Bob Marley says he feels "rich in life forever" without focusing on wealth. Evan Carmichael argues that passion and impact should come before money for entrepreneurs, pointing to George Lucas as someone driven by changing his industry, not profit. Money follows when you love your craft and deliver value.
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Good morning, Believe Nation!
My name is Evan Carmichael. My one word is believe, and I believe that entrepreneurs are going to solve all of the world's major problems. So to help you on your journey, today's message is don't focus on the money. Over to you, Bob Marley.
Have you made a lot of money out of your music?
Money? I mean, what is— how much is a lot of money to you?
Yeah, that's a good question. Have you made, say, millions of dollars?
No.
Are you a rich man?
When you mean rich, what do you mean?
You have a lot of possessions, a lot of money in the bank?
Possession make you rich? I don't have that type of richness. My richness is life forever.
If you just focus on the money, you're never going to get it. This is what so many entrepreneurs do and why so many entrepreneurs fail, is their number one goal is money. Now money is important. If you're running a business, money is important. You know, even if you're running a charity, money is still important. Money is important. It's just not the number one thing. It's number two or three. There has to be something more important than money for you to have success, ultimate success as an entrepreneur. Sure, you can make a few bucks, but you look at the people who are the top in any field, money was never the number one goal. Now in this clip, Bob Marley is talking about how he's not rich financially, but he's rich in life. I'm saying you can be rich financially and you can be rich in life by not focusing on the money. Look at the people who are self-made millionaires and billionaires and read their biographies and read their story and understand why they started their companies. Watch the top 10 videos on all of them. It's never been about the money. It's always been about making a profound change to the way something is done in their industry, having a deep passion for their craft that they needed to bring this thing out into creation. You know, when George Lucas created Star Wars, he thought it would be a flop. He thought it would only be for a select few geeks who really love that genre. He never expected it to be this huge thing that turned him into a billionaire, but he loved making the video and he poured every ounce of creativity he had into making that movie. And that's a story over and over and over and over and over again. Successful entrepreneurs love their craft. They want to do the work. And as a result of creating something valuable, because they put so much love into it, then they start making money. And so I don't want you to be the entrepreneur who says, "I don't care about money. Money is never important to me." Because then you don't go out and get money. And then you can't have the impact. Like, you need money to go out and hire more people and have an even bigger impact. There's only so much you can do. It's great to spend half your time working, half your time volunteering and giving back. That's awesome. But you could have a bigger impact and volunteer more if you had a team of 100 people who are also spreading out their time volunteering. So money is important. For the people who think money is— money is the devil and you shouldn't have money, you're never going to be successful either. Money is important. It's just not the number one thing. Don't start a business just trying to make money. Start a business to have a profound impact on the way things are done in an industry and help people. That thing has to be above. For me, it's helping entrepreneurs. I believe that entrepreneurs will solve all the major problems in the world. It's not on the government, it's not on corporations, it's on us. We're going to make the difference. And so for me, making these videos and helping by writing books and doing the thing that I do, I feel helps entrepreneurs and helps contribute to solving all the major problems of the world. You guys out there are going to be the ones who are making a difference. If I can motivate you, or if I can give you strategies that help you, if I help you keep on that extra year and that's the year that makes a difference, that makes me feel good. It makes me feel like I'm having an impact. That's why I do what I do. And in the process, I make money. If I wasn't making money, I couldn't hire a team and then I'd be doing everything myself. I'd be down to one video every 2 weeks, which isn't good for anybody. So money is never the number 1 goal, but it's also not the number 100 goal. It's gotta be 2 or 3 on the list. So the question of the day today is, I'm curious, what is the number 1 thing on your list that you would put ahead of making money? Leave it in the comments below, really curious to find out. I also want to give a quick shout out to Mike Markham from restaurant-hr.com. Mike, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Year One Word. And making a review on it. I'm really glad you enjoyed it, and I really want to thank you for your support. So thank you guys again for watching.
I believe in you.
I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love, and I'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot of espresso.
I wake up every morning, espresso keep me going.
I never did anything for money, right? So it was never about money. My experience has been when people do things for money, you make bad choices. Find what you love, and then you'll learn how to make money doing what you love. When I changed careers, I was never changing to something for money. I was changing to something I loved more, right? And that, to me, that's really the only way to keep the passion. If you have two choices, one is playing the piano playing piano and another one is over here though, bowling. And you can make more money bowling, but you love playing the piano more. You gotta play the piano. It's like you'll tear yourself apart if you're not doing the thing that you love most in life. And you know what it is right now. Right now there's something that you love more than everything. Whatever it is that you love crazy has to be the thing that you dedicate your life.
You make more money than any actor in the world.
This too shall pass. By the way, I don't even know if that's true. I can tell you I pay more taxes than anybody I've ever met. Truth be told is I've never ever been motivated by money.
I gotta give it to you, man, because you just seem like such a normal guy. How are you able to stick around?
That is my superpower. Talk to my wife.
Exactly, that's what it is. Make people believe you're a normal dude.
Yeah, absolutely.
When you start out, you have to deal with the problems of failure. You need to be thick-skinned to learn that not every project will survive. A freelance life, a life in the arts, is sometimes like putting messages in bottles on a desert island and hoping that someone will find one of your bottles and open it and read it and put something in a bottle that will wash its way back to you— appreciation or a commission or money or love. And you have to accept that you may put out hundreds of things for every bottle, that winds up coming back. The problems of failure, the problems of discouragement, of hopelessness, of hunger. You want everything to happen, and you want it now, and things go wrong. My first book, a piece of journalism I'd done only for the money, and which had already bought me an electric typewriter from the advance, should have been a bestseller. It should have paid me a lot of money if the publisher hadn't gone into involuntary liquidation between the first print run selling out and the second print run never happening, and before any royalties could be paid, it would have done. And I shrugged. And I still had my electric typewriter and enough money to pay the rent for a couple of months, and I decided that I'd do my best in future not to write books just for the money. If you didn't get the money, then you didn't have anything. And if I did work I was proud of and I didn't get the money, At least I'd have the work. Every now and then, I forget that rule, and whenever I do, the universe kicks me hard and reminds me. I don't know that it's an issue for anybody but me, but it's true that nothing I did where the only reason for doing it was the money was ever worth it, except as bitter experience. Usually I didn't wind up getting the money either. The things I did because I was excited and wanted to see them exist in reality have never let me down, and I've never regretted the time I spent on any of them.
