Lessons - Building a Personal Brand as a Content Creator | Evan Carmichael - Entrepreneur, Author & Youtuber

Is there a process that you've reverse engineered, if somebody was looking to create content to build a brand, what is the way to find your purpose as a content creator to somebody could be a little bit more purposeful with their actions from day one? So I would probably expedite their process. Yeah, so recognize, first of all, that a brand is in emotion. A brand is how you want people to feel when they're around any of your stuff, whether they're buying your merch, it's like, how do I feel when I put this on, or if I'm putting on some Michael Jordan's, how am I going to feel when I put those on? If I'm watching your content, how do you want me, how do you want to make me feel? Like your interview, Scott, how do you want people to feel when they're watching and listen to your interviews? Enlightened, motivated, educated, passionate, like just like light a fire and feel like they can go do whatever they want to go do. It's probably very similar to your audience, to be honest, like same idea. Yeah, and listen, if you had, if people had that clarity in terms of jumping into making content that I want people to feel enlightened, like if we run with that, I want people to feel enlightened when they watch my video. Most of the time when we get in front of a camera to press record, we're worried about how am I looking and I weren't there right thing is the light okay, am I in focus, what am I even going to be saying? I forgot my lines. And even if you end up having the perfect words, if they don't have the emotion behind it, they won't land where having the emotion with imperfect words will land. So if the goal before going into any interview or any piece of content, I really want the people listening to this to feel enlightened and empowered, it just changes how you show up. It changes the content direction, it changes the guests that people invite on their shows, it changes the picture that you post to Instagram. So your brain is in emotion, mine is believe if people figure out what that is, it relieves a lot of pressure and also gives a lot more clarity for what to do next. So I think that's the starting point, like what do you stand for? What do you want your brand to be? What is the one word emotion that you want to permeate everything you make? In terms of purpose, well, now we need to apply that to the people who who are exactly like who you used to be, right? Your purpose is to help people who currently are who you used to be. I'm still making content for 1911 because there are millions of people out there who are 19 year old, and they need help, they need guidance, they need support, they need wisdom, they need inspiration. And that's who I'm making my content for. I can help anybody believe in, there's a lot of people who watch my content who are entrepreneurs and that's awesome, but I feel most connected to the people who are struggling to get their business off the ground because that's when I had the biggest pain point in my life. And it's just recognizing that your journey, your story has value in that you're, we're not where we want to be. Like I'm not done growing, Scott's not done growing, like neither of us are where we ultimately want to be. And a lot of people will then use that as well, I'm, I'm no Tony Robbins or I'm no whoever, so I'm not even going to try. But you could go back and help the person that you used to be. I can go back and sit on a park bench and talk to 19 or 11 and give him some knowledge that will, that will help him. And that becomes the exercise then that every time that you, you're climbing a mountain and you're trying to get to the top and you never want to get to the top because that means you're done growing, but you're climbing, climbing, climbing, climbing, hopefully every day. If you listen to Scott's show, you're going to climb and learn more every day. But every time you take a step up, you then reach back and pull to help somebody else get to where you're at. And most people are stuck still at zero. Most people are stuck at just taking the first step. And so they can be inspired by your story. They can learn from you. And knowing that you've been through what they are going through gives them the hope and the belief that maybe they can get out of the hole there. If somebody is starting, so Evan, you're starting day one. What is the advice that you give to somebody so that they make it past this, this initial hump so that they feel comfortable taking the first step. And then once they take the first, I know it's going to be a two-part question, which is a dip move on my part. So what's the advice to get them to take the first step? And then once they take that first step, what's the advice to maintain, continue, maintain momentum? Do it for five years so they see the result. So when you're first getting started, expect a suck. Just expect a suck. Expect it to be terrible. Expect your first interview to suck, your first video to suck. Just expect it. Expect your camera to break and like, sound not to record and you've been a nervous wreck. Just expect a suck. It doesn't mean that you suck as a human. It just means that you don't have the skill set yet. Well, how do you get the skill set? You practice. This is the problem for a lot of people is they'll look at people don't expect to be great. If you're starting the show, whoever your heroes are, Joe Rogan or Tim Ferris or whoever Larry King, I could think are the best interviewers of all time. Great. You can look at them and say, well, I don't think I'm going to be as good as them yet. Like I might on a long enough horizon, but I'm not going to be as good as them. Those are the A plus category. Great. But you can easily think yourself, okay, if they're A plus, I'm probably like a B minus right now. I ask great questions. I'm curious. I think I could do that. And then you go and you do your first show and you realize you're not a B minus, you're a D minus. Like it's just way worse than you thought because when you go live, you freeze up, you're deer in the headlights, ask the wrong question, stumble, look back and say, oh my gosh, you didn't do anything that I thought I was going to do. And you just realize that you're way worse than you thought you were going to be. And that's where most people quit. Like they make one or they try to make the first one. And then they look back and say, this is terrible. I guess I suck at this and it's not for me. I'm not as good as I thought I was and they never keep going. Expect a suck. Again, it means you're amazing as a human because you tried. And if you keep trying and keep improving, keep getting better, you will not suck anymore. So that's where a lot of people struggle. They know what looks good. They feel they can make it. They can't at the beginning and so they stop trying. In terms of keeping going, how do you keep going when you're struggling and failing and not seeing the results? People ask me this all the time where it took me five years to get to 5,000 subscribers or whatever close numbers like that where a lot of people, they're hitting that in the first few months. It took me five years to get there. I like sharing the journey because it's great to see three million whatever now. But a five years, five thousand subscribers, what kept me going through those days was I always focus on who I was serving instead of who I'm not. Those people will focus on who they're not serving. And that game never ends, right? I have three million subscribers who wise it wise in at four or five or ten. I dive deeper into that concept. That's very interesting. What do you mean by they're focusing on the people that they're not serving? So if I'm at three million subscribers, most people who are even at my level are thinking well, I should be at five or should be at seven or should be at 10. I should be at like the net. We're focused on who we don't have. We're focused on and that's great goal oriented like hey, where we're going next. But if you focus too much on that, it's actually really depleting of your energy. So if at the beginning, you get you get five views on your video, you get 50 views on your video. Like, well, I only got 50 views. I spent so much time and energy and effort. I thought it was actually decent and only 50 people watched it were focused on who we're not having, right? Why is it a five hundred or five thousand or whatever meaningful number is that you thought you would have? And as our standards get higher, we keep increasing that number, right? If I get five thousand views on a video, that's a failure where the beginning is like, oh my god, five thousand views. So how I've always just approached it and maybe it was because at the beginning, there was no such thing as being YouTube famous was I just focus on who I was serving that if I had 50 people watch the video, like 50 people watch this video. Yeah. Like if you were to go give a speech at a library or or YMCA or something, 50 people showed up. You'd be pretty amped. You'd be pretty nervous. You're first speaking gig. Oh my god. It's a good. I mean, it's great, right? 50 people showed up to listen to you, but because it's online, we feel like that's nobody and it doesn't matter and it doesn't, it doesn't hit anybody. You know, assume that for one of those 50 people, your video is a life changing video. The message you're speaking is having a major impact, not on everybody, but at least one person in those 50, maybe your words, the way you said it today, with your tone and your story actually punctured through where other people happened. Like they heard your message, even if they don't leave a comment to tell you what an impact that has had. And if you focus on the 50 people you are serving instead of the, you know, all the people that you're not, it does two things. One, it makes you feel like you're doing work that matters. It makes you feel like your work is meaningful and at the end of the day, we all want to wake up and feel like we're going to do something meaningful. If you wake up and feel like it doesn't mean anything if we show up or not today, then that's the path to stress, depression, anxiety, suicide, because we feel like we don't matter. But if you woke up today and felt like today's going to matter, it's going to mean something. I look at my calendar, I see Scott in the calendar, he's like, yes, let's go. It's going to be a great day, guys. Then that's the path to purpose and fulfillment and happiness. So focusing on who you are serving makes you feel better and gives you more energy and happiness to pour into your creative projects. It also has a funny effect where if you focus on who you are serving, they take you to the people who you're not. If you love on your current community and they feel that love and they're going to reciprocate it and take you to their friends to hate, have you listened to Scott's show? It's amazing. Scott cares so much. He invites his great guests on, ask amazing questions, right? They will take you to the people who are not serving. So that was the thing that got me going, it was that kept me going. It was not, oh, I didn't get 500 views on his video, so I'm going to quit. No, 75 people watch this video. I'm having an impact. Keep going. That is a great dovetail into, well, you kind of answered it, but I always love asking people why they named their book, what they named their book and that sort of ties it all together. So you actually wrote a book called Built to Serve and that's why that's such a central theme in what's made you successful. So it's always focusing on who you already have and I think that's actually, I've never heard it phrase that way. And I think that most people don't look at growing social audiences that way at all. It's almost like always looking internally versus at words. That's. Yeah. I mean, you know what, Scott, I didn't, I couldn't vocalize it as well when I first got started. So if we had this interview back in 2009 when I was first getting, I wouldn't, I've been able to say it as clearly as that. But what I, what I found over the years was, and I've been around for a long enough time that you start to, you know, hear stories, a lot of the people who have watched my videos, they would go years and never leave a comment and never tell me the impact that the video had. I remember this one woman who had cancer and she was in the hospital and having her treatments and every, every time it was painful, she would pull up an iPad and watch one of my videos for inspiration. And she told me that she had one really, really painful day and she just wanted to quit. Like just end it. I'm done. This is too much pain. I'm not, I don't want to live like this anymore. And her mom came in and she said, that's not happening. Who's that guy that you watch on YouTube again? Like what's his name? Where you're going to watch a video right now from his channel and she pulled up the iPad and showed it to her and, you know, helped her get through another day. And we did an episode on her show when she was telling me this story. And this had happened four or five years before we did the interview on her podcast. And I had never known like she never left a comment on my videos. She had never written in the email to say, thank you. And now four to five years after this whole thing happened, she's telling me face to face how much of an impact my content has played in her life. So we tend to default that if, unless people leave gushing comments on our videos or we get tons of views, that it's not having an impact and it doesn't matter. I've seen enough of those stories come back that's like, hey, if 50 people watched it for one person that could be a life-changing video. And if you can actually hold on to that, actually capture that and feel that for at least one person, this message is life-changing for them. That's what will fill you up and give you the motivation, energy, hope, encouragement to keep going on the field.