Evan Carmichael, Entrepreneurship and Truth-seeking |393|

Alex

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Evan Carmichael, Entrepreneurship and Truth-seeking |393|
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Evan Carmichael has channeled his success into a passion for helping entrepreneurs.
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photo by: Skeptiko
Alex Tsakiris:
Today we welcome Evan Carmichael to Skeptiko. Evan is a successful entrepreneur who’s channeled his own success into a passion for helping others succeed in reaching their potential. He’s created an enormously successful YouTube channel and two excellent books. I really enjoy, Your One Word: The Powerful Secret of Creating a Business and Life That Matter and The Top 10 Rules for Success.

Evan, welcome to Skeptiko. Thanks for joining me.

Evan Carmichael: Thanks a lot Alex, and that voice, man, I should have had you do my audio book. That’s something special.

Alex Tsakiris: Really? I just drank a smoothie, maybe that’s it.

Evan Carmichael: Yeah, keep it. Yeah, keep the smoothie.

Alex Tsakiris: So, you were just joking a minute ago, Skeptiko is generally a show about consciousness science, these kinds of, who we are, why are we here, picture stuff, but in some ways that’s really just a cover story because what I’m really interested in is truth seeking and truth seekers and I think there’s a wonderful overlap with the stuff you’ve done about believing and about entrepreneurship and I was wondering if we could talk about that connection. So, right off the bat, do you see a connection between truth seeking and this believing/entrepreneurship/reaching your full potential?

Evan. Yeah. I think everybody has Michael Jordan level talent at something, but we just done, one, realize what it is, we don’t try enough stuff, or two, we don’t believe in ourselves to go after it. I think the question of human potential is the world’s biggest problem. I think something like cancer should have been solved already. I think the woman who solves cancer is an accountant right now and hates her life, but she either, one, never tried biology, never got interested in it, never got the opportunity or she went after it but then it seemed to risky, it was a safe bet, somebody talked her down from it and she took the safer path to go and be an accountant.

So, I think that’s everybody. I think Michael Jordan is just as talented as everybody else. I think we all have that ability inside of us and so that’s the path that I’m on, is trying to help people uncover that. Whether they become an entrepreneur or something totally different, that’s okay, but I think everybody has a well, a deep well of talent inside them and are meant for greatness.
 
Alex's question at the end of the podcast:

Is there any wisdom to the idea that you have to be somebody before you can be nobody? Is doing, achieving, accomplishing, grist for the spiritual transformation mill?
 
Alex's question at the end of the podcast:

Is there any wisdom to the idea that you have to be somebody before you can be nobody? Is doing, achieving, accomplishing, grist for the spiritual transformation mill?

It can be. There are many paths up the mountain. But at the top there is just one point.
 
Thanks a lot Alex, and that voice, man, I should have had you do my audio book

So, I think that’s everybody. I think Michael Jordan is just as talented as everybody else. I think we all have that ability inside of us and so that’s the path that I’m on, is trying to help people uncover that

As much as I agree we must embrace and encourage those encouraging the entrepreneurs, I think a certain level of experience is required before I will trust anyone.

But Alex, you'd be so cool as a voice-over, have you ever thought of that?!

And at 7 I saw myself as a Prima Ballerina, so that must be my destiny, no? Perhaps at 70 he can help me uncover my 7 year-old wishful talent?

Sorry, don't mean to be cross or 'not open' but is it not difficult to accept 'life-coaches' who haven't yet had a life?!
 
Agreed! Can anyone tell me a good reason why I should even bother to download this interview?

The guy said he had failed at being an entrepreneur, and that seems to have been cathartic. I also heard that what eventually makes you great hurts like crap first. That's kinda true. I was almost getting the point of the interview when it ended. But then, I have just started reading The Coddling of the American Mind and I think this message might be pertinent to under 25s.
 
Is there any wisdom to the idea that you have to be somebody before you can be nobody? Is doing, achieving, accomplishing, grist for the spiritual transformation mill?

I kinda get the question as do you have to have ambition before you can decide not to? And do you have to make stuff happen as a necessary part of spiritual evolution?

As to then first part of the question I'd say the answer is 'depends'. And to the second part of the question I'd say maybe.

I don't fully understand the American idea of being a nobody. If you mean nobody in particular in terms of particular social standing, the the answer to the question is a contingent no. If we assume the validity of multiple lives we must assume the question to cover all lives - in which case the question is more complex, and worth an essay I am not going to write here.

But, if I can generalise, there are plenty of 'nobodies' engaged in the noble struggle of being a decent human being, and plenty of somebodies who are narcissistic assholes, Being a 'nobody' in a cultural or social sense isn't a valid negative. That's because being somebody isn't an assured positive. Sometimes doing your duty and being a decent citizen, parent, and partner carries more spiritual weight than being an ambitious egotist with problematic morals. But then I would not want to judge what we each need in this particular life.

So "Is doing, achieving, accomplishing, grist for the spiritual transformation mill?" As opposed to being flaccid and doing nothing? Even nobodies do, achieve and accomplish - things that are spectacularly modest in the glitzy highs of the supposedly 'high achievers'. Raising your kids to be decent citizens, caring for a disabled child or an ageing parent, being a good neighbour - all these count for essential things in human society. Without them your iPhone or electric car is no compensation.

Every culture needs the 'somebodies', but they stand on the shoulders of the 'nobodies'. A leader is worth something only if their followers are good quality. There never has been a great general who has won famous victories with crap troops. Great coaches need great teams. The Trump somebody is that only because of the raft of 'nobodies' who keep him afloat.

So if the question asks whether a somebody is better than a nobody, the answer is no. Social rank is relative and contextual. If the question asks whether you need to have tried and done stuff before quitting and doing bugger all, the answer is closer to yes. But if being nobody is sign of defeat, of being crushed - who crushes but the somebodies? Must you become a crusher before you are allowed to virtuously be a crushee?

For me the interview was too short, and this is reflected in the question. There was the promise of exploring the psychology of ambition and aspiration, and what happens when reality fails to match the dream. Is ambition spiritually okay? That is a complex question. We need to do what we must to meet our duty as a parent and partner, and as member of a larger family and even a community.

A recent survey in the UK shows that most of those questioned thought the world would be better off without their jobs. But not that they would be better off with out the income those jobs generate. We comprise, striving to minimise harm in our work, while doing good with our pay.

But Evan said one thing I thought was powerful - our best work comes through our pain. While I have worked in the public sector with a genuine dedication to doing things that improve people's lives, with a high degree of success, I have to admit that a lot of my colleagues and friends and family see that my work to support staff with disability is the most productive I have been. I have to agree, and it has taken acquiring my own disability for that to happen.

Thousands of people, as folk with disability, or who are carers of people with disability, are radiant in their service and their compassion. And they are, for the most part, the nobodies of our communities. Some of them become 'somebodies', as we saw in the recent Invictus games, but they are almost always no more than standard bearers for the other 'nobodies', and they celebrate that rather than any sense of personal attainment. The somebodies do not expose themselves to the hazards of IEDs and landmines. They hand the medals out.

I know Alex meant the question in the spirit of entrepreneurship, but I want to subvert that because I do not believe that entrepreneurship is the magical thing Americans make it out to be. We have a go according to our native inclinations. Some take massive risks, and fail. A minority is successful. But entrepreneurship is not a sufficient ground on which to establish 'somebody' and 'nobody'.

Is the worker who risks little, but who provides his family with a decent life as lesser person than one who risks much and exposes his family to the loss of all they have? All we can say is that we live our lives according to our natures, and some are good at what they aspire to be, many are so so and a few are awful.

Let me return to the question again in the hope of finding gold.

Is there any wisdom to the idea that you have to be somebody before you can be nobody? There is probably no wisdom to the idea, but maybe much to be gained if you labor over it with determination.

Is doing, achieving, accomplishing, grist for the spiritual transformation mill? Yes, provided that you do not think that doing, achieving, accomplishing are things that only somebodies do. Yesterday, because of my disability, I fell over and badly traumatised my feet. This morning, despite significant pain, I made it slowly to the bathroom, using two Canadian crutches. Okay, I was driven by a certain necessity, but it was an accomplishment.

For so many people each day is about doing, achieving, accomplishing things that are modest to those who do not know what is involved in making those things happen. In human terms the nobodies achieve far more than the somebodies - in terms of what is good and necessary.

This may not be what Alex intended in his question. But it is my answer.
 

Loved this. Nature triumphs over capitalism. Capitalism strives (like Communism actually) to be rational, in a mechanical ideal sense. This has become our model of 'efficiency'. Nature is profligate and sloppy. We survive because nature does not make wheat and anchovies that make a small number of off-spring that are heavily armoured - but rather many that are poorly defended. The rational efficient model of reality is a fiction that always corrupts when it is created. Its a pity that management consultants and wealth consultants do not get this - let alone governments.

Andre Spicer's Business Bullshit is a good read on the wider bullshit culture of organisations.
 
As much as I agree we must embrace and encourage those encouraging the entrepreneurs, I think a certain level of experience is required before I will trust anyone.

But Alex, you'd be so cool as a voice-over, have you ever thought of that?!

And at 7 I saw myself as a Prima Ballerina, so that must be my destiny, no? Perhaps at 70 he can help me uncover my 7 year-old wishful talent?

Sorry, don't mean to be cross or 'not open' but is it not difficult to accept 'life-coaches' who haven't yet had a life?!
thx... I need more smoothies... or maybe cigs :)
 
Agreed! Can anyone tell me a good reason why I should even bother to download this interview?

David
Maybe I wasn't paying attention to a sufficient degree, but I thought I heard Evan saying he had serial failures. Maybe making a success from being a serial failure is something? I listened and decided that being an entrepreneur was not for me - but then I knew that already. But the guy tells a story and sometimes listening to another person's story can inspire self-reflection. I was neither offended nor bored. But I recall bugger all of the conversation - and that was maybe because it inspired me to think about other things. That happens a lot with podcasts for me.

So, David, maybe there is a chance you might get to be stirred to think about something that would likely not otherwise come to mind - and it may be useful. That's the best reason I can come up with. Who knows? This could be your 'road to Damascus' moment if only you'd do it. But then, you might just be inspired to make a shopping list. The best outcome might be that you don't have to go back to the supermarket - and hence not get run over. Or, let's be fair, you could stay at home and die when a gas leak ignites.

So, on reflection - forget it. I am not giving you any advice. Come up with your own reason for downloading or not downloading - its too damned hazardous for anyone else to guide you. :-)
 
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