In this motivational talk, Evan Carmichael addresses his "Believe Nation" audience, arguing that entrepreneurs need heightened self‑confidence to pursue unconventional dreams. He outlines seven concrete actions to build "unstoppable" confidence: (1) Identify a personal "one word" that captures your core values, enabling principled decisions and higher standards; (2) Practice saying "yes" to new, fear‑inducing opportunities to strengthen a confidence muscle; (3) Join or create a mastermind group of peers who hold you accountable and call out limiting beliefs; (4) Curate your environment—people, media, spaces, even clothing—to consistently reinforce confidence; (5) Break large goals into tiny, manageable steps, allowing progress to accumulate and diminish overwhelm; (6) Model success by studying the habits and strategies of high‑achievers in any field, using their stories as a confidence boost; (7) Adopt a "no regrets" mindset, letting the fear of future regret override present fear and drive decisive action. Throughout, Carmichael shares personal anecdotes (e.g., turning down a high‑paying university job, building his business from $300/month) to illustrate each point, and ends with a call for viewers to comment, share their resonant strategy, and support his work by purchasing his book.
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Hello, Believe Nation. Today I'm going to talk about 7 things you can do to boost your self-confidence. So I find that entrepreneurs in general need a little bit more confidence in their ideas, need a little bit more swagger, need a little bit more feeling like they can do it, need a little more believe in their life. And it's hard because we're doing something that most people don't do. You know, you're doing something that's outside the norm where everybody else is getting jobs and doing the safe thing. We're off doing this crazy thing of chasing our dream and chasing our vision. And because it's so different, I feel like we need a little bit more confidence to be able to execute and really realize our dreams. So today I'm gonna share with you 7 things that you can do to boost your self-confidence. The first thing is find your one word. And it's not just timely because I actually have a book about it, but really because I feel it's one of the most important things that you can do. It's understanding what you stand for as a human being, because you will likely say no to opportunities that could support you, but you're really just afraid. Or you say yes to opportunities that don't support you, but you don't have the framework to make that right decision. When you understand what it is that you stand for, you start to raise your standards of the people that you're around, of what you will and will not accept anymore, and it just really makes a big impact on your own self-confidence. When you are saying no to something, it's not out of fear, it's out of principle. And being able to understand the difference, a lot of times when people identify what their one word is, it's happy because they have clarity, but also sad because they realize how much of things in their life are not congruent with where they should be. For you to realize the potential that you have, you need to act a certain way that is most true to you, and you'll notice how many things in your life currently, from the people you're around to the businesses you're involved in to the things that you're doing on a day-to-day basis, are not in line with you achieving that best version of yourself status. And when you realize what your one word is, things start to change. And so that self-awareness to understand who who you are, what you stand for, and start making decisions around that makes a huge difference in your self-confidence. Because when you're saying no to something, it's out of conviction, not out of fear of being judged. Number 2 is say yes more. One of the things that I find people are afraid of and that really limits their self-confidence is they're afraid to step out of the box. Not out of something that relates to the one word, not as something that is degrading or is against what you stand for, but just something new, something different, something afraid. You know, as we're kids, we try a lot of stuff. We have curiosity. And somewhere along the line, as we get older, we are more fearful. We're afraid of trying something new. We're afraid of making a YouTube video. We're afraid of getting on a motorcycle. We're afraid of going on that trip. We'll always come up with practical reasons why we can't do something, but the real reason is that you are afraid. And so What I try to do is when I am afraid of something, when I want to say no to something because of fear, I try to force myself to go out and do it and exercise that muscle consistently so it gets stronger and stronger and stronger, and I continue to build and grow myself. The biggest decision of all for me, the hardest one, was turning down a really high-paying job at a university to start this business that was struggling and suffering and making $300 a month. To say no to that, to this company that I didn't know if it would take off or not, making that tough decision, it was one of the hardest decisions of my life, it wasn't super easy, it was days and days of agony trying to think it over, making that tough decision helped me make the next tough decision, helped me make the next tough decision, helped me make the next tough decision. And so when there is conflict, when there is a hard decision ahead of you, don't run away from it, say yes, figure out a solution, dive into it, it makes you stronger and helps you tackle the next situation and gives you more confidence to be able to do it consistently. Number 3 is have a mastermind group. And the idea here is you have people around you who are pushing you to be better, who believe in you, who can see the negative self-talk in you, who have your best interests at mind, who understand what your goals are and try to, you know, gently or sometimes not so gently push you in that direction. I've had and run mastermind groups for entrepreneurs here in Toronto for the past I don't know, 10 years or so. The reason why you're not doing the thing that you're supposed to do to help get your business where it's supposed to be is usually a limiting personal belief, and you are probably not recognizing that. And having people around you to call you on your own BS when you're giving a practical, reasonable answer, but they know that it's just BS, that really helps. And it could be a formal structure where you have people, and that's what we do. We meet every month. And there's between 6 and 8 of us depending on the size of the group. But it could just be a friend of yours, or it could be people in your industry that you want to connect with on a regular basis. You want people around you to help push you to be that best version of yourself and give you the confidence sometimes that you need to make the tough decisions when you don't have the confidence yourself. Number 4, along the same lines, is surround yourself with greatness. If you want to be more confident, you need to surround yourself with things that make you feel confident, that give you boldness, that make you want to do something big and new and special and different and want to actually follow through on it. If you look at the people in your life right now, do they give you confidence? Does your mom give you confidence? Do your friends give you confidence? You know, do your teachers or colleagues give you confidence? Or when you tell them your idea, do they say that it's a stupid idea and you shouldn't do it? Does your office or bedroom give you confidence? Do the videos you watch give you confidence, right? All of that matters, and you want to design your environment with intent so that wherever you are, as much as possible, from, you know, the clothes you wear to the music you listen to, to the videos you watch, to the people you hang out with, to the conversations that you have, are built up around helping you do something great. And to the extent that they're not, I would have a serious thought about whether you still want to have those people or those things in your life. If you want to boost your confidence, then you need to have things around you that make you feel confident consistently. Number 5 is take small steps. One of the biggest things that I found in trying to tackle big projects— I'm starting here, I want to get here, it's a big gap, and because it looks so big, I don't have the confidence to do it. Like, who am I to be able to go out and do that? That's such a big task, I can't do it. And all the negative self-talk starts to come in. Where if you realize that you could take small steps This is really big, but here to here is not so big. It's scary, but not that scary. I think I can kind of do that. And then another step, another step, and you slowly work your way up, realizing that any big endeavor is the collection of a lot of small steps that came before. And so trying to break down whatever that big thing is that you want to do that seems so scary and crazy and out of this world and not possible and not within your skill set or ever going to happen for you, find whatever the smallest, smallest next step is, and continue to build those steps. And when you look back, you'll have realized that you made some pretty significant progress. Number 6 is model success. It can be really scary and really hard when you don't have a plan, when you don't know where you're going. And as entrepreneurs, it's especially scary because we're doing new things, we are pioneering, we're inventing the future, we're writing the new story. Scripts or what will happen. And when you don't have clarity, when you don't have certainty, that leads to a lack of confidence. If you know exactly how to do something and you've done it a million times before, you don't have self-confidence issues because you've already done it, right? Like breathing or walking or writing the letter A or whatever. Like all of these things you do constantly. And so it's not hard for you to do it. Where when the future is unclear, it can be really hard. And so one of the things that I found really helps is modeling success. Maybe nobody has done what I want to do in my industry, but it may have been done before, or there's some pieces that I can learn from history of other entrepreneurs or other innovators or other actors or other musicians or other athletes. They've done something that I can take and apply it to my case. And looking at that not only gives me the strategy of what— like, it helps give me the plan of what I can do, but also inspires confidence in me because I look at somebody here who's done something amazing, who started with less than what I already have right now, and if they can do it, it inspires me to think that I can do it too, or at least I can get pretty close. And I've always found that having those stories around me helped boost my confidence, which is part of why I started this channel, you know, selfishly for me, the Top 10 Rules, the Antspresso, for me to be able to watch consistently daily, to give me confidence where I look at these people and see that they were able to do great things with so little, it makes me feel like I can do it myself. And I need it daily. I need that shot daily. At least it's for me. Maybe you guys can watch something that lasts you for months. For me, I need it daily. I need that constant injection. And so by looking at what they've done, I get that and I feel more confident in my ability to go and execute on my vision. And the number 7 thing you can do to boost your self-confidence is try to live with no regrets. This is the single most important thing that helped me in my biggest decision in my life, was deciding between having that job, that dream job I thought I always wanted, and running this business that was sucking, was I don't want to live with regret. That's what turned the tables. It wasn't making a list of pros and cons and strengths and weaknesses and trying to think about it logically, it was really, if I didn't do this, if I didn't try to make this company work, I would regret it. Where taking that job, I figured, you know what, I can always get another job. It may not be that job, it may not be the dream job, but I could probably work my way up there and get that job. But I wouldn't have this chance again, and I would regret not taking it. That fear of regret, that worry about regret, that looking at your life when you're 100 years old and back to this moment, Will you think that you will regret not taking action? That helps me bust through the fear. I'm still afraid to take the action, I'm still afraid to say yes, I'm still afraid to do it, but the thought of the regret haunting me for the rest of my life helps give me the courage to feel the fear and do it anyway. And it gives me the confidence to succeed and to at least try, and knowing that the trying itself is a victory. Even if I don't get the result, even if my business doesn't take off, like, yes, it worked out for me. I got acquired a couple years later, you know, it was a great scenario for me. But even if it didn't work out, just knowing the answer helps. Just talking to that girl and getting an answer helps. Just making that sales call and getting an answer helps. So it's not necessarily just, you know, the victory, the win, but certainty. Because the more that you live your life with limited regrets, first of all, you'll live a much happier life, but second of all, you'll probably do something amazing and special. And not every bet's going to work out, but you don't go off and hit those amazing goals by playing safe and by living below what you're capable of doing. So that's my take on the 7 things that you can do to boost your self-confidence. I'd love to know what you guys think. Which one did you resonate the most with? What did this video mean to you? Leave it in the comments below. Did I miss some? Are there 8, 9, 10 that you guys want to add in? Pop it down there. I'm going to join in the discussion. And finally, I want to give a quick shout out to Deborah. Deborah, thank you so much for buying a copy of my book. Really means a lot to me. For those of you guys who want to support me and want a chance at a future shout out in a video, make sure to pick up a copy of the book and email in your receipt so we can keep track. Thank you guys so much for watching. Continue to believe, or whatever your one word is. And I'll see you soon.
