Are You Missing This Key to Entrepreneur Success? | Evan Carmichael Explains

I'm going to teach you the entrepreneur success formula. This is the formula. It's very simple. It's easy to apply that when you actually execute it, it will change the course of your life and your business. The entrepreneur success formula. You need to combine what you love doing with what brings value to other people. What you love doing with what brings value to other people. In that intersection is your next great genius, amazing business idea. Here's what most people do. Most people just pick one. Most people either pick what they love doing, but they can't figure out how to bring value to other people. So you've got a hobby. If you love doing something, it just fills you up, it's amazing, but it never brings value to other people, then you never get paid. You've got a really fulfilling hobby and that could be great. And your hobby can be something you do in the evenings and weekends and it fills up your soul, but you'll never turn that into a business if you don't figure out how to bring value to other people. So you're stuck always having to have a job or go work for somebody else while you're doing your hobby on the weekends, evenings, on the side, et cetera. So those are the people who just chase what they love doing, right? Chase your passion.

Need motivation?

Watch a top 10 with Believe Nation.

Hey, it's Nina Carmichael. And we made these videos, it's because you're probably the most ambitious person in your circle, but you know you're capable of more and you need that push by surrounding yourself with the best. So today let's learn from one of the best, my husband Evan Carmichael, and our take on his top 10 rules for success. Enjoy.

There's other people, a lot of entrepreneurs who just go after the money, just try to bring value, just go after opportunity, right? That's the only focus. Like, I'll do whatever it takes. I need to be a millionaire by the time I'm X years old. I'll do whatever it takes.

But you won't.

You will not do whatever it takes because as soon as it gets hard, you're going to lose. And the problem is you're going up against people who love it. Pick whatever industry. You open up a magazine or website, it shows you the hottest businesses for next year. These are the industries that will take off and you have to get into it. It's like, oh wow, that's hot. I'm going to go off and do those things. If you don't absolutely love it, right? This part here, if you don't actually love it, what you love doing, what brings value to other people, if you don't absolutely love it, you're going to lose because you're going up against people who do love it. If it's just a strategy for you, but for other people, they love it, you're going to lose every time. You're going to lose every time. Because while you're counting the hours and while you're trying to figure out, oh my gosh, when is this going to pay off? You're going up against people who aren't even tracking it, who get lost in it, who 12 hours later, they're still doing the thing because they love it so much and they can't believe that, like, where is the time gone? So it has to be in that combination. So many entrepreneurs start a business because they think they're going to make a lot of money and they end up going broke. And it wasn't because the idea was bad. The idea could have been fantastic. The problem was you didn't love it enough. You didn't care about it enough. It was just a strategy. It was just an opportunity for you instead of being actually something that you love. So the entrepreneur success formula, you start with doing what you love and then you figure out how to bring value to other people doing it.

Rule number 2, have a good morning routine.

Staying consistent on your morning routine is the difference between you having between a good life and a great life. The life that you're living right now, which is good. Listen, you have a good life right now. If you're watching this, you have internet, you have food, you know, you have a place to sleep tonight. You have a pretty good life. You have a pretty good life. But it's not a great life. You know? You know you're capable of more. You know you want to do more. You know that where you are right now is not where you want to be. That imagine a year, 2 years, 5 years. Imagine if you were still in the same spot in 5 years. Imagine your life, your health, your relationships, your finances, the impact you're having, your routine, your daily, like what you're doing on a regular, and nothing has changed in 5 years. It'd still be a good life, but it's not a great life, right? It's not a great life.

This is the struggle that you know you're capable of so much more.

If you didn't know you're capable of more, ignorance is bliss.

You just keep living your life.

But when you know you're capable of more, this is the curse of the achievers.

Like, you know you're capable of so much more.

No matter how much people look at you and say, "Hey, wow, you're doing so well. You're doing so much." That's why you're watching these videos. You are the most ambitious person that you know. People look to you for guidance and wisdom, advice and support and encouragement and hope and inspiration. Like, you're the one filling other people up. You're the one inspiring other people to do better, to be more. To go after their dreams.

That's you.

But who's doing that for you? You know you're capable of so much more. And so how do you get it? How do you, how do you do the work? Well, it's a daily thing. This is, this is part of the challenge is it's a daily thing. It gets boring. It gets boring to do the exact same thing every day, to stay consistent on what you said you were going to do. And we start to doubt ourselves. You have days where you're motivated, inspired, ready to take on the world, feeling amazing, and other days where you don't feel so good and you think, wake up feeling like, who am I? I can't do this. What? I said I was going to do that. You look at your goals like, I'm going to do that. There's no way I'm going to do that. Me? I'm going to stay in bed. It's the thing achievers don't talk about is there's a lot of days when you just don't feel like you're worthy of it. You don't believe in yourself. You don't think that you can do it. And it's just that consistency that prevents you from doing the thing because you have the days when you're on fire and then entire days, maybe weeks sometimes, where you're just not doing anything. And so how do you, how do you keep that momentum? How do you keep that consistency? It starts with the morning routine. And the goal of morning routine is is to help you feel motivated, bold, courageous, ready to take on the day. That's what the goal of a morning routine is. Everybody's got a morning routine. If you're watching this, you got a morning routine. Everybody doesn't have a morning routine. Most people actually wake up like an accident, right? Most people wake up and they fall into their day and they look at their phone and it's other people's emergencies and other people's demands for your time. That's most people's day, but For you, if you're watching this, you're, you're an achiever and you have some kind of morning routine. But most people's morning routines are also broken because you're not doing it consistently enough or you're not doing it with enough intent. So if you ask, what's the goal of a morning routine? The goal of morning routine is to get you bold and prepped and ready for the day. Let me ask you this. If you were to for the next year of your life, right? 365 days, the next year of your life, you're gonna wake up and do something that would make you feel bold, powerful, courageous, motivated. Not asking you to wake up feeling bold, powerful, courageous, motivated, but to wake up tired, however you wake up. I woke up tired today. You wake up and then you do something that will help you feel bold, powerful, motivated, courageous, and ready to take on the day. If you woke up and did that for the next 365, how much does your life change? How much does the next year change? How much does the, does the impact that you're making, does the actual momentum that you're taking towards your goals, how much does that change if for the next year you actually did that? It should be tremendously, it should be dramatically, because no matter how much you're doing your morning routine, One, you're probably not super consistent on it. And two, you're not getting the feeling even if you are. That's what needs to change.

Rule number 3: Tell your story.

Your story is your competitive advantage. Why you do what you do, where you came from, your history, all of the baggage, the imperfections, the vulnerability, all of that. Your story is the thing that's going to help you win as an entrepreneur. This is one of the biggest misconceptions, and one of the hardest things for us to do as entrepreneurs, to put ourselves out there and share the story. We want to be perfect. We see these big brands, we see people popping off on Instagram and their perfect life and their perfect planes and their perfect marketing, and we feel not good enough, and we feel like we have to be like them. But people can smell through it. Think about it, you're going up against some big company, right? Whatever industry you're in, there's some big players. More established than you, bigger budgets than you, deeper pockets than you. They've been there forever. They've got the brand name, the history, the reputation. People know who they are and you're going up against them. Why would somebody buy from you instead of them? Because of your story. Because you're going to make me feel special. Because in you, I see myself. I see somebody who cares. I see somebody who's going to go off and make a difference where I have no connection to big company, to big corporation. But what most entrepreneurs do is they try to look the part of being the big corporate. They have a really formal website. They have a really formal photography. They have a really formal bio. At best, you're going to be a junior, junior, junior, junior version of that big company. I need to know why you do what you do. This is how you win your heart is your competitive advantage. Why do you care so much? And if you believe, like I believe, that your purpose comes from your pain, that whatever you're doing right now, your deep purpose is to help other people who currently are who you used to be, then I need to know what pain you've come through. Because you might have the answers, you might have the solution, your product, your service, your coaching, your content, whatever, could actually be the solution. But until I know that you've come through the thing that I'm struggling with, I'm not going to listen to you because I'm going to think, yeah, right, this person doesn't get it. This person doesn't understand me. This person doesn't care. Meanwhile, you do care.

Meanwhile, it's the most important thing.

Meanwhile, you care way more than anybody else cares. But until you actually share your story, nobody's going to listen. This is one of the hardest things for me to overcome when I started my business because I always felt, well, nobody cares about my story.

Who cares?

It's not about me. I have No need to be in front of a camera. I'm, I'm introverted and shy by nature. I know you may not believe that in watching these videos, but I am. And I remember fighting with my agent Steve many times.

I will not see—

nobody cares about what I've done and my story, and I don't, I don't like the spotlight on me, so why does it matter? And after years of fighting, and hopefully what took me forever to figure out, if you guys get this in this video, you'll be way further ahead than I was when I was getting started. People learn through your story. And if you've got a message, you telling your story actually perpetuates the message. So you telling your story is not about you and your ego and how you look and how people see you and prizes and awards and anything. It's about making an impact. Because when I know that you've been through what I'm going through, or I know how much you care about something, I'm much more likely to want to hire you. So let me give you a couple examples. I remember I was doing a radio show, and when I first got started in coaching, it was through a live radio show that I was doing once a week. I remember one person calling in, and he had a landscaping business. And I asked, okay, well, what's so different about your landscaping company? Because he was frustrated that all of these teenagers and high school kids were eating up his business, where they say, hey, we'll landscape your yard and we'll do it for minimum wage. And here he is trying to make more than minimum wage, and he's worried that he has to compete on price and he can't do it against these teenagers. And so I said, well, why do you, why do you care so much about landscaping, man? Like, why did you pick this business? And I hope for all of you, please, that you have a story, right? If you're picking a business just to make money, you've lost already. You've lost. That, that the entrepreneur success formula is you got to combine what you love doing with what brings value to other people. You have to love it. You have to have a story. If there's no story, you've lost. Go pick something else that you actually can connect to. But I asked, why did you start this business? What does it mean to you? And he said, my mom was my hero, and when I was young, she always took me out to the yard and we did landscaping together, and it's always a connection to her. And then there was a line that he said that really caught me where he said Every lawn that I go to, every customer's lawn that I go help, I treat it like it's my mom's lawn. And right there, it's like, oh my gosh, this guy cares so much. Like, do you think the average high school after-school summer job, do you think they care as much about your yard as this guy does, right? If he's treating it like it's his mom's garden. And by sharing that story now, you'd be willing to pay more. I'd be willing to pay him way more than a high school kid because I think that he's going to give a way better service, provide way more value because I understand the story.

Rule number 4: Have an infinite mindset.

Having an infinite mindset comes from you wanting people to win more than you want them to win with you. You want people to win around you, your friends, your family, your team, your customers, the people you interact with. You want them to win. As people in their life, in their goals, whatever they want to accomplish. You want them to win more than you want them to win with you. If you can start to adopt that mindset, it really starts to shift how you see your relationships, how you see your business, how do you see the people on your team, and it allows so much more positive energy to flow in the right direction for everybody to accomplish their goals. So quick example. I made a video. I made a bunch of videos on Tony Robbins. Tony Robbins is one of the first people that, well, he was, I guess, the first big person who kind of recognized the work that I was doing. And he put the video I made on him on his homepage on YouTube and got a lot more views. And we made more videos on Tony Robbins. Tony then invites me to go to his event. We did a couple interviews together. He invites me to go and puts me in, you know, the awesome seating right up front. And I got a lot of people coming up to say, hey Evan, they recognize me. I'm also wearing a hoodie, not that I'm a celebrity, but in that kind of world, people would recognize me. And they said, you introduced me to Tony Robbins. That they found out about Tony Robbins or Simon Sinek or Tom Bilyeu or whoever through the content that I'm putting up. And I had a few people who said, hey, I found out about Tony Robbins from you, and I haven't actually gone back and watched your videos in a while because I've been so deep in Tony Robbins land, and now I'm here at this event and paid thousands of dollars to be here learning from Tony, and I don't watch your channel anymore, but thank you for introducing me to Tony Robbins because that's what I watch now.

I'm pumped. I'm excited.

It's like, that's amazing. Thank you for telling me. Now, would I love for them to be with me forever? Yes, of course, absolutely. But I'm more happy that you're off winning. If you watch this video and you learn from Simon Sinek and you've never heard of him before, you have and you want to dive deeper, and then you go and you buy all his books and you subscribe to him on YouTube and you dive deep into his world and you don't come back and watch another video of mine for another 12 months, I'm pumped for you. I want you to win as a human, as an entrepreneur, more than I want you to subscribe to my channel and keep watching videos here. It's just a fundamental shift in how you see relationships. I look at the people on my team. I want them all to win as people more than win with me. And I see everybody that I'm working with as a parallel path. You and I right now, you're watching this video. We're on a parallel path. This is a parallel path that we're, we're marching on together. And then at the end of this video, you're going to go off and go do something else and hopefully productive and empowering and impactful. You're gonna have a great day. Come on, let's go, Believe Nation. But you're gonna go off and do something else. You're gonna step off the Evan Carmichael path and go do something else. And maybe you come back on the path or maybe you go way off and you never come back. But right now you're watching this video, we're on a parallel path, you and I together. I just wanna maximize that time together. That while you're on a path with me, you're going to become better. And that should be your goal with the people you're around, that we have these parallel paths that we're running together for a certain amount of time. And maybe that's 10 minutes in a conversation. Maybe that's a year of somebody working with you. Maybe that's 10 years. Maybe that's a life partner that's forever, right? But you're on these parallel paths. Your goal needs to be while somebody's interacting with you in person, via email, through your content, they're with you. That they're a better person because of that interaction with you. If you can do that, if you can just change the way you see relationships to do that, to instead just think about yourself first and think about them first and helping them accomplish what they need to accomplish, even if it means leaving you. I've recommended people to courses and programs that are not my own. I've kicked people off of my team because I was gonna hold them back. They wanted to stay here, but like, you need to go and do that thing. This is too safe and comfortable for you, and I can't give you the thing that you want. You have to leave and go do that thing and push them towards it. Also, to make sure you're actually taking action after watching this video, I've designed a special free worksheet just for this video. The worksheet will highlight all of the lessons learned in this video as well as pull out our 3 favorite learnings and quotes that will inspire you to actually do something. The worksheet will also give you space to write down what your key takeaways are and your specific plan of action to make sure you're getting results. If you want the worksheet designed specifically for this video, absolutely for free, there's a link in the description below. Go click on it and start building the momentum in your life and your business. I'll see you there.

Rule number 5: Embrace the end.

Embrace the end. Most people are thinking or. Most people are thinking, do I do this or do I do this? Do I do this business or do this business? If you think about your passions and your interests, right? What do you love doing? What's your heart-centered thing that you could do all day? You probably have a couple things and you feel like you have to pick. This is the mistake. People feel like you have to pick. You don't have to pick. The actual selection is is in doing both of those things combined. A lot of people have said some amazing things about me. It's very humbling. I think of Ed Mylett and Gary Vee, where Gary Vee called me the DJ that likes to watch so much content and then spin it to inspire people. And Ed Mylett said that I'm the modern-day Napoleon Hill. Napoleon Hill is the biggest influence of all time in personal development, and I'm the modern-day Napoleon Hill. First off, that's extremely humbling, But why are they saying that? This is how I'm unique because I love consuming all of this stuff and I love spinning it and mixing it up as well as adding my own message to things. This is how I'm different. There's a lot of people who are just sharing their message and there's a lot of people who are also mixing things together, but there's nobody who's really mixing things together and sharing their own message, right? So instead of looking at those two things as different, Right? Like, I have to pick. I got to pick this or this. Like, I'm going to combine them and that's how I'm going to be unique. So think about your different interests. What do you love doing? What are, what are your top 2, 3 things that you can get lost in and they feel completely different? Your genius is going to be in actually mixing those things together in a way that's never been done before and then using that to bring value to people. Stop thinking "or" and instead embrace the "and." Rule number 6: Lean in on your worry. One of the things that really helped me was leaning into the fact that I'm shy and introverted and afraid to get in front of the camera and afraid to get on stage and no need to be famous. That's led to actually a lot of opportunities. The more I lean in on those things, the more things come to me. I remember doing a speech at Brendan Burchard's Growth event and I wasn't as myself. I was more professional. I was more just giving advice. It was great, great advice. People loved it. And then he invited me back to speak at his private mastermind. And now these groups are paying $30,000 to $50,000 to be in that room. So now there's a higher pressure, you know, like the first one, the ticket was maybe $100. The ticket to this one is $30,000 to $50,000. Like, oh my gosh, extra pressure. And I just leaned in on it. I walked up on stage and I came after Dean Graziosi. So Dean spoke and then it was me. And Dean was using the flipboard, you know, this is like the paper beside you and you're flipping one page at a time. And I'd never used a flipboard in any of my presentations. I've had PowerPoint in the past where I normally just get up and talk, but I thought, okay, I'm going to try to use the flipboard. And I didn't know how to use it. I always felt like I was blocking somebody. So I'm hiding behind the flipboard trying to write it. And it ended up being really funny. And Brendan took me aside after and he said, that was the best. That was so much better than you did in Arizona at my first event. And Arizona was great, but like, you need to lean in on your goofiness. You need to lean in on your shyness. You need to lean in on the things that make you nervous. If you're nervous, say you're nervous. If you have anxiety, say you have anxiety. I led with something like that. It's like, I'm scared, I'm an introvert, I'm shy, and I've got my heart beating like crazy right now standing up here in front of all you guys. That's how I led my speech, something like that. And so leaning in on that has helped me. It's a lot more real. Yeah, it's a lot more real. You don't feel like you have to be fake. You can just lean in on the thing that makes your heart go crazy like this. Lean in on it. If you were to make a video to say, I want to tell you my story. If I go back to the landscaping company, I want to tell you why I do what I do. And normally I hate making videos and this makes me really anxious and nervous and I'm scared to do this. But landscaping is just so important. It's so important to me because and then you tell a story with the mom, wouldn't you want to hire that person? Wouldn't you want to pay more for that person? Right? So leaning in on your story, on the thing that you're worried that you're going to get judged for, is the way that you're going to win.

Rule number 7, take immediate action.

Take some kind of immediate action. Most people's immediate action is research. Most people's immediate action is planning. That's not enough. Immediate action is doing. You have to do something. And you don't know where to start. This is the next thing. Yeah, I don't know where to start. I want to start a YouTube channel. I don't know where to start. You start by pulling out your phone and making a video. I'm in my car on my phone making a video. You can too. It's not worrying about it being perfect. It's expecting to suck and just start.

Just create.

I call it the 2% difference. It's But like, what's the first 2% on your idea? We plan to get to 100% instead of just going and doing something on the first 2%. Whatever that big idea is, start to teach yourself that your ideas are amazing, that the ideas that flow to you are good. They're good for you, they're good for your family, they're good for your community, they're good for the world. They're good, and you have a duty to start doing something towards them. Start to train yourself on this. Recently, I wanted to learn about NFTs and cryptocurrency, and I've dabbled and learned a little bit, but I just decided I'm gonna figure this out. And last week on Friday, I spent the day learning it, and I had all sorts of obstacles thrown in my way. I couldn't get money out of my bank account because my bank blocked cryptocurrency purchases. My Visa blocked cryptocurrency purchases. There's a whole bunch of restrictions as a Canadian to buy from the different exchanges.

All sorts of problems. All sorts.

And you know what? One problem after another, after another. My US bank account— like, well, I've got a US account with TD, so I'm going to go to my US account, no problem. The TD was closed. The online banking had an update. Their website crashed. Like, oh my gosh. Nonstop, but we figured it out. Built some momentum, started taking some kind of action. It makes a huge, huge, huge, huge, huge difference because while you're feeling the bold energy, if you wait till tomorrow, you won't feel the energy anymore. You can have the perfect plan, but tomorrow you won't have the same mindset and so you won't execute the plan.

Rule number 8: Get close to customers.

Try to get as close to customers as possible. So it's great to be making, it's great to be creating, it's great to be, you know, engineering of where you could go. When you start to solve the problem for yourself, that's a great step one, because there's probably a lot of people who currently are who you used to be and seeing how you solved it for yourself, sharing the videos. I need the videos for myself, and then I share them and it helps other people, right? So I solve the problem for me first. You solve the problem for you first. I know there's lots of people like you, but you need to start talking to customers. You need to start getting their feedback. You need to start seeing what they interact with. and that can help guide a lot of your future product or service creation. You need to get out of just sitting by yourself on your couch researching and into actually talking to people. So a quick example from my channel, the whole top 10 rules of success thing came because I just made one video on Kanye West. That's why he's, you know, on the wall behind me. I made one video on him and then people started requesting more. Hey, can you do Dame Dash? Hey, can you do Jay-Z? Hey, can you do Jeff Bezos? Hey, Hey, can you do Steve Jobs? Hey, can you do these people?

And it's like, well, that's a cool idea. Sure, why not? I could do that.

I never thought of it as being a whole series. I just was wanting to give a tribute to Kanye West, and it was a one-off video. And then in the videos that people were suggesting, can you do this person, this person, this person, this person? I still get final say. We ended up having over 2,000 different requests for people to profile. I still get final say as to who we profile. 'Cause I have to feel connected to the message. And when I'm pulling out the content, if we're doing Kanye West or Steve Jobs, it's always something positive. It's always through a lens of belief because that's what I want to put out. I don't want to put out Kanye West's biggest attacks or insults or negativity. I don't want to put out negativity in the world. I could easily done top 10 Kanye West stupidest things you've ever done. I'm not interested in putting that out. So it's that combination of what people are asking for. Hey, can you do this? Can you do that? Can you do this? Plus what I love doing, right? What I want to put my stake in the ground to say, I made this, right? This is the contribution that I'm trying to make to the world. Back to the Entrepreneur Success Formula, right? What you love doing with what brings value to other people. So how to figure out what brings value to other people? You have to get as close to the customer as possible, understand their business, understand what they're going through, understand their mindset. You solving the problem for yourself is a good first step, and then going into, okay, what are you struggling with?

Rule number 9: Be consistent.

Books give you access to mentors who you would never have access to. If you are struggling thinking, I don't have connections, I don't know anybody who's had success, I don't have any good mentors. Everybody talks about mentorship and how important it is, and I don't have anybody in my life to help me. Books could be that for you. Books can be an accumulation of sometimes decades of knowledge all condensed down into 200, 300, 400 pages that you get a window into somebody else's life. And so whatever you don't know yet, whatever you want to learn, chances are it's in a book. It's in videos as well. I love YouTube, but it can be in books. There is no excuse, not anymore, for you not to get access to the information and be around the people that can take you to where you want to go. I'm a big believer that you're a product of your environment. Think about who you're hanging out with, where you are right now, where you spend your time, what information are you feeding into your brain. The fact that you're here watching this video is already a step up, is already showcasing that you are an achiever and that you want more out of life, that you don't want to stay where you are, that you don't want to be in the same spot. Think about 1 year from today. You don't want to still be where you are right now. You want growth, you want progress. You want impact. You want to touch people's lives. That's why you're here. It just needs to be more consistent. It just needs to be more thorough. You know, there's an expression of the fastest way to learn a language is to go to the country. The fastest way to learn Japanese is to go to Japan. And if you can't actually go to Japan, then you try to make your environment as much Japanese as possible. You watch Japanese TV. You read Japanese books. You go to Japanese restaurants, try to order in Japanese. You start hanging out with Japanese people. You take online Japanese classes. You watch Japanese YouTube channels. You try to be around it as much as possible. And for too many of us, we're not doing as much. Are you consistent in watching Inspressive videos every morning? I make them every morning for you, but you're probably not watching them every morning. Are you consistent in your other habits and your other routines and the books that you're reading and the the content you're consuming? Like, are you consistent enough? And that's usually the problem, is that you have these moments where you're bold and you're ambitious and like, I'm tired of this life and I want to do better and this is the day. And so you have the energy and motivation and you go off and do the thing, but then tomorrow you wake up and it's just not there anymore and you don't stay consistent on the habit. And the only difference between the people who've had tons of success and where you're at right now is that they just kept doing it. They just stayed consistent on the habit. And so if you look at reading as an example, I used to read a ton before YouTube came out, before videos. I'm a visual learner. I'd much rather watch something than, than read it. But there was no YouTube, there were no real videos to learn from, so I started with books. And now I've come back to books a little bit where I'm, I'm trying to read 10 pages a day. So the goal is 10 pages a day. And I've been 95% consistent on hitting 10 pages a day.

Rule number 10, the last one before our very special bonus clip, do the scary things.

Everyone tells you to think bigger, to dream bigger, to 10x your goals, to if you had a million dollars or a billion dollars, what would you do? I think the bigger problem is not that you can't come up with a bigger vision for yourself. It's the belief that it's possible. That's why I think that lack of belief is the world's number one problem. For me, for you, for all of your heroes and gurus, all of them. The lack of belief in the next thing, in your big vision, is the reason why you're not following through and being consistent on it. Especially for achievers, you guys, entrepreneurs, you're watching this video, you have big visions. You know, if we gave you the challenge of what is your big goal, what is your big vision, what is the life you want to create? We can get lost in the exercises, right? Clarity is power. Sitting down and writing down your goals and where do you want to become and where are you going to be in 5 years and all of those things can be great exercises to get you started, to get you thinking. While we're writing it down, here's what happens. While you're writing it down, you actually feel that it's possible. You've let go of the limitations. You've let go of the restrictions. You've let go of your environment and your situation and said, "This is what I want to create." In that moment of boldness, you feel it. You feel like everything is possible. And then what happens very quickly afterwards, maybe it's 10 minutes after, maybe it's an hour after, maybe it's the next day, maybe it even lasts a week, you start to look at that list of where you're going to be and you think, "Wow, I can't do that." Right? Does it sound familiar? Have you ever set some giant goal for yourself, feeling bold, motivated, and then the next day you wake up and say, "I can't do that. I'm crazy. I was crazy." It's not even you telling your friends or your family or social media. It's you telling yourself that you suck and you can't do it, right? That's the inner game that we need to work on. So how do we start to fix it? One, I think it starts with understanding that the ideas that you come up with when you're feeling bold, powerful, inspired, motivated are actually the right ones for you. When you're feeling bold and you come up with something, and maybe that's because you watched a video or had a good conversation or read a book or went to a conference or event, You're, for whatever reason, you've stepped outside your current mindset, limitations, belief system. You stepped outside. You're looking at you. You're looking at a more confident, more bold version of you. And you come up with an idea that you want to do. That, I believe, is actually the best thing for you. And then your head starts talking you down because someone like you can't do it. Be safe, be practical. There's no way you can accomplish it. You don't have the money, resources. Education, support system, etc. Whatever valid— you know, these aren't made-up excuses, these are valid excuses, valid reasons. They make sense, otherwise you wouldn't believe them. But that's your job, to still go off and do that scary thing. Step 1 is when you're feeling that boldness and you come up with an idea, understand that that's actually the best you talking. That's actually the thing you have to go off and do. You have to start building some momentum towards, and your brain will forever try to keep you small. This is the challenge, is that we're not consistent because we don't believe that we can do the things that we say that we want to do. There is one practice that if you can learn to consistently implement in your business, it'll change the entire direction. It'll, it'll allow you to accomplish crazy goals that you never thought were possible. And that is to make data-driven decisions. It sounds super boring for any of the heart-led, passion-driven, Type A personality entrepreneurs out there watching. Looking at data and looking at numbers and looking at spreadsheets might be the most boring thing in the world for you. But when the data is coming from your customers, the people consuming your content, the people who you're ultimately selling to, and you get insights into them, it can make a dramatic shift in how you see your business, how you operate your company, and how much money you start to make. I'm a big believer that you make the big decisions in life with the heart, with the heart, and the small ones with the head. Big decisions with the heart, small ones with the head. The heart is why do you do what you do?

Why have you started this business?

Why is it so important to you? What is the mission you're trying to solve, right? So for me, I want to solve the world's biggest problem. I want people to believe in themselves more.

That's the heart.

There's no science attached to it. It's just heart. It's just art. The heart is art, right? It's just creation. And I love tapping into that side. And then the small decisions with the head in that the things that I do have to work, otherwise I just have a hobby, right? If you're only doing art and it has no value to other people, you're not talking to customers, you're not gauging reactions, you're not seeing how you can get better. Then you just have a hobby that doesn't pay you, right? Which can be fulfilling. Not everything has to pay you. But if the goal is to have a business, then yeah, you have to get paid. Otherwise you don't have a company for very long. If you're only listening to the customer data and you're only looking for opportunities, but you don't actually like the thing, then you're also going to lose, right? Because you're just chasing demand, but you're not curious enough about it. You don't care enough about it. You don't have enough heart for it. Example, in my business, if I were to make the top 10 stupidest things X person has ever said, that data-wise would blow up because people would rather consume negativity and poke fun at somebody and try to tear somebody down than to learn and try to improve their own life. In general, it's so much easier to laugh and poke fun at somebody else and criticize somebody else instead of working on ourselves to become better, right? Entertainment versus education. Entertainment is a lot easier to consume than education because it requires more work on your part. So I could do that and the data would say, hey, go make these videos, they will do better. But it doesn't match my heart. I don't want to do that. So the heart gets the veto power, but you have to still listen to the brain, right? So big decisions with the heart, small ones with the brain. So let's bring it back to data-driven decisions. A lot of people struggle with it because they don't know how to make data-driven decisions. They don't know what numbers to look at. They don't know how to collect information. They get, quite frankly, bored of looking at the information, the data. And so then they make subjective opinions and often make the wrong ones. Yesterday, I'm on a call with a team of somebody super well-known, huge presence. You, you know, you would know his name. You've heard it inside out. I've profiled him millions of times, you know, on my own channel. That kind of narrows it down, but I'm not going to tell you who. So I'm on a call with his team, and we're looking at some of his YouTube videos, and the goal is to reach even more people on YouTube. Great. So we looked at one of the thumbnails, and his team said, well, he, he picked this thumbnail. Like, yeah, but this thumbnail is it's just not going to work. This thumbnail sucks. From a best practice, from everything I've seen, from doing 12,000 split tests on YouTube thumbnails, like, this is with a very high degree of certainty not a good thumbnail in terms of getting impact, getting more people to click on it, getting more people to view it. And the team said, yeah, but he picked that thumbnail. I agree with you, Evan. I don't like it either, but he he picked that thumbnail. Okay, well, here's how you combat that situation.

What is his ultimate goal?

His ultimate goal is to have more impact. His ultimate goal is to reach more people, right? Probably. Let's, you know, make sure we get that right. You know, if his mom on her deathbed said, you have to use this as my thumbnail, okay, you know, great. There's a reason other than business for picking that thumbnail. But if the goal of this video— if we can agree that the goal of this video is to try to reach as many people as possible, to spread your message as wide as possible. Yes? Perfect. Let me help you do that. The challenge becomes it's one person's subjective opinion against another's, and the person who's in charge is almost always going to win that fight, right? If the person who's at the top says, I want this, and then somebody underneath says, but I think this would be better, And there's no data to support anything. It's just one subjective opinion against another. The person at the top usually wins. So I said, okay, here's what you do. You agree that the goal is to get as many views on the video as possible in an ethical, honest way. We're not clickbaiting, we're not doing something against the brand. Let's split test it. So here's what you want to do. Here's an idea that I've got. Let's split test it for 2 weeks and see what happens. And what I've always found is that people will listen to the data when they feel like you're on the same page, when they feel like you're fighting for the same goal as them. Because if you can then show him that, hey, this video— this is the case that you bring— this video, if I change the thumbnail, did twice as bad, twice as good. Right? It does twice as— 2x, twice better, whatever. Doubles the impact, right? If you could bring— by changing just the thumbnail, same video, by changing the thumbnail, you can get twice as many views. Here's the data to show you, not just my subjective opinion, but here's the data to show you. Here's yours, here's what it did. Here's the one that we tried for 2 weeks. Just let me try for 2 weeks. Here's what we tried for 2 weeks. Double the views. Double the impact. What do you prefer? You tell me what's more important. Do you still want to go with that because it, again, used to have some other reason for it? And, and this isn't said in a condescending way. It's like, hey, help me understand. This thumbnail that we tried doubled the performance. Which one do you want to go with? And they always go with the one that gets better results. The challenge is when you're bringing the idea, it's just your opinion, and they will almost always trust their opinion over your opinion until you come with the data.

The first is lean in on service, that I'm here to serve, I'm here to help, I'm trying to do something of good. What's the intention behind this thing you're about to do?

If you're going to go on stage or you're going to make a video, you're going to make a video walk into the park, right?

What's the intention?

Is the intention to to hurt somebody, to screw somebody over, to lie to them, to cheat? No, hopefully not. Not if you're a fan of this channel. Come on now, the intention is good, the intention is positive. You want to, you want to serve, you want to help, you want your message to hopefully impact somebody's life. If you're selling a product or service, yes, you want to make money and you're trying to solve a problem, you're trying to help people. So anytime I make it about you, you know, the people watching it, I make it personal.

I focus on service instead of focusing on me.

How am I received?

How are you liking me?

How is that guy who passed by, what is he thinking about me?

Right?

That's about me. I'm worried about me. I'm in my own head.

I'm playing small.

Anytime I can focus on other people and the value that they're hopefully going to get, at least with the intention, I wouldn't be maybe so bold or brave to say, no, this is going to be my best video ever.

But it's my intention always. It's my intention to try to make the best video I've ever done and give as much value as I can and to serve and hopefully one person is touched by this video and it means something to them, right? So when you're afraid to do something, focus in on service. Reminding yourself every day of how amazing you are, I think it's one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself. And it's not about ego, it's about confidence. Confidence comes from a place of strength. Ego comes from a place of weakness and insecurity. So it's time to step into your confidence and remind yourself of how amazing you really are.

This video is gonna help.

So I used to have a lot of problems with ego versus confidence. I used to feel like, who am I? Why do people need to hear my story? I was profiling all these different successful entrepreneurs and people kept asking, well, where are you? How come we can't see what you're about?

Where did you come from?

And I always felt like my story doesn't matter. I'm profiling David Goggins and Steve Jobs and all these people.

Why do you care about—

I mean, sure, I sold my first business, had an exit, but it's nothing compared to what all these other people have done. And I always shrouded it, covered it under ego, like, well, that's such an egotistical thing to do. But really, I was just playing small. I was cheating people the opportunity to learn, to get better, to grow from my story, that my story has value. It's the belief that my story had value that took some time to really work up. Even making videos on my channel, the number one most requested person for top 10 was me. And I resisted for maybe 2 years of even making an Evan Carmichael top 10, 'cause I just felt not good enough. I felt like that's such an ego play and not coming from a place of confidence. And yes, my message has impact, has meaning, can help the world. And the first Evan Carmichael top 10 came out from my team.

So my birthday, birthday, I think it was my birthday, birthday or Christmas, my team put together with the support of my hardcore fans, My first top 10. No, not yet, Evan Carmichael.

You wanna watch it?

I'm a little scared. And that's the one that, that went live on the channel. And ever since then, we've done a regular series of me being on the channel. But it's, it's been a real progress for me. It's been a real evolution. It's taken me a long time, and hopefully you can get there faster. This has been almost 20 years of me sharing ideas and content and, and slowly stepping into the light and slowly building more confidence and more belief. And I hope that With the content I'm making and the experiences I'm sharing, you can get there a lot faster.

The world's biggest problem is a lack of belief. The biggest problem for me, for you, for Brendan Burchard, for everybody, is a lack of belief. You believe in yourself to the extent of what you've done, that you can do it again, but you don't believe in the next step. You don't believe that you can go from here to here. This is why I think everybody has what I call Michael Jordan-level talent at something. Like, you're a genius.

You are the best in the world at something. And it's not what you went to school for.

It's not what your parents taught you. It's not what the people around you are doing. It's probably something very, very, very different. And unlike your parents or grandparents, it's actually possible now because of technology, because of the internet. It's actually possible for you to go off and be this Michael Jordan level genius at something. You don't need to have the resources. You don't need to have the education. You don't need to have The connection, because it's all the walls have been broken down and it's only getting easier. But it's still the lack of belief in the ability to do the thing. People say, well, I think cancer is the world's biggest problem.

Great.

I think cancer should have been solved by now. The woman who would have solved cancer is a manager at an accounting firm doing work that she hates because one, she never believed in herself enough to go down the root to become a doctor or researcher.

And two, even if she started, she didn't believe in herself enough that she could be the genius at it, the Michael Jordan level genius, best in the world or something.

And this is, this is what happens. We settle, we get stuck, we get complacent, we, we find all these reasons and excuses why we can't do it. We're really— it's just fear and lack of belief. And every time you break through, every, every major breakthrough that I've had in my life has come on the other side of me believing in myself more that I could go off and do that thing.

Use the nos as fuel. And I add this in not because I use it, but because I know it works for a lot of other people. And I'm channeling Tom Bilyeu right now. This is one of the things that Tom does that he credits to having his success.

If you know Tom, Impact Theory, built a billion-dollar business with Quest, and now has this awesome YouTube channel.

He has a list. He has a list of all the people who doubted him, who didn't believe in him. And whenever he feels like he really needs that extra motivation, he goes to that dark place and looks at that list and say, all these people did not believe in me, I'm going to show them wrong. I don't do that. I don't get a lot of power or strength for myself of being in the dark side of proving somebody wrong. But I think it can be very beneficial for people. And a lot of people do talk about it.

So I wanted to at least give that to you as an option.

Use those nos as fuel. Use that, your mom telling you that you suck and you can't make it, maybe she doesn't say that you suck, but that you can't make it, using your friends or haters online saying that you're never gonna do it, using that as fuel to say, I'm gonna show you and prove you wrong. I just think the danger is if you live in there for too long, if you're only fueled for the dark side, it consumes you. If you're only doing something to prove somebody wrong, you're never gonna stay consistent and persistent enough because it's not a good enough reason.

At the core of doing the thing has to be you love doing the thing.

You want to serve, right?

You're built to serve.

You want to serve.

You want to help. You want to help, right? But if you have to channel the dark side every now and then, use those nos as fuel to help you get forward, then go for it and give it a shot. Your actions have to map to your ambitions. One of the biggest challenges people have is figuring out what does balance look like for you? You don't want to have Jeff Bezos's calendar. You don't want to have Evan Carmichael's calendar either. Balance looks like something different to us. Finding your version of balance, mapping your actions to your ambitions, and then having the courage and the confidence to chase that down and apply it to your life when the people around you are saying you're nuts, you're crazy, that's the juice of life. That is where you'll find peace as well as your success. So as an example, let me walk you through a typical week in the life of Evan Carmichael. I like having my morning routine that I do pretty much every day of the week. I have my evening routine that I'll do pretty much every day of the week. And then I have different days for different things. I find that if I have one full day to focus on just one main task, I'm much more productive. So on Mondays is my mentoring day, and I'm spending the whole day mentoring the people on my team. We're growing. We've got over 25 people on the team, and some people I talk to every week, some people every month, some people every quarter. But I spend the whole day just figuring out how can I make the people on my team better, listened to, heard, improve training skills, all of it. That's my whole day on Monday, and all I'm doing is being in the mentoring zone. Tuesday is my YouTube day. I'm making videos, I'm strategizing, I'm planning, I'm creating, I'm all in on just making YouTube videos. My team doesn't bother me on Tuesday unless it's an urgent emergency. They're not connecting with me on Tuesday because I'm in YouTube mode. Wednesday is my project day. I work on the things that I want to do to grow my business, whatever project is on my mind right now. So right now, Build to Serve, right? Getting the book out, promoting it, working on my email campaigns and sequences and funnels and all of that is most of Wednesdays. Thursdays is my public-facing day. That's when I'm doing interviews and Hangouts and podcasts and being on people's Instagram shows and YouTube shows and radio shows. It's all day. It's 25 minutes on, 5-minute break, 25 minutes on, 5-minute break, my entire Thursday. Fridays is my CEO day, and so I'm doing bigger picture projects to help build my business and grow it forward. Saturday becomes fun day. Saturday is when I spend the day with my wife. Normally I'm planning a new food place for us to go eat and looking at festivals for us to go to and enjoy. We're in coronavirus time right now, so we're in lockdown, but it's basically non-work day, and I'm in charge of planning a day for myself and my wife to have a fun day that I know she's gonna enjoy. Sunday is family admin day, and that's when we're doing Costco and dishes and laundry and We'll do the dishes more than just Sunday, but laundry and cleaning up the condo and going to Home Depot or whatever has to get done that's more kind of on the admin side. And when you have clearly defined days for your life, at least for my life, it prevents bleed. So for example, if, you know, we really have to go to Costco to get something, not on a Saturday.

Nope.

You have to defend your time. You got to defend your time because other things will constantly attack in your time. If you're ever at the point where you feel like everybody has something for you to do and you have no time for yourself, it's your fault. You haven't put the boundaries up. You haven't put the gates up. You haven't protected your time enough with the shield that you have. That's what you need to do on a consistent basis and say, I love you. I respect you.

I want to help you. I want to work with you.

This is my time. I can help you over here. And the caveat is when you show up for them, you're with them. Act on your uncomfortable ideas. We get great ideas as entrepreneurs. We get great ideas and especially moments of boldness and confidence and You get great ideas. It could be when you're in the shower, on an airplane, or traveling. You get great ideas for what you want to do, and then tomorrow you tell yourself, "I can't do that.

That's crazy. That's too hard.

That's scary.

That's uncomfortable." Teach yourself to act on your crazy ideas is how you start to build confidence.

Because if you come up against a crazy idea and then you allow yourself to say, "Well, that's too scary. That's too hard. That's too difficult. I can't do that." What you've taught yourself is you don't have courage. You've taught yourself to come up with ideas but then not trust in yourself. And so when you come up with the next idea, you're telling yourself, "I don't trust myself." When you set a goal for yourself to hit, hit some big goal, you don't believe yourself anymore because all you've done is taught yourself that you set goals, you have ideas, and you never follow through. You've built this identity of, "I'm somebody who doesn't follow through." That's what you need to start to destroy. That's what you need to destroy and squash out of your life, that identity of, "I don't follow through." Your ideas are genius. Your ideas are amazing. This is why Play Bigger Tools will help.

You get an idea in your, in your awesome environment, act on it.

Do something. Lean into the uncomfortable. Lean into the things that cause a little bit of your heart to beat and cause some anxiety. That's how you start to make the shift. Deciding your top 3 goals right now.

What are your top 3 goals?

Most important things to you right now.

What are your priorities?

The 3 big things that have to happen for you.

What are they?

Get clear, get specific. If you don't know what they are, that's why you're not chasing anything big down.

If you haven't thought about it, then that's the problem.

You're stuck in these small projects for life. What are your 3 big goals for your business and your life right now?

Staying in your cocoon and only hanging around the same 5 to 10 people— if those people are not more ambitious than you, then you're going to stay stuck. You're going to feel good about yourself because you're pushing everybody and you're optimistic and and you feel good relative to where they're at, but you won't be growing. You, you are probably the most ambitious person that you know. You're the, you're the most positive, most uplifting, most energetic, most ambitious person of any of the people that you hang out with. And that's great and fulfilling, and you can serve them and help them, but it limits your own growth.

You stay stuck or you stay super slow growing.

And so you need to inject people who have a greater belief system than you into your life to make you feel like you can grow and continue to get better. And that could be somebody who's actually in your life. Quick, like, side note: if there's anybody in your life at all who you've met once, twice, 4 times, right? Doesn't have to be your family. Somebody that you've hung out with and met that made you feel better about yourself when you left them— holy cow, hang on to that person.

I love the—

what I say— collect good people. Hang on to those people. Find a way to do a business with them, find a way to spend time with them, find a way to hang out with them. But Brendon Burchard reaching out to me to do this business together, right? Like, he's finding ways to hang out with what he thinks is good people. So, you know, that's, that's a tremendous honor on my part. So if you have anybody like that— and again, it's probably not the closest people to you, you have to go on the fringe of people you have spent some time with— try to spend more time with them. Find a reason to do it, whether it's starting the business together, whether it's just having a monthly coffee together just to connect again, do it. If you don't have anybody like that in your life, don't stress. That's why there's videos, that's why there's books, that's why there's podcasts. If you watched— if you actually started your day with an Enespresso video every day, your life will start to shift. You won't notice it tomorrow or the next day or the next day, but a month later, 3 months later, 6 months later, you start to see, I'm thinking bigger now, I'm more bold, I'm more confident, I I want to do bigger things with my life. Well, why is that? It's because you're hanging around people who are doing bigger things with their life, even virtually. So I can learn a lot from Brendan, who I've met and now doing a partnership with, but also from Oprah Winfrey and Elon Musk and all these people. The more I'm around them, the more they pull me to want to think bigger.

Focus on progress. When you focus on progress instead of the end result, that's where I think you can keep your motivation, keep your belief. When I first started making my videos, I wasn't getting any results, right? Nobody was watching, nobody was commenting. I felt like a loser, right? Like nobody cares, it's not happening, I'm not getting the results. Understand that you very rarely ever get results at the beginning. If you focus on just getting the results at the beginning, you're likely going to get too discouraged and quit. It's not that the results aren't important, it's just people have a too short an attention span And when you focus on the results at the beginning, it is too discouraging and you do give up. Instead, you focus on the progress.

Are you getting better? Are you learning?

Was your video better than last time? Did you show up with more energy than last time? Did you have better points than you did last time? Was that sales call you did better than the one last time? Was your next test better than it was yesterday, right? Are you getting better? 'Cause if you can say, I'm getting better, if you're making videos and you look back, a week later, a month later, and say, man, I still suck, but I'm better than I was a week ago, a month ago, and you can focus on the progress. At least for me, it really helps fuel my motivation, my belief in myself that, hey, if I made that growth from here to here, then I can make more growth from here to here. And at the beginning, here's the thing, at the beginning, the growth is pretty fast. When you're learning something from scratch at the beginning, you actually learn very quickly. It's at the end that it gets harder. For me right now, to keep getting better is harder. I don't see as big a return on my, on my progress as Evan Carmichael growth from last week to this week, from last month to this month.

How much better am I on camera from last month to this month?

Not that much. It requires even more effort and even more mentorship and even more practice and training to get better as when you're close to the top. At the beginning, you can learn really quickly and there's a lot of progress. The flip side for me now is there's lots of results, right? When you start actually getting good, that's when the results kick in. So then you can start focusing on the results. So, hey, is this working or not? Is this video doing better than the last one or not? Because you start getting some data and results to work with. So at the beginning, you're focusing on the progress. Am I getting better? Am I improving?

And am I learning? Is it better than I was last week?

And then as that starts to taper off, you might get frustrated with your progress, but good news, you're going to start seeing results come in, and that'll keep you motivated to keep going as well. Don't compromise is an amazing message, but too many of you who are perfectionists will hear that message and use it as an excuse for not taking action. I'm a firm believer that planners need to do more and doers need to plan more. And here's the problem: planners do not need to plan more. You're already great at planning. You will plan, plan, plan, plan, plan, plan, plan your life away and never actually take any kind of action. And so for the perfectionists out there, for the planners who want to have the perfect plan before you do anything, this is an amazing message, but you're not hearing it correctly. It's not don't compromise on having the perfect plan and just sit in your room all day and don't take any action, because Steve Jobs was a doer. This is a hard lesson that I had to learn myself because I lost a $40 million deal in my first business when I was 21, 22, because I was a perfectionist. Perfectionist, because everything had to be perfect, because I didn't want to compromise. That's how I interpreted the message. But as a result, I didn't do anything and just kept planning, and I lost the deal. It became between us and our biggest competitor, and we were really late to the party because we didn't do the right thing, and we ended up losing the deal. Now, would we have won it if I had done more? Maybe not 100%, but I would have had a better shot at it. And so ever since then, I've been trying to release that perfectionist habit. It's still in there. I still love to plan, But the people who have the most success have that combination of planning but then actually doing. Block the time and take small losses for big wins. Physically put into your calendar, this block of time on Monday afternoon I'm spending on XYZ, and I am okay with losing some small losses. I will not be reachable.

I might lose a deal.

There might be some burndown happening that I can't take charge of. I'm going to disappoint I'm gonna let somebody down, not intentionally, not on purpose, but it's gonna happen. And you're not gonna kick yourself for doing it because what you're gonna make, you're gonna make that time count. Those 2 hours, 4 hours, 6 hours, 8 hours, however long you're spending working on your goals, you're gonna make that time count. You're sacrificing all these small wins that you love going after to make this time count. So use that as pressure. Not to feel guilty about yourself for not doing those little small wins and being late getting back to people, but in saying, I am working on something that's going to change my life. And because of these people who are dependent on me for everything else and I'm pushing that off, I better make this time count.

Use that pressure to drive you forwards instead of backwards.

Planning doesn't count. Planning, strategizing, making ideas, that doesn't count. Where you're going to grow doesn't count. You got to do. You got to send an email, you got to make a piece of content, you got to post something, you got to follow up with somebody, you have to create, you got to make. Instead of just living in your head, right? That's how you tell the difference. Planning is just living in your head, models, structured business plans, ideas. It's, it's amazing.

I love it.

I could be there all day long, but you won't have any kind of impact just staying up in here. Do every single day. Adopt the mindset that you need to do on a daily basis.

You have Michael Jordan level genius at something. You, you, you are the greatest, the greatest in the world at something. And it's probably not what your parents did or what you went to school for. It's sitting here somewhere deep buried and you don't believe that you can do it. But until you actually lean in on what you have Michael Jordan ability genius at, until you actually start doing it, you'll never live the life that you're capable of. You'll constantly be doing what other people want you to do, living up to other people's expectations, meanwhile knowing that you're capable of more. I often get into fights— maybe not fights, discussions, maybe arguments— with people about when they're making YouTube videos, for example. Thought leaders— I'm deeply passionate about helping more thought leaders get onto YouTube. I want to see your message out there because I believe that your message can change the world. I think your message can impact people's lives, that people like you, who you used to be, they need to hear your message and you're, you're too scared to get it up there. And one of the biggest complaints, or one of the biggest objections people have is, well, I don't know how to edit, I don't know how to film. And what they end up doing is you spend 20 minutes making a video, recording it, and then 5 hours editing it. What you're doing there is training the wrong skill. If you want to make a video like this, right, you're going to sit in your car. I'm still just making this video off of my phone, right? I just have a— can you see my glasses? Maybe you can see. Look, I've got a— there we go. This is cool. Look, I've just got a little mini handheld whatever tripod, I guess, a selfie stick more like it, and, and my phone. That's how I'm filming this video.

That's it.

Sitting here in the car while my wife is in Costco shopping and getting some awesome food for us. If you spend 20 minutes making a video, filming it, recording it, and then 5 hours editing it, you're just training the wrong skill. You'll never get great at the thing that you have Michael Jordan level ability at. Now, if you said your ambition is to be the world's greatest editor, that's different. Congratulations, you're doing it, you're doing it. But if you want to be a thought leader, a speaker, an expert, you want to, you want to learn to make videos and be the front -facing person, then spending 20 minutes on something to actually improve your skill— that's improving your skill, making a video— but 5 hours editing it, you're just not wasting time, but you're, you're stealing from your opportunity. You're stealing from your ability. You're stealing from your best self. Okay, well, what do I do, Evan? Well, how do I, how do I then create? I don't want to put up something that's bad. The thing that gets you there is is actually getting great at your skill, the Michael Jordan level skill. I'd rather you spend 5 hours making a video, doing it again and again and again and again and again and again and again so that you don't need editing, that you're so good at the thing that you don't need editing. Because that's a skill that will serve you for life. Because when you go on stage, you don't get to edit yourself. Right? There's no second takes. When you go on TV and you're being interviewed, when you go on people's podcasts, you're being interviewed. If you're— you're teaching yourself that you're only good when you're edited, and that's not your Michael Jordan level ability.

This whole seriousness versus playful thing, I agree that it's important to be playful. I think smiling is great. I think having a happy, optimistic, positive way of thinking about things is really important, especially as entrepreneurs, because We have to deal with so much crap, so much pain, so much misery, so much rejection, so much other people's negativity around us that if you are not playful, if you are not joyous, then it's really, really hard to keep going on your mission. And it's ultimately why a lot of people stop and they quit. They get consumed by the negativity and they have to leave it and go off and do something else. That being said, I also think there's a time for seriousness. I think it can really help you.

I think it can help focus you.

I think it can help drive you forward on your mission. The way I see playfulness and seriousness are two sides of the same coin.

I think you need both.

I think they're not opposite of each other, I think they complement each other. I see it as the same thing as ambition and gratitude. I think you need to be really ambitious. I think it's important to have big goals and set a life for yourself that you wanna go off and accomplish and keep striving to do it.

And I think it's important to be really grateful for everything that you already do have.

You are spoiled, you are lucky, you are so fortunate. Just to be alive, just to be living in your country, just to be able to watch these YouTube videos. There's so much that you have to be grateful for that you don't even recognize. And so I think both of those serve each other. I think if you are just overly ambitious and never are grateful, I think it just leads to a really dark place. I think it's never enough and it just becomes all-consuming. And I think if you're only grateful all the time and have zero ambition, then that's a happy life, but you're not helping others, you're not serving others, you're not fulfilling the potential that you have inside yourself. And so I think of them as both being necessary. I think you need both of them. I think one standalone doesn't help you get to where you need to go. And so I see that as the same thing as playfulness and seriousness. I see them as two sides of the same coin. I think you need both of them at different times to help you go off and be that best version of yourself.

You start thinking about, okay, I'm not great at these things, but they need to get done. Right, some of these things have to get done. First, you want to eliminate.

If it's—

if you don't have to do it, then don't do it. There's some things that you're doing that actually don't matter. There's some things that I'm doing that don't matter, that you think matter, but then when you analyze, like, that doesn't even matter. Nobody even cares if I do that thing or not, right? Just eliminate it. Don't, don't give it to somebody else if it shouldn't even be done in the first place. You eliminate it. Then you automate it. So automate is look for ways to do it through software, through technology, through tools. Anything that I'm, I'm doing multiple times, like, okay, how do I, how do I make this more automatic so that I don't have to be doing this all the time? And if you can't eliminate it and you can't automate it, then you delegate it. And delegate is you give it to somebody, give it to somebody who, that's their Michael Jordan level genius. Editing these videos I have an amazing team. You know, Christina— hi Christina— is amazing, and that's her Michael Jordan level genius. She makes amazing videos. She can edit way, way, way better than I ever could, let alone than what I can do right now. And when you find people who they are the Michael Jordan level of the thing that you suck at, that's when you can really start to explode. Now you might be You might not be able to afford them yet.

So what can you do?

Well, one, you get people who can volunteer, who can maybe do some kind of barter. Like entrepreneurship is about being resourceful. What can you offer them and what can they offer you? What kind of trade can you make? If you have no money, what kind of trade can you make? Instead of saying, well, I just, I don't have money to hire somebody, so I'm just going to do it myself. You have to start being more strategic. You have to start thinking, okay, what am I, what am I so fantastic at? What is your Michael Jordan level ability? And how can that be of value to somebody else that in exchange for me helping them, they can help me with this thing? That's how entrepreneurship works. The ones who really, really win, they're not the ones who do it all themselves. They're the ones who are resourceful to find ways to bring on a team, right? The ones who are ultra successful.

Number 2, schedule your due time.

What I want you to do is plan for 1 hour every single day.

If you're an entrepreneur, 1 hour every day where you are doing— pick a time.

Ideally, I think morning, like if you get in at 9, then 9 to 10, first hour of the day.

But if it's not, then block in your account. This is important. This is what will change your life. This is what will change the trajectory of your business. If you are stuck constantly just responding to people, in planning perfectionist mode. Due time, right? We said do it daily, point number 1. Now you got to schedule it in. Just have an intention won't do anything if you're not actually taking action on it, right? You're not doing the thing that you promised to do. You're not doing the doing. The progress that you will make the closer you get to your goals will be a reflection of what you are putting in your calendar, what you are actually doing. So I want you to schedule 1 hour today of due time. Every single day we're gonna be making something and pushing it up to the world.

You can't feel grateful and sad at the same time. You can't feel grateful and upset at the same time. You can't at the same time feel grateful and hurt, vengeful, rage. You can't. Gratitude is the opposite emotion, the opposite expression of all of those things. So whenever you're feeling low, down, negative, hurt, upset, the answer is gratitude. I don't like staying in negative emotions for too long. The only one is grief. You know, I think the only one that I let happen is grief because I think you just have to work your way through it. I don't want to trick myself out of grief because you're feeling it for a reason. I don't actually think it's a negative emotion. I think you have to just work your way through it. But everything else— upset, anger, hurt, jealousy, rage— Think about all the other negative emotions that you experience. I don't want to stay in them for too long. They don't serve me. They don't serve you. They don't allow you to show up as your best self. And so the fastest way out is gratitude, because there's always something that you can be grateful for. It's just a perspective shift. If I was sitting here in the car feeling upset or feeling sorry for myself or down on myself, I can always think back to, man, I used to make $300 a month and feel like I wasn't doing anything, that I was bringing no value, that I wasn't contributing anything. And now I get to sit in this car. I get to sit in this car, right? That little shift can make all the world of difference. I was talking to Jeremy yesterday on my team, and Jeremy is an entrepreneur I invested into, what, 18 months ago, I guess. He used to have a job working at a grocery store. Hating his life, knowing he was capable of more, earning minimum wage, and just not liking what he was doing at all. And now he's, he's built over half a million dollar business a year doing YouTube consulting based off of what I taught him, taught him, and continue to teach him. You know, he's got a half million dollar plus business now. And we were talking yesterday and he was a little down because You know, there's the client who left him, and, and that happens, right? Any client service business, you get bad news, clients will leave you, you will at some point underperform, you will disappoint people. That's gonna happen. And that— and my job is to help give more perspective, to say, dude, it's okay, you're, you're still great. Look at what you've built in the past 18 months. Look at where you were. You used to be a grocery store clerk. A mail clerk. Now you're working with amazing people, helping them build their channels, getting paid insane amounts of money compared to what you're used to. Like, how much money do you have in your bank account compared to where you were 18 months ago? How much more fulfilled are you in the work that you're doing right now compared to where you used to be 18 months ago, right? How much of your world has changed? So don't get too down, because the down doesn't serve you. Most people can't handle radical honesty. We can't handle it because we're too caught up in other people's opinions. We care too much about what other people think about us. We're so insecure that if you actually got honest feedback, you'd feel like you suck as a human, not that you just have an area that you need to work on. We can't separate between skills that we need to work on and us. The fact that we suck at a skill, we interpret as we suck as a human. Because we care too much about what other people think, which is why radical honesty is not something that we generally lead with. But until you get to the point where you can have that both with yourself and at least with the closest people around you, until you get there, you won't have fulfilling, deep, meaningful, honest relationships. When I think about radical honesty, I think about it in two ways. One of giving it, being able to give honest feedback, and then being able to receive it. Two different sides of the coin that I'm gonna break down in this video. So in terms of giving it, we would love to be able to give more honest feedback, right? How many people in your life would you love to have a more honest conversation with and tell them what's really on your mind? You don't because you're afraid of how they're gonna react. You're afraid that they're gonna get hurt, they're gonna freak out, they're gonna judge you more, they're gonna run away, whatever. You're afraid. You're afraid of the reaction. And so the way around that is to show love. When you give honest feedback to somebody, the initial reaction is negative because they feel judged. That's really at the core of it. Like, they feel that you are judging them. They don't feel the love. So you have to lead with love. The more that they feel loved, that then you give the feedback, they know it's coming from a loving place. They're much more receptive.

Get used to releasing imperfect things. It doesn't mean that you settle for crap. That's not the message. It's not just, okay, this sucks, we're gonna release it and not care about it anymore. By releasing imperfect things though, and then tweaking it and getting better, you are getting used to doing. You are getting used to not just holding on to your perfect concepts and perfect dreams forever. For me, an example could be to make, make imperfect videos, you know, do Instagram stories. And if I make a mistake, I post it. If I make a mistake, I try to make it into something fun. When I was in Boston, I was trying to say, we're gonna go see some dim sum. We're going to a dim sum restaurant. And I'd say, we're going to dim, dim, dim, dim, dim, da, Dim, dim, dim, dim, Dim Sum, right? I stumbled on my words and I made into something fun, and I released it. Like, yes, that's the best. Put that out there. Perfectionists need to get used to losing the perfectionist habit. And it Won't ever go away. It's always the big fear that I don't want to become a slob. I don't want to let myself go. I don't want to release garbage out to the— you won't. You'll never be that person. You'll never stop caring, but you just need to lose the perfectionist habit a little bit because you will never be perfect. The stuff you release will never be perfect. You will always look back at what you made and say it could be made better, and that's awesome. That's your greatest strength, but it's also your greatest vulnerability. It's your greatest weakness. So getting used to once a week releasing something that isn't perfect, it's the best that you could make within the time allotted. Once a week, every week, release that within your own industry. So for me, it'd be making a video, do a Snapchat story. For me, it's daily, 3 to 5 times a day, but at least once a week. And when it sucks, when you made a mistake, when you want to delete it, when you want to say, of course I can't post that, I can't sell that, I can't put that out there, As soon as you're about to hit the delete button, boom, that's when you post it and feel the fear and the nervousness and the craziness and like, oh my gosh, I can't believe I just did that, that sucked. And then release it. So you know what, that wasn't actually that bad. Like, what's the response? It's not, not actually that bad. And when you can get used to releasing imperfect products and keep your drive to make perfect products, that's when ultimately you will win, to move from planning mode into the doer mode.

People will not understand what you're trying to do. If you are an entrepreneur with a big dream, a big mission, a big vision, some big goals for yourself, people won't understand what you're trying to do. If everybody understands, you're thinking way too small. If everybody's like, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Oh, that's exactly like this. You're thinking too small. Your potential, your vision, is bigger than how you're explaining it. At the beginning, it should be difficult for people to wrap their head around what you do. It should be difficult to explain who you are. If somebody asks you at a networking event or some party, hey, what do you do? I think it should be difficult for you to explain who you are. I think that's fantastic. I think that means you're actually living your life instead of living inside some box that is easy to understand. I look at my history, and I've been on YouTube since 2009, my first video. And at the time, YouTube was not what it is today. It was not an educational platform. There weren't really people doing entrepreneur videos, educational videos, long-form videos. It's just a totally different beast. And it took 5 years to get to 7,000 subscribers. On my main channel. 5 years, 7,000 subscribers. I remember one of the videos that I loved the most. I was so proud. I spent the most amount of effort and collaboration time in creating this video, and it was, it was a long video. It was 6 minutes. It was a 6-minute video back in the day, so it was this long video. And I showed it to somebody when I was basically ready to release it. I showed it to somebody who was in the industry, who was not in the YouTube industry but in the, in the video industry. And I showed it to him and I said, hey, what do you think? Like, I'm, I'm pretty happy with this video. Do you have any thoughts, feedback, suggestions? And he just didn't want me to publish it. He said, nobody's gonna watch a video that's 6 minutes long. Nobody. That just— it's just way too long. Nobody's gonna watch it. He told me that I didn't understand how the internet worked and just, I don't know, just poured into me. I shared some of the exact quotes in, in Your One Word, my first book, of what, of what he said to me. And he was an expert, right? He was somebody who was— he wasn't just some guy off the street. He was a guy who was in thought leadership, did a lot of video content. And him telling me that this would never work and it was too long, that I didn't understand how things work. And a younger, you know, less experienced Evan might have listened to him, but at the time I felt, okay, I don't know, maybe he's right, but I spent a lot of time on this thing and I liked it. It moved me, it inspired me, so whatever, I'll just post it. Who cares if it ends up being a giant flop? Then lesson learned. Maybe it'll inspire, you know, a couple hundred people and I had fun doing it, right? And so we released it, and at the time my best video had 100,000 views in a year, and I was so proud of that video. Man, 100,000— 100,000 views in a year, that's awesome! This video launched and did 100,000 views in a month. It ended up being my best video on the channel. It's not anymore, but was the best video on my channel for maybe a couple years. Now it's got, you know, a couple million views on it, and it's just a reminder that I'm trying to do something big. You are where you are because of your environment. The easiest way to change where you are right now, and if you're not happy You want to change where you are right now in life. The easiest way to do it is to change your environment. Change who you hang out with, change the videos that you watch, change what you wear, change where you go, change your habits. When you change your environment, it automatically triggers new thoughts, new beliefs, new mindsets inside you. Where if you hang out with the people who are not living the life that you want, you're watching the videos of people who are tearing each other down instead of educating and lifting people up, when you're constantly surrounded by negativity and small-mindedness, guess what you become? If you can switch it, if you can choose consciously to make a change in your environment towards a better life, that life will start to manifest. So when I was on my tour in 2019, it was the first time I got to meet John Assaraf. I was going to San Diego and John's team heard that I was doing my tour and said, hey, if you're coming to San Diego, would you like to interview John for your channel? Uh, yeah, yeah, yes, I would. Yes, I would like to do that very much. How do we make that happen? And, uh, we, we scheduled it. It was not part of my initial tour. We had to move things around to make that happen, and we had the fortune to spend I don't know, half of a day with John. We went to his office, NeuroGym. We did the interview, we hung out, we talked about YouTube, uh, met his team. And there's the knowledge exchange, which is great, where I got to ask him questions and hang out. And we, we— I don't know how long we spent there on the actual interview, but more important is the energy exchange. More important is when you're hanging around somebody who's accomplished a lot it, it makes you want to do more. You know, when you're around people who are more fit than you, it makes you want to be more fit. When you're around people who have a great relationship, it makes you want to have a better relationship. When you're around people who've had success in business, it makes you want to have more success in business. And the challenge, and a big reason why I make all of my content, is because you are probably the most ambitious person that you know. You're the most ambitious, positive, happy, uplifting person in your circle, and that's fantastic, and that's a gift that you give to other people because you're encouraging and lifting them up. But there's nobody pulling you forward. There's nobody who you're hanging out with who says you could be doing more. And so hanging out with John Asraf at his place in San Diego was another extra push. It's like, this is This is something that I want more of. These are the people that I want to hang out more with. Even though I'm introverted and shy and don't like to introduce myself to people and think that I suck at networking, it's still important to spend as much time as possible with the people who inspire you to live a better life, whatever that version of your life is. So I'd encourage you to look at your calendar, look at your schedule, look at what you're doing right now, look at how you're spending your time. How much of it is actually dedicated to the thing that you could be the greatest in the world at? And for too many people, it's, it's not enough. For too many people, it's zero. You have ideas and hopes and dreams and ambitions and goals, but there's nothing in your calendar where you're actually spending time focused on it. The best thing you can do to set you up for a life of happiness, fulfillment, purpose income, all of it, is to drastically change what's in your calendar to spend more time developing your Michael Jordan level skill, ability, genius. Period. You are what you consistently do. The problem for people watching this video, for you, your problem is that you know where you want to go, you know what you want to accomplish, you actually even know the habits that you need to do. You're just not doing them consistently. You get motivated, you get inspired, you get pumped up, something happens in your life that then makes you want to go and drive further, harder, faster, let's go! And then you fall off the track. You go back to the old ways, you go back to your old habits, and then you don't end up accomplishing your goals. Even though you know you're capable, you know it's possible, you know you could do it, you have done versions of it in the past, but you're not consistent on it. That's the problem. And that's what we need to shift in this video, because until you get off that loop, you're going to keep running the same cycle over and over and over and over again, knowing that you're capable of more, knowing that you've got the potential and heart to accomplish amazing things, to serve, to make a lot of money, to be the person that you want to be, knowing that that's possible, but then never actually accomplishing it. We're going to fix that in this video. So I've got a model of the 4 stages of personal development, or 4 stages of personal growth. And the first one is the haters. And the haters are the people who hate their own life. And this is most people. Most people don't actually love their own life. If you really dug down and analyze people, you ask them about themselves and how much they love their life, most people will not love their life. Most people do not have positive self-talk when they're looking in the mirror. Most people overjudge themselves, over-criticize themselves, and know that they're not living the life that they could be living. That's most people. Most, most of the world hates their life. And it shows up, especially in America, in depression rates and suicide rates. Like, people are not happy. People are not happy. And as a result, they're in a lot of pain. And as a result of that, they, they hate on other people's ideas. If you're thinking why so many people will tear down your ideas and tell you why you can't do it. Because they are in a lot of pain themselves. Because they maybe took a shot at their life, their dream life, and it didn't happen. They didn't make it. So now nobody around them can be happy either. Right? This is the problem I'm trying to solve. You know, I'm trying to move people from the land of haters because I believe people are good. You know, I believe people are good. People are good. People want to serve. You're built to serve. You want to serve. You want to help. People are at the core good, and yet a lot of people are negative because they're in a lot of pain. So that's step 1, and that's probably not— if you're watching this video, if you subscribe to this channel, that's not you. You're not the hater, but you know probably a lot of people who are haters, and you can join me on my mission to save them, to serve them, to help them, to shift them, to move them forward, to realize that their dream life is possible. Whenever you don't know what to do, the best thing you can do is model success. Find the person or the people who've done the thing that you want to do, learn how they did it, apply it to your situation so you can achieve similar results and get to your goal. Otherwise, you're constantly bouncing around between idea to idea to idea to idea, constantly trial and error, trial and error, trial and error. And you might run out of time and it might actually get too late. Where if you can model success, the, the biggest shortcut to success is to model. Find the people who've done it, understand how they did it, apply it to your life. This is the thing that changed my life. I, I quit on my business partner. I was 19 years old, maybe 20 at that point. I quit on my business partner. I was just tired of of things not working. I was tired of the business being so slow and sluggish and, and not getting results and making no money. I was tired of it. I was— everything before that that I applied myself to, I got a result. And here I was trying, trying every day, trying, showing up to the same place, showing up to my business partner's living room every day, working from this dining room table every day, and just not getting results. And I was tired of it, so I quit. And then I woke up the next day and realized I don't want to quit. I can't quit yet. I can't quit. It's— I'm going to regret this, but I can't keep doing it the way I'm doing it. And so the genius moment out of pure desperation was, somebody has done this before. I asked myself, who has done this before? Who has built a software company before? Who's done this? I'm trying to solve this problem. I don't feel like I'm an idiot, although I kind of feel like, like an idiot right now because I'm trying so many things. I know I'm not stupid. Somebody's done this before. Can't be this hard. Who's done this? And that's where I thought of Bill Gates, who started Microsoft. And he's just one of many. He could have been anybody in software. He was just the only person I could think of at the time. And I learned his story and found out how he did it and applied those strategies through him, through partnerships. So I thought, okay, let me get some partnerships. And I got my first deal, I've said, for $13,500 a little while after.

And that changed everything for me.

That changed the business, that, that made me stay in it, that gave me hope, that made me feel not worthless, that made me feel like things were possible. That gave me growth in the company, and it also gave me a strategy for the rest of my life in that whenever I don't know what to do, the best thing to do is to model success. The biggest problem with wannabes is you're watching a video or you're going to an event and you think that that's the work. That's not the work. That doesn't matter until you actually do something. Watching this video doesn't mean anything unless you actually take action on it. Right? Nothing changes in your life until you actually take action on it. Watching this video, going to somebody's event, listening to somebody's podcast might get you inspired, right? It might get you thinking about what's possible, about where you could go, but it doesn't actually lead to you doing anything until you do something. As entrepreneurs, we're mission-driven, right? You want to solve a big problem. You want to make a huge change in the world. So remind yourself of what the mission is and how grateful you are to be on this path. Even if you're not where you want to be yet, you're not doing what you want to do fully yet, but you never are there. You never— when you hit that goal, you, you want a bigger goal. I think that's great. So you're on your journey and you're much more fulfilled on that journey than you used to be compared to who you used to be. Compare your life to where you were 5 years ago or 10 years ago. The awareness, the education you've gone through, the purpose, the heart that you've now discovered and tapped into on a deeper level. For me, I'd be thinking about helping entrepreneurs. I get to every day wake up and help entrepreneurs. I get to make videos, I get to make content, I get to influence people. I get to, I get to try to help 18-year-old Evans out there. Who's struggling with their first business, right? For you, what's your big mission and how can you tap into it and feel it? And it may not have to take too long to do it, but just close your eyes and actually feel that you touch somebody's life. Again, it may not be the scale that you want. It's never the scale you want, but you touch somebody's life. If one person left a comment on your video, one person left a thumbs up on your post, you touched one person's life. Tap into what that feels like, that you had a meaningful impact on them today. I would have been the guy who 10 years ago would have thought that's not possible for me. I'm this introverted, shy kid who just is not a Type A personality and doesn't like networking and will never meet these people. So step 1, consume their content. Even if you never meet these people, just having them around you daily allows you to start to shift and start to think like them, allows you to start to adopt their mindset because they're saying things that are different than the people in your life. John Assaraf is saying something different than your parents, right? He's thinking a different way than your friends. He's thinking on a higher level than a lot of the people probably in your life.

Life right now.

And so the more that you're around that virtually by watching videos, even if you never meet him, the more you start to think bigger, to have more ambition, to believe that it's possible. So part of your daily routine must, must, must be to consume the content of the people who inspire you to want to be bigger. That's why I make this Anspresso video. That's why I make all of my content on all of my channels. But if it's not my videos, if it's books, if it's podcasts, something— it's got to be daily though. Just like you brush your teeth daily, you need to inject positivity and belief daily from people who are doing more than you, right? You're brushing your teeth helps you with your dental hygiene. We need to work on our mental hygiene. It's really, really important because the, the mental hygiene will take care of itself in a negative way based off your current environment. If you are just constantly battling negativity around you or small-mindedness around you and there's nothing that comes into your life that feeds you with hope and positivity and inspiration and the sense that you could do more. If there's nothing in that in your life right now, then you won't go off and do it. And so step 1 is to just be around the content every single day in micro doses every single day. My new routine right now is I go for a walk in the morning. And it's about 40 to 45 minutes in the morning. And I, I watch my own videos. I watch my top 10 videos while I go for the walk. So this morning I was watching Lewis Howes video and a Gary Vee video that I made for my channel. And every time I do it, I pick up something new. It's a fantastic way to start my day. If you could start your day every day with Gary Vee or Lewis Howes or Jon Aceroth or Oprah or Elon Musk or whoever, your life will change. It's why I do these Anspresso videos. I want to give you the shot of Anspresso every morning. Your life will change if you start your day every day with the people who inspire you. They will pull you up and you don't notice it on a day-to-day basis. But if you look back a week, a month, 3 months, 6 months, a year, if you did it every day for a year, holy cow, you will be a totally different person.

There is always a way. There is always a way.

There is always a way. There is always a way. There is always a way. When you feel stuck, when you feel hopeless, when you feel like the world is against you and you've got big ambitious goals, remind yourself there is always a way. There is There's always a way. Entrepreneurship is always about how resourceful you are instead of the lack of resources. This is where people get caught up. You wish you had more money. You wish you had a different education. You wish you had different parents. You wish you lived in a different country. You're so focused on the things that are not going right in your life instead of focusing on what can I do with what I do have? There is always a way. Wife has to go shopping on filming day?

Great.

I'll film in the car with Timo. Hi, Timo. High five. Woo. Good boy. He's so cute. Business shuts down. My dance studio closes down because of COVID Great. Move online. Like, there's always a way. I was telling my friend Mark about how I got The Honest Company for my book, Year One Word. So I don't know, 3, 4, 5 years ago. I don't know how long ago.

How long ago?

When did Year One Word come out? Doesn't matter. I wanted to get The Honest Company because they built their business around their one word, honesty. And they were, you know, $100 million-plus company. Wanted to interview them. There was only one big problem: I didn't know them. I had no connection in. And I wrote in and I didn't hear back, and I really, really wanted the company. So there's always a way. Remind yourself, there's always a way. So what I did was I wrote to TechCrunch, and TechCrunch at the time was the biggest blog/website/news site for the tech industry. And I said, hey, I messaged the managing editor, who I did not know either, right? Just cold out of the blue, said, hey, I'm writing a book and I'd love to do an interview with The Honest Company. And Hey, if I did an interview with The Honest Company, would you publish it? We're gonna talk about these topics. And he said yes. Just interviewed the managing editor out of the blue, and he said yes. Great, now I can go back to The Honest Company and say, hey, I want to do an interview with you for my book and for TechCrunch. And that got me in the door, right? And then that led to me doing the interview. And flying to California and meeting Christopher Gavigan, who's an amazing human, and doing the interview and getting my book done. And so I didn't know The Honest Company. I didn't know TechCrunch. I had no connections in. But you remind yourself, there's always a way. And that's how you do it. You find a way. What can you do with what you do have right now? How can you be a resource? How can you be an asset? How can you help the people around you? So that you can move closer to accomplishing your goals as well. So how do you do it? You know, it's easy to say, great, Evan, you don't understand me. I'm stuck in the situation right now. How do I get out of it? Everybody's against me. I tried a million— I tried everything. I tried everything and it's not working. How do I get out of it? So a couple of things you need to do. Number 1, if you are stuck kind of in the middle of it, if you are stuck feeling overwhelmed, feeling it's not possible, feeling just you've tried everything and you're gonna give up. Step number 1 is you have to take a break from where you are right now. Go outside, go for a walk, breathe, meditate. Because when you're in, when you're in the lowest of the low, me saying be more resourceful, there's always a way, you can't actually hear it. You're not ready for the message yet because you're too low. This is why a lot of us, when we're trying to help other people, the people around us, and telling them, "You're gonna make it, you can be great," they can't hear it because they're too low. So you have to get them back to normal state. You have to get yourself back to a normal state. So that comes from getting outside your environment right now. Go for a walk, get some fresh air, do some breathing, meditate, pray, whatever you need to do to get back to a normal state so you're not a depressed human but you can actually be open and receptive to a message. I'm here making videos for you because that's part of my routine. You know, I'm recording this on a Tuesday. Every Tuesday I make videos. Every Tuesday I make videos. Every Tuesday I make videos. Every Tuesday I make videos. I've made videos feeling sick. I've made videos with no voice and I held up signs. I've made videos with a concussion and a broken neck. I make videos. That's the difference between an achiever and a high achiever, is that you show up when everybody else would give you a break, when everybody else would say take it easy, when everybody else would say you're pushing too hard, everybody else says you're too obsessed. You say no, I'm committed to my goals, I'm committed to making this happen, because you are what you consistently do. We tend to try to overcorrect things If you have a goal of eating a certain number of calories or sticking to a certain weight and you go and you binge one day, we tend to try to overcorrect to say, that's it, I'm going on a 24-hour fast. You know, I'm just not going to eat anything for 24 hours. Or if your business, you let yourself down, you don't deliver, you don't promise, you don't follow through on the promises. You say you're going to make videos for YouTube, but then you don't do it. And then the next day you wake up and say, I'm done with that. I'm going to make 80 videos today or whatever the number would be. We tend to try to do too much in the short run, and that's not where the gains are made, right? You could go to the gym and have an amazing session, but if you're not consistently showing up to the gym, you're not going to get the results that you want. Same thing for the gym of life, the gym of business, the gym of, of your mindset. It's what you do consistently every single day. And that can sometimes be boring, and that can sometimes be that you're chasing the wrong thing. You're doing somebody else's routine instead of your own. But if you want to be a high achiever, if you want to show up for yourself, for your family, for the people around you, for your customers, for the people who know you can serve, you want to show up as your best self every day for them. The key is that you stick to your habit. Try to be a person of value. Being a person of value means what does this person care about? And how can you help support it? So if you're trying to be a person of value to me, what am I— what do I care about right now? You know, the easiest thing to do is look at my Instagram bio, look at my Twitter bio, look at the things that I'm promoting right now. Right now, if— right now I'm talking about Build to Serve a lot. It's still something I care deeply about. Right now I'm talking about Movement Makers, I'm talking about Brandlytics. These are the programs that I'm launching that I care a lot about. So how can you help me with that? What is Jon Asraf launching? Go look at his Instagram bio, his Twitter bio. What is he promoting right now? That's what he cares about right now. To be a person of value, you want to be the person's chief goal officer. What do they need right now? What are they promoting right now? What are their goals right now? And then finding some way to help them, even if it's just being the best person in the comments.

Right?

I have an amazing community. You guys are amazing. It's what makes me want to keep making content because of how fantastic you guys are. And there are some people who watch the videos and then never leave any, any comment. Leave comments, guys. There are some people who watch a video and leave a comment, and then there are the special few who watch a video, leave a comment, but then will also comment on the other comments. Not in a promotional way, not just saying, hey, check out my new channel. I've worked really hard on it. Let me know. Sub for sub. But in an encouraging, positive, optimistic way. In just trying to cheer the other people on and supporting them. Those people are extra special. And there are some people who I would do the best that I could to try to support them. I get hit up every day with different promotional opportunities. Hey Evan, can you link this up? Can you shout me out? Can you check out my business? Client, and it's usually a no because I don't even know who you are. But there are other people who have brought so much value to my community that I would, I would do my very best to try to help them because of how much they've helped me, even though they may not have ever bought anything that I've done, just because they were so valuable in the community, right? So that's your goal. Your goal is to be a person of value, to be the chief goal officer, and then be a person of value to them and their community. So they start to recognize you.

If you don't like something in your life, you can change it.

This is why we become entrepreneurs, because we don't like something that's going on in our lives, in the, in the world, you know, the people around us.

We don't like the way something is done, and we're committed to change it. That's why entrepreneurs are going to solve all the world's major problems.

We're not waiting on government. We're not waiting on big corporations. It's us. We're gonna, we're gonna solve the problems. You, you are going to solve the problems. If you don't like something, when most of the world is stuck in complaining and blaming and mediocrity and unhappiness and excuses and I'm too old and I'm too young and I don't have the resources and blah blah blah, well, most of the world is stuck in that. You're off saying I'm gonna make a change. I'm gonna make that happen. And it's just the mindset shift that you have to make and keep and sustain on a daily basis, because it's so easy to fall back down into limited thinking, into fixed mindset, into mediocrity, to feel like, I can't do this. Maybe, maybe it can't happen. Maybe it's not for me. Maybe I'm not the person. Maybe I'm not good enough. Maybe I don't belong. Maybe it works for other people but not for me. Right? It's so easy to go back to that zone. But if you don't like something in your life or your community or the world, you can change it. Be the change you want to see in the world. That's you. Where do we learn to be great managers? You don't learn it in school. You'll, you'll probably not be a great manager at the beginning. So I think the best way to get going is to actually hire somebody part-time. The first person I hired was for 1 hour a day. 1 hour a day. I hired them for 1 hour a day. One, they were better at, at the thing— it was doing database stuff— than, than I was. So it freed up an hour and a half of my time every day because he was better at it than I was. He could do it faster. And two, it also got me used to managing somebody on a small scale before being fully responsible for them, before I was their entire income. And had to learn how to be a good boss, a good leader, a good manager, good mentor, good coach. I could, I could play on a smaller scale and develop the skills. And so I think people wait too long because they feel like they have to have a giant budget. You could hire somebody for 1 hour a day, you know, instead of buying Starbucks, you know, I don't know how much is cost? $5, $4, whatever, right? Instead of buying Starbucks every day, you get 2 coffees, that's $8 to $10. You hire somebody for $10 an hour to do that thing for you, 1 hour a day. That frees up your time to go do other things. So I want you to start being more resourceful, to try to find other ways to through instead of thinking, I'm by myself, I'm all alone, I can't do it. There's a famous expression that goes, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. You have to build a team. Your mission is too big. Your purpose is too big to make your dream happen. You have to focus in on your Michael Jordan level ability. And to spend more time doing it. To stop spending time on the things that don't produce value and that you don't have a lot of interest in. And to start thinking about how can the people around me support me better? And if they're not going to support me, how do I find people who will? Because your purpose is too important. You haven't even come close. I've tried everything. You haven't even come close to trying everything. How many things have you tried? 20? There's a million things you can do. You have not even come close. And don't use that as a beat yourself down. That's a push forward to say there's a million more ideas inside me. There's a million more ideas inside me that I can use to accomplish this goal. There is always a way. Remind yourself, make it your mantra. Put it on a t-shirt. There is always a way and you are going to find it.

Because you made it this far in the video, I want to celebrate you. Most people start and don't finish. Most people never actually follow through.

Most people say they want something, but they don't ever do the work to actually get it. But you are different.

You are special.

Believe Nation, you made it here all the way to the end, and I love you.

So as a special celebration, if you put a hashtag #believe down in the comments below on this video, I will showcase you and celebrate you somewhere on the screen in a future video because you are awesome.

If you want to watch another top 10 rules of Evan Carmichael, check out the video next to me. Continue to believe. I will see you there.

Be super clear on what you want out of life and then go find people who've accomplished exactly that and learn from them. Who you spend your time with is who you become, so choose wisely because most people