You are now tuning in to Discover Your Potential with radio talk show host Dan Gilman. So listen, participate, be inspired, know that you can discover your potential. Here he is, Dan Gilman. Today's very special guest is Evan Carmichael. At age 22 he was a venture capitalist raising $500,000 to $15 million. He now runs a YouTube channel for entrepreneurs for over 3.5 million subscribers and 300 million views. He wrote 4 books and speaks globally. He wants to solve the world's biggest problems. People don't believe in themselves enough. Forbes named him one of the world's top 40 social marketing talents and named him one of the 100 great leadership speakers and 25 social media keynote speakers you need to know. He set two world records. He owns Canada's largest salsa dancing studio where he met his wife and has a giant Dorito bag in front of him all day long to remind him that he's stronger than the Doritos. Toronto is currently his home. He's a husband, father, and I want to introduce to you Evan Carmichael. Welcome to Discover Your Potential. I'm your host Dan Gilman, and today we have an extraordinary guest, Evan Carmichael. Evan, I want to thank you. It's a blessing to have you on my mother's show. It was my mother's show. I know she would have loved to chat with you in real time. Thanks for the love, Dan. I'm excited to be here. Your vibe and your voice, you've already put me in the zone, so I'm ready to go. Excellent. I'm glad I did. I'd love to learn more about you as a person. What was your childhood like? I know you were very close with your mother as well. I'd love to hear more about your own life. Hence, I'm carrying on my mother's legacy, but I'd love to hear more about you. This is a picture. For the audio listeners, I'm holding up a giant canvas of me when I'm eight or nine years old and my parents above me. I used to have it in my back and now I have it in front of me. This is what I'm looking at basically all day long, but I wanted to bring it up and show Dan. My parents would always tell me that I'm Evan Kasturli, Carmichael, I can do anything I believe that I can. No, they're both alive, thankfully still, and live in the same city, so it's amazing. But they taught me how to be human. When people say who your greatest mentor is, it's always my parents. What did they do to you about business? Well, nothing. But they taught me how to be a human, but then I bring to business. All of my core values and I just had to treat people came from my parents. This is just a reminder of the person that I am and the person that I want to be. Growing up, I was a weird kid. I was into baseball cars and all sorts of weird things that I wanted to do. My parents, one of my favorite things about them was they would always encourage us. I'm in the middle. I got an older sister, younger sister, and we were all into vastly different things. And they would always encourage us to go and do the thing that we wanted to do. I think partially was my mom was born in Italy and was her parents were a little more strict and there was in moving to Canada where we live now. There's a certain way that an Italian woman is supposed to behave and do. And my mom wasn't really having that. She's like, no, I don't want to live that way. That's not for me. And I think as a result of that, they loosened it for their kids, which me and my sisters, to do, hey, go explore what you want to explore, do what you want to do, and always encouraged us to go chase that down. And so my passions led into entrepreneurship, came from baseball cards. They would drive me three hours out of town every week to go to this big baseball card trade show and convention that was happening every week. And I would bring my cards and pack them up and go and sell. And I'm 12, 11, 12, 13, kind of that range in negotiating over 50 cents with 40 and 50 year olds. It's like, that's how I cut my teeth and entrepreneurship. And I didn't know what I was doing. I was just having fun and making a little money. But I planted the seeds for what I am now, which is being an entrepreneur and then trying to spread more belief to others. So really, it's what my mom gave me and belief I'm trying to give other people and I guess similar with you and the willingness to carry on with the show and the legacy and continue to gillman legacy onto the world. How did you and when did you discover your own potential? Or what drove you to become an entrepreneur? Well, I don't think I have discovered my own potential fully yet. I think we're always, all of us are constantly in flux and growing and learning. And the easy way to look at that is, you know, if you think about five years, what are you capable of? What's your potential in the next five or 10 years? Are you like, you actually have no idea. You know, if you said, Hey, Dan, 10 years ago, Dan, Hey, Dan, in 10 years, you're going to be hosting the show. He's like, Nope. That's not happening. And then here we are. Right. And so it's for anybody. If you look backwards 10 years, you, you know, used up no idea what you were capable of. And so what makes you think that you're capable now of knowing your potential in the next 10 years, right? It's like, not, you can't, not if you're growing, not if you're listening to the show, not if you're improving. And so we never fully know our full potential, which I think is exciting. I mean, that's why Dan here and his mom previously and the guests that come on kind of open your eyes to a new way of thinking. And if you get one thing from each guest, imagine how much you're going to learn and improve your potential for the next five to 10 years. It's going to be crazy. For me, for entrepreneurship, I had a lot of entrepreneurial tendencies growing up. So baseball cards and selling nose and lemonade stands. And at five years old, I was drawing pictures and going door to door trying to sell them to my neighbor for 10 cents. You know, it's like all of these little tiny nothing hustles, right? I mean, 10 cents. But there was something in me that I love that, I love that part. But entrepreneurship also wasn't a thing. Like when I graduated high school, I'm 42 now. So when I was, when I graduated high school, which was, I don't know, when you graduate 18, 19, I said, I wanted to be a banker. If you look at my high school yearbook, it says, where are you in 10 years? Banker VP at a bank. Because entrepreneurship, I didn't know an entrepreneur. There were no entrepreneurs in the media. You kind of had to be basically meant that you couldn't get a job and say, get to start your own business. So I didn't know I wanted to be an entrepreneur. It wasn't available. And then in university, I met two entrepreneurs, would start at a company and they asked me to join. And that was the hardest decision of my life because I had the choice between six figure job at a high school, investment banking, what I wanted, what I said was my dream job, the job that all my friends wanted, or make $300 a month and own 30% of a company. And I really struggled with like, what do I do? I was still probably the hardest decision ever in my life. And I had the voice of Jeff Bezos in my year who had this regret minimization framework, which basically was like, live life without regrets. There's few regrets as possible. And so I asked myself, what will I regret more? Saying no to the entrepreneur opportunity or saying no to the investment bank? And I realized, you know what, I can always get another job. It may not be the same job, may not be, you know, same pay and may not be the same travel, whatever. But this other thing, I don't know if I'll ever get a chance to do this again. So even if it fails, even though failure is the most likely outcome, like it's probably going to fail. But I don't want to, I don't, I told myself when I'm an old, when I'm in my 40s, I'm an old man, you know, like when life is over. When you're 18, 19, it's a 40 year old. Look, it's like life is over. It's finished guys. I'm 42 now, right? So I can say that I'm going to look back and like, I'm going to regret this. This, this is going to be a big regret. So I'm going to say yes and do it. And so I said yes to the entrepreneur opportunity. Sucked, struggled, like hardest days of my life. And we can dive in if you want, but eventually made it through. And ultimately, I think your purpose comes from your pain, that whatever you struggle the most with is what you want to help other people through. And so because I struggled so much with a lack of belief and with starting my business, being an entrepreneur, what I wanted, I want to help entrepreneurs get their businesses off the ground and spread belief. That's what I've been doing for the past 20 years, I guess now. You've met so many extraordinary people in your life. Tony Robbins, Gary V, Grant Cardone. I mean, I could just keep naming Deepak Chopra, which is incredible. Kevin O'Leary. I know you've done a few segments with him and I can keep going on. But, and I mentioned this before, but one major person comes to mind. For me, anyway, that connection is the legend Les Brown. What, and I'm just curious, what was the meaning like when you first met? Or did you meet Les before or after? I'm just curious. So Les, Les, I've always had on my list as, I think he's the greatest speaker of all time. And so for me, when I was trying to get better at speaking, I had my YouTube channel, I always struggled and thought I was too introverted and too shy. And I wasn't a good enough speaker. And I would always look at Les amongst others, but I thought Les was the best. And watch his old videos to see how he does it and like how he can memorize stories so well and bring those examples out and just deliver with care and energy and empathy. It's just, I mean, it's still something to marvel at, right? But especially in my early career, I was, I was, I really looked at him as, as a Shynan example. The first time I'm, I'm connected with him was we were doing a clubhouse stream. And we were streaming some of my favorite speeches that he had put together. And then he joined the stream. Popped in, he's like, Hey guys, this is Les Brown. It's like, hi Les. And so we, we turned that into a, let's do an actual like real stream together. And we turned that into a clubhouse session where it was him and his son and me and my team all on a, on a live Q and A together. And then that turned into a, he wanted to interview me for his show. Like you want to interview me? Why do we do this? Should be flipped. Why are you interviewing me? He's like, I want to introduce you to my community. I want to have you on my, in my group. And so we did a live video of him asking me questions and it was great. Uh, and it's, and it's, so it started, I mean, you look at him and in my younger days, like young Les Brown is, is the hero from what a great speaker he is. And now it's still like, how old is he? Is he only some was 80, if not 80 or 77. Right. It's like, and he's still going and he's still doing it. And he's on clubhouse and he's, he's like always willing to wherever people are, he's willing to go there and not judge it and not say, well, it's a new thing. And I'm, I'm old, so I can't figure it out. Right. Like he's just, he dives in and does it. And one of my biggest fears growing up was that I would, uh, I didn't want to be the aging rock star who you just keep playing the same hits that you came up within your twenties and you just like touring and keep singing the same songs. Or worse, like the one hit, one there where you had a flash and then it's all over. And, and when I see someone like less, it's the inspiration is like, look at this guy, he's still going, he's crushing it. He's still on top of his game. Uh, and so it's still an inspiration. It's like, I hope that when I'm 77, I'm, I'm still showing up with as much energy and enthusiasm and love and care and passion. Um, so less is, is definitely one of the, the greats of all time. And what a gift we have now to still be living with him that. You know, it's like, imagine you can go watch Babe Ruth play baseball or Mickey Mantle or who were like these greats from the past, but, but he's still here guys. Like, if you get a chance to go hear him speak, I would encourage you to go do it. This episode of discover your potential is sponsored by Squarespace. You know, one of the biggest challenges for entrepreneurs and creators is pulling all the pieces of a business together, a website, payments, scheduling, email marketing. Squarespace makes that simple because it is all in one place. For example, I know a life coach who used to juggle three different platforms, just to book clients, send invoices and update her website. She finally switched to Squarespace and now her clients can book a session directly through her site, pay online and even get automated reminders. She told me it not only saved her time, it made her business look more professional overnight. Squarespace also gives you a headstart with Blueprint AI, their AI powered website builder. Just share your goals and style and it creates a custom site with content and design recommendations in minutes. And with built in analytics, you can actually see where your audience is coming from and what is driving revenue. If you are ready to simplify and grow your business, start today at Squarespace.com and discover what is possible. Check out Squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to launch use offer code, DYP to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Yeah. Hey, when we're 70 years old, maybe we can do this again. We'll be able to be like in VR. We'll be all beaming into your living room and having some coffee. Exactly. The communication will never go dull, but the technology will. The technology will always improve. Yeah, absolutely. And I know you also conversed with Kevin O'Larry more recently in a video as well about the pandemic. He did say something interesting that I picked up. Well, there were many interesting facets that you both mentioned. About entrepreneurship and the like, but he also said something about that artists were not looked upon as prior to the pandemic and before that they were making much less and now they're making more because creators are doing so much more as far as, you know, just getting out there. So I just, I found that really interesting that he brought that up. Yeah. I mean, the idea of having to be a struggling artist is, is going away. I think there's so many opportunities now to be able to build an audience in and monetize that audience and not have to have, uh, not have to be picked, right? Like not have to have somebody in some high position say, you, you're going to be the next star that you can just bet on yourself and do it. Whether you're creating content on YouTube or Tik Tok or Instagram or clubhouse or, or Etsy, like wherever you are, whatever art you have, there's an opportunity now to express yourself and build your own community and your own fan base now NFTs and all of it. Like there's huge opportunities out there. And, um, yeah, it's just amazing. And it's great because one of the, I own, I own a salsa dancing school. It's the largest salsa dancing. Oh really? Yeah. And maybe North America, but definitely Canada is how I'm my wife will teach five, six thousand people a year how to dance salsa. And a lot of the people who in the salsa world, they're, they're artists. They're like dancers and artists and it, and then still have to go have a full time job because they can't make enough money off of their art. Like they love the dancing so much, but they have to work some IT job. They hate because they can't figure how to make money off of the dancing. And a lot of artists have that where they have, they have a full time job or part time job because they haven't yet figured out as most artists, haven't figured out how to, how to make money off their art yet, but it's only becoming easier and it's only more role models and there's only more access now. And it's being heavily democratized now where you don't have to be picked. You don't have to have that one person in the fancy office saying you, you're next, right? You can actually bet on yourself and build your own business off of it. You mentioned that you did some artwork. Well, I know you weren't when you were a kid, but. Yeah, I suck at art. Although I see like, so painting and stuff is what I was selling when I was five years old. I now have a 13 year old son who's terrific at drawing and I try to draw with him and he just destroys me like drawing a human eyeball is insane. I can't deal with what he's great, but I see, you know, like this is art, you know, like my videos are art. Entrepreneurs are artists. It's just a different version of art. And so, you know, while I can dance and I could teach dance classes and I can make YouTube videos and I can do this, the technical art, I guess, of the, of painting or drawing or poetry or whatever. I'm not that great at, but I think honestly, everybody is an artist. And a lot of the artistry gets, if you're talking about hitting our potential, like your potential is your art. That may be, that may be being a surgeon that is your art, right? But often the potential gets sucked out of us because we're forced to go do something that we don't want to do. Yeah. And I want to, I want to actually bring that up. I neglected to bring this up also during the start of the show, but built to serve. I've got actually both of your books. Well, it matches the whole show background too. Look at that. We're all in purple, purple, purple. Yeah. And you're one word, of course. There's a first one. Nice. But built to serve. I want to bring this up. And I wanted to give this to at least five of my listeners. I wanted to give built to serve and your one word to five lucky listeners, just because to Pat, and I'll try to do more, but just to pass on your message to people because there's so many people, especially right now, who are hurting in this world who haven't maybe had, like, as you mentioned, haven't fully discovered their potential. But also I read this book. Actually, I read it a few years ago, but I read it again recently, but finding your purpose. And after losing my mother, I question, what am I doing? Where am I? What am I going to continue to do? Do I want to continue her legacy? And it all stems a lot from the book as well, built to serve. Cause I'm here to serve. That that's my goal is to help as many people as I possibly can. Cause after my mother passed away, and I don't need to go into this, but after my mother passed away, I had hundreds of people call me that. I didn't even know that she touched lives on and it was just extraordinary. And I was like, well, my mother wasn't extremely famous. Uh, but the people that she touched and changed their life, they're like, I can't live without your mom. What am I going to do? Yeah. And it's like, it's just extraordinary. But anyway, we all want to serve. Humans are built to serve. That's why it's why I called it built to serve. They did functional MRIs on people's brains and found that serving people hits the same part of your brain as having food and having sex, which are also pretty important as a human. Uh, so if you're not happy, it's cause you're not serving. And some people want to serve the world and help millions of people. And some people just the 25 closest people to them, you know, like they're closest. Friends and family that the glue, my wife is, my wife doesn't want to serve the world, but she's the glue for our family. And we all want to wake up every day and feel like what we're doing matters to somebody. It's not enough just to chase a, chase a selfish pursuit. You want to feel like you're going to make something today. That's going to have an impact on somebody else's life in some way. You know, even if it's one person impacted, that will make you feel good. And if you feel that you're going to go off and reach your potential, get closer to it at least where if you feel like every day it doesn't matter, this is where most people are like, today doesn't matter. Nobody cares if I show up or not. You know, if I didn't show up, it's not going to make any kind of difference. And then if you're living that constantly, that's the path down to depression and anxiety and suicide and just a lot of dark times where if you felt like, no, today we'll mean something to somebody, then that's the path up to then helping not just yourself, but your family, your community, the world. And so built to serve was created to kind of give people the blueprint to get started along that journey. And often in the times of the lowest moments come the greatest gift because you end up helping people who are currently like that and your story becomes the path through. So even you sharing about your mom and continue on the legacy. I haven't lost my mom yet. You know, like I'm grateful that, you know, that she's still here. Right. I mean, I'll take a picture, but I'm grateful she's still with me. And so I can't talk about loss. I can't, I can't imagine. I can't imagine. I can't, I can't even imagine. Like I might be a wreck for two years. I have no idea. Um, I was a wreck for a while. Yeah. Like just, I can't imagine it. She was the only one really for me, you know, as part of my family. So. Yeah. I mean, I'm, yeah, I'm getting emotional. Just think I can't, I can't even imagine it. Um, but, but you can, because you've been through it, you know, you've had to deal with it. And so you could, you could give advice. Like I might be calling you up and say, Dan, dude, how were you like, how, how did you even just brush your teeth? You know, how did you even get out of bed? I can, and you can give advice because you've been through it. Yeah. People won't listen to me on that. Cause I have, I can only imagine it. I haven't been through it. So I don't know, right? And so that's where it's so important to share your story. And it's so important to get your message out there because there's somebody else out there who's hopeless, who does not see a way out, who sees zero potential inside themselves and your story can be the spark that gives them just a little bit of hope, you know? That things do get better and there is a way through and I can help you and he like, here's what you can do. And, and then that makes you feel like you're contributing. And that the end of the day is how we, we're all built to serve and we all want to feel like what we do matters. Yeah. And that, and that's another reason why I took on my mother's show too. Because I didn't want to lose that piece of her. And this is, this was her contribution to the world. So by me continuing her strive to touch people's lives, it's also me being still connected to her in some way. Anyway. Yeah, yeah. Spirit's passing through. It's, it's amazing. And the listeners connect and of course you'll have your own guess on and your own style of doing things, but what a, what a perfect tribute. You know, like I'm sure I'll struggle with how do I honor and I might come to the same thing, like maybe the work, I mean, honestly, the work I am doing is basically I'm trying to give the message my mom gave me and give that to the world. They're on a think you grow rich with, um, how, how would, how was that event? By the way, cause I know Les was there, Dr. Forbes Riley, there were a lot of extraordinary people that you were amongst. I was on with them before it even was a big thing and they invited me back and you see it's one of those things like it's talking about stepping into your potential. I mean, we great one to end on. Um, you look at that list and you say, well, who am I to be in this space? Like, who am I to be on the stage with all these other amazing people, like people that you've idolized and looked up to and see as your heroes, who am I to be up there with them? And it's just realizing, no, you have a, you have something to share. You have a unique voice. You have a message and you're not going to deliver the same message that less will and that you can help people in a way that maybe less can't, you know, and. You will get these opportunities and you will get these ideas that flow through you as well. And it's often ourselves that talk us down from saying, yes, to the big opportunities, we talk ourselves down from our own potential, not even our friends and family talking us down. It's us as the voice inside our head telling us that we can't do it. You get a great idea and then you say, I can't do it. I'm not good enough. I don't know the background, the education, the skills, the money, whatever. Right. We come up with these reasons why we can't hit our potential and that's the daily battle and whether it's listening to shows like this and getting some inspiration from, from people like Dan or the previous episodes from his mom or looking up to people like Les Brown or reading books or watching videos. If you want to hit your potential, it's a, it's a daily battle. It's a daily grind. It's a daily effort. Just like, you know, you got to brush your teeth every day. I think Zig Ziglar said you got to brush or flush, floss your teeth every day. You need the motivation every day too. You need to surround yourself with the people, even if they're virtually like this, who make you feel like your potential is possible. And if you're around that daily, then you will get closer to actually hitting your potential. Fabulous. I know we're out of time. I just want to thank you so much, Evan, for being here today. I have so many more questions, but hopefully I'll have the opportunity to have you on again. So thank you so much. Thank you for the love, the energy, the kindness, the intent. Appreciate it. This is Cindy Gilman and you're listening to Discover Your Potential. So until next time, do something nice for yourself, but do something nice for someone else.
