John Legend spent six years getting rejected by record labels before signing a deal. Evan Carmichael shares his own six-year wait for a breakthrough video in 2014, and notes that Harley-Davidson started by making just a handful of motorcycles. The pattern: most people quit before the yes comes.
Chapters
Good morning, Believe Nation. Today's message is: Keep going.
Over to you, John Legend.
The thing is, every successful person you know has failed at what they love to do before. I've been unsuccessful in my career. You just didn't know about it because I wasn't famous yet, and I was trying to be famous. I was trying to get a record deal for 6 years, and I kept getting turned down. And any successful person you know, even though it seems like everything just happened for them, it usually was preceded by a bunch of failure, or at least a significant amount. But the great ones aren't the ones that don't fail. They're the ones that learn from their failure and they keep going and they're persistent and they're tenacious. And for me, I was trying to get a record deal from '98 to 2004, and I got turned down by every major record label, including the one I'm signed to now. And for me, that means that even when you hear no, you have to keep going through all those nos until you get to yes.
So what do you think?
For me, usually if I start a project, it doesn't matter how hard it is or it will be, I will always continue to finish it. Like for when I just started my YouTube channel, YouTube channel, I did the 10-day challenge and so many things break down. The software shut down on me a few times, but I still stayed up late and then kept going, finished my editing. Yeah, it was tough, that 10 days.
But Nina kept going. Yeah, she kept going. I think people give up too easily. I think people quit too soon. I look at my YouTube channel, since we're talking YouTube, I started it in 2008 and it wasn't until 2000— it wasn't until 2014 that I had I had my major breakthrough. So what is that, 6 years? 6 years. Yeah, 2014 is when I had my first kind of big video that took off. 6 years. Would you keep at something for 6 years and not see any major results and just keep doing it? Right, I think people just expect instant results and when they don't get it, they quit and try to move on to something else and then just move on to something else and never stick with anything. It's the key to success. I look at successful companies, look at Harley-Davidson. I may get the numbers a little off, but they started I think in 1903 and they made 5 bikes that year, 5 motorcycles. And then 1904, they made another 5 motorcycles. And then the next year they made like 7 motorcycles. And then, you know, 2 years later they finally opened up the factory and they made 50 motorcycles. Like, how long would you be willing to make 5 motorcycles and 5 motorcycles and 5 and then 7? Most people think that's a failure and they quit too soon. And so I think with any goal that you have in entrepreneurship or in life, you have to keep going. It's gonna be way harder than you thought it was. It's why it's so important that you have a deep passion for it because you're gonna quit. If you're in it just for some instant result, instant money, instant gratification, you're gonna quit because it's gonna get way, way, way too hard. But if you have the deep passion for it and you keep going, the prize will be yours.
So the question of the day today is: What is the thing that you're working on that you have been working on for a long time and you're still going to finish it?
I love it.
Oh, I cut you off.
I like it.
You kept going.
Leave it in the comments below. We will join in the discussion. I also want to give a quick shout out to Christina Archer. Christina, thank you so much for picking up a copy my book, Your One Word. I really, really, really appreciate it, and I hope you're enjoying the read. 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.
We'll see you soon.
No, no, much love, and we'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot of espresso.
In today's world, you can't sleep. There's no days off. There's no time to rest and just kick it. So you just keep going, you know. So even though the album just came out, like, they got me in the studio tonight. I was in the studio last night till 6:00 AM. We got a full day of, like, you know, interviews and running around New York, and then we got studio all night. You just keep going. And That's how you keep your chops up.
There were times in the last 5, 6 years that I was very tempted to just say, you know what, forget it, this is too difficult, you're not going to come up with the album that you need, and you're driving yourself crazy with it. And I was— and of course on top of that I was getting quite a kicking from the press. So at that point in my life with so much going on emotionally, watching, you know, being kicked about by the media and the press and the industry, almost wishing that, almost wishing that my career was over. I just was, I was almost ready to give up. But part of my motivation, a very strong part of my motivation to keep going, was that I always knew how terrible it would look to young gay kids that were worried about coming out. Not that they necessarily see a great parallel with a, you know, someone who was outed when they were 35, but I think it is a very— it would look— it would be a horrible way to leave my career, to leave people thinking that my sexuality took away my market, because I just knew that wasn't true. And I felt a kind of responsibility, not only to myself, but to young gay people to say, "Look, I—" Because I felt absolutely sure that my market hadn't left me, so I felt it really important to say, "Look, it is not damaging if you are, if you have ability, it is not damaging to have the confidence to come out." And that in certain parts of life, it really doesn't matter anymore. In certain careers, it really doesn't matter anymore. And I think just the success of the record this time around, and I hope its continued success, um, will alleviate that perception, you know.
