Evan Carmichael argues that successful leaders stay stubborn about their purpose and values but flexible about how they achieve them. Many entrepreneurs fail by refusing to adjust tactics when the market demands it. The talk includes clips from Ryan Gosling and Jim Carrey showing how compromise turns obstacles into creative breakthroughs.
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Good morning, Believe Nation! Today's message is compromise. Over to you, Ryan Gosling.
I wake up every morning, espresso keep me going.
I wake up every morning.
I think compromise is integral to the creative process, and it's more about finding a way to see those find a way to make those compromises into, uh, um, um, you know, opportunities and not see them as obstacles.
Mm-hmm.
Otherwise you can get really stuck.
Yeah, yeah.
I think that's the only way to keep moving forward and being creative.
So this is an interesting message for this channel because so often people are coming in saying, "Go for it! Never give up! Go push harder!" And here's a message saying compromise, and I think It's actually when you look at the most successful entrepreneurs and the most successful leaders, it's both. It's the genius of the and. You will see that the most successful leaders are insanely stubborn for the why, but insanely flexible about the how. And this is where a lot of entrepreneurs will fall short because you're so obsessed about doing this thing in a particular way that it may not work out. And chances are it won't. Chances are that product that you want to put out, people may not like the design, they may not like the functionality, it may not work exactly as you thought it would. And you need to tweak it. You need to change it. You need to listen. You need to compromise. But what you won't compromise is the big vision. What you won't compromise on is your one word, your value, right? Like, this is what you stand for. And that's the line in the sand, and you're not going to go over it. Where I think most people are stubborn about small things. I think most people are stubborn about the wrong things. I think most people are so stubborn that they hold themselves back because they're not willing to compromise to get to the big goal. What you need to have is the ego to believe that you can do the big thing, the confidence and the boldness to go out and chase that big dream, and then at the same side, the humbleness for the cause. You can do this big thing, you're confident, you have the ego to do it, but the humbleness to do anything needed to go out and do it. Maybe that means you have to sweep the floors. Anything. The great leaders will do anything to move their cause forward as long as it falls within you know, the lines of who they are, right? But nothing is beneath them. They'll get on the assembly line and start making products if they need to. They'll make the phone calls if they need to. They'll sweep the floors if they'll need to. And so if you're being stubborn about something right now, I would really challenge you to think, does this actually matter? Because the most important thing is advancing the cause. Stubbornness around the why, the mission, the cause and flexibility around the execution and how to do it. That's my thoughts. What do you think? I want to know in your life, in your business, what is non-negotiable? What are you not willing to compromise on? I'm curious. Leave in the comments below. I want to see your answers. I also want to give a big shout out to Jeff. Jeff, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word. It really, really, really Means a lot to me, man. Appreciate the support. Thank you guys 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.
What's up, Believe Nation? To add some more perspective on this idea of compromising, we're going to put a couple more bonus clips that that I hope you'll enjoy.
I have no education. I had no high school diploma. I didn't even have a GED. I quit high school halfway through grade 10. I didn't have a lot of options. I would be a dishwasher or a waiter or custodial work of some sort. So I decided I might as well go and do something creative. I decided to go to The Comedy Store, The Laugh Factory, and The Improv, you know, all of those clubs every night. Make my $25 a pop a set. It was my version of being a waiter. It was a compromise I decided to make. Out of that came In Living Color, and out of that came touring auditoriums, 5,000-seaters. It was a really creative time. I was able to prove that I didn't have to be an impressionist, that I had a personality of my own, however abrasive it might be from time to time. But long story short, all of it came from that call compromise from that deciding to do what I didn't want to do. Things you can't do, or the things you're not allowed to do. Like if the executives come and say you can't do that, whatever it is, it's too expensive, you get angry, you get out of your mind about it because you've been clinging to this concept and this image that you have of how it should be done. And invariably, most times, after that storm has passed and you actually sit down and go, okay, we can't do it that way, How can we do it? You end up with something even better than what was there before. And you go, that's the universe, that's how it works. It's like relationships, like everything. The thing that is taken away and you're clinging to and you're trying to fix and you're trying to secure it, make sure it doesn't go away. You think it— your life will be destroyed, everything will be ruined. And it's just the universe going, no, I have something better for you. Just have faith. Sometimes compromise is actually the way to get to what you want.
I have a certain gene in my body that allows me to understand what someone else is saying when they say, uh, we want to sell a lot of these things. Like, I don't see selling a bunch of something as the opposite of it being interesting or important or meaningful. I've always had I've always seen it from both sides, you know, and it's a really interesting place that I'm in right now. Like, I— you do have to balance, you know. If you saw my iTunes playlist, I could— I could have a conversation with anybody at Stereogum or Pitchfork, you know. But what I do with Columbia Records as the artist that I am with the records that I make under the contract that I have, I'm taking all of my influences and I'm trying to convert them into pop music. That's my job right now. It's not the only thing I can do, and it's not the only thing I will do, but as long as I'm still trying to make pop songs, I want to play by pop rules, you know. I want to listen to the top 20 and figure out what's going on. I don't want to fall behind. I'm trying to take all the elements of music that I love, that I'm well-versed in, and convert them into music that a lot of people can get into. I don't know why I do that. It's— a lot of people can't. A lot of people find the compromise maddening. I see it as another challenge, and I see it as another talent, you know, like the ultimate talent of restraint.
All filmmaking is intelligent compromise. That's the whole process we go through. You never have enough— I mean, Colin will be able to vouch for this. No matter what your budget is, you never have enough time, you never have enough money. It's weird. When you're doing a huge film, you're in the same position you were when you were doing a tiny film. And there's a good reason for that. You're always trying to get as much on screen as you possibly can. And so whatever the box that's built for you by the economics of the project, you're always trying to push up against those walls. And so you need help from your team in terms of— how you arrange things and how you make that work.
Waking up every morning and compromising. You have this idea, this ideal of what you want to do that day, and you then, you know, you just— it just gets stripped away and stripped away and stripped away and stripped away, except for those magnificent moments when the cast does something that you couldn't imagine and you go, wow. That is really awesome. And then you immediately get a feeling of dread because you're expecting then, as soon as you say cut, that someone will say, yeah, we missed the focus, there was a boom in the shot, there was an extra in the background who tripped and fell, whatever the— whatever the thing is that ruined the moment that you may not get back again.
