Moving Beyond Your Expectations of Success

with guest Evan Carmichael #MakingBank S5E23

In business, it might seem like the bar of success keeps getting higher and higher with the latest and greatest companies constantly creating new things. It’s hard not to measure yourself – and your dreams and ideas – to these remarkable competitors. They’re a good way to motivate yourself but expecting to be like them is where entrepreneurs start going wrong.  

Our recent guest on Making Bank, Evan Carmichael, knows a lot about the struggle of expectations and finding your passions. At the age of 19, Evan sold a biotech software company. Since then, he turned into a successful venture capitalist, and now writes books and runs a YouTube Channel to help entrepreneurs.  

Learn about how you can deal with expectations and growth, along with Evan’s process of finding out what you’re supposed to be doing! 

Expectations of Success 

“And I think is where a lot of people struggle. You expect to be perfect. You know what the challenge is, you know what good looks like.”  

It’s hard when you’re in a business that already has an example of success. You want to benchmark your progress against what is already working, and what has already been done because you know it works. This sets people up for an impossible standard, cutting themselves short before they even can begin.  

When you can’t replicate something as natural as others, you immediately think that you’re failing at it. This is where originality comes into play in entrepreneurship and keeping up with creating things. You make your own goals and methods that work for you, then you won’t have to compare what you’re doing to other standards. It’s easy to stop and quit after you can’t recreate something great.  

And even if you create something you think is great and you look back on it and think that it sucks, that’s okay too. “And so it’s more about expecting to suck at the beginning and paying attention to the progress that you’re making.” 

The more that you do something, the better that you’re going to become. It’s putting trust into an idea and believing that you’ve got the capabilities and skills to make it successful. Getting past the suck, moving forward, and developing the business and your skills ultimately play into meeting your end goals.  

“The only difference is I just kept going where a lot of people quit too soon. And I just want to give people their permission to suck at the beginning and just suck a little bit less every day. And eventually, you’re taken off.” 

Finding What You’re Supposed to Be Doing  

The number one question that Evan got when he was touring was “how do I find my purpose?” And after going from city to city and talking with different people, he realized that the question wasn’t as hard as everyone made it out to be.  

“You don’t have to go sit on a mountain for ten years meditating to figure out what you’re meant to do. There’s a process. It’s a three-step process.” Evan found out that there are three main components in finding out what you’re supposed to be doing, along with how to keep staying on the right path. 

The first part of this process is finding out what you’ve built to serve. Evan says that everyone is built to bring something to the world, to bring to people. You have to wake up every day and believe that what you’re doing is important to the world and to the people that you’re producing for. You’re creating things that go just beyond you, which helps motivate and inspire you as you continue to create.  

Next is your why. This is your purpose. Evan says this comes from your pain. Whatever you struggled with the most, that built you into the person you are today. You grow from your failures. Being able to recognize your lowest points and how to move on from them is vital when determining what you’re meant to do. 

“When did you feel like a loser and you have no self-worth, you just feel like a total reject of life that moment. And we’ve all had it. Your purpose is to help other people who currently are like that because there are millions of people right now who are like you from five years ago and you can help them, and you can help them.”  

The last thing in the process is to keep growing. If you stop yourself short, you’re cutting off the potential reach that you can gain by creating more. You’re going to constantly evolve, and that will not only just show up in your creative business life, but who you are as a person every day.  

“We’re never done growing. We never have all the answers, but every time you step up and grow, you can pull somebody else up to the step that you’re on and that will fill you up for the rest of your life.”