Evan Carmichael argues entrepreneurs must keep creating something different to avoid stagnation. He spent 15 years evolving from speaking to websites to YouTube while staying focused on helping entrepreneurs. The video features examples from film and animation, showing how creators across industries reinvent their work to stay engaged.
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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 create something different. Over to you, Shigeru Miyamoto. So as entrepreneurs, we like to create different things, right? That's part of what we do. We don't like working for the man. We don't want a typical corporate job. We want to create our own thing. We want to self-explain and we want to make something different. I think that's something that should speak to you as an entrepreneur if you're watching this channel. I feel like I'm already speaking to the converted, and I don't need to express the importance of making something different. Because that's what we do as entrepreneurs. That's our role. Here's the challenge that I think that makes it difficult for entrepreneurs. We don't continue enough to make different things. Entrepreneurs are really good at the start of coming up with some bold, brand new idea, and then launching it. Now, whether it becomes successful or not, tweaking, tweaking, tweaking, trial and error, testing, customer feedback, until you hit something. What ends up happening next, though, is what screws over a lot of entrepreneurs. They stop creating something different because they found this thing that they think is the recipe for success. They found the one way to do something that was different, and they're doing it over and over and over and over again, and it's generating cash for them. Then they stop evolving. And that's the death toll for an entrepreneur. If you are not continuing to evolve, to create new things, to be different, then you're going to get bored of your business. And this happens to so many entrepreneurs. I can't tell you how many entrepreneurs I talk to that are 3, 4, 5 years into their company and say, "I'm bored. I'm looking for something different. I don't know, maybe I'll sell my business." Or they start on some like passion project, some side thing that they want to get going and doing. And here's what happened. They had so much creative energy and so much difference going into the first part of their business at the beginning, and then they found the thing that worked, and so they stuck with that and they stopped evolving. They evolved as a human, right? We constantly evolve. We constantly get new interests. We constantly want to try new things. They evolved and grew, but they didn't grow their business with them. Your business should constantly be a reflection of who you are and what you're interested in doing. If you are sticking down a business line that you are not passionate about anymore, then you're never going to have huge success. If that's you, if you are not passionate at all about your business, then chances are your business— you grew too far away from your business, right? You grew and your business stayed here. And even though it's making money, it's not interesting to you anymore. And so if that's you, Sell it and go find something else. Don't find some side hobby passion thing. Get out of your entire business and go try something else. And for the next one, and if you guys aren't at that point yet in your business where you get bored of it or you're just on the cusp, evolve your company with you. So if you look at my business, it started off me doing seminars. I was invited to speak. I sold my company when I was 22 years old How old am I now? 30— 37? So it's 15 years doing this. It's easy to get bored. Now, I still love helping entrepreneurs. That is still a huge passion of mine, but the execution of it changes. It started off me just doing speaking, and I love that. And then it evolved to me doing my website, and I love that. And then that evolved from me focusing on my website to spending a lot more time on YouTube, and I love this. And this may evolve to something else. Right? I'm not sold on being a YouTuber for the rest of my life. Something will change, I'll shift, and I'll go off and do something else. It'll still be likely around helping entrepreneurs, that's my passion, but how to do it will shift, will evolve, and grow. My introductions on these channels are changing. The video series that I try— so it's like there's the macro changes of the projects I take on, from speaking to website to YouTube, and then there's the micro evolutions inside, from launching a new series and testing and seeing and always trying new things to see how I can improve and make it better. If I stopped doing those things, I would start to die, and then I'd have to get out of it. So stop dying in your business. Continue constantly to introduce new things to get this thing excited and invigorated so you never get bored in your business. So the question of the day today is, I'm curious, have you ever been bored in your company? And what did you do to change it? Leave in the comments below, really curious to find out. I also wanna give a quick shout out to CX Kohler. Thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book. I understand it was as a gift actually, so I hope you enjoyed the gift and you're reading it and applying it to your life and your business. 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 Nespresso.
The Lion King was of course, you know, it was huge, especially because I did it for all the wrong reasons. I mean, I did it for my daughter because I wanted to show off as dad, and you know, I was doing all these grown-up movies where people were getting killed, and I couldn't take her to a premiere. I wanted to do something to take my kid to a premiere. And it was, you know, it was surprisingly emotional doing that movie. You know, it deals with a father's death, so, you know, it's got a lot more depth than the surface let me believe. And it shocked me, my own response, you know, once I started writing on it, because I was thinking, oh, you know, this is going to be, easy that it, you know, and it wasn't like it was hard, but the emotional involvement suddenly became, you know, profound as opposed to hard, you know. And really it was The Lion King that got Terry Malick interested in me, for instance. You know, Terry loved Lion King and wanted me to do Thin Red Line. So, you know, all these things are, you know, working with Ridley Scott. I mean, We've done some really good movies together, and they're stylistically so different. I mean, Black Rain is so different from Thelma and Louise, is so different from Gladiator, is so different from Hannibal, is so different from Black Hawk Down, is so different from Matchstick Men. I'm sure I'm leaving some out. So, you know, working with people who are like me, that, you know, they get a little bored doing the same thing, you know, off they go to try to do something completely different. I mean, that's, you know, that's a big part of it.
Reality television shows are so big now. I like to get on the bandwagon whenever I can find one, and I felt if we're gonna do a cartoon, an animated movie for the Hub Network, I want to make it more different than anything before. Why not make it a reality animated cartoon? So in order to make it a reality cartoon, we have real people in it. I'm as real as I know I can get, so I'm in it. We have a few other real people. You got Jim Belushi is in it. Jim Belushi. Christian Slater. They're doing the voices, right? Teri Hatcher, Sean Astin, Armie Hammer's in it. Flea and Darren Criss, they're all voicing superheroes. Are the superheroes new heroes? They're all new heroes. Actually, they're aliens from another planet, which is not unusual in a superhero story.
Let me tell you, in order to have something different, you are going to have to do something different. In order to have something more, you have to do something you haven't done yet. I had to say the things I didn't want to say, do the things I didn't feel like doing to have the life I know I wanted. Period. Period. And all I did was give instructions for here, do this bite-size, do this bite-size, do this bite-size. Bite-size digestible palatable pieces of what you can do. Does that sound good, you guys? And when you look up and you don't have to have a magnificent change over 12 months, have a small change over 30 days and then a small change over 30 days. Your breakthrough comes will come in needlepoint moves, and you'll look up in 5 years and not recognize your life.
