In this motivational video, host Evan Carmichael opens with his belief that entrepreneurs will solve the world’s biggest problems and introduces the central theme: pursue your passion. He features a montage of successful figures—Kevin O'Leary, Nick Woodman, George Lucas, and Patrick Bet-David—who each share personal stories and insights emphasizing that passion, not money, is the primary driver of lasting success. Kevin O'Leary, known for his money‑focused persona on Shark Tank, explains that many millionaires don’t remember the day they became rich because they were focused on building something they love. Nick Woodman recounts his post‑college depression, a surf‑focused backpacking trip, and how following his surfing passion led to the creation of GoPro. George Lucas describes how his varied interests (cars, anthropology, art) all converged into his ultimate passion for filmmaking, illustrating that following internal drives, not external expectations, leads to fulfillment. Carmichael ties these anecdotes together, arguing that while money is necessary, it should be secondary to a deeper purpose—helping entrepreneurs, creating impact, or simply doing what you love. He invites viewers to reflect on their own number‑one priority beyond money and to comment. The video ends with a brief, negative interjection from an unnamed speaker (Speaker D) who dismisses entrepreneurial risk, providing a stark contrast to the overall uplifting message. The call‑to‑action encourages viewers to believe in themselves and continue watching daily “espresso” motivation clips.
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Good morning, Believe Nation! My name is Evan Carmichael. My one word is believe, and I believe that entrepreneurs will solve all of the world's major problems. So to help you on your journey, today's message is pursue your passion. Over to you, Kevin O'Leary.
If you're passionate and you're successful, you'll wake up, you'll wake up one day rich. You won't realize really be going for the cash, it'll just happen to you. Everybody I talk to that's had success doesn't remember the day they became a millionaire. No idea. Not important to them. They remember winning. They remember building a business and being successful. Again, the pursuit of freedom manifests itself in passion. That's really what it's about.
So I just finished the first draft of my next book. I'm super excited about it. I'm basically taking the top 500 rules. I'm taking the top 50 people that you guys have liked the best from my top 10 rules, times their 10 rules, we have 500 rules, and condensing them down to the most consistent, most common top 10 rules that everybody has. People have accomplished massive success, and one of the ones that is consistent, it's the number one rule, is around following your passion. Doing the thing that you love. And this is not something new on my channel. If you've watched Expressos and top 10s, you've heard this message. Over and over and over and over again.
Passion.
Follow my passion.
Passion.
Follow your passion.
Recognize your passion.
Passion.
Passion.
Passion.
Passionate. Passionate. Passion. Passion. Why I'm really excited about this one today is because it's coming from Kevin O'Leary. And Kevin O'Leary, you see as the Shark on Shark Tank and always talking about money and his goal is making money and his goal is sending out his soldiers to go out and make more money and come back and his dream is to go to bed a little richer at night than he was in the morning, right? That's all he talks about on Shark Tank. At most of the interviews, and this one was different. This one was talking about pursuing your passion. This one was talking about him saying that most people don't even remember the day they became a millionaire because they were doing something much more important. And I love hearing that message from him because it's atypical from what you normally hear from Kevin O'Leary, but it's true. Now money is important. Money is important for everybody. Money is important for me. I look at my budgets, I look at my revenue, I look at my costs, I look at what products are generating sales and which ones aren't. I look at for this business, TDS. I look at what classes are generating revenue, which ones aren't, how much we could pay, how much we could charge. I look at it constantly. It's part of running a business. If you are not making money, you're gonna go out of business. The important thing though is there has to be something more important than money. Money is number 2. Might be number 3 or 4, but it's not number 1. If you are in business and money is number 1 for you, you're not gonna have a lot of success. There has to be something more important that is passionately driving you forward, whatever it is. No judgment. It could be almost anything. The thing that you would do even if you weren't getting paid to do, what is that? For me, it's helping entrepreneurs. I never thought I was going to make money doing this. And if you look at a lot of successful entrepreneurs, they have no idea how they're going to make money. You know, if you look at Elon Musk, he thought that there was a 90% chance that his companies would fail, but he just needed to go and try it. When I started helping entrepreneurs and doing speeches, you know, 3 people showed up to a free event. I'm like, I'm never going to make money off of this. It's crazy. Entrepreneurs don't have money. How am I gonna ever turn this into a business? I still needed to just do it because I loved it. And even if it never became a business, I would still do it because I have the deep passion to helping entrepreneurs. And by doing it over and over and over and over again, you start to maneuver, you start to figure out ways, hey, I could monetize this. This is how I can start making money doing this. Money is still important. Money feeds everything. Money allows me to hire a team. Money allows me to grow bigger. Money allows me to have a bigger impact. But the number one goal for me is helping entrepreneurs. That's what fuels me. I could spend all day helping entrepreneurs and not get tired, not have to go to the bathroom, not have to eat because it just fills me up so much. I might crash afterwards, might be starving afterwards, I might, you know, pass out afterwards, but it's that insane drive that pushes me forward. So you need to find the thing in your business that's the, it's the most important lesson that comes up consistently across successful entrepreneurs and athletes and musicians and actors and anybody who's reached the top in their field. You have to love what you're doing, pursue your passion. Money's important, but it's not number one. So the question of the day today is, I'm curious, what is your number one? What's the most important thing in your business besides money? Super curious to find out. Leave it down in the comments below. I also wanna give a quick shout out to Mohammed Attabali. Mohammed, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word. I really appreciate the support and I hope you enjoyed the read. So 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, and I'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot of espresso. I wake up every morning, espresso keep me going.
Everybody around me, their parents were lawyers or investment bankers or entrepreneurs, or they were all like involved in business. And that actually didn't seem very much fun to me growing up. So I thought that being an adult's kind of a drag. I actually was pretty depressed when I graduated from college. I mean, I was literally depressed for like 6 months. I woke up at 1 o'clock in the afternoon and laid on a couch and looked up at the ceiling and just said, "Dude, what am I gonna do?" And so with no inspiration, I just decided, "You know what? The only thing I can think of to do right now that's gonna make me happy is if I go surfing." And so I planned a 5-month trip around Australia and Indonesia, living out of a backpack in a van at the time. If I didn't follow my passion for surfing, I would've never had the idea for GoPro.
Everything I did, I was following something I really cared about, something I loved, something I was passionate about. And I kept following that passion, whether it was cars, whether it was anthropology, whether it was art, photography. And eventually it led me to my huge passion, my real passion, which was making movies, which combined all of those things. And I realized that had had gone on to get my degree in anthropology, I would have probably made anthropological movies in New Guinea or someplace and eventually been on National Geographic and, you know, the History Channel and been then making features and I'd have done Star Wars just the same. If I'd have gone to Art Center and become an illustrator, I would have probably started doing animation and doing animated films and making animated things and then ultimately I would have gone on and been right where I was. So no matter which route I took, because I cared about all of them. They all led to the same place. Had I done what my father had wished me to do, which was to go into the office equipment business with him, which I knew I wasn't gonna do, I knew I hated that, my life would have been unpleasant. And so I think it's very important not to do what your peers think you should do. Not do what your parents think you should do or your teachers, but to do what you inside, or even your culture thinks, but do what's inside you.
Man, what happened to Pops when he started a business? He failed. What happened to Mom and Dad? They got a divorce. What happened to us? We lived 6 different places. Was it fun? Hell no, it wasn't fun. What happened in high school to you? Did you play baseball? Did you play high school basketball? Did you get picked up for football? Did you date the girl you like? What was your GPA? Who were you in high school? Who were you afterwards? What makes you think you're going to make it in life? Man, you got to stop selling this stuff to this guy, man. Stop it. It's getting old. Go get that job that you let go of paying you $12 an hour and part-time get a degree. Stop taking these damn risks. We're not meant to do something big with our lives. Simple as that.
Are we done?
I'm done.
I'm good. Okay, good. Pat, I want you to know this voice is never going away. This voice is always going to be there. No matter how much money you're going to make, it's always going to be there. The great thing about it is though, every morning you wake up, you have a choice on which voice to listen to. But I want you to think about a completely different thing right now. Let's just say you do nothing. Let's just say you buy into your fears. Let's just say you buy into every single thing you're worried about. Let's just say you don't make any decisions to go after your dreams. Fast forward 10 years from now, 20 years from now, 30 years from now, 40 years from now. Let's just say your funeral's around the corner. You have 50 people there, 100 people there, maybe 200 people show up. These are your friends, family, and people that love you. So you'll be loved for one generation. Remembered for 2 generations, and forgotten after that. Is that truly the life you want to live? Is that really what you want to do? I don't know if that's the life you really want to live. You see, what I've noticed is no matter what you ever do, you'll have a lot of lonely times. You can lie to your family, you can lie to your friends, you can fool the world into realizing that why you didn't win was because of some challenge that you had to face, but there is one person you can never lie to, and that is the man in the mirror. You can never lie to the man in the mirror. Never. For the rest of your life, the man in the mirror is going to look back at you and say, "You did not choose to go after your dreams." And you have to be okay with that. Now, what I would like to encourage you to do is to make the right choice. I encourage you to face your fears and pursue your dreams. Go pursue the dreams that matter the most to you. You only got one shot at this thing here. And if it works out, Man, it's gonna feel so good for you. And if it doesn't, at least you had the courage to make that decision. I hope you make the right choice. I trust you will.
