COMMIT TO GREATNESS: Unlocking the Secrets to Success

Become great.

You must commit to your own gift.

Greatness.

You have to really commit.

I aspire to be something greater.

Hello, Believe Nation. My name is Evan Carmichael. My one word is believe, and I believe that entrepreneurs will solve all of the world's major problems. So to help you on your journey today, we're going to learn how you can commit to greatness. And also, guys, if you're watching, if you hear something that really resonates with you, please leave it down in the comments below, put quotes around it, you might win a prize. But also when you write it down, it's much more likely to stick with yourself as well. Enjoy.

Now a lot of young people talk about the Black Mamba. The Black Mamba, let me tell you something. When you talk about the Black Mamba, you talk about practice, it's a must-have. I watched this dude lose a game, a game. I don't even know if it was the playoffs. I think it was like a regular game against the Miami Heat in Miami. Miami, South Beach, Florida. I don't know if you ever been there before, but it's— you want to go. It's a nice place to just hang out, especially if you're on the road playing ball. It's a nice place after the game to go get dinner, sit on the beach. It's a nice— and I'm sure if you NBA, they probably got a VIP section for them on the beach. And unfortunately The Lakers lost to the Miami Heat because Black Mamba missed a wide open shot in the corner, set shot, he missed it. What he did for the next 3, 4 hours while everybody else was getting dressed and going on the beach, he sat there for hours shooting the exact same shot over and over and over and over like he had never won a championship. I'm like, now hold up, where everybody else at on the Lakers? They need to be out there as a squad. But the Black Mamba's out there doing his thing like, I'm not on them, I messed up, I gotta practice. And this is not a coach practice. This is not an organization— the organization didn't call this one. This was just flat out the black mamba was saying this is a must-have. And where most of you go wrong, you're not even 4.0 and you're not studying. Like, you're not even a 4.0 student. Like, you got a 2.0, a 2.5, a 3-something, and you still not really studying like that because for you it's like, ah, it's not a must-have. It blows my mind. I work with professional athletes. I work with D1 athletes all over the world. And when I look at Twitter and Instagram, it blows my mind how dudes on Instagram, I'm like, bruh, you have not won a championship. Like, that's what you come here for, to win a championship. And so if you don't win a championship, I don't even know why it's people broke. I don't even know how you had enough time to do a 30-second video.

You broke.

How did you have time to do a video? How did you have time, like, to do a dance routine when you should be practicing? You should be lifting weights. You should be looking at film. You said, not me, that you want to win the tourney, that you want to win it all. You want to go to the Final Four. How do you want to go to the Final Four but your schedule don't look like the Final Four? What are you tweeting about when you broke?

I realized that when— to have the level of success that I want to have, it's difficult to spread it out and do multiple things, you know. It's in order to to be world-class, and I made a decision, I want to be world-class. And it just, it takes such a desperate, obsessive focus to excel on a certain, on the level that I want to make movies. You know, I was, uh, Star Wars when I was young. I sat in a movie theater and watched Star Wars, and I just couldn't believe that that movie made me feel like that, just floored and just stunned by the creativity. And just, I'm realizing that in order to move people in that way, in order to touch people in that way, you really gotta focus with all of your fiber and all of your heart and all of your creativity.

Making the right decisions is a one-on-one battle.

Whatever majority of the—

whatever majority of the crowd's doing, find your way doing the opposite. And see 9 times out of 10 how right you turn out to be. How many of you, by a show of hands, how many of you have found out a way to not waste time? Show of hands. So it's simple. See, God gives us a lot of things in life, but it's a couple things he don't give us. And time is something he gives no man.

That's the one thing.

No matter if you look at your watch, I look at my watch, you look at your clock, I look at my clock, you look at your phone, I look at my phone. Time slows down for no man. So the question is, how much time you gonna waste? I gave up on trying to make money years ago. I gave up on entertaining clubs years ago. 14 years since I even entered, even thought about taking a step in anything that doesn't reflect where I'm trying to go. That's what you got to put in your head. Every decision you make, does this decision influence where I'm ultimately trying to go? Because if it does, you got to get rid of it. So these conversations that I came and had today, I can go all day. 'Cause I love sharing the reason why people don't realize what you got to give up to become great. What sacrifices you gotta make to become great. What promises you gotta make to yourself to become great. Read this in the thought process. Greatness is a lifestyle. It's what you live like. It's what you get every day.

Breathe.

You know, hard work pays. I put in a hell of a lot of work all throughout this buildup in the fight. I pumped out more content than anybody. More content than Fox. More content than ESPN. More content than BT Sport. More content than everybody on the mag life on my own channels. You know what I mean? I'm a fucking workhorse from all angles, not just in the gym. But I'm building this media empire now myself and we pumped out the content. I'm very proud of how it went. We consistently Daily movies I was releasing, you know, from like a month ago, every single day. You know what I mean? Nobody's doing that. So I'm very proud of it and I'm very like, the work pays, hard work pays. And I put in the fucking work and that's why I'm sitting at the top. I put it all on the line, I show up, I perform, and I get the results from that.

You know, Shark Tank, I do the show not because they're great investments, but I do the show because it sends the message to kids 8 to 80 that the American dream is alive and well. You can watch the show and come to realize that somebody out of Iowa or the middle of nowhere in Texas can start a company and turn it into something special. I think so many families watch the show together that it's just, particularly in this day and age when so many people are saying what's wrong with this and what's wrong with that and what's wrong with America, it just really reinforces that somebody with an idea who's willing to go beyond just an idea to a company phase and really work, something special can happen. And, you know, just reinforcing that is really important to me.

And like I've said before, we each have a gift, but too many people miss out because they refuse to sign the lease on their gift. You keep looking for it outside of you.

Stop.

Sit with yourself. What is it that you do the absolute best with the least amount of effort? That's your gift. But if you are constantly looking outside of yourself and you don't latch on to your gift, you will never find your purpose. If you want to succeed, you must commit to your own gift and embrace it.

A good fighter is not necessarily the greatest fighter to ever live. It's where you want to go. You know what I mean? A good fighter is just to be diligent and committed and disciplined, doing what you hate to do, but do it like you love it. Always testing yourself and forcing yourself to the limits, you know. If you know you like, if you love women, then deny yourself that, you know what I mean. That's what success in general is all about, sacrifice. From my experience, of any little success I may have had, just be willing to sacrifice, you know. Unfortunately, sometimes you can have fun accomplishing your goals. And when sometimes people don't have the determination, the will, and the steadfastness, the tenacity, they give in under the slightest struggle.

Greatness is a different definition to different people. Greatness to me is when I land that fakie half cab hill on my skateboard or some shit. Greatness is the song I recorded last week. Somebody might not find that great, but it's great to me, and that's all that matters. What the fuck I think in my head, as long as I like it, that's all that matters. Greatness to me is finally getting my video on MTV. It's on there now, and I'm happy. I finally got my shit on fucking MTV. Some people might think that's selling out or whatever, but I don't really give a fuck. That's fucking great to me. I'm proud of myself. I've been wanting that since I was 7 years old, and I finally got that shit. Hard work pays the fuck off.

Martin Luther King tried to commit suicide twice. You guys see what I'm saying here? JFK went through periods of deep illness, deeply, deeply ill, where people thought he would die. These types of things, right? Winston Churchill went through deep, deep depressions. So you can become one of those people. It doesn't mean you're gonna become one of them, because that's— I mean, those guys are in their own universe. But you know, you can become somebody of great power if you've gone through that, because you've been hardened Do you guys see what I mean here? If you've been through that kind of bullshit, then if you've conditioned yourself to pull yourself out of something like that, if the world gets all fucked up, while all the other people, they're used to happiness, they're like, whoa, happy, and they're like, my happy world's falling apart. My happy world is falling apart. Shit gets all fucked up, you're just like, it's all good, baby. Yeah, yeah, you know? You don't care because you're adjusted to it. So you've taken conscious control. Do you guys see what I mean? Okay, so there's benefits. Being a hard case newbie means that you can be better than any of the guys that had it easily. It'll be harder to get, but you can excel to a higher level than all the people that were naturally good if you choose to. But for you, it will be a life of commitment in the same way that a guy that wants to get kind of big in the gym, if he's going to be big in the gym and he's a hard gainer, little skinny dude, he's gonna have a higher commitment level. To get to that level, you're gonna have a higher commitment level. You're not gonna get to average as easily. And sometimes even striving to stay at average won't work for you because you slip back. So you have to really commit. You have to take your foot off the fucking parking brake, man. You have to burn the boats, as they say, and just go for it. As a hard case newbie, if you do that, you can slowly build those willpower muscles, slowly reacclimate your body to positivity, build up friends, build up abundance, build an amazing situation for yourself. You do amazing, amazing things.

There's a lot of people who get frustrated, who then say, "Enough is enough. I'm going to do something." Then the next day they wake up and it's— they're back to their old life. They had this moment of boldness, a moment of greatness, and they fall back into repeated patterns and habits. Life just gets them down again and they go back to their job or their regular life. How did you break that cycle? This is actually the day I'm gonna go and do something bigger?

I think it was just a moment of like, enough is enough. Like, I was sleeping on my sister's couch for a couple years originally, and she had told me, you know, are you gonna start paying rent? At about a year and a half mark, like, when are you gonna start paying rent? Because I was just eating her food for free. I was like a slob. I didn't like clean up. I was just taking advantage of the situation. And I was 24 years old or something. I remember just being like, it's time for me to grow up and do something with my life. Like I've sat here for a year and a half, almost 2 years now, like depressed, miserable, whatever I was doing, making excuses. Like this isn't who I wanna be. I aspire to be something greater. You know, my parents didn't raise me to be this way. I wanted to make myself proud. I wanted to make my last name proud. I wanted to make, you know, my family proud. And I wanted to be a symbol. I think, you know, I've always wanted to be a symbol of inspiration, of possibilities. From my sports days, like, I remember the feeling after the games when parents or fans or parents of other players from other teams would come up to me and say, thank you for showing me what's possible. Like, I had no you know, there was no way you were able to catch that ball, but somehow you did that. It was like, it blew my mind. There was no way you guys should have come back after how much you were down, and what you did like blew me away. Like, I loved hearing that and seeing in other people like this spark of passion, excitement, a possibility for what they could create in their life. And I, and I wanted to be that symbol of passion and vision and focus and commitment towards my dream to show others what's possible. And I've never been the best at anything I've done. You know, in sports, I was like always the underdog. I was never the biggest, fastest, or strongest dog. And I think it's just wanting to show people what's possible. So that's what I'm still doing. It's like I'm just a kid from a small town in Delaware, Ohio, who I had a lot of emotional turmoil inside growing up, and I'm trying to show people what's possible no matter where you come from.

Thank you guys so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed. I'd love to know what did you take from this video that you're going to immediately apply somehow to your life or to your business? Leave it down in the comments below. I'm really excited to see what you have to say. So thank you guys again for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself. Believe in yourself and whatever your one word is.

Much love.

I'll see you soon.