Have FUN! - Hugh Jackman (@RealHughJackman) - #Entspresso

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, we're going to learn how to have fun. Over to you, Hugh Jackman.

When the things most matter, you so desperately don't want to destroy it for being scared that you can really destroy it.

Sure.

When I hosted the Oscars, I was like, wow, man, this is a billion people. And I just thought, okay, whatever you do, just remember you're a kid from Maroonga in Sydney. You're hosting the Oscars. Have some fun, you know. And luckily for me, those turning points, I've somehow always stuck to that idea of just having fun.

If you're not having fun, you're never gonna shine. If you're not having fun and you're constantly stressed and you're constantly worried and you're constantly freaking out, then you're not gonna have fun, your customers aren't gonna have fun, your suppliers aren't gonna have fun, and you're never gonna be able to build the business that you wanna build. I think you have to attack it from both sides where you want to build a better future, you want to be upset about what you've created and you wanna build something greater, and at the same time, have fun and be grateful and recognize all the amazing things that you have currently built up. It's both. If all you're doing is fun, happy, la la la, then you never strive to improve. And if all you're focusing on is improvement and getting better, then you're never happy. So you need to have both. One of the things that I encourage my instructors here to do at Toronto Dance Salsa is to have fun in their class. And their students will have fun, our customers will have fun if the instructor is genuinely having fun. And that looks different for different people. One instructor might tell a lot of silly jokes. One instructor might be goofy at the front. One instructor, you know, might put on a song that makes them really happy. It doesn't matter what it is, it has to be individual to each person, and I can't tell that person, "Here's what you need to do to have more fun." They already know. But for their class to be more fun, they have to actually be having fun in the class. And so if you take that to your business, yes, you wanna strive, yes, you wanna grow, yes, you wanna push, yes, you want the best, yes, you wanna improve, and at the same time, you wanna enjoy what you have, you wanna have fun, you wanna be grateful, and you wanna remember this moment as something special in history. Sometimes it can be hard to remember to do it, but even just a simple reminder can help. If you feel yourself getting really stressed out, freaking out, not being clear, snapping at people, just a reminder to say, "How can I have a little more fun in this?" or "What am I grateful for today?" or "How can I make this situation better?" to cool yourself down, gain a little more perspective, and help you go off and accomplish the big goals that you set for yourself. So the question of the day today is, I'm curious, what do you do in your business to have a little fun? Leave it down in the comments below, super curious to find out. I also wanna give a quick shout out to Shaweeb, I hope I pronounced that okay, from HMSHost.com. Thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word. I really appreciate it and I hope you're enjoying reading. 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 Enespresso.

I wake up every morning, Enespresso keep me going.

So something like Avengers, it seemed like you were having a great time.

I am!

Not a great— not a huge acting challenge for you, I imagine.

But—

It all depends.

You seem to be having fun.

Well, fun is important. This should be a fun job. It's make-believe. It's you and your friends with real costumes and better guns and shit doing the thing, you know, exciting people. It's— that's what that's about. When you're doing something like The Avengers, you got to take it seriously in terms of you believe the space you're in, you believe the world and the convention of it, that there are people who can do shit greater than normal human beings can do. Trust that, go with it, treat them like they're those kinds of people, and they have an element of danger and an element of awe. That comes with all that. That's the honesty of the world. But, you know, I'm Nick Fury. I got some shit with me too. So I can be, you know, boom, I can stand up to them and say what I need to say. And sometimes, like in the Avengers, I need to manipulate these people. I got to where I am because I'm Nick fucking Fury. I can do some shit. Nobody knows how old I am or why I'm still alive or why I'm now black when I used to be white. You know, so I got some shit with me too. So you accept that and you go with it You treat it like it's something honest, and you treat it like it's something real so that when people come and see it, they don't see you going, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, you know? Shit, I'm in it. I'm in it. There's some dangerous shit happening, and you motherfuckers can help us fix that. So let's go get them. That's like you and your friends doing that shit when you were kids. Let's go get them. Let's go get them.

Ah!

You know? And then you shoot at motherfuckers, and they can't say you missed, because their chest blow up, and all that kind of shit happens. It's great.

So even with these movies under your belt, you came out to LA, and you were still thinking it was going to be for PA work.

I still thought I was going to be a PLO. I mean, I didn't know. It was still— I was believing more. I mean, I sure did like what I was doing. And I had people— and I couldn't— honestly, at that time, the $320 I was getting, I was like, is this legal? Because it was so much fun. And I was really looking over my shoulder going, hmm. And I kept getting invited back. And then I'd have people come up and go, hey, man.

You're good at this.

I was like, well, thanks, 'cause it sure is fun. So I really didn't know. I guess secretly, if I look back and I look at my diaries, there was hope underlying, but I was still like, I need to go out and get a job. And if I can pursue acting on the side, get a PA job, get in the storytelling biz behind the camera, and let's see. Then another funny thing happened. That first audition when I got out here was for a casting director named Hank McCann. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. It was for a film called Boys on the Side. And I went and read. And he goes, I think you did really good. I'll have you for a callback sometime later. I went off from there. I get called in for a baseball film, Angels in the Outfield. I walk in the door.

This is—

there's a bunch of funny peculiarities of how the hell I got to be standing here today.

I walk in the door.

It was backlit. I remember I had an American cap on. I was on Warner Brothers lot. I open up the door. It was backlit in the afternoon. Producer's sitting on the couch.

He looks up.

He goes, hey, look at you, the all-American kid. He goes, you ever play baseball? I said, 12 years.

He goes, you got the job.

So they send me— they pay me Schedule F, $48,500. $48,500 to go play baseball for 11 weeks in Oakland. Again, I'm going, what is this business? But it happened. And during that, I got called back to read for Herbert Ross for Boys on the Side and got that role. And so that Coen Brothers film that got pushed, that PA job that I would have taken if it was there, never happened. And I haven't PA'd since. By the way, I believe in winners and losers, and especially the freedom to fail.

Who?

Who?

Him?

Who?

Him? Who?

Him?

Him? Who?

Me?

Hey!

Have fun. You're not going to have fun every minute of every day. I don't care what job you take, you know, any job you take. I don't care how well rewarded you are. I don't care anything about that. It won't happen all the time, but you better be having fun in what you do. The truth is, a lot of success won't just come from ideas and being hardcore and being in the weight room. A lot of your success is going to come from luck. I know that was true in my case, and I know, frankly, it's the case of almost every successful entrepreneur I met in the tech business in the last 34 years. People will make it seem like it was the grand master plan in all cases. Of an all-knowing and all-seeing genius, that and a lot of luck is what really leads to success. So given that you're gonna have to have a lot of luck, you better be having a lot of fun. Don't take the next job or don't do the next startup because you should. Do it because you want to. Because you can think of nothing better, more exciting, more energizing to get up every day and go do than whatever it is that you selected. Be patient and be urgent when— sorry, be patient when you get the first signs that it's not fun, because time must be measured. Constantly be improving yourself, because only by improving yourself will you maybe find that next idea. I'm sure there are many people in this audience who'd like to do a startup. And yet, the first law of doing a startup is you gotta have an idea. But if you're having fun, if you're building capabilities, if you're treasuring your time, if you're building your muscle and being hardcore, the good ideas will come to you.