How to Become UNSTOPPABLE | 14-Minutes of Motivation

Nothing is impossible.

Impossible is just a word.

None of this was possible.

Ask the impossible.

The impossible can happen.

Hello, Believe Nation, it's Evan. My one word is believe, and I believe in people more than they believe in themselves. And my sincere hope is that if you see in yourself what I see in you, you'll be able to change the the planet. So to help you on your journey today, we're going to learn how to do the impossible. And as always, if you hear something that really resonates with you, please leave it down in the comments below and put quotes around it so other people can be inspired. And if you're leaving a comment within the first few hours of this video going live, you have a chance to win one of two daily prizes that we have. Good luck.

As a child, my parents always told me, "You could be whatever you want to be. You could do whatever you want to do." And you know, that office, that position, the highest office on the face of the earth, it was something I heard my parents saying it, but I didn't totally believe it. Yet I went out in the world and I carried myself and I held my head high and I stood there and I looked people in their eyes and I talked to people as if I was deserving of of everything that this planet has to offer. So I just, I really want to say to children out there and to people who are watching, Confucius said one time, "He who says he can and he who says he can't are both usually right." So I want to stand here before you and as I hold this award, I want to give love to my wife and I want you to keep in your heart, just know that you can. Know that you can.

Nothing, absolutely nothing is impossible. You can begin again. You can believe God again. You can trust again. You can be successful. You can overcome your addictions. You can heal. You can feel alive again. This is when you realize that those things are possible. You are getting a breakthrough. So, I want to encourage you right now. Don't give in. Go for it. Don't give up. Don't throw in the towel. And even if your back is up against the wall, even if you are on the ropes and you are receiving a rope-a-dope financially, listen, you got to fight back. You don't get in life what you want. You get what you fight for. For. And when you decide that my future, my health, my marriage, my freedom, my happiness, my joy, my peace, my children is worth fighting for, you are securing your breakthrough.

[Speaker:DC] Just to go after it. I mean, the thing about being an entrepreneur is this, it's just all to you. You know, a lot of people like to make excuses. I don't have connections. I don't have money. I don't have this. But, you know, if you find something that you like to do or love to do, be great at it. And see if you can turn it into a business. And worst case, you're gonna have fun doing what it is you love to do. And best case, you can turn it into a business. I'm just not big on excuses. I just think if you really— everybody has that opportunity to go for it. They just gotta do it.

Here's maybe the greatest thing a teen or anyone in this room and who's watching on the television at home can learn from the champ. These are words to remember when anyone tries to tell you to give up, tell you to give in because whatever you're trying to do is impossible. The champ said this: "Impossible is just a word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact, it's an opinion. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing." Greatest quote ever. So, As a relatively new dad and a former teen, I'm here to say you will make mistakes along the way. You will fall down. I have many times. Even Ali did. But what we do after that fall is how we make history, because impossible is nothing.

I don't really need the money. Like, I don't need the money anymore. I made dream money from from video games, like stuff that I— things I would never imagine. You know, when people say like, is this what you dreamt? I didn't dream any of this. None of this was possible or, or even considered a reality when I was a kid. You know, when I started skating, like the best you could hope for was your picture in a magazine, maybe a pro board, maybe, and free gear.

That's it.

And then once you reach an age of responsibility— and this is, I'm talking about when I was like 12— once you reach an age of responsibility, say 18, your career is over because you can't make money doing it. You can't do it into your adult life.

I'm a fucking believer, bro. I see things and I want to make them real. No matter how hard it takes, no matter what obstacles, no matter how many embarrassing meetings I have to imagine is happening when I leave. Doesn't matter. I'm a doer and a freaking make-it-happener.

Well, I learned a lot from our founders. One of the things I learned was ask the impossible and really dream big. What you learn about people is if you paint a very broad vision, you attract people who really want to make it happen because they're dreamers too. So you can inspire people, and with that inspiration, you get the smartest people, and they deal with a lot of stuff.

But can an organization like Google, which espouses the idea that you're going to give people in the organization 15 or 20% of their time to do almost anything they want in terms of innovation. Can that system work in smaller companies? Can that system work in any company? Is that a leadership tenet that can work across a broad range of companies?

Well, in fact, it worked at Google when Google was tiny. So the answer is yes, it does work in small companies. Remember, we give this to engineers, and engineers are not that clever, right? If they're going to work on something in their 20% time, it's going to be something that's pretty related to their training and their knowledge. And that's why it's so powerful. Very, very few people sort of get off the reservation and do something completely different from technology and so forth. And if they did, we would encourage it.

Has something manifest that you can recall come from just that kind of incubation?

Virtually all of the interesting apps now came from a combination of an acquisition and a 20% time. If you look at Maps, if you look at Google Earth, if you look at Chrome and Android, all of them came from somebody trying something, identifying something, and then we would say, we have all these 20% timers, but we need a real group. And the fastest way to do that was to create a real group or buy a company. What's the most important change, the most significant change in your way of thinking about the world over the last— 20 years.

That the impossible can happen. I never thought that the Soviet Union would implode so easily. And I never thought that the Chinese would abandon their communist system and move into the free market so readily. It was unthinkable 20 years ago. Both has happened. The world has changed.

And it's not clear exactly how it's all going to play out.

No, it is not exactly clear when it will happen.

Exactly.

But that it will happen now in the long term, 50 to 100 years, yes.

And the center of gravity is shifting to Asia.

Must be because the population's there. The talent pool of 1.3 billion people plus the Japanese, the Koreans, and the Vietnamese and the others, it can match Europe and America. But that talent pool was inert, did not have science and technology, did not care about science and technology, but now, Everything that you do, Asia is doing.

Liz Records is a very important place. It was the most famous record store in San Diego and one of the most famous in the country. When Blink first started, I drove around about a 20-mile radius from the store and I broke into every high school at night and I made Blink fake flyers and I put them in every single locker at all these high schools that we were playing at the club downtown. At that point in time, everyone in San Diego wanted to support their local bands. It was just a really big scene. So because I put those flyers in those lockers, we ended up having, um, our first show at a big club. All the people came and we had enough people that watched us that the guy that owned the club invited us the following week to play on the big stage. So what we did is not only that show, we rushed and made a really quick recording, and it was our first recording with a little Buddha statue on it. People commonly refer to that record as Buddha. We made that to sell here in this store. So we would put 5 tapes in at a time. It was in the time where tapes were selling, and every week we would call up and they're all, they're gone. We're like, oh my gosh, we put 5 more, they're gone. So then we gave them 10, they're gone. Then we gave them 20. Next thing you know, we sold thousands of these tape cassettes out of Lou's Records, and then we got our start. Um, it was a, you know, Little suburban kids, we had a dream to be in the punk rock section. And I'm here now looking at all these things I grew up on, and it is so insanely important to me.

Do you ever visualize you winning or anything in your head?

Always. I always dreamt of winning the World Cup, but it's not happened yet. I still look back to '98. After the red card that I got against Argentina, What went on in my life and in my family's life after that, I think was very tough. It was probably the toughest moment in my career. I was having death threats. I never felt safe for 3 and a half years. People used to turn around and they're saying that, "You've let your country down and you've let your family down, so how does that feel?" I don't think I'd ever felt as alone as that as a person, as a footballer. Can knock a person down so much that they just go under. Outside pubs in London, there was effigies hung of me, and this was on the front of the newspaper. It's just something that sticks in my mind from that time. Trying to think what was said about me at the time. There was a headline of "10 Lions, 1 Stupid Little Boy." Still emotional, isn't it? Still raw. Yeah. This is a saying that I use all the time, and it's true. It is a round world. '98 was just before the World Cup, I was at the top. Then after the World Cup, I was at the bottom. And then you work yourself back up. The upside for me was the Greece game. Once the game started, it was It was the start of an incredible day for me. It was either going to the World Cup that day or it was going into qualifying games, which none of us wanted to do because the expectations of us. I remember Teddy Sheringham getting a free kick on the edge of the box, and I remember putting the ball down, and I remember looking up at the clock and thinking, this is it, you know, this is the only chance I'm gonna get now. The only thing I could hear was the man and his drum Around about here, I think. And then I stepped back, took the deep breaths, run up, and as soon as it left my foot, I knew it was in. It was the loudest I think I've ever heard the fans. It was such a huge moment for everyone. I remember just running off and being that excited, just jumping up in the air. You know, I could have touched the top of the stadium if I wanted to because I felt that high. The whole canvas is the idea of the goal. There's the ball in the corner, my celebration, and the words 'belief, strength, and family' is what I needed and what I had to get through after '98. Finishes it off. Being in front of a blank piece of paper with experts around you as well, I think that is much more daunting than stepping out in front of 90,000 people playing football.

Thank you guys so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed the video. I'd love to know what did you think? What was the single biggest takeaway that you took from this video that you're going to apply to your life or to your business somehow? Leave it down in the comments below. If you're within the first couple hours of this video going live, you have a chance to win one of two daily prizes as well. I also want to give a quick shout out to Frank Hoffman. Frank, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word, and posting it on Twitter. I really, really appreciate the support, man, and I hope you enjoyed 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.

Much love.

I'll see you soon.