, it wasn't expected either.

SPEAKER_01 29:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:22

Um, and so I'm like, I'm gonna make this video, like I'll find a way to make this video happen. And it's got half a million views. It's awesome, and it's still growing, yeah. And so, like, huh? That's cool. But I mean, and I've done other things that also go nowhere, right? Of course. But like, if my team suggests something, I I fight to try to do it unless it's just really not possible, right? Of course. You know, it's like there was another one that somebody sent me about AI doomerism, you know, it's like AI bubbles here, and like everybody's gonna lose their jobs and all this stuff. It's like I just don't want to like it's not on brand, it's I don't want to make negative videos, yeah. Um, and I love AI. We can have a whole conversation around that too. But uh, so I'm in general, my team, I I try to take their ideas and at least give it a shot. And if it doesn't work, we've all learned from it, and then they can see here's why, like, I don't think it's gonna work. Um, same thing on thumbnail designs. I was like, hey, I don't I don't like this one, but test it. Who cares? Like, I guess as part of if you're only making one video a month, then you have to be a little more strict in what you're doing. For us, every single day we're doing one long form video, shorts. I have no idea how many we're doing, but um, and so any one video or any one thumbnail, like it doesn't matter as much. And it's like again, back to the it's not about the destination, it's the journey. I love my favorite thing in my business is just seeing the people on the team grow and get better and learn and improve. And so seeing that video pop off and like, I'm wrong, you're right, is like the best. Uh and and the other ones is like, hey, let's cheer on you tried it, and now we learn from it. And now, like the next thing that you suggest will hopefully be better. And so I don't like there's not a lot of this this like fights or pushback on like somebody saying, uh, no, that's a bad idea, we shouldn't do it. Because if anything, we're like, I love ideas and let's let's give it a try. As long as it fits under belief, you know, I'm not gonna trash somebody. Um, it's gotta it's gotta be positive and hopeful and tie back to entrepreneurship somehow.

Start With Coaching And Learn Objections

SPEAKER_00 31:28

It's funny because you say something, and I think some people uh interpret it one way, which is you know, you do daily content, which is hard enough, but you do long when you say long form, it's funny. People probably think it's six, 10 minutes. You have a lot of times where you're doing a video a day that's like 45 minutes or longer. How, I mean, you have to have a team to do that. I mean, how else could you do an hour-long video a day? Like, what does that process look like? What is your day? Like, for example, what was yesterday? You woke up and then what happened throughout the day?

SPEAKER_02 31:57

Uh, so I do different days for different things. So Tuesday is my YouTube day. And on Tuesday, I spend the whole day doing YouTube videos. So I prep by Monday being my team day. So Monday, I'm spending all day with my team. And I'm mostly in 25-minute meetings, five-minute breaks in between, and like all day team. And my team knows if you need me for something, if I can support, help, guide, whatever, Monday. Like I have the whole day, that's all I'm doing. I'm not thinking about YouTube or my other programs or software or whatever, right? Like just YouTube. I'm sorry, just team. And then Tuesday is just YouTube, and I spend the whole day doing YouTube stuff. And and I'll often start the day with a team uh meeting, and once a month it's about thumbnails, and once a month is about uh our content strategy, and once a month is about our data and analytics. And so we start the start the the Tuesday morning with a team meeting, and then the whole day I'm just filming videos, and I don't have to do anything else. I mean, unless I want to. Um, but I'm that's all I have to do. And so, like scheduling your time, bucketing your time, having content day, I think is incredibly powerful. Now, you may not be able to take a whole Tuesday off. I mean, it's it's not off, it's it's what I do. If you have a full-time job and you're watching this, just commit to whatever Thursday night, Saturday morning, but put in your calendar that every week you have dedicated time. You don't have to match, like you could look at where I'm at now, and cool, but but all my videos are still live. Go back and watch early videos, and I'm sitting there, you know, in my you know, office with a flip cam. I don't even remember the flip cams, and it's like I'm trying to balance it, and so it's cut, but it's wobbly, and I don't know it's wobbly. So I'm like coming in and out. It looks like I'm, you know, and I suck on camera. And the the very first video after my shot with my friend, I have like this giant window behind me, and you can't see me because the lighting is terrible. I think all the mistakes. Uh, and so one thing though that we've held to even from the beginning is like a video has to go up. So even now with my team, there's always more we can fix. Like every video, there's no video that's perfect. Every video, there's always something that we can fix. There's always one more tweak, but like every every day a video goes up. And having that content calendar uh really helps first me and then the team. So just make a commitment. You don't have to do daily content, but make a commitment that every week, Tuesday at 9 p.m. or whatever it is, a video is going live on your channel. It's going up. And if it's not good enough, it's still going up. And if you if you don't know what to say, then say that. Like hold your phone and say, I don't know what to say. And I promise I would make a video every week at nine o'clock on Tuesday, and I stressed out all week about it, and I have nothing and I feel terrible, but I want to keep my commitment to doing that to myself and to you. And so here's my video sent. Like, that might be your best video because it's it's actually the truth. Um, and the good news is it gets easier. Like, again, go back and watch my videos and see how much I sucked at the beginning and how boring it was. And uh it took me um over a full day to make that first video. That's the first video I did a uh uh I think it was a story of Walt Disney. Uh and uh it's six minutes. I have to go back and look. It's not that long, and most of it is B-roll with me reading a script because I I couldn't memorize the whole thing. I suck at memorizing, and so the on-camera part, I don't know, is like a minute, two minutes, and it took me a whole day to do that. Uh, so it gets easier, right? It's like however difficult this is for you right now, it gets easier. And so saying, Oh, you could do however many videos a day, again, because I've practiced 10,000 times, and so it's like unfair to compare now. But go back to anybody, anybody, any creator that you look up to and respect, and just look at their first video and see what they were doing. It's like, oh my God, I could beat that. Like, okay, this is I'm better than that. Uh, and so I you know, use that as inspiration. But I think um right now I spend one day a week fully dedicated to doing YouTube videos. That's all I have to worry about. For me, I think in general it's hard to switch tasks, like humans in general have a time, hard time task switching. But for me, especially, it takes me, it's like it's so hard for me to jump between if I did a YouTube video, then had to go write my book and then had to go do an interview, and then it's like I would be it not doing very well. Um, so just being able to stay in the zone and just do YouTube videos all day long just makes it easier for me. So I've designed a life around helping me accomplish that goal.

Team Workflow And Batching Content Days

SPEAKER_00 36:39

I love that. And one of the things that Evan said here, I think is really important, uh, is a lot of people have heard of the term batching or batch recording or batch editing. And this is important for people that have a full-time job. So when I was uh first coming up, I had a full-time corporate job in downtown Seattle. It took me about an hour to drive there, and when traffic was bad, uh maybe two hours uh coming back, but I still found time to shoot, edit, and learn. And one of the things that I would do like at work during my lunch break is when there was a either a streamer, a lot of times it's Roberto or Blake, actually, uh, would have a live stream about how to grow a YouTube channel. During my lunch break, that's what I was watching. I was obsessed about learning the platform and then making the time that I had, every moment that I had count towards the channel because that's what I ultimately wanted. I didn't want the corporate job. So uh a lot of people are gonna have there's always this is something I've said for years, there's always an excuse to not do something. You can always come up with an excuse to not do something. There's always gonna be a perfect excuse. Like I work too long, I have kids, and I get all that. But for every person that says that, there's one person that was like, those are not obstacles, those are just new puzzles for me to solve, solve them and then we're successful. And I feel like it is very important to know what your own um like for me, I'm kind of a procrastinator. I don't know about you, Evan, but I'm a procrastinator. So I have to put guardrails in in place. I put things on a calendar, just like you said. If I'm gonna shoot, I put it on the calendar because for whatever reason in my brain, if it comes up on a calendar, I have to do it. So I know that about myself. So if I have to film something for a day, I'm gonna put it on the calendar. Boom, there it is. And it's nothing else is gonna get in front of that. So know yourself, I think is super, super important. What would you say about um your journey that um the things that you found about content creation and yourself and all these things that you maybe have guardrails in place for yourself? Are there any any uh particular personality traits that are maybe against what you have to do on a weekly basis, or does it all work together?

SPEAKER_02 38:32

Well, first off, you should have a lot in there, which is great. Shout out Roberto Blake. Uh he's awesome. Uh in my first book was with the Penguin Random House. I got that book deal because of my YouTube channel.

SPEAKER_00 38:43

Amazing.

SPEAKER_02 38:44

Uh and uh I mentioned Roberto Blake, he's one of the people that I talk about in the book. So shout out Roberto Blake.

SPEAKER_00 38:49

Roberto's great.

SPEAKER_02 38:50

Um, in terms of procrastination, well, everybody's a procrastinator. Yeah. It's just understanding the reason why. So, to your know yourself point, we procrastinate on things that we don't want to do. And fair enough, like you don't want to do your taxes, and you don't want to mow the lawn, and you don't want to, like, there's all this stuff that you don't want to do, and so it's natural to procrastinate. But we also procrastinate on the things that we do want to do because we're afraid, because you don't want it to suck. Like you procrastinate on making a video, you tell yourself you want to be a creator, and you procrastinate. Why? Well, because you don't want to suck, and so we procrastinate and procrastination really just like finding really good reasons why we can't do something. And again, the thing that helps me through that is just service. So if you can actually connect, that maybe your channel's not gonna change the world, but like could you imagine that your video might help one person and you're not gonna make a video because you have a pimple on your nose? You know, but it's like, but but that's that's what we said, tellers like, oh, I can't make a video because like, oh, my my got this pimple, and it's but meanwhile, like have you ever had a video that you watched that changed your life? Like that actually changed your life, right? And and hopefully everybody listening, watching, like you, there's been some video that you watch that changed your life that wasn't from some huge character, it was from somebody just sharing their journey and like actually changed your life. You could be that for somebody else, but you're not doing it because of what? Because you have a pimple, or because you think you have the wrong phone, or because you stumble and mumble, you know, when you get out, and that's okay. Like it's just all progress begins with telling the truth, and so that's the truth. And and the truth is you procrastinate because you actually deeply care, and that's great that you care, and so turn that care into service and start helping. And the way I think about it is if your first video doesn't suck, then you suck. Like then you should have posted five years ago. Because what's gonna happen? Like, imagine when you you like that one? I love that one. That's fire. He's eating lunch, he's eating dinner here. That's right. Um uh because think about it. Like, what's your message? Like, what would you tell your kids, or what's your message for your audience? Like, don't start until you're perfect. That's not your message, it's but some, but you're living that. And then imagine now when you do, what's gonna happen? You do grow and you do get bigger and you do start to accomplish your dreams. When people look back on your channel, they're gonna just see perfect. It's like, well, uh, you were perfect from the start. That's not that's not the journey that you probably want to be sharing. Like, I love that you can go back and watch all my crappy videos. I mean, even that first video did not get a lot of views, like it's got a lot of views now because people just want to see episode one, but it did not take off. And I've got plenty, go look at video 17 or 32 or whatever, and it's got like a hundred. There was a video last week that's from like 16 years ago, and it got its first comment, right? It's like great. Wow. Uh so the fact that you suck at the beginning is great because that's gonna be the journey to show people you will be an inspiration to others if you keep going. It doesn't mean that you suck as a human, it just means that you suck at the skills. And fair enough. Like, why should you be great out of the gate at something you've never done before? Um, and we overthink a lot of times the edit. Uh now, if you want to be an editor, that's a whole other thing, right? Like if your business is editing, if that's what you're teaching, then yeah, your stuff better look great. But if you're not focused on editing, like that's not the thing that you want to be known for. What often happens is people spend 20 minutes making a video and then seven hours editing it.

unknown 42:25

Great.

SPEAKER_02 42:25

If you're at the beginning of any journey and you spend 20 minutes doing one thing and seven hours doing another thing, like what skill are you actually training?

SPEAKER_01 42:33

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:34

You're training yourself to be an editor when you don't even want to be an editor. Right? So, like, I'd rather you spend seven hours making videos with 20 minutes of editing to teach yourself the skill of making the videos.

SPEAKER_00 42:49

Right.

Procrastination And The First Video Rule

SPEAKER_02 42:49

So, in my world of like entrepreneurship, speaking, etc., uh, what happens if you're just making videos and you always need to use a teleprompter and you need it perfectly edited? Well, then you'll never gonna be able to do a speaking tour. You're never gonna need to go on shows and do interviews because you've only created this environment where you win and everything perfectly edited. And again, no knock to the I love editors. We have a bunch in our team. Um, and if that's what you want to be known for, then put everything into the edit. That's insane. That's awesome. For everybody else, though, pour the energy into the thing that you are actually trying to get better at, the skill set. Because again, you don't suck as a person, your content sucks just because you don't have the skill. So pour the energy and love into developing the skill. And if it's like talking head kind of videos, then even how Travis started this video, the energy was insane, right? Like he wasn't just like that. Your first video wasn't like that. No, no, no, right? It's a learned skill, and now he's he's gotten a lot better. And like it's I had energy coming in just because of how we introduced this. I was expecting like chill Travis, and then boom, he's like, Okay, I'm awake. Let's go. This is awesome. That's the skill to work on, yeah, right. So, whatever the thing is that you want to get great at, make sure that the Limited amount of time that you have, because you have a job, you have kids, you have responsibilities, everything else, great. But you have two hours a week to work on YouTube videos, great. Like spend it on the thing that you're actually trying to get better at. Because if you overthink the edit and spending all this time trying to learn whatever tool, then you're not actually honing your craft and you feel like no progress is being made. So I'd rather you post a video every week and just have it be raw and get better at telling stories and capturing yourself or capturing your life or whatever your video is going to be about. Because that is something that people will then start to notice and care and love about. And then you either, if you want to do editing, awesome, go learn that, or you get to the point where you can afford to hire an editor to help you do all that work. If you are trying to do all every edit yourself and then never get good at the thing you want to get good at, you never get to a place where you can afford to hire the editor because the channel never takes off because you're spending whatever energy you have on the things that you're not trying to get better at, and then you end up burning out and realizing, man, like I had a shot. So I hope people take your shot. Like, don't look back in 80 years on today, say I had a shot, I had a chance, and I didn't do it. Right now's the time. Chapter's got me fired up. That's right, let's get it. Now here's the thing. Come on, believe, what are we doing here?

SPEAKER_00 45:12

But this is exactly what I was about to say about Believe. For those that are at this point in the podcast, I think what you've learned is this. Hey, you've you've heard the energy behind Believe. We're gonna talk about that lastly here in a second. But this podcast has bridged the gap between all the analytical advice that we usually hear from uh YouTube content creators and even like uh gurus and such, and given you the glue in between those things to push you forward because YouTube content creation isn't just about the numbers, it's about everything in between. And this podcast has literally told you that part. Like that little stinger. I put that in there so it can be part of the intro hook. That's pretty good, right? That's a learned skill we just talked about.

SPEAKER_02 45:54

That's insane, right? Exactly. Like he's like, you know, it's like Evan didn't say anything worth putting in our hook. So I gotta save this episode.

SPEAKER_00 46:01

I'm gonna save this episode. No, real quick, I do want to talk about because um you have shown through this podcast your believe uh kind of mantra, but we've never actually specifically mentioned it. So I just want to real quick talk about that branding and what that means and how you came up with that, because it is a part of whenever anyone thinks about uh Evan Carmichael, it's not just like the documentary type stuff that you've covered with entrepreneurs, but it's this believe thing that's always been really strong in your branding. Talk a little bit about that so people understand.

One Word Branding And Believe

SPEAKER_02 46:28

So, you know, that book that I had with Roberta Blake, the the title is Your One Word. And I got that book deal with Penguin Random House because of my YouTube channel. And the idea is everybody has a single most important core value. If you had to pick off the cuff, Travis, what's your most important core value? Uh of all of them, probably loyalty. Loyalty, great. And so, like the greatest gift you can give people is your standards. And so, loyalty, if people hang out with you, I'm sure you are a loyal friend, a loyal husband, a loyal right team member, etc. But like by hanging around you and witnessing your example, other people increase their loyalty as well, just as a human. Because you're giving them an example. Now, you're never done with loyalty, like there's levels to this. You can have more loyalty, and so that's how I see um the world. Like, the more you were around loyal people, you'd be happier. And the more the world embraced loyalty, you would be happier. And so, like, that's the difference that you're trying to make in the world. Now, I just yeah, we did that in five seconds, but if people go through the exercise of just figuring out what's the most important thing that I stand for, what do I want to teach my kids? Who are the people I love hanging out with? And like that's the impact you want to make, then content and everything else just becomes a lot easier. So, me not making that negative AI bubble video is easy because it's not about belief. So, cool, me not making the top 10 stupidest things that Elon Musk has said or whatever, easy. I don't care if it brings like the that's a what's the expression, the devil comes carrying a bag of cash, something like that. I don't care about that because it doesn't run through my filter of belief. And short term, I'm probably leaving tons of money and opportunity on the table, but long term, it's just easy to stay sustainable doing work that you feel is core to your mission. So um I just encourage people to think about what's the most important core value that you have, and then guide your life through that lens, and amazing things happen.

Wrap-Up And Where To Go Next

SPEAKER_00 48:32

I uh this is one of the few times where I'm gonna end the podcast and feel like I still have a billion more questions. It's and I've done so many of these, and I can only think of maybe one other time where that's the case, but I feel like we've gotten through 40% of what I would talk to you about. And then when you started talking about things, I had another 40% on top of that, which is great. Who's who's that other? Let's shout out that other who's the other person. Um, so there is this is a selfish thing, which is uh one of the content creators I interviewed a while back, uh, Nomad Push. Uh, if you guys want to watch that pot that podcast, it's on it's on a channel. Yeah, I I I loved him. But the thing is, is like every time you say something, it opens up another door. Maybe what we'll do is we'll just we'll just come back again in the future. And I I'm sure I'll have even more questions then, just because you're such an incredible and inspiration to me, because again, I've known of you longer than I've known you, but even for the time that I've known of you and known you, you've been incredibly positive, incredibly awesome. And I love that you spread positivity and encouragement around. So if you're new to the channel, in the show notes and in the description of the YouTube channel, you can link, we'll have the links for all of Evan's things. And uh, you definitely should go over there and watch some of the stuff. You will be inspired and educated all at the same time. Evan, I want to thank you so much for your time. You're a busy dude. It's not Tuesday, so he's not shooting a video after this. He's got other things to do, I'm sure. I appreciate you greatly.

SPEAKER_02 49:50

Cool, man. Well, happy to come back due round two. We didn't talk about business models, we didn't talk about analytics, we didn't talk about data. We didn't, but you asked great questions, and uh, I'm leaving this conversation with more energy than I came in. So I love it. You're doing a really great job.

SPEAKER_00 50:05

I love that. And if you love this interview or interviews like this, I got a link for uh you right here. Actually, right here, let me put it right there, and you can watch this video right now. We'll see y'all in the next one.