Evan Carmichael uses a gladiator metaphor to push entrepreneurs past fear and self-doubt. He addresses the inner critic and unsupportive people who hold you back, arguing that daily persistence and belief in yourself are what separate those who build businesses from those who don't.
Chapters
It takes a lot of guts to be an entrepreneur. You may not have entrepreneurs in your life who support you, who you can look up to. And think of when you came up with the idea for your business. It may be 2 in the morning, you're lying in bed, and bang, this idea hits you. You can't sleep. You have an idea that you want to build a better life for yourself, right? This is something you get excited by. You think back to that eureka moment of a change you want to make in your life. And the bigger the change, the more drastic it is, the more you're going to potentially be afraid of it. And you lose that courage. You know, you find you wake up the next day, you don't have the courage you had at 2 in the morning because your habits, your beliefs, your routine, this keeps you down at mediocrity. And a big part of that as well is the people in your life. So think about, you come up with a great idea, right? The next morning you wake up, what do you do? You tell people about it. Who do you tell? You tell your friends, you tell your family. And this is what separates the people who are your true friends from everybody else. Because when you don't have it all figured out, there's going to be a lot of holes in your plan, right? I want to start a business. You're going to have the friends who will look at your idea and say, That's a great idea. You got to go do it. And they'll find the holes in your plan and give you supportive ideas for how to get over it. We're going to have other people in your life. I call, I call these guys the little man. You have the little man in your life who finds all the reasons why something's not going to work in your business. All the faults in your plans, right? They say it's not going to work because of this and this and this and this. All the reasons why it's not going to work. And they're confident, even if they have no experience, even if they've never done it before, they have no idea what they're talking about. Little man is confident in his wrong opinions, and that confidence often means that you believe in their wrong opinions more than you believe in yourself, and you don't take action. And little man smacks you back down into mediocrity. So how do you get over that? What's helped me is I like to think of entrepreneurs as gladiators. We wake up every day and we go to fight for our business. We fight for a better life. We fight to make our dreams happen. We're fighting for a better world for ourselves, for our family, for community, for the people around us. We're fighting every day. It's hard. You wake up, it's hard. It's soul-crushing being an entrepreneur at the beginning. And while you're fighting, you have a whole bunch of people who are in the audience watching, the spectators. That's where little man sits, up in the crowd. And he's joking with his friends, and he's hurling insults, and he's throwing popcorn down on you, because that's what little man does. But he's too afraid to get up and actually do something important in his life and fight in the ring. And I think it's important for entrepreneurs to remember the source. Like, look at who's giving you this advice. Have they done it before? And not listen to people who just drag down on every idea you have, because the little man, he's a dream killer. Because at the start, you don't know how it's all going to work out. I don't have all the answers. I just came up with the idea last night. I can't figure it all out on my own right now. And that uncertainty leads you to doubt yourself and question yourself and say, I can't do this. I've never done anything like this before. I don't have the skills. I didn't go to school for this. What makes me think I can do this? And you can't let the seeds of doubt infect who you are. Your own doubt, little man's doubt, because that dream of yours is important. And through believing in yourself, and having a schedule of inspiration. You schedule in inspiration daily into your life that pushes you to become better than you are. That's how you can achieve greatness in your life, in your business, and overcome the fear that you get along the way.
