In this 14‑minute compilation, host Evan Carmichael introduces a series of bite‑size lessons from some of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs and leaders. The video strings together short clips from Oprah Winfrey, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Masayoshi Son, Larry Page, Richard Branson, Bob Johnson and several unnamed speakers. Across the montage, recurring themes emerge: the importance of belief and personal conviction; turning setbacks into learning opportunities; confronting fear and using fatalism to act despite uncertainty; learning quickly from mistakes and persisting through dark moments; recognizing that not every idea is worth pursuing but nurturing the few that truly matter; building deep relationships and creating value for partners; maintaining a financial runway to stay on the right side of the success/failure line; and daring to follow bold, dream‑driven visions. Evan frames each segment with a call to action, urging viewers to write down resonant quotes, reflect on the advice, and apply it to their own entrepreneurial journeys.
Chapters
What's up, Believe Nation? It's Evan. My one word is believe, and I believe that you have the ability to do something really special, and I want to play a small part in your success through these videos that I'm making. And so to help you on your journey, today I'm continuing the How Billionaires Think: Success Advice from the Top series, volume 3. And as always, guys, as you're watching, if you hear something that really resonates with you, please leave it down in the comments below. Put quotes around it so other people can be inspired, and when you write it down, it's much more likely to stick with yourself as well. Enjoy!
The thing about being an entrepreneur is this: it's just all to you. You know, a lot of people like to make excuses. I don't have connections, I don't have money, I don't have this. But you know, if you find something that you like to do or love to do, be great at it and see if you can turn it into a business. And worst case, you're going to have fun doing what it is you love to do. In best case, you can turn it into a business. I'm just not big on excuses. I just think if you really Everybody has that opportunity to go for it. They just got to do it.
Turn your wounds into wisdom. You will be wounded many times in your life. You'll make mistakes. Some people will call them failures, but I have learned that failure is really God's way of saying, excuse me, you're moving in the wrong direction. It's just an experience. Just an experience. Just an experience. I remember being taken off the air in Baltimore, being told that I was no longer being fit for television and that I could not anchor the news because I used to go out on the stories. And my own truth was, even though I'm not a weeper, I would cry for the people in the stories, and which really wasn't very effective as a news reporter to be covering a fire and crying because the people lost their house. And it wasn't until they— I was demoted as an on-air anchorwoman and thrown into the talk show arena to get rid of me that I allowed my own truth to come through. And the first day I was on the air doing my first talk show back in 1978, it felt like breathing, which is what your true passion should feel like. It should be so natural to you. And so I took what had been a mistake, what had been perceived as a failure with my career as an anchorwoman maker woman in the news business and turned it into a talk show career that's done okay for me.
You are unusually fearless and willing to go in the face of other people telling you something is crazy, and I know a lot of pretty crazy people. You still stand out. Uh, where does that come from, or how do you think about making a decision when everyone tells you this is a crazy idea, or where do you get the internal strength to do that?
Well, first of all, I'd say I actually think I feel fear quite strongly. So it's not as though I just have the absence of fear. I feel it quite strongly. But there are just times when something is important enough, you believe in it enough, that you do it in spite of fear.
So speaking of important things—
Like, people shouldn't think I should— People shouldn't think, well, I feel fear about this and therefore I shouldn't do it. It's normal to feel fear. Like, you'd have to definitely have something mentally wrong if you didn't feel fear.
So you just feel it and let the importance of it drive you to do it anyway?
Yeah. You know, actually, something that can be helpful is fatalism to some degree. If you just accept the probabilities, then that diminishes fear. So when starting SpaceX, I thought the odds of success were less than 10%. And I just accepted that actually, probably, I would just lose, lose everything. But that maybe we would make some progress. If we could just move the ball forward, even if we died, maybe some other company could pick up the baton and move and keep moving it forward. So that would still do some good. Yeah, same with Tesla. I thought the odds of a car company succeeding were extremely low.
So many things go wrong when you're starting a company, and often I think people ask, you know, what mistakes should you avoid making? And, you know, my answer to that question is don't even bother trying to avoid mistakes because you're going to make tons of mistakes, right? And The important thing is actually learning quickly from whatever mistakes you make and not giving up. Right, and I mean, there are things every single year of Facebook's existence that could have killed us or made it so that it just seemed like moving forward and making a lot of progress just seemed intractable, but you just kind of bounce back and you learn, and nothing is impossible. You just have to kind of keep running through the walls.
Is that ideas matter. Now people say, of course ideas matter, what kind of stupid life lesson is it that ideas matter? The truth of the matter is, this is both under and overappreciated. Most people think every idea is a good idea, as long as they had it. The truth of the matter is, not every idea is a good idea, not every idea matters, and not every idea should be pursued. And if you're in a field like I am, or was, of innovation, not every idea is a good idea, even if it strikes you that way on first blush. In fact, most people are lucky to have one idea that really matters in their whole life. That's not a criticism, but earth-shattering, life-changing ideas are very few and far between. Research insights, investment insights, innovations, A good idea needs to be cherished and nurtured.
Most important thing is you have to— there's two sides, really, sort of the intellectual or mental side. You have to pick a business that has a niche. You have to have a reason to succeed. You have to be something like we were doing, say Japan can beat Germany in manufacturing of this type of a product. That was the niche, really. And then on that, you just have to have a total and complete passion because there's going to be so So many dark moments. You know, I think the dark moments are true for any entrepreneur or any startup company. I'm sure that you talk to Steve Jobs and Apple, you'd see many, many dark, dark moments. Ours happened to last a little longer than most of them, but you really emotionally have to be prepared for those dark moments.
I think every entrepreneur I've ever spoken to would echo that. Yeah. That there are dark moments when everything's on the line.
That's the life of an entrepreneur. I'm an entrepreneur, and if you're going to be into it, you better be prepared for that.
Going against the tide is great if it works. Now, it doesn't always work, and you really have to be smart to go against the tide because you're going against a lot of smart people. But when you get it right, you'll end up better. Whether it's Microsoft or Google, I mean, so many people that have really hit big have gone against the tide. But you have to have great confidence in yourself. You have to be the right person. There are very few people that can pull it off, but when you pull it off, it's great. Same thing in real estate. You go against the tide. People are selling, you're buying, the tide changes.
The fundamental connection to doing business is basically relationships. You know, people really, if you really think about it, People want to do business with people they like. I mean, every now and then you'll do a deal with the devil, but you don't really like the devil, but you have to do it sometimes. But you'd really much rather do business with somebody you like, somebody who shares your values, somebody who you know is committed to the same objectives you are, somebody who's willing to work as hard as you are. And when you find those people, those are the people you want to bring under your tent to be part of your business objective. And you've got to do that by, you know, sort of presenting yourself in a way that people clearly understand that you are committed to creating value. Business people want to create value. It doesn't mean they don't want to have fun. It doesn't mean that they don't want to be involved in other kinds of things. But if you can say— go to someone and convince them that I can help you create value, And by your ability to articulate that and to communicate it and to give people the impression that you will work as hard as they will to create that value, you're going to find people wanting to come to you. And so for me, it's sort of been like that throughout my whole career, is being able to, to say to people and talk to people in a way that convinces them that I am going to do everything I can to help make what they want to achieve a success, and by extension, I'm going to be a success. When I started BET, the guy who invested in BET is a guy named John Malone. He was at that time the operator of the third largest cable company in Denver, Colorado, and he kept investing money into BET without taking additional equity. And as BET became a big success, you know, I ended up with about 75% of the company, he ended up with about 25% of the company. And one day I asked him, I said, John, John, you put over half a million dollars in BET on the startup. You put it in as debt, you didn't put it in as equity, which would have given him greater ownership. I said, why'd you do it that way? And he said, Bob, I always knew you would work harder for yourself than you would for me. And it was that kind of commitment. So if you can convey to people that you're willing to work hard for them and for yourself, you've got a business partner. You're connecting the dots.
You know, there is a very thin dividing line between success and failure when you start a business from scratch. And, you know, if you don't have enough money to pay the bills, you go the wrong side of that dividing line. And if you can somehow get enough money to pay the bills, you stay the right side of that dividing line. And, you know, I've always been running faster than perhaps I should, and I have great difficulty saying no to things, so keep on taking on new things. And, you know, we've just managed to stay the right side of the dividing line over the last 50 years in business. but equally, in those early days, when you're starting a business without any financial backing, it's easy to slip the wrong side, and in fact, you know, most entrepreneurs do slip the wrong side, and the important thing is then just to, you know, pick yourself up and, you know, start again, and if it doesn't work at that time, keep going until you do succeed. And not to give up.
I want to talk about dreams for a second, and in my case, literally a dream. When I was in college, I was sure that I'd been admitted by a clerical error, probably a computer error, and because of that, I had an irrational fear I'd be sent home on the bus. And Sergey here knows this is true. But it turns out, because of that anxiety, I woke up literally with a dream. And it was kind of a strange dream. It went like, I think I could download the entire web onto some old computers that were lying around. And That would probably seem pretty crazy to most people, but I stayed up a couple hours in the middle of the night doing some math, and it seemed actually pretty plausible. Well, assuming he actually didn't keep any of the web pages, he only kept the links. And then sort of figured out, given all that data, I thought it would take a couple weeks, and I told my advisor that. And he just sort of laughed at me. And of course, it took him a year or two, but at the end of that, we had a way to rank web pages and no thoughts to search at all. But eventually, search entered the picture, and you know the rest. And that became Google. So I'd like to encourage everyone to follow their dreams.
Thank you guys so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed. I'd love to know what did you think? What did you take from this video? What was the most memorable or most applicable lesson that you're going to immediately implement into your life or your business somehow? Let me know down in the comments below. I'm looking forward to hearing what you guys have to say. Thank you guys again for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love.
