How to Identify Your True Voice and UNLOCK Your Potential in 68 Minute | Evan Carmichael

You know, there's some people that when you hang out with them, you just feel worse. You feel worse about yourself, you feel worse about your life, you hit a lot more negative. Suddenly your hopes and dreams are crushed. You feel like you have to go home and nap or shower or something. You just don't feel yourself. You feel icky, gooey, like, ah man, why am I so low? There are people who just sap your energy. And part of being an optimistic person is you want to pour into others, you know, you want to encourage others, you want to be the light for them. And at the same time, you have to protect your own peace, that you can't only pour into others and have it suck away your energy. And so there are people who, you know, who you're just pouring into, pouring into, pouring into, and they're just taking, taking, taking, taking, and you feel drained by the end of it. So do an audit. Do an energy audit on the people in your life. And the ones that are making you feel amazing and you leave them and like time flew and you feel so unstoppable leaving, cool. Like find ways, fight for ways to spend more time with them. Need motivation?

Watch the Top 10 with Believe Nation.

Hey, it's Evan Carmichael, and I watch these videos every day because I need them for motivation. Being around successful entrepreneurs every morning helps me believe that I can do great things too. It's like your morning coffee, but for your goals, kickstarting your day with a blast of positivity. So here is a challenge for you. Try watching one video every morning for the next 30 days, and let's find out together if they help you do great things too. If you're in, leave a hashtag #believe in the comments below so I can celebrate with you.

And the people who make you feel worse about yourself, that you suck, that you're never going to make it, that these ideas you have are stupid, spend less time with them or eliminate them. Some of them you can just get rid of. Some of them may be, you know, people that you went to kindergarten with or high school with and you've outgrown them. You know, we're in friendships out of convenience, not out of people that you're actually selecting. And so you've outgrown some people and it's time to move on. It doesn't mean you have to call them and tell them that that they suck and that you're better than them now and you're moving on, you just stop spending time with them. Make yourself more inaccessible. And some of the people are harder to do and you don't even necessarily want to completely get rid of, right? Like maybe it's your mom. Maybe your mom is always negative. Maybe your mom is always telling you that you're doing the wrong thing. And in those situations, you probably don't want to get rid of your mom, although some people have done that and cut their parents or negative family members out of their life. But my best guidance is you just limit access to the person and to the topics. So maybe you don't have to call your mom every day. And/or if you do, then don't talk about work. Talk about other things. Like, are there enough other things that you can talk about with these family members that doesn't leave you feeling down, feeling blue, feeling like you're not gonna make it? And so limiting access to the person in terms of number of hours and/or limiting access to the topics that you talk about. And it's just you getting more comfortable setting boundaries. Because as you let people walk over you, they will continue to walk over you. You set boundaries. You don't have to be rude. You don't have to be mean. You don't have to be controversial. You don't have to raise your voice. You don't have to get angry. But you can set your boundaries and say, I'm not talking about this with you right now. And you train them. Like they've trained you that it's okay to talk about this. Now you train them that it's not okay to talk about this.

Rule number 2, identify what motivates you.

When you can identify the thing that makes you come alive, because we've all felt it. Everybody has felt boldness and courage at some point.

Well, what led to that?

Were you listening to something? Were you reading a book? Were you listening to Samuel's podcast? Were you dancing? Were you like, what were you doing? And then just put that as part of your daily routine, right? Like if Samuel's podcast is the thing that gets you feeling motivated, cool. He's got 40+ more episodes to go and listen to. Start your day with them and then go listen to them back. And he's making new ones all the time. It's like when you identify those things, it might have been accidental. If you're listening to Samuel's show for the first time, maybe you came across it by accident. You were searching for me and you found this.

Cool.

Now, don't make it accidental. Make it intentional. Plan for it so that tomorrow morning when you wake up, you get that same energy burst to give you the motivation, belief, confidence, courage to go off and have a great day.

Rule number 3, believe.

I like to say that belief or lack of belief is the world's biggest problem. I think everybody has what I call Michael Jordan-level genius at something, but we're not doing it because we either are too afraid to start, we don't believe in ourselves enough to try, or we don't believe that it will work out. But at the end of the day, you could be great at something, and it's probably not what your parents did, and it's probably not what you went to school for, what your guidance counselor told you to go off and do. It's something totally different, but you could be the best in the world at something. And you're not because you don't believe in yourself to chase it down.

Rule number 4, play bigger triggers.

I have what I call play bigger triggers. And these are things that I put in my life to remind myself that I'm awesome, that I wanna believe harder, that I wanna be more positive. And so some of them are behind me here in the office. You can see my bag of Doritos and people say like, can't you get a healthier sponsor? Why is Doritos a sponsor of your video? Well, they're not. I have a strategy called damn the Doritos. And the idea is when you're on a diet, that to eliminate junk food from your house. The way my weird brain works is that actually makes me weaker. I'm telling myself that I'm not capable of being around the junk food. And so what happens if you go to a vacation or Christmas party or whatever? You're just going to eat all the food around you because you've trained yourself to only excel in a certain limited window. Where instead I want to say, "No, I'm awesome. I can be around this and it's not a problem." And so my mouth is watering right now looking at that Doritos, but I want to eat it, but I'm not going to. And it's a reminder that I'm awesome. I have neck braces here behind me and these are from when I broke my neck. I was doing a tour. We did a 23-city speaking tour and halfway through or two-thirds of the way through, I broke my neck. And everybody said, "Go home. Go home. Go home." But for me, I just didn't want to default to quitting. And so, I stayed on tour and I said being around other entrepreneurs is actually more healing for me than just lying on my bed all day. And so, that's a reminder that I did that crazy— I broke my neck in two spots and I stayed on tour.

It's crazy.

I can't even like imagine. I don't even let me know that I'm still that bold person that I was before. It's a reminder of some of my best moments that I'm proud of. I have a picture of my wife who's very meaningful to me. I have a picture of my YouTube subscribers. That's the first original gold plaque that I got. This skateboard is the first thing that I bought with my money. I saved up $40 when I was—

I don't know how old—

and that's the skateboard that I bought. I had Mikey Taylor on, friend of the channel, a couple of times. He has made— he's a professional skateboarder and made the second most amount of money, I think, as a skateboarder after Tony Hawk. And I showed him that skateboard and he said, "Yeah, that's a piece of crap. It's not a very good skateboard." But it reminds me of like what I did and that at the time seemed like an impossible effort for me to save up the money to do it and then I did. And so put triggers in your environment that remind you of how awesome you are. Whether they're accomplishments, whether it's a bag of Doritos, a broken neck. Cast, whatever it is. The things that when you look at is a reminder that you've done awesome things and that you are an awesome person and that you can continue to do more amazing things in the future. So when that's in your environment, whether that's your office, your bedroom, your car, your work, whatever, when you have it around there— it's not that every time I look at the Doritos every single morning, I'm not having to stare down competition with the Doritos for 8 hours that reminds me I'm awesome. They're little triggers that pop up that every time I walk into my office, like boom, something hits me. It's like, yeah, okay, let's go.

Let's play bigger.

And so what are the play bigger triggers that you can engineer in your environment so that you don't have to think about it? It happens automatically. The first point here when I said environment is feed your mind daily with positivity. That's where you have to subscribe to a YouTube channel. You have to open up a podcast. You got to open up a book. And that will to make that happen is where a lot of us, myself included, will struggle because we don't— if you don't feel like doing it, you feel great once you've done it or when you're in it, but you may not feel like doing it at the beginning. And so there's that little disconnect. But when you have triggers, they automatically trigger you to think bigger. When I see the Doritos with the broken neck or my wife or the skateboard, like, it triggers me to want to play a bigger game.

Also, to make sure you're actually taking action after watching this video, I've designed a special free worksheet just for this video.

The worksheet will highlight our favorite lessons from the video that will inspire you to remember what you learned today and actually apply them.

The worksheet will also give you space to write down what your key takeaways are and your specific plan of action to make sure you're getting results. If you want the worksheet designed specifically for this video, absolutely for free, there's a link in the description below. Go click on it and start building the momentum in your life and your business.

I'll see you there.

Rule number 5: Trust your ideas.

I believe that the ideas that come to you when you're feeling bold, powerful, courageous are actually the right ones for you. If you're listening to this episode and you're feeling pumped up like, oh my God, this is amazing, you've kind of raised your energy level, whatever comes to your mind next, I believe is the right thing for you. And then your brain starts getting in the way and tells you all the reasons why you can't do it. So when you go on vacation or when you're with your friend or when you're— you kind of— we have these moments where we get pulled up, where we feel like, oh my God, things are possible. And you come up with these great ideas for yourself. And then it's not even telling your friends or your family about this idea and them telling you that it sucks. It's ourselves telling ourselves that we can't do it. I'm going to launch this show. It's going to be amazing. I'm going to have all these people on. We're going to spread all this goodness in the world. And then you wake up the next day, it's like, I can't do that. Are you kidding me? I can't do— What gear am I going to buy? I suck on camera. I'm the most introverted person. Who did I think I was that I could do that? And that's where we're just living by default. And so what I've tried to do is just shortcut that where I'm getting an idea. I trust that ideas that come to me are good. And I go do something about it as long as I'm in a positive state. Like, I think when you're in a negative state, you're feeling anger or rage or jealousy or whatever, don't trust those instincts because you're probably going to do something that you regret. But that's what we end up doing. We like, when we're in a negative state, we listen to our intuition, our negative intuition, and do something stupid. But then when we're in our positive, upbeat, courageous state, we get these ideas and then we don't do it.

And then we regret that.

you know, the next day, the next year, the next month, et cetera. So when you feel bold, powerful, courageous, unstoppable, happy, and an idea comes to you, just trust that that idea is actually good for you and you have to go do something about it.

Rule number 6, model success.

How much do you think modeling plays into success? And is that something that you've, you've done as well? Yeah. My, my channel initially was called Modeling the Masters.

Oh, wow.

And if you go youtube.com/modelingthemasters or Model Masters, I forget which one it's still, it still goes to Evan Carmichael. So that was my initial handle. So I'm a big believer. It's like, wow, I literally didn't know that. That's amazing. That's a super inside baseball that not very many people would know. You'd have to be OG subscriber to know that. But I'm 100% like, that's what saved my business. My first business was modeling Bill Gates and seeing how he built Microsoft. And so how can I use that to apply to my company? And modeling won't get you all the way there. It gets you like 85% of the way, right? It's like trying on a hoodie and it doesn't quite fit. And so you got to, you got to make a couple adjustments. So if you want to be a great podcast host, so that's like somebody's watching, that's their next great ambition. Okay, cool. Listen to the podcast that you love. Josh has his questions and Rogan has his questions and Ferriss has his questions and whoever else that you love listening to, they have their questions. You can't just ask the same questions that Dr. Axe is asking and Joe Rogan's asking, right? You have to add your spice and your flavor to it, but it gets you 85% of the way there instead of trying to feel like you have to figure this all out on your own. Back to the beginning of this interview where, you know, you said what made the difference between your first 5 years, you went from 0 to 2,000 subscribers, and then the next 5 years with 2,000 over a million. It was mentorship. It was, it was modeling success. It was getting help. It was not trying to do everything all on my own. So At the beginning, copy. At the beginning, yes, copy Dr. Axe and copy me and copy whoever else and copy thumbnails and titles and intros. That's not all you want to end up doing because then you're just an Elvis impersonator and you're never going to be Elvis, right? So, but that gets you to the path, right? That gets you way faster on the path to then, okay, I saw how he did it. Now I'm going to experiment and branch off and do my own thing. So. I think modeling success is the fastest way to grow, gets you 85% of the way there, and then you got to figure out that extra little secret sauce to add in for yourself.

Rule number 7: Find the right tribe.

Some people, I think they're not doing or they're not achieving things in their life because they don't want to be vulnerable, or they think that, oh, they're going to judge me. This happens in Middle Eastern culture. I'm not going to do that because this is what they're going to think about me.

That's every culture. Yeah.

Why is that?

Well, because we're—

We believe in ourselves, but that's going to stop us.

Because we're social animals, because we care about bonding with other people. Like, we need other people. Like, if you are alone by yourself on a desert island with no human contact, you're going to go crazy. We need people. So we've been trained to work together. And how do you work together? Well, you need people to like you, right? Or you get kicked out of the tribe. So this is like hard, not 2023, but way back. This is what we've been trained, this hardwired into us. The good news is now you could find your tribe, right? You may not fit in with your little group that you grew up with, your high school. but there are tons of people like you. We're in this group here of entrepreneurs. Everybody in there is a weird duck, right? Like to be an entrepreneur, they're all trying to go for, I think it's million dollar net worth.

Yep.

Right. That's a, go home to your friends from high school and say, I want to build a million dollar net worth. Right. It's a weird thing to say. You get, you would get kicked outta that tribe and then you don't want to be alone. And so we, we try to make ourselves smaller to fit back into our tribe. But the key is not make yourself smaller to fit with your original tribe. The key is to find a new tribe. Because there's people like this group here, like your audience, like the team you've built, who want to go off and do amazing things. And it's the courage to jump from one tribe to then find the new one that can support you.

Rule number 8: Don't have a perfect plan.

Richard Branson has a great quote: You don't learn to walk by following the rules. You learn by doing and falling over. And one of the things that I am still working on is Not having a perfect plan. I feel like I want to have the perfect plan. I want to have it all figured out before I get started. I am a recovering perfectionist, and I lost a $40 million deal when I was 20, 21, 22, because I was a perfectionist. And I had a software company we're building it, and I wanted to come with the perfect plan, the perfect plan, the perfect plan, a perfect exit, the company that was going to buy us. And we knew, I knew who I thought would buy us, and we went and we presented to them. And they didn't— they said no. They didn't want to buy. It's like, what? No, I didn't— what do you mean no? And what I learned later on is that the number one company is very rarely the business that ends up buying you. It's the number 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 company that wants to become the number one company that they're a lot more aggressive. And so the number 4 company in our industry had raised $800 million, was going off buying companies, and they bought our biggest competitor, and it came down to us versus our biggest competitor, and they chose our biggest competitor. They loved us, but they had already started talking to our competitor months earlier. They were further down the process with them, and then they bought them, and that was $40 million, and that hurt, you know? Now, if we were in there earlier, would we have made the $40 million? I don't know, maybe not, but a 50% chance at $40 million? That's still pretty good odds. I would take it. And so we often feel like we have to have it all figured out in advance and we have to know the rules and it's got to all be perfectly planned out. And like, that's usually not how it goes. You just need to start. You got to start and you got to keep taking action. And, and yes, we have goals that we're shooting towards. We have our big picture vision of what we want to ultimately create and our smaller goals that we're shooting towards. And you don't have to have the perfect plan. You just need to start taking action and following through.

Rule number 9: keep growing.

How do you deal, deal with sort of this fear, uncertainty, or even imposter syndrome, right? I think a lot of people think, well, who am I to be giving, you know, advice or telling people how to be successful if I haven't quite done it yet? You know, did you have that in your career, and what, what, and how did you overcome that? Yeah, I'm still working through it, you know. We all are.

Yeah.

You don't know that you're ever done. You know, we're never done growing. That's why we all have to keep stepping into the growth lab. There's always a new thing to get better and improve on. Uh, but yeah, I mean, when I first got it started, I, I looked up to the Tony Robbins and the Les Browns and the, the people who are, you know, making content and been in this space and realized, what am I going to share that Tony Robbins hasn't already shared? Like, how am I going to be any different? And And it took me a long time to even tell my story. And we would do profiles of different entrepreneurs on the channel. And the number one request, we'd always say, who else do you want me to profile next? At the end of a profile, uh, the number one question is always me. Like, what do you want to hear me? Like, I mean, sure. I, you know, you've listed a couple accolades at the beginning, but that's nothing compared to Steve Jobs and Elon Musk and Walt Disney and all the people that I'm profiling. Like, why do you care about me? And so that was a big, uh, process to unwind, to, to figure out, oh, like my story actually adds value. And so to get over imposter syndrome, what I realized was if you were to go back and talk to the person you were 5 years ago or 10 years ago or 19-year-old you or whatever it was, and just imagine that they're on a park bench and you got 5 minutes to go and talk to younger you, could you help that person? It's like, yeah, you know, I, I know what I would say. I can go back and help that person. I could give that person some great advice. It's like, okay, well, if you can help that person, recognize that there are millions of people right now who are younger you and they need your help. And people will learn from you in a way where they won't learn from Tony Robbins or Les Brown or anybody else because of your story and your background and the way that you position and the way that you The words that you use and the way that you explain things will be different than somebody else. People will learn from you, but they won't learn from me. We might even say similar things, but like the way that you say it, it just connects with people differently than the way that I say it. And so most people I see as we're climbing this mountain of growth and whoever you think is ahead of you, you know, you're the Tony Robbins or Les Brown, they're at step number 10,000, you know, and I'm at step 800. They're way ahead of me. But even if I'm at step 800, where are most people stuck? Like step 1. Most people are at the beginning. Most people have no idea how to get started. So if you're at step 800, if you're at step 5, you can get people to step 4 because you've done it.

Mm-hmm.

Now you can't help somebody get to step 20 if you're at step 5, right? And that's where people might over-promise, over-deliver, or say they've done something that they haven't done. So like, don't do that. Uh, but most people are stuck at the beginning and however far you've gotten, you can reach back and help other people get to where you've gotten. And every time you take another step up on that mountain, you reach back and you help people get to where you're at. And so it's less about imposter syndrome of comparing yourself to, you know, Les Brown or whoever. Uh, and it's more about looking backwards and say, holy cow, I've come really far compared to who I used to be. And there's lots of people who currently are who I used to be. And they need help.

And rule number 10, the last one before some special bonus clip: learn when to pivot.

I don't have 10-year goals. Um, I think if you know where you're going to be in 10 years, you're thinking small.

Oh man, that's good.

Sorry, it's like, like, think about who you were 10 years ago. Like, how old are you now? I'm 28 this month. 28. So like, think about who you were at 18. It's like there's no way you could predict that you'd be here. Yeah. And so what makes you think that 28-year-old you knows what 38-year-old you is gonna be like, right?

Happy birthday, by the way. Thank you.

So we plan these goals for ourselves, and there's nothing wrong with having goals. The problem is usually when you're 3 years in on your goal or 2 years or whatever, it actually makes sense to shift to something else because that's actually more in alignment of the mission. So my mission, the purpose, is to solve the biggest problem in the world, which is people don't believe in themselves enough. And I think the way to do that best right now is through content at scale. So me making my own content, encouraging people like Eddie to make more content, coming on podcasts like yours to make more content. I think that's the best way to do it. That may change, you know, like in 3 years, maybe that's something else. Maybe we're all in VR. Maybe we're hologramming into your, you know, fancy condo or something. And that's the new thing to do. Okay, we just finished. We recorded all these videos. Ray is in a sweatshirt, and I don't know how hot it is. It is insanely hot right now here in Manila.

It is.

What, do you have a final message that you want to share with, uh, Believe Nation before we wrap up?

Yeah, sure. So the things that you want to try, try it. It's better, uh, it's better to fail than not trying at all. You gotta try it.

Let's go, Ray!

Yes, believe!

You have a single most important core value, and when you figure it out, your entire life changes. If you feel like you're being pulled in a million different directions, you're walking on quicksand, everybody wants something from you, you're hot and cold, you want to do something one day and you don't the other day, you have a hard time saying no to people and to opportunities, and you're just being pulled in a thousand directions— does that sound familiar? Does it sound like you? If that's you, you don't know what you stand for. Because when you know what you stand for, all decisions become easier. I wrote two books on this, Your One Word and then Built to Serve. And at the core, both of them is figuring out what, what do you stand for? What is your single most important core value? And when you can name it, when you can label it, when you can get to the root of it, what it does is give you clarity for the rest of your life. Mine is belief. My one word is belief. I want to believe in myself more, and I want to spread belief to the world, to the people around me. It's why I make all these videos. I make them for myself because I need to learn, and I want to be around the best. I want to be around people who inspire me to believe more in myself, and I try to spread that to the world. It becomes a filter through which I see the world. It becomes the filter through which my best self operates. Whenever I don't know what to do, whenever I'm given an opportunity, whenever I might be pulled in a thousand different directions, what do I run that through is, well, believe. What would the believe version of Evan do?

What would he do?

And then that just makes it easier. Boom. The decision made easier. If you look at my YouTube channel, people say, well, you do all these top 10 rules and you do all these inspiring videos, it's great. Why not do top 10 of the stupidest things this person said, or top 10 reasons why not to follow this person? If I did that, if I went negative on Kanye West or Donald Trump or whoever, those videos would actually do better. You know, this is where it gets really tough. This is where it really comes down to what do you stand for and how much do you stand for? Because when you can get to the core of who you are, that becomes a lot easier. Because making those videos, if I was to slam people, would do better. People would much rather watch negative videos than positive. People would much rather laugh at somebody else than educate themselves. It's just, just how we are. We'd rather watch Big Brother and watch reality TV shows and people tearing each other apart. You can't look away from a car accident or fight on the street. We have this thing inside us where we like seeing other people not doing well because that's how we feel better about ourselves. When you see somebody else struggling, see someone else's terrible life on TV, makes you feel better about yourself. So we have this, we have this insecurity inside all of us. And so those videos would do better. Our top 10 stupidest things Kanye West has said would, would get more views, would make me more money, would lead to more subscribers, would lead to all the metrics that, that you would probably look at, right? You know, if I look at, well, what are my goals? I want more subscribers, more views, more comments, more revenue. It would help all of that, but it's anti-belief. I don't want to— I feel gross. I don't want to put that content up. I don't want to put up content slamming people. It's not who I am. It's not what makes me come alive. And this is where you could do it for a short amount of time and you're going to start to burn out because you start to hate your life because you're doing work that is just against who you want to be. You look at Dave Hollis, he's got his one word of captain. Great. So what is What would a captain do? Captain goes through choppy waters. Captain is built for the rough seas. So if he's ever stuck thinking about, should I do this or not? Well, what would a captain do? And then boom, answer. So figuring out your one word, figuring out that most important core value, what it does is give you a roadmap for the rest of your life. And it never gets old. I will never stop believing in myself and others and wanting to continue to inspire. Dave Hollis will never stop wanting to be the captain. And you need to figure out what yours is because that gives you direction again for the rest of your life. So how do we do it? How do— what are some of the tactics? What are some of the tricks that you can use? Because I think this is one of the most important exercises you can ever do in your life, understanding what you stand for as a human. It's not, it's not taught, you know, in schools. It's not taught in textbooks. Most of the people who've taught you in schools, they're not happy with the direction of their life either, right? Like, as you start to get older, when you're, when you're a kid and you look at your parents and adults, you feel like they got it all figured out, they have the answers, and then you realize they have no idea what they're doing. Like, they're barely hanging on themselves. The teachers who taught you about, you know, life in, in school, they're not happy with their own life. They haven't figured this out either. But I think it's one of the most important things that we can learn. So again, I have two books on it: Your One Word, Built to Serve. If you want to go deeper, those are great resources. But you start with what are some of the things that make you come alive, you know? Who was your favorite teacher growing up? What movies did you love growing up? What did you love about how your parents raised you? Even if you hate your parents, was there anything that you can pull out that you loved? And what you're doing is looking at what are some of the things that tie these things together. So if you had to write— this is the exercise I do with people— okay, tell me your favorite movie and 3 words to describe it. Tell me who your favorite teacher was and 3 words to describe them. Think about your favorite teacher growing up, favorite coach, your favorite mentor. Or it's not because they taught you grade 8 science, right? It wasn't the material they taught you. They made you feel better as a human. They taught you how to be a better person. Why? What did they do? I was talking to a woman yesterday, coaching her through this process. We did an Instagram Live together. She's part of my Movement Makers program and just passed a year being in the program. So we did a Live together and she wanted to go through this exercise? How do I find my one word? And her favorite teacher growing up wasn't a teacher but was her coach. She was a track coach. And one of the things that she loved about the track coach was he would get in and do it with her. So whenever she was tired, whenever she wanted to quit, whenever she didn't feel good enough, he wouldn't just give her words, but he would do it with her. He'd say, okay, I'll do the last one with you. Race me. He would run alongside her. So as you think about it, what, what was your favorite teacher growing up? Who was it and why? Write down some descriptive keywords. And what you'll find is if you do that with who your favorite mentors are, who your favorite teachers are, what your favorite books or videos are— look at my channel, all the people we profiled— and who are the people that you resonate with the most? If you love me, what are 3 words about Evan Carmichael that you love? You love Dave Hollis. What are 3 words that describe Dave Hollis? All the good things that you love, that make you feel alive and bold and confident and serving and wanting to help. All those things are connected, but they don't feel connected. This is the problem. This is the connective tissue work that you have to do. This is where we never learn these things. The things that you love are not just random occurrences.

They're connected.

When you write them down, the descriptive keywords, you'll see a trend that happens between them. So for me, it's belief. My favorite movie is Seabiscuit. It's about a horse that's too small and a jockey that's too big and a team owner that's going bankrupt, and somehow they come together, find each other, and win all of these races. And it's based off a true story, and they go and beat the well-funded, you know, the team that has the perfect jockey and the giant horse and the tons of money, and they go and they beat those guys, right? So if I were to write down, you know, the 3 words, believe is on there. I might say underdog, I might say inspiring, I might say believe. I would say believe, you know. And then if I think about my favorite teacher growing up, Madame Farr taught me French, but I don't even use I don't use my French. Like, French isn't even that valuable for the work that I do. Why do I love Madame Farr? Well, because she believed in me, because she would meet with me once a week when I was in my graduating year, and she just asked me about my life, how I was doing in school. I was introverted. I was shy. You know, it was harder for me to make friends and feel like I fit in and belonged. For her, I might put belong. I would definitely put believe, and I might put something else, maybe care or compassion. And those meetings with her once a week turned me from a B and C student into a straight A student when I didn't think that that was possible for me to do it because I'd never really gotten A's my entire school career. So we start to look at the similarities. Right? But I'm far. Believe, you know, compassion, etc. Seabiscuit, underdog, believe, right? There's different keywords that will show up, but what's a consistent one? Belief. Ah, that's interesting. It's interesting this keeps coming up. What would happen if I built my whole life around belief? What would happen if I built my business around belief? What would happen if I created created a schedule and a calendar and habits and routines that made me feel more belief. What would happen if I could spread that belief to others? What would happen if I brought on team members who love believe and helped spread believe with their skills and talents? What would happen if I had my significant other believe in me, right? What would happen? What would— how much does life change? Changes everything. Changes everything. Everything changes because now I'm designing a life with intent and purpose and with design, as opposed to randomly having things experienced for me, to me, because everybody's got an agenda for your time. Everybody wants you to do certain things, and that's when you feel lost and being pulled in a million different directions. You have to figure out what you stand for. I think it's the most important thing you can do as a human. What do you stand for? What's your single most important core value? Some people get it right away from the exercises. Some people, it takes some time, and you, you sit on it and it becomes more and more right or more and more wrong. But when you find it and you get that compass, you get that roadmap, it's with you for the rest of your life. It makes every decision easier. It makes you live a lot more in alignment and makes you feel like what you're doing is important, that it matters. It gives you the confidence and the courage to do the thing that you're afraid to do, to step outside your comfort zone, to build the business and the life that you want, and ultimately to make you happy. To make you happy. And then you can spread that happiness to others and help them believe in themselves. Themselves do. The voice inside your head telling you that you can't do something is not your voice. It was put there. It was planted there. It was fertilized there by the people around you, by your parents, by your teachers, by your friends growing up, by society. It was put there. Think about it. When, when you were born, when you were young, I don't know what earliest memories are, but you see kids, everything is possible. You know, like, I'm gonna be an astronaut and I'm going to be an architect at the same time. And, you know, my goal growing up, I was going to be a baseball player, play for the Toronto Blue Jays, my hometown team, and I was going to be a police officer in the off-season. So be professional baseball player. I love Kelly Gruber growing up, third baseman for the Toronto Blue Jays, and in the offseason I'm going to be a police officer because I love police officers. Like, everything is possible. Everything is possible to kids. And then what happens? Suddenly we start to get older and we realize that things aren't that way, and we have to be safe, and we have to be practical, and we have to be smart. And that message gets drilled into us, and It could be your parents, it could be your friends, it could be the school system, it could be the media, it could be society. There's lots of it. Think about the people who are giving you the advice. Think about the people— that's why it's so valuable— think about the people telling you that you can't do something, and how many of those people genuinely love their life. The people telling you you can't do something How much do they actually love their life? Not a lot, right? They don't. What gives them the authority to tell you that you can't do it? Some people will do it out of fear. It's love but fear, right? Maybe your mom's telling you you can't do something, but she loves you. Probably she's telling you because she wants you to be happy. She's telling you because she's afraid. She's telling you because if you go go off and do something that doesn't work? What's going to happen to your life? She's living from a place of insecurity, right? That— but it's love. And some people do it because of jealousy. They tried to live their dream, they took their shot, and it didn't work out. And so now nobody else around them is allowed to succeed. Instead of going and taking a second shot, they spend their time trying to tear other people down. But either way, they're not happy. They never lived their life. They never chased after their goals. They never pursued their dreams. And now they're telling you that you can't do that. Most people are not happy. Look at any survey, any study, or even just think about it. Think about the people saying no in your life. Are they, does this person actually love their life? Probably a no. So why are we listening to them? This is a problem because most people don't love their lives. You're surrounded by it. It's everywhere. It's in everything that you're picking up. It takes a conscious effort to start to shift that. This is why so many people, when they do learn, when they do improve, when you've been on a personal development, personal growth journey, when you learn something, you want to go help the people around you. The first thing we want to to do, the first instinct is to then bring it to the people around us because we want the world to be better, right? So that voice is not yours. That voice was planted. The mistake is thinking that it's yours. The mistake is thinking that that insecure voice inside your head is actually you talking. It's not you talking. That voice telling you that you suck, that you can't do this, that someone like you will make it, that's not you. That's not your real voice. That is your parents, that is your school, that is society, that is the media. That's not your voice. That's what you've been conditioned to believe. So how do we start to change it? The goal of this video is not to be, you know, giant conspiracy theory, the world's against us, but it's possible. Like, how do you change it? How do you start to shift it? Well, we need to recognize where one that that's not your voice. Do you believe that that's your voice? Because as long as you believe that that's you, you stay small, you stay stuck, you stay listening to it because you're telling yourself that you can't do it. So step one is to recognize that that is not actually your voice. And if you can do the deeper work to figure out, well, whose is it? Whose voice is that? Is that your parents? Is that your brothers? Is that your schools? Is that the media you're consuming? Is that— like, who is it? Whose voice is that? And why do you still care about listening to that voice? Like, that's some deeper work, but if you figure that out, it'll allow you to stop listening to it. Step 2 is to start to eliminate the things in your life now that make that voice louder. Maybe you're hanging around some people who you shouldn't be friends with anymore. You know, maybe just because you're friends with somebody in high school doesn't mean you should still be their friend now. You know, maybe you've grown apart and now it's time to get some new friends. Do an audit of the people that you're following on Instagram and on YouTube and any social media and whatever you're feeding your brain with. Do an audit and think about, are these people— which voice are they empowering? There's a great story about two wolves. You know, I'm gonna paraphrase it, but there's two wolves inside you. One who wants the best for you and one who wants to grow and learn and improve and serve and share and be courageous, and the other wolf is scared and afraid and keeping you small and stuck and insecure and weak. And it goes, well, who—

which wolf wins?

Who's the wolf that ends up carrying the day? The answer is the one that you feed. So if you feed the wolf all your insecurities and fears and doubts, then that that wolf is going to win, and you will be afraid and full of insecurities and doubts. And if you feed the wolf that makes you feel bold and courageous and powerful, then you will become that too. So that process— we need to recondition ourselves by changing the environment, by being around the people who are doing the things that we want to do. So do that audit of the people you follow on YouTube, on Instagram, and how much of your time— here's, here's the test— is when you walk away from a video, when you walk away from the app that you're on? Do you feel better about yourself? Do you feel bolder, more courageous, more powerful? If you're watching this video, you know, when you watch my channel, do you feel better about yourself? Are you filled with more belief, ready to take on the day? Yes? Great!

Hey, I got more videos for you.

Stay tuned.

No?

I sincerely apologize because that is not the goal. But then if that is happening, then, then yes, unsubscribe me and go follow some other people, you know? And same thing for all the people you follow on Instagram. How many of those people make you feel better? Do you leave your phone feeling better about yourself, more courageous, bold, ready to start today? Or did you just waste a whole bunch of time and feel worse about yourself? Great. Those people, unfollow them. Everybody who makes you feel that way, stop following them and replace them, because I guarantee you that if you look for the light, you'll find the light. It's a good one. You know, if you look for the light, you'll find the light. There are people on every social platform in every part of the world who are spreading kindness, spreading belief, spreading hope, spreading possibility. They exist everywhere. It's not common. It's not the default yet. That's why lack of belief, I believe, is the world's number one problem because it's not default yet, but there There are people spreading the light. Find them. Be around them. Hang out with them. Collect them. Learn to collect good people. It'll shift everything. So you've got a real important decision to make. Do you listen to your heart? The feeling that you want to do more and serve more and help more and be more and create more, or do you listen to that voice that's not your voice inside your head telling you all the reasons why you can't do it? It's a choice. You have to decide which wolf you're gonna feed. Both wolves exist inside you— the insecure wolf and the powerful wolf—

and either one could win.

It'll dramatically change your life which one you feed. You just have to decide which one are you going to feed today. The difference between a great day and a mediocre one is your intention. How did you decide to show up today? Most people have no intention. Most people, you wake up, you check your phone, you're falling into other people's emergencies, other people's demands on your time, what everybody else wants for you to do today, right? Everybody's got an agenda. Everybody's got an opinion on what you should do with your life. You open your phone, there's all sorts of other people's emergencies for what you should be doing, right? Their emergencies become your priorities because you don't have intention in the day. Where when you flip it, when you start to say, no, I am going to take control of my day, take control of my life, and start to live with intention, everything starts to shift. The most important part of my morning routine is intention. Every day, here's what I do. I wake up, I am tired, I am groggy. I'm, I'm like, forget what day it is, forget what year it is, forget who I am. I wake up, I got stuff in my eyes, I got lines on my face. So, you know, I'm just, I'm groggy. I don't wake up excited and like, yeah, oh my God, let's go, we're filming content today! You know, I have to remind myself of what I'm doing. And as I walk to the bathroom, I'll usually put on a song. And in the morning, usually I'll have some oldies playing because it just makes me happy. So I'll put on some oldie and I'm going to the bathroom and I find myself just starting to dance a little bit, which is great because the motion starts to change things. If you put on songs that make you happy, that make you moving, it's going to start to shift your entire day. And music is the fastest way to change your state. And then as I'm going to the bathroom— might be too much detail— I'll then look at my calendar. I'll look at my calendar and I'll say, how do I want to show up? What's my intention for today? What is my intention for today, for how I want to show up for whatever is in my calendar today? And today is a Tuesday. Tuesdays are when I make videos. I don't know when this is gonna be released. But what's my intention this morning? I look at my calendar, I see I've got a bunch of YouTube videos that I'm gonna make today. I'm going to go with Nina and she's gonna run some errands and I'm gonna film from the car. And I want to make content that matters. I want to make something that matters today. I want to, I want to make something that's gonna inspire somebody today. I want to make a video that touches somebody's life today. I want to make potentially the best video I've ever made today. I want to speak some truth into the camera. I want to touch somebody's soul in the content that I'm making. That's my goal for today. You think that changes how you show up, right? It's like, as opposed to just, oh, I'm going to make some videos today.

Okay, cool, cool.

Let's go do that. That process doesn't have to take an hour in the morning. Right? That process is while I'm going to the bathroom, right? It takes a minute, not very long, but it shifts everything because it changes how you show up for the entire day. I've also got on the background of my cell phone, the background says, "Remember your intention," as a trigger. So anytime I load my phone, I can see that between videos and I press stop and I'm loading the next one, I see the background of my phone again. Remember your intention. Like, yeah, what was my intention this morning? Because even if you set it up in the morning, doesn't mean the whole day is gonna be amazing. Something's gonna throw you off. You come back to your intention. What was my intention today? And it works for being your business goals. It works for accomplishing your business goals. It works for your personal goals. On Saturdays is my fun day, and you I usually plan something to do with my wife Nina, and maybe it's a hiking trip, maybe it's a— we're gonna go out and try out a new restaurant. Like, it's fun. It's not chores, it's not tasks, it's not business. It's just something for us to do. So the intention showing up is different. What's my intention today? Well, my intention is to be the best husband I can be. What does that mean? Like, not just words, but you're trying to feel it. What does that mean? I want to have a great day with Nina. I want to make her I want to make her laugh today. I want to be present today. I want to not be frustrated by some little thing that happens. I don't want to be sucked into anything on the work side. I don't want to be daydreaming about business. I want to be thinking about my life with Nina. I want to be daydreaming about where we're going to go together as a couple. Right? And the words will change, but even now that, just saying that puts me into a different mindset. I got to bring it back. I want to make killer videos for you guys! We just don't have intention, you know. We know we want more. You know you want more. You know you want more to life. You know you want to accomplish more. You know you want to be more. You know you want to serve more. And it's a great feeling, but we don't hold on to it long enough to actually do something with. And we'll usually think of that, I want to do more, I know I'm capable of more, and use it to beat ourselves up to say, well, well, look, I didn't do it. I should have done it last week. I should have started last year. I was too afraid to do it. We just beat ourselves up and blame ourselves for not doing more, as opposed to using that intentionality to then create a better life for ourselves today. And it starts with today. It starts with today, like right now. The rest of today can be different if you chose to, with intention, show up. So how do we do it? How do we do it today? How do we do it ongoing? Because if you woke up with intention for the next year, holy cow, does your life look different. Step number 1 is create the environment of intentionality. And why that matters is because it allows it to happen on auto, on repeat, automatically without you having to think about it. Because as soon as you move it to conscious, there's that step, there's that barrier, there's that block where when it's unconscious and automatic, you're much more likely to do it. The environment, right? So my office, if you see my office, I got the pictures on the wall. They all mean something to me. I walk past in the morning, I walk past my mannequin of— I have a mannequin in my office, or on the way to the office, of me wearing the hoodie, because superheroes have mannequins of people wearing their outfits. And it fires me up, it gets me going. I have the music, right? Put music for how you want to feel, not for how you currently are feeling. I'm feeling. If I put music for how I currently was feeling in the morning, and I'm just tired and just waking up, it'd probably be some slow meditative calm, birds chirping, waterfall kind of stuff, which there's nothing wrong with that, but it's not how I— if I ask myself, how do I want to start my day? It's not with birds chirping and waterfalls. It's with something that gets me moving, because what I'm missing the most is fun. I'm not feeling fun and energetic in the morning. And so I need that. But when I put on The Lion Sleeps Tonight, or when I put on Runaround Sue, or I put on Respect, you know, Aretha Franklin, when I put on, you know, any of these oldies, I just start moving. I start dancing, start singing at the top of my lungs, and that gets me going in the morning, right? So the more you can have these habits and these triggers in the morning to get you set up, So that when you're looking at the intention of the day, you're already in the right frame of mind. Because if you don't have the right mindset going in, no matter what your intention becomes, it's really hard to get it actually firing. Because you can tell yourself, "I want to have a great day," but if all you're thinking about is how slow everything is and how crappy your life is, how you're not further ahead and how tired you are, you could say the words, but it won't land as strongly. So the, the environment really matters. Step 2 is you have to look at your calendar and see what's ahead and come into it with intention. How do you want to show up for all the things that are in your life today? What's on your calendar? And schedule things in, right? Like, create a calendar that maps to your ambition. Your calendar should be a macro reflection of your intention. Your calendar is an intentional life. What's in your calendar should be a reflection of what you want out of your life. So look at your calendar. This is a great weekly exercise to do. Look at your calendar and then see what in your life, what in, what in those spots actually let you live the life that you want. So you say you want to be a YouTuber, you say you want to be an entrepreneur, say you want to be a great husband or wife, you say you want— great. Show me in your calendar where you have dedicated time to make that intention happen. Because if it's just a hope and it's never scheduled in, guess what?

It never happens.

I'm filming content today on a Tuesday because it's in my calendar, because that's part of an intentional life for me. Where if I waited to get inspired to do something, I would make not a lot of content, right? Most of your goals are not in your calendar, and so they never get done. There's a tweetable: most of your goals are not in your calendar, so it never gets done. So intentional life is putting things in your calendar. An intentional day is in reminding yourself in in the morning of what you wanna do, it's how you show up. So when I'm showing up to make videos, I already explained the process that I go through. But then at night when I'm gonna have time with Nina, it's different, right? I'm not thinking about YouTube videos anymore, I'm thinking about my time with Nina. So an intentional life in your calendar, and then in the morning, an intentional day, just look at your calendar and say, here's what I need to do today, here's how I need to show up. 'Cause again, if you plan your week on a Sunday and planned it all out, looks great, you're gonna wake up on a Wednesday and then forget why you set that as your goal and not show up with the same intentionality anymore. So the morning reset for intentionality matters. And then step 3 is triggers. So step 1 is having the environment and the routine. Step 2 is planning out intentionality in your life, which is your calendar and on a daily basis when you wake up. And then step 3 is the triggers to bring you back. When you need to. So my biggest triggers on my cell phone, my biggest trigger is remember your intention, so that anytime I check my phone, I see that as a reminder to myself of the person that I said I was going to be today. The other thing that really helped make a big shift in my day-to-day life is I schedule things in 25-minute increments. So I'm doing interviews, I'm doing calls, I'm doing whatever's in my calendar is in 25 or 55 minute increments before I go to the next thing. I have a five minute buffer before going into the next thing. So if I'm doing interviews, Thursday is my interview day. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, Boom, boom, boom. 25 minutes back to back to back to back to back to back. The occasional 55 minutes before the next thing. And I would do it initially just as a buffer for timing, so in case something went over, in case I had to figure out some tech gear or in case I had to go to the washroom or whatever at a five minute break in between as a buffer. But the happy accident that came as a result of it is I use it as a little intentionality break for the next thing. So yesterday, when I'm mentoring my team, if I'm talking to Jeremy for 55 minutes and then I have Alex coming up next, that 5-minute break in the morning, it's going to be, how do I want to show up for my team? It's mentoring day, I want to show up, I want to be present. I want to guide them. I want to help them grow and learn and be inspired. I want to be the best leader I can be. I want them to come away from today inspired, motivated, ready for action. Fill them with courage and belief, right? That's the morning. That sets the tone for the whole day. But in the break between Jeremy and Alex, that 5 minutes, I'll use a minute or two of it to set the intention for the next one. I just came from Jeremy and I'm going to Alex. How do I want to show up for Alex? And it may just be repeating the same thing that I came up with this morning, or there might be some nuance, there might be something different, there might be something unique about Alex that I want to remind myself of before going into that call with him. So the daily reminders of the intention, the daily triggers: one is the cell phone background, remember your intention, and two is having the break, the 5-minute break between switching tasks to set myself up for the next task and remember why I'm doing that specific one. The intention matters, you know. Again, we wake up and it's so easy to fall into somebody else's plan for us. It's so easy to look at our texts or look at our emails or look at social media and feel like we're already behind and we already owe so many other people people in our lives, our time, and we don't control our day. And you have to put up some walls around where you're spending your time, and you have to start your day with intentionality to say, this is the life that I want, and I'm doing the activities that move me towards my goals. And the more that I am intentional, the more that I am present, the more I will actually start to accomplish those things. You have so much greatness in you. You have so much heart and so much care and so much soul and so much of a desire to do good and serve and help. And yet for some reason at the end of the week, it just didn't happen this week again, and it didn't happen again this week again. The difference is creating an intentional life for yourself and then reminding yourself daily and throughout the day of what that intention is. You don't need any more money or any more support or anything else beyond what you already have. You have everything you need to win. The only difference between now and where you could be in a year is how much you're going to show up with intentionality every day to move closer to your goals. Sometimes you need to slow down to speed up. Sometimes you need to take a pause. You need to take it easy. You need to take a step back from what you have been doing to say, well, what do I want? And does this still serve me? Is this still the life that I want to be building? Am I still building something that I'm, I'm happy with or not? And this is where a lot of entrepreneurs struggle because we are very goal-driven.

Goal-oriented, right? Raise your hand if you're goal-oriented. Is that you? You've got goals, you want to go off and accomplish them.

We're achievers, and achievers get their self-worth and self-value from hitting their goals and checking the things off their list to say, I did that, I accomplished that. When people ask me what my 10-year goal for myself is, I don't know. How are you supposed to know what, what you're going to look like in 10 years? Think about who you were 10 years ago. Do this as a quick exercise. Think of who you were 10 years ago. Who were you 10 years ago? What were your goals? What were your aspirations?

What were your ambitions? What were your dreams?

Could you with any certainty, with any degree of certainty, predict that you're gonna be here 10 years later? If the you from 10 years ago was making a 10-year plan for yourself, is this where you would end up?

Probably not.

No, right? Not if you're growing, not if you're learning, not if you're improving, not if you're watching channels like this and you're investing into yourself. The idea that you would be here is crazy because a lot of the stuff didn't exist and because you've, you've grown and learned yourself. And so there's nothing wrong with having plans. I think they're great. I think having goals speak to your ambitions, but you have to be willing to jump off course when it no longer serves you. The danger of having a 10-year goal for yourself is you're thinking small. Anybody who has 10-year goals for themselves are thinking small because you have no idea what you're capable of in a 10-year window, and you have no idea how the world's gonna change in the next 10 years. So you could hit your 10-year goal, but it's tiny compared to what you could have done if you're a little more flexible, right? So you have to be willing to jump off your 10-year plan to go do something else because you're being called to it. And that's where slowing down really helps. Do you get great ideas in the shower? I get great ideas in the shower. Do you get great ideas on vacation? I get great ideas on vacation. Do you get great ideas walking through nature? One of my favorite things to do, walking through nature. When I walk through forests, just a quiet walk with the dogs, I get ideas. I get great ideas. Ideas. I get great ideas on drives. I've started great businesses off of different drives. I started a business with Beau, who's an entrepreneur I invested into. Now it's a mid-six-figure business because I was going on a hike through the forest, and then I was driving home, and it was about an hour and a half drive, and I was reflective. And for some reason— this is how it comes, this is why slowing down really matters. For some reason, I'm thinking about Bo in the car. I may not have thought about Bo for a couple months. Why am I thinking about Bo all of a sudden? All of a sudden, it just comes. I want to start a business with Bo. We're gonna start an agency together where we book guests on people's shows. And now we've done that. He books some of the biggest guests in the world for my channel. He booked Mel Robbins, he booked Matthew McConaughey, he booked Deepak Chopra. He's booking all sorts of crazy guests for my channel, and he does it as a service for other people to book great guests for their shows too. And he's passionate about helping people launch their shows and get great conversations and build their brands and spread an amazing message out to the world. And so we started get this business. And, and he quit his job, now has a mid-six-figure business doing this because I went for a walk and had a drive and then called him or sent him a message. And that's how a lot of the great things have happened to me in my life. A lot of the great ideas, the, the next ventures, the, the innovations and the breakthroughs come from slowing down. The overscheduled entrepreneur doesn't come up with great ideas. The overscheduled entrepreneur might be really efficient. If you jam-packed your calendar, you might be really, really, really, really efficient, but you really reduce your effectiveness. And so life will go through these ebbs and flows, these ups and downs, and you'll have these moments where all you need to do is get work done. There's been, there's been many times where I don't need any new ideas right now. I just need to execute on what I've got in front of me. Many times. And so being efficient really, really, really matters. But when you then move to a place of— oh, we see some friends— we move some place of creativity where it becomes about coming up with the next invention, the next new thing, the next place that you want to go, right? Then you have to be having chunks in your time, in your calendar, that you can allow yourself that freedom. So if I look at my day, my calendar, where I spend my time. I like having one day per week to be project day. So Wednesdays for me are project day, where I have the whole day to work on whatever projects I want to work on. And then Friday I call CEO day, where I get to work on the big picture things to grow my business. And one of my favorite things to do on Fridays, when, um, when it's not too super freezing outside here in Canada, is go for a walk to start the day. Go for a walk, clear my head. I've got the whole day ahead of me to be the CEO of my business, and, and I ask the question, what does that look like? What does being the CEO look like? What's the next version of Evan Carmichael? And I often come up with fantastic ideas. Not all the time, you know, sometimes you just go for a walk and it was great to clear your head and get some fresh air, and that's all that came from it. And sometimes you get fantastic ideas because you took the time to slow slow down and have that in your calendar. So a couple things— how do we start to, how do we start to execute and put this as part of our regular routine? Because what most people do is you wait for your life to break before you make a change. You wait for life to get so bad that something happens. Most people don't go on a diet and fix their health until they have a heart attack, right? Like, you don't actually make a change until something breaks and forces you to change. But you don't have to hit rock bottom. You don't have to be in that negative a situation. You can be a little more proactive, and slowing down allows you to do it. So a couple, a couple steps. One, put time in your calendar every week to have a little bit of reflection. It doesn't have to be a whole day like I do on Fridays, but a walk. Put a 20-minute walk, a half an hour walk. It's good, it's good anyway. They get a little cardio. It's good anyway to get outside, get some fresh air. But, but book in a half an hour walk once a week at least somewhere in your calendar where you're not just on your phone and you're not just stressing about what has to get done, but you have time to actually just be by yourself and watch suddenly as solutions come to you, right? So one, put that 30-minute walk somewhere in your calendar once a week. 2, pay attention to where you, you don't love the things in your life anymore. Quite often there's things that we started with and were energizing and enthusiastic about and we loved doing and it was filling us up with energy and then slowly became a job. You know, I think especially as entrepreneurs, we love starting things. We love, we love the beginning of something, right? Is that you? Hands up. Is that you? You love starting something from scratch. You love building, but then we don't love maintaining. We don't love keeping it. We don't love the ongoing work with it, right?

There's a lot of entrepreneurs.

And so it's me too. And so at that point, when you stop loving as much of the day-to-day grind on it, you still love the idea of it. You still love doing the high-level work around it, but you don't love doing all of the itty-bitty stuff, you either have to let that thing go or you hire somebody to help you with it. It's either gotten to the point, for me, it's either gotten to the point where I can now hire somebody because it's gotten to the point where it's monetizable and I'm making some money from it. Maybe not huge money, but enough to bring somebody on to help with it. Or I didn't, it failed, it's not making money, and I don't like it anymore, and so you have to drop it. And this is again where our 10-year goals let us down because we might be super excited by it. It's like, okay, in 10 years I'm going to build this thing up. But the actual path needs to be actually 6 months in, you got to jump off that and go do something else because you don't love it anymore. You didn't build it up big enough. So step 1 is do our 30-minute once a week walk, get some, get some fresh air and some time for yourself. And then step 2 is think about what are some of the things, the areas in your life that you're not happy with anymore. That maybe used to bring you value but not anymore. You don't love the process of it. And how do you start to offload it? Because part of coming up with new ideas and creativity is unloading the things that are filling up space in our head, in our calendar. And chances are there's lots of stuff that fills up space in here and space in your actual calendar that don't actually serve you anymore. And maybe never did, and it's time to let them go. Either just drop them, slowly pass them on to somebody else, or hire somebody to help you with it. As you build and as you grow, you're gonna have to let go of things. There's a great example, a friend of mine who started his business. He has a hard time saying no to people. You know, is that, is that that you have a hard time saying no to people too. He had a hard time saying no to people. And as his business built and grew and became more successful, the demands on his time became more and more pressing, and he had to choose, okay, where is my time going to be spent? And some of the people that he used to spend time with, or some of the organizations that he used to donate some of his time with, he couldn't do everything. So now it's time to reprioritize. And so inside of that, he said, well, what Where do I want to be spending my time and with whom? And he had to let some of those organizations go. It's sad, it's hard, but he had to let some people go and let some of the organizations go because it wasn't either the most effective use of his time or, two, the most fulfilling. Like, there's nothing wrong with doing volunteer work or helping people, but it's got to feel— it's got to feel fulfilling to to you. And we're constantly playing that game, like where you spend your time, with whom, on what projects is the game for the rest of your life. You're just leveling up the size, the impact, the amount of care, the amount of good that you can create. And so again, the overscheduled entrepreneur is not very creative, is not coming up with life-changing, life-breaking decisions. So step 1 is to schedule in that time to get out there, do your walks, allow some freedom for new things to come to you. And then step 2 is doing that audit of your life, of where things no longer serve you, of where your 10-year plan has fallen apart and needs to be fixed, so you don't wait for life to completely break on you before you decide to make a proactive change forward.

For another top 10 videos with Evan, check the video right there next to me. I think you love it. Continue to believe, and I'll see you there.

I think the biggest thing that I would leave people with is just to make this moment count, to make today count.

It's so easy to listen to a show like this or to read a book or to watch a summary and then say, okay,