BREAKING: The Secret to Achieving Massive Success

Good morning, Believe Nation! It's Evan. My one word is believe. I believe in you, and I want to see that awesome thing that you have inside you explode out into the universe to have a major impact. So to help you on your journey, today's message is find an accountability partner. Over to you, Eric Thomas.

All right, y'all gotta do me a huge favor. All right, look, I know, I know the power of one. Trust me. Look, don't get too analytical on me. I know the power of one, but I'm telling you, sometimes to make a milestone become a reality, you gotta get it done by twos. One of the greatest basketball players that ever played the game. Yep, Michael Jordan. Oh, a spectacular move by Michael Jordan. Yep, Michael Jordan didn't do it alone.

Come on, come on, come on.

You got, when you say Mike, you gotta say Scottie Pippen. Are you hearing me? LA, LA, baby, when you say Kobe Bryant, like for real, for real, you can't go without saying, when you talk about that era, you can't go without saying Shaquille O'Neal. Are you hearing me? Sometimes, yup, the Power One is great. MJ was doing his thing on the solo, yup. Kobe was doing his thing on the solo. But you gotta keep it 100. When Jordan had Scottie, ah, magical. Magic happen. Oh, when Shaq was with Kobe, ah, magic happened. And what I'm telling you is, as long as I was doing it by myself, yep, as long as I was doing it by myself, I could never get that dissertation done. The power of two. No man, and I mean it, no man is an island. And let me tell you what changed the game. What changed the game is when I met with Dr. June. What changed the game is when I sat down with Dr. June and I had some accountability. Can I say it? Ah, accountability partner. Your problem is you doing it by yourself. Your problem is you don't want nobody to know that you got, I know, I know you afraid for them to see your weaknesses. I know you're afraid to be vulnerable. Yep, you're afraid to tell 'em your dream. Look, you gotta tell somebody. Somebody gotta hold you accountable. I'm not telling you to tell the world, but one other person needs to know. And one other person needs to hold you accountable. And my life changed. My milestone became a reality. Listen to me, I'm giving you the secret to success. The day I told Dr. June, I wanna get it done, and Dr. June looked me in my face and said, don't play with me, don't play with me, are you ready? Look, I, not only do I have a PhD, not only have I sat on many committees, listen to me very closely, I can and will I'll help you to get through this, but don't play with me. You gotta be serious. And Doc said, all I need you to do, you tell me when you want this PhD. You tell me when you wanna be finished with this dissertation. You tell me when. You tell me, and I'll tell you how, I'll tell you what you have to do every single day. How many pages you have to write. How much research you have to do. How much time you have to spend on it. Listen to me, it did not become a reality. It didn't become real until I sat down with Dr. June and we made a commitment. Are you hearing me? Before it was just an idea, before it was just a thought, before it was just something I said, but when I sat down, imano, imano, man to man, imano, imano, man to man, when I sat down and I made that commitment and I shook his hand, when I looked him in his eyes and said, I'm ready to get it done, all we did was meet every Monday. Are you hearing me? I know this sounds too simple. I know it sounds too good to be true. All we did was sit down on Mondays at 9 o'clock, and every single week he said, this is what you need to get done. If you are a man and you do what you say you gonna do, and you make no excuses, and you don't let nothing get in your way, I guarantee you in a year's time, if that's how long you want this process to take, I guarantee you we can get it done. But what I can't do is I can't do it for you. But I can show you what it takes to make it. And I didn't want— I— there was a part of me that I never really wanted to link up with nobody else because I really didn't want to fully expose myself. I didn't really— he said to me, kid, you've never written a dissertation before. How would you know how to do it? That's what I'm here for. And when you get that life coach— that's the problem with some of you. You can't get to that next level because you're trying to do it on your own. You're trying to do it in your own strength. And I'm not saying there's no power in one. Mike was murdering the game, putting up 60-something against Boston. Mike was dunk contest. Mike was doing it. But Mike never reached those milestones by himself. He had to bring somebody else into his sphere of influence.

If you want to reach your potential, if you want to have ultimate success, you need to have the people around you pushing you to do more, to be better, and to go faster. Because it's rarely you that's gonna push you to be the hardest. Because there'll be days when we push ourselves that today's the day I'm gonna go out and crush it, and there's gonna be other days where you wake up and you just don't feel it. And if you have a boss who's grinding on you, or if you have customers who are grinding on you, say, hey, you got to go and do this thing, then you'll do it. But we will too often let ourselves down. We don't want to let other people down, but we'll let ourselves down really often. And so you wake up and you don't really push as hard as you could. You don't do as much as you could. And so that's where having the right people in your life through accountability can really help you. I do it in 3 different ways, and hopefully you can pick up some of these things that might be able to help you. The first way is I started a mastermind group, and I've had this group for over a decade now. And we had criteria to get started. Now we look at businesses with at least $300,000 in revenue, and the highest has had $8 million in revenue. And we meet once a month, and every month we get together at my boardroom and we meet around the table and we have dinner, and everybody has 15-20 minutes to talk about what's going on in their business and how, how we can help them. And not so much all the wins. Like, it's easy to talk about all the great things that are happening. This is the group to talk about all the crap. Like, what do you need help with? How can we help you? 'Cause you're not gonna go talk to, you know, your customers or your investors or your suppliers about all the things that are going wrong in your business. This is where you do it. And so that really helps. And then at that meeting we also partner people up where two people are connected and every week they have a quick accountability phone call. Say, here are the things I wanna get done before the next meeting. And you have a 15-minute call, 10-minute call every week with your partner to make sure that you're both doing the things that you said you were going to do. So we have one year-end goal that we're all shooting for. Mine is to reach 1 million YouTube subscribers. Other people have different targets. Could be revenue, could be something else, but a meaningful number. And then in between those monthly meetings, to prevent the, like, the big high of coming to the meeting and you're on fire for the next week and then you fall back down to your normal, you know, patterns, and then the big high again. Like, how do you stay consistently high? Having that weekly connection point with somebody else in the group and then switching up who you connect with every month really helps. The second form of accountability I have is I have a YouTube mastermind group. This is run by Tim Schmoyer. It's me, Tim, and a couple other YouTubers who have YouTube as a full-time business plus, and we have teams and we're, we're trying to build our companies to the next level, all using different kind of strategies. You know, mine is entrepreneurship-focused. And I have products like books, and I do brand deals. And Tim is creating his own courses, and he has different kinds of content. And everybody's basically using YouTube for their business somehow. And we meet once a week on a Tuesday, and it's great to say, okay, here's, here's what I need help with, right? Here's how I'm trying to grow, here's how I'm trying to learn. And every week somebody takes a different spot on the hot seat. So it might be my week to go, and then in you know, 6 to 8 weeks, it'll be my week again to go up. And in between, it's other people's turns, and I'm trying to give advice instead of just receiving advice. And so it helps keep my eye on the ball— not here— my eye on the ball for YouTube, being able to get help, ask for advice, and also see what other people are doing. You know, the point of those groups is, yes, it's great to have accountability and to push yourself to do more, but also if you see other people who are ambitious, who are trying to do big things, and even if you're helping them, you're on the other side. Just seeing, being around other entrepreneurs makes you want to do more. There's just a vibe. You know, if you're around people who hate their jobs, who hate their lives, it's hard to stay positive. It's almost like you want to build a shield, like, don't, don't infect me, right, with your hatred of life, right? And entrepreneurs are off, like, we want to do big things, we want to, we want to have a big impact, we want to create something new. And being around other entrepreneurs who are trying to go off and do these big things Even if you're not asking for help on your day, it's still inspiring, it still makes me want to push harder. So I've got the in-person mastermind group that I started, the group that Tim started that we meet virtually once a week. And then the third way that's really helped me, that continues to help me, is the videos. You might be watching this and saying, "Well, that's great, it works for you, Evan, but I don't live in a big city like Toronto," or "I don't have any connections online, I don't know how to be around successful people." 'You know, I just have deadbeats around me who hate their lives. I don't know how to go out and create these mastermind groups.' One, that's a limiting belief that you can, you can crush. You can find ways if you're really dedicated to. Instead of just complaining and shifting your thinking to how, you start asking that question, then you'll start finding answers. But the videos also really helped me. A big reason why I made this channel was for myself. Like, it's great, it's for you guys, it's to spread awareness, is to help entrepreneurs. It's for me too. It's for my own mindset. When I'm watching content from a Steve Jobs or from an Eric Thomas or from an Oprah Winfrey or Michelle Obama, like watching these people doing these things, it inspires me to want to do more. And so, you know, Eric Thomas is my accountability partner even though I haven't met him yet, right? By watching his videos and hearing his passion and just seeing what he's up to and how hard he's grinding and hustling and want to have an impact on the world, it motivates me to want to do more. He's pushing me even though he's never met me. And so those people, what I call aspirational mentors— find the people that you love, find the people that you look up to. Whether they're entrepreneurs, athletes, musicians, the people who you just resonate. Because some people love Eric Thomas and some people may not like him. You know, some people love Oprah Winfrey and some people may not like her. It's not that one person is right, one person is wrong. Different people will hit you with a message and a style and a tone tone that just resonates with you more. You know, Eric Thomas is passionate and excited and will yell at you, and Wayne Dyer, you know, will be calm and might hug you, right? It's just a totally different energy, but often they're saying the same thing. Their message is often very, very similar, just their style and their approach is different, and you'll resonate with one over the other. And so when you find those people that you resonate with, Subscribe to their channel. Subscribe to their news alerts. When you find somebody who has a message that was really meaningful to you, try to absorb as much as you can. There's an entrepreneur that I discovered through this channel named Naveen Jain, and he's an Indian billionaire, and he wants to go to the moon and has all these huge plans that he's going after. I'd never heard of him before somebody requested him for the channel. He doesn't have a YouTube channel. You know, and so as much, even as much content as I'm consuming by making the videos for you guys, I also subscribe to news alerts on videos for Howard Schultz, who's from Starbucks, for Naveen Jain, and for a couple other people who I just love their message and how they think, because I want to surround myself with it more. Even as much as I'm already getting from my channel, I want to surround myself with this content even more, because when I'm around those guys It pushes me to want to do better. You will not push yourself to be the best you. You just won't. You'll give yourself days off. You'll give yourself permission to slack way too often. And so having people around you who are either in person who push you, or who are online as part of a group who push you, or people who you just watch their content or read their books and consume them and they're part of your life, will push you to be the best version of you and not let you take so many days off. So the question of the day today is, I'm curious, how do you stay accountable? You've got this big goal that you're trying to accomplish. How do you make sure that the actions that you take are consistent, are daily, are mapping to helping you accomplish that big goal? How do you stay accountable to yourself? Leave in the comments below, really curious to find out. I also wanna give a quick shout out to Thomas Bodich who bought my book, Your One Word. For his wife Natalie Claire Bodich, who's a big fan of the channel. So Thomas and Natalie, thank you so much for your support. I really appreciate it, and I hope you enjoyed the read. Thank you guys again for watching. I hope you have an amazing day. 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 En-spresso. I wake up every morning, espresso keep me going.

You better stay on top of yourself and really measure. Unless people measure themselves, you don't get any better. You cannot succeed unless you are really holding yourself accountable and owning outcomes. Believe me, I've seen plenty of people at Microsoft, various places in the tech industry, brilliant people who when it came time to execute and actually count success, And maybe not so much. Maybe not so much. In order to do that, you have to actually know what the goal is. If the goal was to get to 450 million users and then sell to Facebook, WhatsApp did a hell of a job.

Right?

I mean that.

That's not a— I mean, it's a hell of a job at 19 billion, 55 people. That's a hell of a job. But you have to decide what outcome do you want? Bill Gates was offered $7.5 million to sell all of Microsoft in 1979. He would have been a rich guy if he had taken it. Richer if he didn't, but a rich guy. But even putting that aside, the impact on society wouldn't have been the same. We had discussions with Facebook about buying Facebook, but Zuckerberg knew what he viewed as an outcome that he really desired and was willing to put in the blood, sweat, and tears just like we were. So execution and measurement are hugely important, and yet people let themselves off the hook.

Let me give you the one word secret to happiness. One word. This is all you need to be happy. The most important word ever.

If you had to think of one word that's most important to you or that sums you up or that would be kind of like a little beacon. Hey, Believe Nation, if you want to know what the most important one word is for Tony Robbins, Tony Robbins, Gary Vaynerchuk, Oprah Winfrey, will.i.am, and Howard Schultz, I have a very special secret video for you. Check the description for details.