Shaquille O'Neal and creators including Sylvester Stallone and Ryan Coogler explain why passion matters more than money. Stallone made Creed as a love letter to his father. Coogler persisted on the film despite industry skepticism, driven by family trauma that inspired the story.
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Good morning, Believe Nation. Today's message is "Follow Your Heart." Over to you, Shaquille O'Neal. I wake up every morning.
Espresso keep me going. I wake up every morning. What is it about investment and entrepreneurship that sort of has bitten you?
I never look at it as investments, believe it or not. I just look at it as partnerships. I help changing the world and just being part of something that's inspiring. My business people all the time, whenever they talk about money, you can ask them, I was like, ah, I don't want to hear it. But if they bring an idea to me that I think is going to go to the next level, most of the time if I follow my heart, then everything else will fall in place. I've never ever done a deal, hey, we got this suit company, we throw some pinstripes in the suit, you give me $100,000, we sell 20 of them, we make— I've never did a deal where it was always based on money. I've always did my business deals based on how I felt it was going to go in the future, how I felt it was going to help and inspire somebody.
If you are starting a business just trying to make money, you're going to lose. This is how so many people go out of business. They read the magazine of the 100 hottest startups to start this year and they try them and they fail. You lose. I don't know how many times you need to hear this message. I don't know how many times we have profiled different successful people. I think, I think This channel, we've profiled more successful people than maybe anybody else. Maybe any other YouTube channel, maybe any other publication, period. Maybe. If we're not there, we're in the top. From athletes to musicians to entrepreneurs to politicians to inventors to artists all over the world. People from different countries, different cultures, different races, different genders. And the single most consistent thing that everybody says is you have to follow your heart. You have to have passion for the work that you're doing. I don't know how many times you need to hear it. I don't know that, you know, we're making another video on it. A lot of you guys are going to get it. A lot of you guys still won't get it. Hopefully by hearing it from Shaquille O'Neal this time and different entrepreneurs, at some point it's going to sink in. If the only reason that you're doing something is just for the money, you will always live paycheck to paycheck because there's nothing deeper driving you forward. As soon as you get enough money to pay your bills, you're going to ease off the throttle and you won't have any success. Where if you're driven by something more than just making money— and making money is important, listen, we're running a business, you got to make money. Money provides for a lot of amazing things. It's not that money is evil, there just has to be something above money, something driving you. Look at whoever you look up to most, whoever's had the most success in your industry. They wanted to change the way something was done. They had this thing inside them that they had to get out. And they made a lot of money in the process of doing it. But money was never their number one goal. It never is. And so I hope that by hearing the message again, for some of you it's going to sink in, and this is going to be the time that you actually decide to do the thing that you're passionate about. Because I don't want you wasting time. I don't want you just wanting to be an entrepreneur because you want the entrepreneur lifestyle. I want you to do something important. And it's only gonna come by leaning in heavily on the thing that you are most passionate about. So the question of the day today is, I'm curious, who is the most successful person that you look up to that really exemplifies that characteristic of just loving what they do, important in the hustle, hard work, and effort? Who is that person for you? Super curious to find out. Leave it down in the comments below. I also wanna give a quick shout out to Michael Brown. Michael, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, "Your One Word." It really means a lot to me, man, and I hope you're enjoying the read. Thank you guys again for watching. I hope you have an amazing day. I believe in you and hope you continue to believe in yourself, and I'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot of espresso.
I wake up every morning, espresso keep me going.
The last Rocky movie before Creed, the final scene, was it your way of saying goodbye to the character, goodbye to that?
Yeah, goodbye to everything, goodbye to the— one of the best chapters of my life, at least professional life. It really was. Then along comes this young guy out of Oakland. I'm going, what?
Ryan Coogler.
Ryan Coogler.
When director Ryan Coogler first met with Stallone, he was untested as a feature filmmaker, but he had an intensely personal idea for reviving the Rocky franchise. Coogler's father had fallen gravely ill a few years earlier. With Ryan by his side, there was only one thing the elder Coogler wanted to watch.
The father is a very soulful, powerful man, and now he's being reduced to a shell of his former self. But oddly, he watches Rocky again and again and again. His son, who loves his father, sitting right beside him, he's watching his father disintegrate before his very eyes. The traumatic impact was so imprinted on this young man that he never got over it. So he comes to me, he goes, "Hey, look at this great idea. We're gonna revive Rocky." I go, "How?" And when he told me the story, I said, "This is insane, wrong. You're a young kid, you haven't done anything yet, but I appreciate the thought." He goes, "Okay, see you around." And he goes out and he does a masterpiece for Vail Station, wins the Cannes Film Festival. Every studio wants him. What's he wanna do? Creed. I went, now either this guy here is just He's trying my patience. Or, he reminds me of a guy I used to know.
I was gonna say, that was you 40 years ago.
Yeah, it was. Absolutely. Then I realized this is not a movie for him. It's for his father. This is all about a love letter to his father.
You know, if you really dug down deep and ask a real Rocky fan why he likes the movies, it's usually because they watched them with someone that they love. What's so great about them is they're so personal to people. You know, people just associate them with their family.
This young, dedicated artist can't help but reflect on those who once doubted him.
They never said I wasn't talented enough. They'll say something like, "The industry is shady. You don't need to be doing this." I respect their opinions, but at the end of the day, I had to follow my heart, and that's what I wanted to do. It was a passion. I couldn't shake it. And I'd be hurt now if I didn't stick with it because it'll always be on my head.
Paul, when you first signed up for the first one, which was back in like '99, 2000, did you think you'd be sitting here in 2013 talking about Number 6?
No, not a chance. No screenplay, nothing when I signed on. It was just an idea.
Yeah.
And it was funny because I wanted to do it, you know, working with my friends, because I'd already worked with these people before. And they're like, "You can't do it." My representatives are telling me, "You can't do it. There's no script.
There's nothing." You didn't listen to their advice.
You were right.
I got lucky. But it was just, you know, following your heart kind of thing. And it wasn't even about, ah, down the road. It was about living in the moment and got lucky.
