Episode #2 features Evan Carmichael: entrepreneur and YouTube sensation. One day, Evan decided to stop posting articles he didn’t really support and to start really taking his passion for business to the people. He developed his own YouTube channel where he communicates daily with thousands of people looking to become better entrepreneurs. How did Evan build up his YouTube following? Come have a look.
On Google Hangouts: https://plus.google.com/117640653308688335454/posts/MbEJ1Spvzci
YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwvjwtetD1w&feature=youtu.be
The John & Jani Show #3 Transcript
John: Hey, everybody welcome back to The John and Jani show episode number two, somebody dancing. I am your host John Khoury, founder of Liquic.com and author of a new book called Quanology coming out soon and with me is Jani Moon.
Jani: Hello, I am calling from New York City, I am a media coach there making people stars in the media, so happy to be here, again John.
John: Thanks for being with us again Jani and this show is all about cool people doing cool things. We want to show our audience how people achieve the things that they want to achieve in their lives and today, we’ve got Evan Carmichael with us from www.evancarmicheal.com, spell just like you think and he is going to show us how to build up your YouTube following. Evan has built up a nice YouTube following and hopefully he is going to take us through the steps to get that and so we are going to show you a clip of Evan, right now with one of his You Tube video, listen all in the clip Jani.
Jani: roll in the clip, I am the technical person, here we go, this is one of my favorite clips of Evan, I love it, I think that it speaks for itself.
Evan: How to get through hard times, a buddy of mine is going through a time in his life right now and I sent him a message today to encourage him and support him and I realized that what I wrote in that message, I have never really shared with people before I haven’t shared it with you and I thought that the message might help you if you are going through a hard time in your life right now, and if sharing my story from what happened to me last year.
Last year was really a hard year for me from a business perspective and the from a personal perspective, and the business side I was growing less and less happy with what I was doing, most of my money came from advertising, I had a popular website, I have over 20 million people visit my site, so you can sell advertisement against that and make money.
The problem for me there was that I was creating content that was just generating a lot of views, so to sell a lot of advertising and it wasn’t necessarily stuff that I was proud of or would really help entrepreneurs which was my passion. So I felt increasingly disconnected to my business and as a result last year, totally changed my model, took off all the ads on my site and took my biggest revenue source and bought it to zero, which is really stressful and basically just starting over, starting over with a new business model to help entrepreneurs. On a personal level, my life was falling apart in a lot of different areas, I went through a divorce which was the most stressful thing that I ever had to go through in my life and I hope that you never have to go through that.
I spent $1.6 million building my dream house and then had to sell it; at basically cost, so I didn’t make a profit on it. I gained 15 pounds and so the first time in my life, I had to watch what I was eating and pay attention to that while I never had to worry before. I started losing my hair for the first time in my life too from all the stress and craziness and people and my family passed away and that created more stress and it was a tough year.
And it’s funny in life how sometimes, when something is going wrong, everything seems to go wrong at once and just when you think something is, you is just getting better, something hits you in your stomach even harder. That’s kind of how the pattern goes and the advice that I gave to my friend was what helped me get through it. It was really a challenging, tough year but what helped me get through was feeling like I was doing something important, it was making these videos, helping you guys, answering your questions ,feeling like I was giving back and helping people.
So, the only way that I knew how, which was through entrepreneurship and by helping you guys and by seeing the response in the videos and by knowing that I have helped your business get better, I have helped you to become a better entrepreneur, you are now taking that knowledge and helping more people, that making me feel like I was doing something important.
Jani: Okay, so you get the gist, ah.
John: I am pretty moved by that to be quite honest.
Jani: I know, right how awesome is he that is a great example also.
John: That was pretty impressive, but let’s brings Evan on what he has done with, is he ready for us?
Jani: Evan Carmichael, come on down
John: Evan I do have to say that was a pretty courageous video; do you want to tell us about that? Oh you are on mute button hold on a second, do I have him on mute?
Jani: Okay I can hear now
Evan: 5:04 Okay, yes that was a pretty raw one, a buddy of mine was going through something basically pretty similar, he was in a divorce and his business was fully falling apart and I just wrote him an e-mail to let him know that I went through the same thing and here is how I overcame it and he was so overwhelmed with that, that I thought hey, I should share this and help other people who might be going through the same thing.
John: So, did this all start when you, as you said, you took down all that advertising off your site and you started to make the videos, it’s that where this real change came in your whole YouTube thing or was this the beginning of your YouTube things, when you stopped put the ads on your site and started making the videos?
Evan: No, that wasn’t the start, I was growing more and more disillusioned with my website and as a result I was trying to, I started doing video as my passion outlet and so I spent my time there, when my team would spend time on the website and I started doing the videos because I got a lot of questions that people were asking to me and I would also respond by e-mail and I spend a lot of time writing to people back e-mails, I don’t get anything from it other than personal satisfaction.
When I figure that, you know if these people had this question other people would have the same, and if I made a video that I could help them as well as help a lot of other people with that same question, so it was a start with the video channel and we have been working with this awesome connection coach name Jani Moon, who has helped me made the videos a lot better and she encouraged me to take risk and be vulnerable and that was part of what, you know that all came out in that video that you just saw .
John: Took such perfect advice
Jani: That video was one of my favorite video because it exemplifies why so many people love Evan Carmichael, they believe in him because he speaks with such straight vulnerability and heart.
John: And that is in contrast to a lot of the that stuff you see on websites, the stuff that people are sort of producing content that they know is just going to kind of, bait people to bring in good SEO, whatever to bring in a lot of visitors but it doesn’t really offer a whole lot of stuff, I guess that is a big contrast right there.
Evan: Yes and even looking at SEO its moving towards brands, it’s less about the key words and more about the brands and so how people got , I don’t know how the arguments is to the taught but entrepreneurs to the personal brands, how can you get up there corporate brand that can actually find people, if you make that connection to people, you are going to get more likes and you get the SEO ,now SEO isn’t about keyword, it is about building up yourself as a brand and this is a bigger strategy to help you.
John: And how does that work and can you explain that a little because a lot of people go to Google and then they, because normally when they go to Google they search for stuff like entrepreneurship ,and they will come up with a site that’s right, one of the results would be like your site for instance? But now
Evan: Yes, typically Goggle is very key word focused and there common advice was, you know create content with these keywords or by covering that exact match of your domain, you want your domain with your keywords in it, so you want you know entrepreneur. website .com, so you see the brand functioning on your website.
Goggle is moving far away from that now but they realize that some of the people just came for the results, google is really what they want, they want quality information, you want searchers to be happy, right if I type in whatever search I want to be satisfied with the results and Google as over the past number of years really updated their algorithm to focus on looking and showing companies that they considered bigger brands even if they don’t have as much keyword optimization.
John: Right, they have a total presence.
Jani: Everyone is dying to know, like everyone because like everyone, America, the world, wants to know because you just said it, right we all have to build our personal brand, John, The John & Jani Show, we are building our personal brand on this show. You are helping your viewers build their personal brand, how did they do it for YouTube? How did they, what are your tips?
John: This is a great tip already you just said, I think it’s a great idea is a fact that that a lot of people get a lot of emailing other people. The people who made followings get a lot of e-mails and, I feel that is essential not a waste of time in the sense but you are not maximizing that content because you are putting good content into an e-mail, so obviously you can consider the idea when you respond to e-mail, post them on your website and you are basically doing that in a sort of sense but for YouTube videos.
Evan: Nah, and I think people, I am a visual learner and I think most people are visual learners and if you can see a picture and you can see that person talking to you, it helps them understand your message better than just reading it and it ties them to you. I get so many people write to me and they say, you know Evan thank you so much I feel like I know you and they bring up something that I might have said in my videos, and the first time it happening it kind of creepy, people they are calling me their friend and they are bringing up something from my past and look, I don’t have no idea who you are but I am getting more and more used to it. But it, you know if you are just getting started on You Tube, how I started, just answering questions, so you may not even have an audience yet and you are just trying to get started so, you know you don’t have people asking you questions yet, but you can think about your interactions with your customers and prospects and people in your network and the common problems that they have and use that as a question.
John: Yes
Evan: To something that had happenedand they are sharing and the first step is really just providing helpful advice, I think when my videos started getting a lot better was injecting, and this you know big credit to Jani ,for helping me with this, is injecting your story and, you know your passion into the video, so if somebody ask me, how do I, how do I do a steal for my company? I would get on and say, okay I am just your CO and I am comfortable talking about the topic and I hear the five things you need to do about blah, blah, blah and that’s great, that’s great content but it doesn’t tie people to me yet and what really adds to it, is me sharing my story too about SEO and opinions that I went through and showing the vulnerability. Basically getting people to feel something but I want people to see every video that I create and feel something because that ties them to my brand and makes them want to watch another video, another video, another video.
John: I guess you said a right word there, a key word in all this is a process, you said it’s kind of weird; it’s kind of creepy at first that people start to, I will tell you what is creepy for me because I also worked with Jani, the first thing is weird is to just film yourself in the first place; just film yourself that’s the weirdest thing in the world, is it not? But you are used to this now.
Evan: Yes
Jani: My next question and Evan answer that because John, I remember in the beginning, he had issues around filming and a lot of people do; and a lot of people that’s one of the main reasons why they didn’t even start a You Tube channel, how do you overcome those obstacles, the filming yourself on camera?
Evan: It’s scary; it’s so scary and your first video suck but its knowing that your video is going to suck and it is a process and it will get better, you know my first video I didn’t want to spend money on a camera so I use my DSLR but it didn’t focus properly, so it didn’t auto focus I had to have somebody focus it for me, so I had my sister; I had my some of my staff come into the room and focus it and then leave because I couldn’t have them in the room while I was doing the video, you know not even
John: Self conscious
Evan: my fiancé and nobody else in the room, it was too scary. The first videos that I did it took me like the whole day; the whole day to do one video and, and the video sucked, you know it was decent content, whatever but wasn’t anything that I was really proud of. I still put it up and I got some good feedback on it, I looked at that video and you could see that my channel could go back to the beginning and I am embarrassed by it, and look at that, oh man I want to take that down so bad, but people still liked it and it is fun to see the kind of progress that it makes. Now I am at the point where, I’ve got, I don’t know I’ve got 1200 videos recorded and…
John: 1200 videos
Evan: Yeh, man its
John: So you gotten used to it, that’s what you are telling us
Evan: Yes, I will sit down on a Wednesday and I will film between 10 to 20 videos on one Wednesday afternoon but before it used to take me
John: About what? About what? Because look see you’ve got five-step for SEO and whatever but 1200 videos, that’s a lot of what we are talking about then?
Evan: It’s a lot of work
Jani: You’ve got to be creative, so you got more creative in your videos now to you showing off more sites URLs, right
Evan: Most of the videos, for those of you are looking at video strategy is a great one that You Tube suggest called Hero and Hygiene where, hero is your big videos that’s the one, you know, hoping goes viral, you are big, you know unstoppable thing. You spend a lot of time working on it like one video that has almost half a million views that you spend a lot of time on and your high yield is your daily stuff like, you brush your teeth every day, you wash your face every day, so the hygiene is daily, regular content that you put up on your site, where the yield is once a year, every six months.
John: So, all of the time brush your teeth
Evan: Yes
John: Every day, I got that now
Evan: Yes
Jani: It’s the whole environment John, brushing your teeth
Evan: That’s a great {15:03 inaudible} that’s a smart dad
John: For changing diapers
Jani: John just had a baby so you can show; you can show that, you can do the whole video series on being a dad for the third time now
John: Exactly
Evan: What I found was the hygiene content , most of it was answering people’s question, so I had a great question from John from Arizona and here is, his questions and answers, that’s most of it but on top of that I’ve also had some fun videos. I have a series that is called Versailles Wears, I am upset about something kind of in the moment, I pull out my phone and just record something the quality sucks on it but it is a passionate message coming out. I may have done something fun and I just did some organic setting for the first time, some filming of myself going through that process, I am learning, so you are learning with me as the audience.
Jani: But those message Evan, that you are pointing out is that you get people to fall in love with you because you were showing so many different sides of who you are, you are not just showing this one dimensional Evan, you are showing all of these dimensions side of you, and then you get the following.
Evan: And those videos are more for the hard-core audience, so I did that video, like Evan goes to Florida and I took my family to Orlando, we went on all the rides and we were singing the song and all that stuff and there was some funny moments in there but why would you watch that Evan’s vacation video like, who cares?
John: I was about to ask that, how many people are watching that stuff, somebody is dancing
Evan: Those videos don’t get as many views as the how to knowledge stuff but the people who watch it are the hard-core audience and then they want to go and watch more, because I’ve brought them in, so they can really connected to me and then they want to go and watch everything else, and so most of the views that I get on my videos are related videos, so they watch one and then they watch the other one, and another one; and another one, so they keep watching more and more of my videos and they subscribe and then new ones comes out with and they keep watching those.
So, it’s good to have a mix of the personal ones in there as well and it is up to you how much you want to share. I don’t want to get really too deep and personal with some of the stuff but, you know 80%, 85% is straight up business stuff with my stories and another extra 15, 20 is going to be the fun side of me and it brings people in, it make them feel like they knows this guy and when they look at the business advice they are going to come to me instead of somebody’s else.
John: What do your friends think of all this, that’s what I am thinking, what do your friends think of that?
Evan: A lot of them want to know how to do it.
Jani: Yes, that’s great
Evan: Yes they want to help and I have helped a few people through the process, some of them have been on the video, like when I went to Orlando, I went with a friend of mine and he is on some of the videos, I know they are used to it by now, I guess to
John: Can you tell me why they go?
Evan: It was fun
Jani: So Evan, for all Evan’s fans out there and entrepreneurs and all the people who are wanting to build their brand on their You Tube channel, what are some specific net involved tips that someone starting out can do, because I know that, like you are very consistent and you have a whole little, you know bag of tricks of things that you do that have gotten you success, what are those tips?
Evan: So, let me tell you a quick story, so I am at, two of my medias have been a client with Jani has been working with me on to up my videos and when I first talked to them the guy, he tells me, Evan I don’t think you are going to be a good fit for our channel because you’ve got great content but you kind of suck on camera and like what, I thought that was good on camera man. I have really done like 500 videos how can I suck on camera and he said that to most of the people we get they are already media coach, they are already on CNN; they were already on CNBC, they were news experts.
So, he took a fire on me and we started working together and that’s when I met Jani and we started working together and from that point I started doing You Tube videos every day, like two videos go up on my channel every single day of the week and through crazy repetition in building that muscle and getting it be back at me ,to make the videos better to the point where, now my channel has been referenced as the best practice, with these other people have a hard time posting once a week.
Here I am now, the best case for people to model, are you kidding me, I was like the worst person, I wasn’t thinking of those, I wasn’t going to accept it in, now it’s the best one just to doing a lot of work out there. So, to Jani question on specific steps of what you can do, the first one is
- Figure out what’s your story is and you don’t have to be a super outgoing person, I am actually a really shy person, you may not; you may not get that talking to me right now but I am not the guy who goes up and introduce myself and hands out my business cards and toss it on an airplane, that’s not me but you are going to get, just because you shy, it doesn’t mean, you are not passionate about what you are doing. So it’s figuring out how to tell your story in a passionate way, so that when you are doing the first video, that’s your very first video. Practical hands-on steps make your first video that tells your story, why you do what you do, what made you start this thing and what you are doing why it means something to you. And don’t worry if it is not edited properly and, you know don’t worry about any of that stuff. You can’t do it on your phone, don’t let any of these excuses get in the way of getting you started that’s the first one and then.
- Regular ,consistent videos and think about problems that people are facing, questions that you have been asking your customers, or from your friends, prospects or if you hanging out and chat , you see people talking about something or something in the new that you haven’t paid on, create up videos that talks about that and just get into the habit, put in your schedule once a week on whatever it is, set aside time, this is my video production day and know that’s your first one is going to suck and that’s okay and you are going to be nervous, it’s okay you are going to get better ; you are going to get better each time and once you start seeing feedback come in and somebody says wow great video, it makes you feel so good like the best part of my day is waking up. I got my lentils for breakfast and spinach and start mix them up together and I start looking at my comments on You Tube and it’s always all these great wonderful things and that just start get me get geared up for the day ahead. So I give a lot of credit on rambles but you want a tip so right tell your story, scheduled it in once a week, set aside time know that they are going to suck, but that’s okay and don’t be too worried about them being too super professional again.
Jani: And what has it gotten you because you are gotten some accolades, not only the often comments but your You Tube channel has got some gigs, right?
Evan: Yeah, I recently came back from Malaysia where I was asked to do a speech on social media
John: In Malaysia
Evan: Yes, they awarded me social media speaker of the year something, I don’t know; I don’t even know how they found out about me and I asked them
Jani: They asked for you
Evan: That what they said but I asked them, I don’t even know any Malaysians, I have no Malaysia connections and they flew me over there and paid my fee in a hotel and airfare and all that stuff and they said they just found me through my You Tube videos and said I’ve got to get this guy here
John: Does that work for these people just write to you and said they want you to come speak?
Evan: Yeah
John: And you had no idea who they were?
Evan: Right there but they feel like they know me from watching all my videos.
John: Wow, but how did you find out that they are legit I am going too deep into this, I mean
Evan: I know, just cool curiosity, it’s a good question before I book anything in my calendar
John: You know they are going to kill you or something
Evan: Right and it did look kind of sketchy and I was worried, you know some opportunity but before I book anything in I need to get a deposit and for my speaking gig that’s at least 50% upfront, so they wired the money into my bank account and that was the first step, so these guys are for real, they paid for my trip.
John: I don’t trust
Evan: Yeah,
Jani: What, it is spurred all of this is happening because of this You Tube channel the following, you’ve got this amazing workshop and now they are just coming, right it’s like a snowball effect all because of this is passionate video?
Evan: Yes, I am doing another one next month in Orlando at a national conference for a company, and again they just found me through my You Tube channel one of the guys whose going to be attending there recommend it to the CO of the company and they saw my video, and videos are just happening, people are just finding it from the audience that are billed.
John: Wow
Jani: Its amazing Evan thank you so much for joining us on, how can people get in touch with you?
Evan: EvanCarmichael.com that’s the website, you can find me on YouTube channel in the masters and you’ll find me.
John: You can’t miss him with all of those videos; you can’t miss those, nice Evan
Jani: Evan, thank you so much, you are an inspiration, your passion, your vulnerability, your creativity in what you are doing on You tube is absolutely amazing top notch.
John: Thanks for being here, buddy.
Evan: Thanks guys
John: Thank you Carmichael and everybody hang on with us we are going to have a little talk bye, bye Evan.
Jani: Bye Evan
John: So, we’re back, we weren’t there the whole time but that’s okay, I mean he is a star of the show.
Jani: I love that guy, he is doing
John: I can see why
Jani: You saw that video and he have so much heart and passion for what he is trying to do in helping entrepreneurs. I think like that the most important thing, you’ve just have to, you’ve got, people have to know that you care.
John: That’s a great tip he gives about bumping shyness because I think some people just feel like they are not totally not made for this, I am shy.
Jani: Your video series is coming up John.
John: You see, you make me think about that stuff, should can’t do that but the point what he said is that, okay you are shy or whatever but you have to find that passion inside and say, okay that’s coming out in this form, you know and despite that and this is something I struggled with a lot, is that the whole idea, it’s going to suck and you get used to it and that was a big thing too.
Jani: So, what’s your first video going to be, you have a book coming out?
John: No, so I do have a book coming out
Jani: Ah, you are so quiet {inaudible}
John: When I am in the shower, she is just taking videos in the shower. When I am in the shower I am a genius, a speaking wizard, that’s when like you are totally relaxed and everything comes but I don’t know ; I don’t know. I have a million excuses why not to do it but it’s always right, you are probably should just do this thing, right
Jani: You have to just do it; you have to just do it because if you don’t then, you know you are going to come up with excuses after excuse.
John: Missed opportunities, yeah but I have really enjoyed this, get used to it, figure out your story all these great tips, I just disappeared.
Jani: You are focusing; you are focusing John
John: Focusing
Jani: You are focusing in TV land; you are focusing, so John we can’t end until you commit to one video, which one is it going to be?
John: I am going to introduce a book, how’s that sound?
Jani: Awesome, I just did a video before we did our show, so I have Evan, so alright you going to do a video on the book?
John: I am going to do a video on the book.
Jani: All right, Evan Carmichael thank you because this was inspired by you.
John: Yes, thanks Evan for coming on the show, we are going to post a transcript to this on the websites, on one of our websites. We will post it on You Tube and on Google Plus, everybody thanks for coming in, Jani you want to roll the….?
Jani: Thank you
John: Thanks for watching, see you soon.