In this motivational video hosted by Evan Carmichael, a panel of successful entrepreneurs and public figures—including Elon Musk, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Gary Vaynerchuk—discusses the necessity of a high pain threshold for building and scaling a startup. Elon Musk explains that founders must focus on short‑term cash flow, constantly confront the risk of failure, and handle the most painful problems that no one else can solve, likening the experience to staring into an abyss and eating glass. Carmichael expands on this by urging entrepreneurs to deliberately increase their tolerance for discomfort, compare it to physical training, and to practice hiring part‑time staff as a way to build leadership and management muscles. Schwarzenegger emphasizes that pushing through physical pain creates champions, while Vaynerchuk frames pain as an inevitable part of independence, leadership, and problem‑solving, using superhero narratives to illustrate the need to embrace struggle. The overall message is that entrepreneurs must love the “crap,” continuously build resilience, and view pain as a growth catalyst.
Chapters
Good morning, 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's message is: have a high pain threshold. Over to you, Elon Musk.
Unfortunately, one does have to be focused on the short term and money coming in when creating a company, because otherwise the company will die. So a lot of times people think creating a company is going to be fun. I would say it's really not that fun. I mean, there are periods of fun, and there are periods where it's just awful. And particularly if you're the CEO of the company, you actually have a distillation of all the worst problems in the company. There's no point in spending your time on things that are going right. So you only spend your time on things that are going wrong. And there are things that are going wrong that other people can't take care of. So you have like the worst— you have a filter for the crappiest problem in the company, the most pernicious and painful problem. So I wouldn't say it's— I think you have to feel quite compelled to do it and have a fairly high pain threshold. And there's a friend of mine who says starting a company is like staring into the abyss and eating glass. And there's some truth to that. The staring into the abyss part is that you're going to be constantly facing the extermination of the company. Because most startups fail. It's like 90%, arguably 99% of startups fail. So that's the staring into the abyss part. You're constantly saying, OK, if I don't get this right, the company will die. So it can be quite stressful. And then the eating glass part is— You've got to do the problems. You've got to work on the problems that the company needs you to work on, not the problems you want to work on. And so you end up working on problems that you'd really wish you weren't working on. And so that's the eating glass part. And that goes on for a long time. So how do you keep your focus on the big picture when you're constantly faced with, we could be out of business in a month? Well, it's just a very small percentage of mental energy is on the big picture. Like, you know where you're generally heading for, and the actual path is going to be some sort of zigzaggy thing in that direction. And try not to deviate too far from the path that you want to be on, but you're going to have to do that to some degree. But I don't want to diminish the— I mean, I think the profit motive is a good one if the rules of an industry are properly set up. So there's nothing fundamentally wrong with profit. In fact, profit just means that people are paying you more for whatever you're doing than you're spending to create it. That's a good thing. And if that's not the case, then you'll be out of business, and rightfully so.
Being an entrepreneur sucks a good chunk of the time. We have to deal with a lot of crap being an entrepreneur, especially as we are trying to build this amazing thing that's never been done before, and that's the point. You're trying to do something that people have not done before, right? We're trying to build something special. If you're just doing the same thing as everybody else, you're gonna get less than average results because they've been doing it longer than you, have more track record, more experience, and so you wanna be doing something different, and doing something different comes with a lot of pain, comes with a lot of failures, comes with a lot of people judging you and telling you you can't do. It comes with a lot of doubt. A lot of it will be self-doubt as well. And then as you build up and you get a team, you're going to have to deal with everybody else's crap. You know, I don't want to make this seem like a negative situation because I love it. And that's part of what you need to do as an entrepreneur is love the crap. Love the pain, right? If you are super sensitive to any kind of pain, any kind of discomfort, then it's going to be really hard for you to have ultimate success as an entrepreneur. And what I recommend you doing is slowly increasing your tolerance. Just like anything else. Just like, you know, if you are trying to learn snowboarding, you can only do a certain amount and then you fall and your muscles will get tired and you can't do it. Just like when you start lifting weights, you can lift 10 pounds and then 20 pounds and then 30 pounds. You know, as you get the repetitions in, your muscles grow stronger and you can deal with more, more, more, more. That's what you need to learn as an entrepreneur. So one of the greatest exercises I think you can do is actually start to hire somebody part-time on your team. I think a lot of entrepreneurs have the wrong notion around hiring. We think we're going to bring on somebody on our team, we're not going to have to manage them or deal with them, they're just going to take away all of our pains and we're going to get to focus on the things that we love. And that's partially true. You want to hire somebody that you can delegate the stuff you don't enjoy to and that they are really good at, but there's still a lot of pain because you're dealing with a human being. You're dealing with their baggage, their issues, their motivation, their struggles, and all of the crap always comes back to you that you have to deal with. A good chunk of your time is dealing with everybody else's problems, right? And helping them, and liking it, and wanting to see them grow. If you're trying to operate your business as, I'm gonna build up a team of people to help me do something amazing, but I'm not gonna be a leader or a manager, I'm not gonna really care that much about the people, and they're just gonna be on their own, you're not really gonna build a great organization. And so you need to learn how to manage and you need to learn how to lead. It's super, super, super, super important. And better to do it on a part-time basis. So the first person I hired was for 1 hour a day. 1 hour a day, that was it. And that freed up more than 1 hour of my time because he was better at doing that job than I was to go off and do other things. But I still had to care for him. I still had to ask him how he was doing. I still had to understand his goals. I still had to understand where his struggles were, what his limiting beliefs were, right? That's your job as a leader, is to build the people up in your organization to do amazing things and join you on this crazy adventure journey that you're on. That's what you have to do. And so I'd strongly encourage you guys, if you don't have anybody on your team, look to hire somebody part-time. One hour a day, couple hours a week, whatever it is, to free up some of your workload, but also get you used to managing people and dealing with their issues. So the more you can build that muscle up, dealing with the crap muscle, the stronger it gets, the more crap you'll be able to deal with, and the higher your pain threshold will be so you can build something amazing. So the question of the day today is I'm curious, what's the most painful thing that you've ever had to do in your business? Really curious to find out. Leave it down in the comments below. I'm looking forward to seeing what you guys have to say. I also wanna give a quick shout out to Antoine Clerc-Brunot. Antoine, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word, taking that selfie with the book, and posting to Twitter. Twitter as well. I really appreciate the support, man, and I hope you enjoyed the read. So thank you guys so much 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 espresso. I wake up every morning, espresso keep me going.
Going through this pain barrier, experiencing pain in your muscles and aching and just think, go on, and go on and go on. And this last 2 or 3 or 4 repetitions, that's what makes actually the muscle then grow. And that divides then one from a champion and one from not being a champion. If you can go through this pain barrier, you make it to be a champion. If you can't go through, forget it. And that's what most people lack, is on this having the guts. The guts to go in and just say, I go through and I don't care what happens. You know, it aches, and if I fall down, I have no fear of fainting in a gym. Because I know it could happen. I threw up many times while I was working out, but it doesn't matter because it's all worth it.
Have you ever watched a James Bond movie where it doesn't look like he's losing at some point and then he wins? Or Batman or Iron Man or any superhero? There has to be some diversity for you to, you know, overcome to win. You can't be a champ unless you are in a place where you look like you're going to lose and then you win. The pain that's going to come with being independent, you have to embrace it. Because it's gonna happen. And also know that the more successful you get, the more problems you're gonna have, the more knots you're gonna have to untie. Being a boss does not mean smooth sailing. It means having the ability to care about other people before yourself and to untie problems, untie knots. That's all it is.
There's—
it's not business if there's not problems. There's nothing good without struggle. It just doesn't happen. In all my experiences, there hasn't been one thing that's been successful without me feeling some pain before it was successful. So now when there is pain, I embrace it. You know, I've been embracing it. I'm a G about it because I know that must mean that if I'm cool, that, you know, what awaits me is like the darkest before the dawn. I don't want to like sound corny, but that's really what— that's what has to happen.
Pain is a beautiful thing. Challenge is what life is about. A life without challenge, a life without pain is a life without growth. And where there is no growth, there is stale, stagnant energy. And that's where most people live because most people's lives are designed around treading a path that is void of challenge. The minute they recognize challenge or pain, they move the other way. This is a primal instinct and normal and natural, but a weak perspective. Most people are bored if you ask them, "What do you think about your life?" "Huh, same old, same old." Every single day, what's the thing? Same day, same shit, different day. Things of this nature. That's because they're living their lives in a Lie that is shrouded in comfort. It doesn't exist. They're not challenged, they're not growing, they're bored and they're better off dead. Your aliveness is found in your pain. Embrace it, love it, and grow from it.
