Break the Mold: How Doing the Unexpected Leads to Success | Joe Rogan

Rise and shine, it's espresso time! Good morning, Believe Nation, it's Evan Carmichael. My one word is believe, and I believe in you. I believe in that amazing gift you have inside you that needs to be shared with the world. So let's start the day off right together. Grab your cup of coffee and sip on today's message: be creative. Over to you, Joe Rogan.

We were talking before this podcast about Holly Holm's victory over Ronda Rousey, and one of the things we were talking about was that Ronda had this very linear, straightforward attack. You knew she was coming, and Holly is a master at countering. So all she had to do was wait and move, and Ronda was coming in one direction. There was no There was no variation.

There was no creativity.

There was no creativity. It was a mad bulldog rush that had worked on everybody else before. But she found one person who was a virtuoso at movement. And she needed creativity, and it wasn't there. And she needed that experience that came with having faced someone who knew that position and knew— had a deep understanding of that movement, and she didn't have that in her repertoire. And so that's the result that we saw. Like a striker like Anderson Silva, he's extremely creative. If you watch, he's got a fight versus Tony Frickland in Cage Warriors. Cage Warriors? What the fuck was it called in England? Small organization in England. I think it's Cage Warriors.

Yeah.

Where he practiced this step-in uppercut elbow, like a sideways elbow, and his coach was going crazy, stop practicing that. And he would make his wife hold the pillow because his coach didn't want him to practice it anymore. 'cause he thought he was wasting his time. So he practiced stepping— his wife would hold a pillow for him, and he'd step in and throw this uppercut elbow. That's what he knocked out Frickland with. And he obviously— yeah, Frickland was outclassed in that fight, but he wanted to make a point. And like the front kick that he landed in the face of Vitor Belfort— Vitor never saw that shit coming 'cause nobody had done that to him before, 'cause nobody had done that in the history of the UFC. Nobody had ever knocked anybody out with the first kick you learn in martial arts. But the creativity to try something like that, he would throw punches to your thigh from standing. He would throw a jab to your thigh. He would throw a crescent kick, an inside crescent kick to your face. Like, what the fuck? It was part of what made him such an effective striker is that he threw these things that you just didn't expect him to do.

Your ultimate success will come from doing something in a creative way that has never been done before in your own style. Now, I'm a big believer in modeling success. I think whenever you don't know what to do, you're new to an industry, you're new to a country, you're new to anything, study success. It's the name of this channel. It's why I started doing this. I believe you can learn a lot by studying the people who have come before you. It's how my first company was saved. I studied Bill Gates' success, and it took me from making $300 a month to having companies as customers in 30 countries and being acquired a couple years later. That strategy saved my business and saved my self-worth, modeling his success. But doing what Bill Gates did was not the exact same thing that what I did. I had to try what Bill Gates did and then modify it, and that's the key. You take what works for these different people and then you modify it for yourself. You have to put your own twist on it. You gotta put your own unique take on it because otherwise you're just a copy of somebody else. And you won't be a good copy. I look at my YouTube channel, we've done some iconic things. We've done the Top 10 Rules of Success, we've done the Enespresso series, we've done a lot of things that now other people are trying to copy. People send me emails all the time, or they leave comments on YouTube saying, "Hey, this person's copying you. This person has the same template, the same idea. They're doing the same thing as you." So? Like, you can't out-Evan Evan. If all you're doing is copying exactly what I'm doing, you're going to lose. Copy, do exactly what I'm doing. You're going to have to modify it. If you're just a junior Evan, then you always lose. And that sucks for everybody because I don't want to see a bunch of junior Evans out there. I want to see people doing their thing. I want to see you take what I'm doing and improve on it and make it your own and have a different target audience, like have something that people really love and look up to and can't wait to see. If all you're doing is a mini version of me, then Why are people going to really pay attention to you, right? Like, they're going to come to me. So that's the thing. You have to be creative. You can start by copying other people. You look at people that you look up to and respect. If you love Oprah, study her story, see what she did, learn from those lessons. Success leaves clues. Absolutely. That's what I preach all the time in these videos. But when you apply it, it should feel a little bit off. It should feel like if I just copy and paste, It's not quite the whole thing. You're like 95% of the way there, but that extra 5%, that's the genius that you need to apply yourself. That's what you need to bring to it, the magic that you and only you can do. If you get up and start preaching believe, you can't do it like me. It's not that I'm great or I'm better than anybody else. I'm just better at being me than anybody. You're better at being you, so go be you. Like, you can't be better at Steve Jobs than Steve Jobs. And so that's the point. You can model success. I'm a big fan of it, but at some point you need to be creative. You got to find your own path. You got to find your own place to stand. And that's exciting. It's scary, but it's exciting. And the gut check that I always used was I would copy it exactly and just see what felt not right. Felt like, hmm, this piece here that's missing. You know, people would give me challenges and assignments and I would try to do it and it would never quite feel right. And I would always have to find a way to customize it and tweak it. Even when you guys leave suggestions and feedback, "Hey, do this topic." Sometimes it's a fit, sometimes I need to like— it always has a bit of Evan into it, right? Like all the videos that I launch have me, have belief. I see them, whether I'm in the video or not, has a piece of me. Because that's what my channel is about and it can't be replicated. And so you want everything you create to have a piece of you in it, even if you're modeling from other people. You need to have that creativity, nurture it, be excited by it, study it. And whenever you have that little feeling that something doesn't feel quite right here, something needs to be improved here, I know I can do better, Get excited. That's where you're going to create some magic. When you feel a little bit of restlessness, jump into it. Don't run away from it. Don't hide under the covers. Jump into that restlessness because from there you're going to create something amazing that only you can do. And then people out there will try to be junior versions of you, and you can give them the same message. So the question of the day today is, I'm curious, what is the most creative thing that you have done in the past week? Let's have some creativity happening here in the comments. Leave it down in the section below. I'm excited to see what you guys have to say. I also want to give a quick shout out to Adam Travers. Adam, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word. Really means a lot to me, man, and I hope you enjoy it. So thank you guys again for watching. I believe in you, and I hope you continue to believe in yourself in whatever your one word is. I'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot of espresso. I wake up every morning. Español.

So I saw Natalie the Flowassist's video and she had like a bald head and I just thought she was so beautiful. And I was also working at a job that I was frustrated with and trying to get Awkward Black Girl off the ground. I tweeted something like, "Man, I wish I had an excuse, like I wish someone would just break up with me so that I could have an excuse to shave my hair off." And then I was like, "Oh, that's a funny plotline of like a show or something," and decided like to tweet that I was gonna— or put on Facebook that I wanted to shave my head bald. And so all my friends responded like, "Oh my gosh, do it! You about to be so ugly! Oh my God, what if you have a weird-shaped head?" And I was like, "My friends are terrible." But I saw how much attention I was getting, and I was like, "Oh my gosh, I should use this. I should shave my head." and then do a trailer for Awkward Black Girl where I feature my bald head. And that way people who want to see what I look like will also know about this new show that I'm trying to do. And so I did it and it got like 3,000 views in a day and I had a bald head and I had a fresh start and that bald head changed my life.

My mom always knew with singing that was my very strong suit. You know, I grew up singing in a church and my mom said when she saw me sing, that's really all the things that gave her like, you know, wow, I feel really like my daughter have something powerful. She thought that that could get people to immediately see why she drove 4 days and 3 nights, you know, from her hometown to help me pursue my dreams. But everywhere we went, I mean, it was usually mostly for acting stuff because people wasn't— I mean, we in Michael Jackson's time, people wasn't really signing kid acts. And so even though my strongest suit was music, we still— I still wanted to enter the world of acting. And so we thought what a great idea it would be to try to trick these people into letting me sing in the room so they could see that she might not have She don't have a lot of experience with acting, but she's got a lot of guts. And she's got a lot of, you know, passion. So we go into these rooms, you know, we'd have a quick conversation. The people would be, you know, they see a million people all the time. They was ready to go after a little while. And my mom, you know, we get ready to go, and as soon as we're about to get ready to go, I say, you know what, can I just sing for you, please? And then my momma, you know, Kiki, they're not here for any of these things. They don't have the time for none of that. And I'm like, but please, but please just let me sing for you, please. No, honey, no, honey, just let her sing. Be a lion in your own way. It's just so funny when I think, when I really think back on that type of stuff, it is so funny because my mom and I really did have game plans. And I think, like, seriously, we had a game plan. And when we go out the room, we be like, thank you, thank you.

Ha!

High-fiving and everything. And like, that is the best. I remember, I always tell my mom, we have a thing. It's like, I tell my mom all the time, like, you my soulmate, girl. You my soulmate. I know that moms and daughters and parents, they have maternal relationships, but my mom and ours is more than that. She understands me and she has compassion for me because she shares the same love that I have for creativity.

For me, I always like a director with a good balance. And what I mean by good balance is enough vision, number one, and then enough freedom for the actors to be able to do their jobs. So I— the style of acting that I choose to take for each role, I love to be the character. I love to become it, not in a method type of way, but in a scene. I like to watch a movie I'm in back and feel like I can't remember doing that stuff. Like watching Star Wars. Half of the things Finn does in that film, I can't remember making a decision to do it because it was— there was instinct and there was freedom and there was the ability to be able to be creative. And J.J. is a big advocate of that. I mean, he would— we would start a scene with the dialog and he'll be like, all right, let's just do your version and let's just do a version that you guys feel free with. And that's how Harrison works as well. And improv really makes way for magical moments. And when you have a director that has a good enough balance to understand the technical point of view for at least a good shot, color correction, visual effects, practical effects, but then he has artistic knowledge also. For character arcs, dialogue, and fun. It's always good. So that's what I look for.

Raise your standard.

Apple, at the core, its core value is that we believe that people with passion can change the world for the better. Not one drop of my self-worth depends on your acceptance of me. I don't ever give up. I'd have to be dead or completely incapacitated. Hey, Believe Nation! If you want to see my all-time favorite top 10 rules of success, I have a very special secret video for you. These are the individual clips that I have personally learned the most from and applied to my life and my business. Check the link in the description for details.