How to EXPLORE Your Michael Jordan Talent | Dave Chappelle's Journey

He said, there are guys here who are bigger than I am, run faster, jump higher.

Now everybody was better than me, but I had them all cracking up.

One of the best decisions that you can ever make in your life is to play to your strengths.

When you know what you got going for you, be confident, not cocky.

Rise and shine, it's Enspresso time. Good morning, Believe Nation, it's Evan. My one word is believe, and I believe in you. I believe you have an amazing gift inside you that I want to see explode. Loaded onto the world. So grab your coffee and sip on today's message: Play to Your Strengths. Over to you, Dave Chappelle. Do you remember how Dave first discovered comedy?

Yes, I do. Um, yes, I do.

Dr. Yvonne Sian is Dave Chappelle's mother.

She's He was a minister and a college professor.

I think the moment he decided to be a comedian was the day that he had to decide whether or not to sign up for the second week of basketball camp. And he called home and he said, "Mom," he said, "There are guys here who are bigger than I am, run faster, jump higher." Now, everybody was better than me, but I had them all cracking up.

So I figured, let me tweak my ambition. I spoke at my old high school. Just to encourage the kids. And I told them straight up, I said, if y'all want to make it out of this ghetto, you're going to have to stop blaming white people for your problems. And you're going to have to focus. And you are going to have to learn how to rap or play basketball or something. You're trapped, nigga. You are trapped. Either do that or sell crack rocks. That's the only way I've seen it work.

One of the best decisions that you can ever make in your life is to play to your strengths. I think the challenge is a lot of people don't know what their ultimate strengths are. And if that's you, then that becomes your first priority. Figure out what you love, what you're great at, and go all in on that. Too many people are living somebody else's version of their life. You're doing the thing that your mom wants you to do. You're doing the thing that your country wants you to do, or the school system wants you to do. You're doing the thing your uncle, your friends want you to do, where most people don't have a very clear vision of what they want to do for themselves. What they have Michael Jordan-level talent at. I believe that everybody has Michael Jordan-level talent at something. And if you don't know what that is, then that becomes your immediate first responsibility to figure that out, because otherwise you're living a life with zero direction. You're doing something because a magazine says that this is the hot thing to do, or because some celebrity is doing something and now you want to do it. You have no internal compass, and so you're following everybody else. And that leads to a really unhappy place. At least a place of, of self-hate. It leads to a place of lack of confidence constantly and searching for other people to give you answers. Well, the answer comes from here, comes from within, from you figuring out that thing that you love doing. If you don't know what it is that you want to do, then you start by exploring. You say yes, you say yes, you say yes. You try out a whole bunch of things until you find the thing that makes you come alive. I look at my journey of helping entrepreneurs and I was speaking at a couple of events internationally after I sold my first company, and I just loved that idea of giving back. Somebody asked me to speak at an event because I had sold my business as a young entrepreneur, had some success, and so I said, "Yeah, I'll do that. Why not? I'll say yes." I didn't know what I wanted to do next in my life. I actually had a dip. I had some mild depression because I had sold my business, which is great, you know, hard to complain about that, but I didn't know what I wanted to do next. I didn't have my purpose. And so I said yes to a whole bunch of things, and one of them was speaking. I spoke in Mexico, I spoke in Brunei, and I came back home and I said, hey, why don't I do this locally? Like, why can't I do this for Toronto entrepreneurs in my own city? And I had my first event that we promoted like crazy with the YMCA, and only 3 people showed up to it. And I thought I'd never be able to make money from this. If 3 people only show up to a free event that was promoted like crazy, how are you ever going to make money doing this thing as a living. It didn't matter though because I loved it. And this is what you find so often with so many of the most successful people. It doesn't make logical sense at the beginning how this thing is going to play out. If you looked at my early career helping entrepreneurs of 3 people at a small YMCA event, you would never think that I would get here. You would never think that I'd be able to have a big impact. You would never think I'd be able to make this into a business. And this is a story of so many people. At the beginning, you look at what they did and it was mediocre and it was very poor results, and you would never think that they would go on to be a huge success, but they did because they loved what they did, because they had insane passion for their craft, and they got so good at it that their talent became undeniable. And I badly want that for you, to find the thing that you have Michael Jordan-level talent at, to stop doing the boring crappy job that you have right now To stop doing something because somebody else wants you to do it instead of the thing that you want to do for yourself. Stop that. How long are you going to live that life? If you don't know what it is that you want to do, explore, explore, explore until you find the thing that you want to come back to and just have the confidence, the belief that if you keep doing it, you will get good at it. You will find a customer base. You will find a way to make money and to make this into your career. Now I've got some special bonus clips for you, but before Before that, my question of the day is, I want to know, what do you have Michael Jordan level talent at? Leave it down in the comments below. I'm really curious to find out. Thank you guys so much for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love. Enjoy the bonus clips, and I'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot of espresso.

One of my weak points in my personal life is I don't like technical stuff. So even though I have to be on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook, I don't care for that. So guess what? I find somebody who loves to do that. You know, I find somebody who has a strength where I have a weakness and I partner with them. All you're trying to do is get to the goal. No one gets there by themselves. Everybody needs help. Now, when you know what you got going for you, be confident, not cocky. Managing your strengths, knowing what they are, and don't let nobody talk you out of it. And that gets you fight ready. You get fight ready like that. You got to know you. Helps you develop your skills. All the while, you're developing your strength. It's not, you just gotta keep developing the strength. Don't let nobody talk you up. At the same time, you must work on improving your weaknesses. So I've had to, in spite of myself, get on Instagram, get on Twitter, get on Facebook. I gotta do the videos whether I want to or not because the world is moving to social media. If I had as many followers as Kim Kardashian, I probably wouldn't even have to do this TV show.

You need to bet on your strengths and don't give a fuck about what you suck at. You're gonna, way too many people in this room are gonna spend the next 30, 40 years of their lives trying to check the boxes of the things that they're not as good at, and that you're gonna waste a shitload of time and lose. I highly recommend auditing yourself, or if you have no fucking empathy or EQ or self-awareness, then find somebody in your family or friendship that does and let them tell you who you are, and once you believe that, either for yourself or someone else told you, go directly all chips all into that because that is the only possible way, in my opinion, watching from the outside, that is, let me rephrase, that is a very highly likely way of over-indexing because the truth is if you want to be an anomaly, you've got to act like one. You know, like, and so that's it, that's what I got. So thanks for having me.

You need to know what your unique strengths are and be willing to delegate. So I would say that the question of whether you should take a skill, learn it yourself, delegate it to someone else, or hire a new team member are determined by having a very accurate self-assessment and assessment of your team's skills. Not only what you can do, but what you should be doing. That's very important. So if you're a startup CEO or founder and you have a team of, say, 2 to 10 people, as soon as you have funds to hire, you should not be focused on the things that you are bad at. Sounds very, very intuitive, but it's not because you might have enough time to do those things, but the question is, do you have the attention to dedicate to those things so they're not an interruption? Especially if you're a venture-backed startup and you're competing against other companies that also have a lot of funding. The game in the race goes to the swift, so you have to have a lot of velocity.

So let me give you the one secret to happiness. One word. This is all you need to be happy.

The most important word ever.

If you had to think of one word that's most important to you or that sums you up or that would be kind of like a little beacon. Hey, Believe Nation, if you want to know what the most important one word is Tony Robbins, Gary Vaynerchuk, Oprah Winfrey, will.i.am, and Howard Schultz, I have a very special secret video for you. Check the description for details.