Evan Carmichael and rapper G-Eazy discuss raising your standards and cutting wasted time. Evan batch-records 70 videos in a single day each month to push his limits. G-Eazy spent four years street-performing with a keyboard, living in a cardboard box on a beach before being discovered after six years of relentless shows.
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Good morning, Believe Nation. Today's message is go hard. Over to you, G-Eazy. I wake up every morning, espresso keep me going.
I wake up every morning.
Go hard. And then when you think you're going hard, go harder. Like, that's really it. Just hustle. You know what I mean? There's nothing in life that you can't put enough work in every single day and not get better at. You know what I mean? Like, if you want to be good at something, you know what I mean? Like, you can't just like not like do it every day and not get better. It's the same shit with music. It's the same shit as learning how to play an instrument or something. If you spend your time practicing your craft, like, you know, that's really it. It's just, you know, because nowadays it's like with the internet, everything is so accessible and, you know, everybody in the world is a rapper. You know what I mean? Everybody's putting music out. So it's like, how do you stand out? Quality is always going to matter, but also being different. You can't try to be different, you know what I mean? But you just got to be yourself.
Every major breakthrough that you'll have in your life will come from raising your standards. Every major breakthrough that you have in your life will come from raising your standards. You may tell yourself that you're working hard. You may think that you're working hard right now in your business. Maybe for you, working hard means, you know, X number of hours. And in the past, Whenever you worked less than that, you felt like a slacker, but now you feel like you're working hard. Maybe compared to your friends or your family or the people around you, you're working really hard. Maybe they tell you you're working really hard, and so you feel like you're working really hard, but you're not getting the results that you want. And maybe it's time that you need to raise your standards a little bit. I bet if I came in, if you said that you're working hard and I came in and audited your day, there'd be a ton of wasted time. And I'm not just talking about now you need to wake up an hour earlier or 2 hours earlier and get get more work done, sleep the same number of hours. Look in the, you know, 16, 17 hours that you are awake. There's a lot of wasted time in there. Whether it's checking your social media, refreshing your email all the time, responding to a crisis that isn't really a crisis, not spending your time on the valuable things that you need to do to grow your business, constantly being interrupted and distracted. And it's not their fault they're interrupting and distracting you. It's your fault for allowing it to happen. There's a ton of wasted time in what you're doing every single day. And as long as you think that you're working hard, as long as you think that you're doing your best, then you're never gonna do better. If you say, "This is the best I can do," you're never gonna do better. And you're gonna be stuck where you are. Now, you're happy where you are, great. But don't complain that you want more. Don't complain that you want more, you're not willing to raise your standards and put in the work and get better to get there. So I look at the change in my schedule where now I'm recording all my videos as a test, all my videos in one day, once a month, for the entire channel, making 70 videos in one day. And when we first came up with this idea, I'm like, "I like it. I like the push. I don't know if I can do it. I don't know if I'm gonna be able to sustain, but I want the challenge to test it and see." because I thought I was already doing a lot, because everybody around me would say, listen, you're making 3 videos a day, that's crazy. How do you make 3 videos a day? Where most people working hard is making even a video a day is considered working really hard. We're doing 3 a day, and to record them all once a month is nuts. But I want the test. I want to see where my limits are. If you're never pushing for your limits and you don't know what you can do, If I said the best I can do is once a week, then that's what I'm gonna stick to doing. And I'm gonna be wasting some time. So I'm gonna try. This is our first test. Doing once a month. Can we make it happen? Can I still be good making 70 videos in a day? Can my team handle the influx and get everything ready? Do I lose momentum? And I'm okay with failing. I'm okay with it not working out. But I'm not okay with not knowing. And so you wanna be taking on challenges to push yourself, to understand where your limits are. And work on busting through them. Every major growth that you have in your life, every single major move forward will become by adjusting your standards. When you demand more from yourself, when you start teaching people how to treat you, that's when you're going to get the next major breakthrough in your life and in your business. So the question of the day today is, I'm curious, what was the last standard that you raised for yourself in your life or in your business where you said, I'm no longer willing to tolerate this anymore, my new standard is up here, This is what I want to accomplish. What was that last one for you? Leave it in the comments and we'll join in the discussion. I also want to give a quick shout out to Tom Pelton. Tom, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word. It really, really, really, really means a lot to me, man, and I hope you're enjoying it. 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, and I'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot of espresso. I wake up every morning, espresso keep me going. Hey, Believe Nation, thank you so much for watching. If you want to learn more about this subject, get a little bit deeper on it, I'm going to share some extra bonus clips that I hope you'll enjoy.
4 years I street performed here before I got my record deal. I was on the streets with a little bitty keyboard.
Okay.
With glasses on like I was Stevie Wonder.
Okay.
You know, hustling, you know, with a big chitlin bucket. I paid my rent and my mom's rent off of street performing.
Performing.
But I would only do it 3 days out of the week, just 3 days. But I would be, uh, I can't talk, I can't even talk because I was like singing from like for like 8 hours straight for people going to work and coming from work. Then I went, I hitchhiked to LA, but I lived on the beach, you know, cardboard box and, uh, big beach towels I slept on. In the beach? On the beach every day. And then I wake back up and when I wake up, I sing again. Then I came, I hitchhiked back to Chicago and then I got discovered. But I did all that for like 6 years street performing.
Well, a lot of artists don't know that they gotta get on the goddamn road and tour. You know what I'm saying? You gotta get the people knowing about you, man. You know, not just your hot single, man. You gotta get out there and politic. How do you politic? Through touring, man. You know what I'm saying? Merchandise. You got a shirt with your name on it? You got a hat with your name on it? You know, these people are walking billboards. You know what I'm saying? Exactly. You know, you gotta get out there and politic, man. And that's how we did it, man. We just stayed on the road. If it was like 7 people in the audience when we went, we didn't say, okay, we ain't going back to San Diego 'cause there's only 7 people there. Or we ain't going back to New York 'cause we only had 10 people there. We kept coming back and hammering them over the head. And the 7 turned to, 100, 100 turned to 500, you know what I'm saying? To selling out every time. We had to change venues, you know what I'm saying? You got to get out there and politic, man. You got to get out there and tour. You got to get out there and sell your merchandise, man. And, and a lot of people, you know, I ain't gonna tell you this, but it take a little money to start your own label, you feel me? It take a little money to start it, you know what I mean? So all you niggas selling that shit in the hood,
