How To Take Action and CHANGE Your Life

I'm going to teach you a strategy right now that will change your life. It's called the 2% difference. The next time you're feeling down, frustrated, depressed, angry, tell yourself it's the best. Entrepreneurs generally don't have a lot of patience, and that's actually a good thing. One of the biggest things that holds entrepreneurs back— Need motivation? Watch a top 10 with Believe Nation. I'm Evan Carmichael, and here's my take on my top 10 rules of success, volume 6. Enjoy. Okay, let's kick it off with rule number 1: take action now. I'm gonna teach you a strategy right now that will change your life. It's called the 2% difference. The 2% difference is as soon as you get an idea for something, as soon as you get an idea for a new thing that you want to try out, you go do it. And it's called the 2% difference because most people, when they come up with an idea, what they do is they think about it, they plan, they strategize, right? You got an idea to go launch something, great. You go home, you strategize, you, you tinker, you plan, you think about it. But then you wake up tomorrow, different person. You wake up tomorrow a different person. You were feeling bold yesterday, you came with this great bold, bold vision for yourself, amazing. You're feeling on top of the world yesterday. You wake up tomorrow a different person, and then you don't do anything about it. Maybe you research a little bit more, and then that idea is dead. I believe that the decisions that you make when you're feeling bold, unstoppable, and confident are actually the right ones for you, and then your head talks you down from doing them. We just don't live in the land of bold and confidence 24/7. We spend 1% of our life, if that, feeling bold and confident, and the other 99% feeling scared and afraid and back down to where we were before. So the decisions you make when you're feeling bold and confident are the right ones for you, and therefore the the first step you need to take is not planning, is not strategizing, is not thinking, it's action. The 2% difference. What that means is instead of going home and strategizing and planning on how to get to 100% of your goal, build immediate momentum on how to get to 2% of your goal. Focus on taking action to get 2% of the way close to hitting your goal. And then that momentum will carry you forward to helping you get through to the rest of the 100. So here's an example. I'm filming this from Las Vegas. I'm on this tour right now. I promised Nina, I made a decision, I'm gonna take Nina to every city in North America with a million-plus people. That was the goal that I had. Great. Most people would go home, start researching, thinking, how many cities are there in North America with a million-plus people? How are we gonna do it? Nina has a full-time job. On and on and on and on with all the reasons why you're not gonna be able to do it, and you start planning and strategizing. Great. No, that's not the way to do it, because you wake up tomorrow a different person and say, I don't know about that goal, I can't do that, and you start talking yourself down from it. So while you're when you're feeling the boldness of it, when you're feeling capable, when you actually feel capable of accomplishing that goal, you go off and you do something. So I said, great, this weekend I'm gonna go to Boston. Nina had never been to Boston, so this weekend we're gonna go to Boston. And I messaged her to say, Nina, I've decided I'm gonna take you to every city in North America with a million-plus people, and this weekend we're gonna go to Boston. Turns out there's 50 cities on the list. I don't know how I'm gonna get to my 50 cities yet, but I can hit one, and that's 2%. If you cannot get to the first 2% immediately, you will never get to the 50, you'll never get the 100. It's just never gonna happen. This is the problem for most entrepreneurs. You plan too much, you strategize too much, you think too much, you're too smart. We're smart. And so you find really smart reasons why you can't do something. You're a perfectionist. You're worried about putting something out before it's ready, and then you never release it. The people who I've met on this tour, I feel so bad for them. It blows my mind of people who've waited decades-plus to move forward on their idea. That idea that you have, that you're sitting on, you need to go do something about it right now. That's the difference. There are dummies, dummies, dummies who are winning in your industry who don't have as much intellect as you, who don't have as much passion as you, who don't have as much of a heart and a cause of wanting to do something good to serve as you do, and they're winning and you're not. Why? Because they're actually off doing the work and you're sitting on your couch at home strategizing, researching, planning, thinking about it, and being too afraid to go off and take action. And so the 2% difference, The next time you feel yourself coming up with an idea, and we get ideas all the time, you get an idea, train yourself. Idea, trust that it comes from somewhere, right? That idea comes from somewhere. Don't judge it. Don't be critical of it. It came from somewhere. You have a responsibility to do something about it. Idea to action. Idea to action. Train yourself. Idea to action. You thought of something today? You thought of something in the shower? Great. Idea to do something. Idea to action. The 2% difference. Stop planning your way on how to get to 100% of your goal and figure out what can you do right now, today, immediately to get 2% of the way there. Start applying that principle. It will change your life. Rule number 2: change your mindset. I'm gonna give you the most important strategy that the next time you're feeling frustrated, you're feeling defeated, you're feeling like giving up, will save you and help you find that inner strength and next gear. Here it is: tell yourself it's the best. The next time you're feeling down, frustrated, depressed, angry, tell yourself it's the best. Because now this is your chance to show yourself and the world what you're made of. The next time you're stuck at a red light and you're frustrated and complaining, it's the best. The next time you're working out and you feel like you're on your last set and your lungs are on fire and you can't push again, it's the best. The next time you're frustrated in business that you're not getting the sales you need and you feel like you're waking up every day and there's no momentum, it's the best. It's the best. This is your chance. This is your chance. You can complain for 7.5 seconds and get frustrated and then tweak it inside your brain to say, "This is the best." Why? What does it do? First, it switches your mindset to one of hopelessness to one of resourcefulness. It switches your mindset from one of hopelessness, that this sucks, that I'm giving up, I'm defeated, it's over. Why does this happen to me? Why does this suck? To one of resourcefulness, that this is the best, this is my chance, because you grow through challenges, and this is the next challenge in front of me that I am going to grow through. Rule number 3: Change your perspective. Most entrepreneurs can't handle a major setback. You can't. You can handle a whole bunch of little setbacks, a little bit of punch to the face, but you can't handle a major setback. When there's a major meltdown, what do you do? Do you get back up? Do you find another way, or do you quit? And most entrepreneurs, most businesses will quit. Look at how many companies are still around. Look at the biggest companies in the world. How many of them were around around 100 years ago? Not very many. Most companies go out of business because they can't adjust, they can't evolve, they don't love the dark clouds enough. Let's look at YouTube as an example. Whenever there's a major algorithm change, everybody's upset, everybody's complaining, everybody is freaking out like, oh, I don't like it, I don't like it, right? They complain. I get pumped. I get pumped because it's my chance to win. Now it sucks because it's a lot of work because you got to figure out a new path, but everybody who's ahead of you who's complaining, that's your chance to win. And so I'm going through it right now. I look at my channel and making 3 videos a day might be a setback for my channel. Even this video, I don't know where it's going to be. It might be on my main channel, might be on a sub-channel that I'm making. It's a big potential strategic shift for me to say going from 1 channel to 3 or 8. Haven't fully figured it out yet, but I'm pumped. I'm pumped. While other people are suffering and struggling and complaining that this is the new YouTube, I'm gonna test it out. Immediate action, let's go. It's not that loving the dark clouds, at least for me, it's not that loving the dark clouds, you want negativity to happen, you want there to be controversy, you want chaos to happen, you want your competitors to go out of business, you want it to be difficult. It's not that, it's that that's your chance to win. And so the best thing I recommend is flip it in your head, learn to tell yourself that this is the best. When everybody else is complaining, when everybody else is struggling, even when you, when you put all this work into doing something and now it's collapsing on you, it's really hard to stay positive, tell yourself this is the best. This is my opportunity to prove to myself and the world what I'm made of. And then if you can move from a place of resourcelessness to resourcefulness and find a path while everybody else is ahead of you and complaining, that's your chance to win. Rule number 4: Be patient. Entrepreneurs generally don't have a lot of patience, and that's actually a good thing. We want things now. We want to hustle hard. We want to see the results of our labor paying off. We want to see change happening, we have a big vision, we know it can work, and we want it to happen right now. And that's amazing, and I want you to hold on to it. And at the same time, I want you to have incredible patience. Because what ends up happening is entrepreneurs often quit too soon. You had the right idea, you had the right vision, you even had the right execution in starting it up, but you just quit. You thought it was going to happen in 3 months, where it's actually going to happen in 3 years. For what you're doing every single day. You need to be applying yourself and close off every other opportunity for 4 years, and then you'll be successful. 4 years ago on my YouTube channel, I had 7,000-ish subscribers. 4 years ago. How did I get here with 1.2 million? By making videos every single day. Every single day. We haven't missed a day in 4 years and in the past 2 or 3 years has been 3 times a day, or at least 2 times a day, just grinding it out. And in those little micro moments, in those micro videos, it's super impatience, right? It's like, this video has to deliver, this video now has to deliver, this next one, this one right here has to deliver. There's a lot of impatience to make things happen, and it's knowing that this is going to take me years to get to where I want to go. Also, if you want to learn how to build more confidence, check out my 254 Confidence Series. It's free, and the link is in the description below. If you're doing work that you love, you're more likely to follow through, you're more likely to do it because it doesn't feel like work because you love doing it. Surround yourself with greatness. If you want to be more confident, you need to surround yourself with things that make you feel confident. Rule number 5: Live your truth. Most people aren't happy in life because they're living somebody else's truth. You're not living your truth, you're living somebody else's version of it. Your parents, your family, your culture, your society. You're living somebody else's the closest version of it, and so you're never happy because you never explored it. You never picked at it. You never found out what you could be, and you settled for something less than what you're capable of. You know you're capable of more. You may not know what the thing is that you should be doing, but you know it's not this thing right in front of you. I can't tell you how many people I've met on this tour who have that story to share. I had a woman whose father told her that women should not be doing any kind of entrepreneurial ventures, that women are meant to be teachers, and so she spent 15 years being a teacher before having the courage to jump off and start her own business. And now she has a multi-million dollar construction business. I had a girl come up in Albuquerque where I am right now who studied for years to be an accountant. Why? Because her mom was an accountant. So her mom made her go study to become an accountant, and she didn't know what she wanted to do. So she said, okay, great, yeah, I'll be an accountant. She just graduated and realized, I don't want to be an accountant. This isn't for me. It's easy. It's, it's the path that my parents took. Like, it's great for me to get into it. I can get Easy money. You know, my mom said, I'll like it when the money starts coming in, but money's coming in and I don't like it. I want to do something else. I know I'm meant for something greater. And so she told her mom, I don't want to do this. I want to learn how to be a management consultant and I'm gonna go back to school. That takes a lot of guts. That takes a lot of courage. Most people do not have that courage. Most people do not have the courage to stand up to their parents and say, I don't want this life. It doesn't mean you have to hate them, you have to attack them, you have to tell them they're wrong. This is for you. You don't want that life. Most people never have that courage. And the story that comes to mind for me is Akio Morita. And use this as motivation, as wisdom. If you are trying to battle your parents or your culture, your friends, your society, remember Akio Morita. He started Sony. Now, he came from 11 or 12 generations of sake brewers, Japanese background. The Japanese culture is super family-oriented, and the oldest always takes over the family business. All this has to follow in line with what the family was doing. And so he was expected to take over the sake business. And it's not just one generation, you're talking 11 or 12 generations in a Japanese society. And he said, I don't want to do this. I want to start my own business, a technology company, at a time when Japan was known for super low-quality products. This is the man who put Japan on the map for high-quality products, that products coming out of Japan meant something. Was a stamp of quality because of Akio Morita. And he went on to build one of the most successful brands in the world, Sony. But it starts with having the courage, having the courage to say, that's not my life, that's not my truth. Rule number 6: Surround yourself with greatness. This is why I keep going with my YouTube channel. This is the reason why I keep going with my YouTube channel, because yes, your spouse is important, and yes, your friends are important, and the people that you hang out with are super, super, super important. And all the other people that you hang out with by reading books and consuming content, watching videos, all of that makes an impact too. The more that you spend hanging around people and ideas and wisdom that bring you up, the more you're going to rise up. And the more you're around people who are complaining and negative and pulling you down, guess what happens? The more you're gonna be pulled down. And one of the big reasons for me in creating this channel was I wanted I wanted to be around successful entrepreneurs. I wanted to be around people who would push me to go off and do more. Because in my life, I'm super fortunate to have a very understanding wife, a very supportive family, friends who encourage me and, you know, always support the things that I'm doing. But I don't have people who are pushing me to do better. You know, I don't have people who say, you know what, what you're doing is great, but you should be out here. Like, you could be making these adjustments and playing a bigger game, you can have a bigger impact. And so I needed more of that in my life. And so my solution to finding it was, was the videos, was I want to hang around Elon Musk and I want to hang around Steve Jobs, I want to hang around Warren Buffett, I want to hang around these people who are thinking on a bigger scale. Because the more you do that, the more you ingest this content, the more you're gonna think like them, the more you're gonna act like them, the more you're gonna take these pieces to not not only just be like them, but to be the best version of you. Rule number 7: Don't try to please everybody. So listen, everybody's going to have an opinion on what you should do with your life. Everybody. Your friends, your family, your culture, your society, your community, your customers, online haters. Everybody's got an opinion on what you should do with your life. And it's tempting to want to take the advice. One, because it gives us advice, but two, it's also somebody to blame, right? Like if it doesn't work out, it's not my fault, it's that person's fault. They said I should do it. At some point though, you have to decide that you are going to be an adult, that you are in control, that you want to go off and build your own life. And you, only you, know what that looks like. And you have to have the courage and the confidence to step up and say, I'm in charge. This is my life now. I get to decide what I want to do. And some opinions will matter and some opinions will make a difference and others you have to let bounce off you. You're not going to be able to please everybody. Everybody has an opinion on what you should do with your life and the only one that that really matters truly is this one right here. So how do you decide? How do you know what the difference is? How do you know which opinions you should take, which you should listen to? Because on the one hand, it's you want to take advice. You want to take counsel. You don't know everything. And on the other hand, it's your life. You've got to decide. How do you make those two things work together? Number one is understand what your one word is. Your one word is your most important core value. Mine is believe. Yours is whatever it is. It's worth going through the exercise. I think it's one of the most important exercises you can ever do in your life. It becomes a filter through which you see the world. And so for me, it's belief. And belief is around believing in yourself, having self-confidence, believing in the work that you're doing, having passion for it, and believing that it's going to work out, believing in the impact, believing that there is light at the end of the tunnel even if you only see darkness around you right now. That's belief. And so all of the decisions that I make are through the lens of belief. Every new piece of content that I put on my channel is through the lens of belief. And so if you give me advice that has nothing to do with believe, it may be great potential advice, but it's not for me. How do I know what's for me? Because I'm standing on my rock of believe. And if you don't know what value you stand on, it's easy to get pulled in a lot of different directions. Rule number 8: Be consistent. Most entrepreneurs don't win because they're not consistent enough. It's not because you don't have talent or skills or energy. You're just not consistent enough. You're not consistent enough. Too many entrepreneurs get all pumped up and motivated and You're working like crazy and you have an amazing day, and then the next day you wake up and you're back to your normal life and you're not consistently putting in the effort. The reason why my YouTube channel has won is because I made videos every single day for 5 years. 5 years ago plus, I had 7,000 subscribers on my YouTube channel. Now we're over 1.8 million. Not because I'm super talented, I'm not. Go back and watch my videos, you'll see how I sucked at the beginning. Super nervous, awkward in a suit, sitting down, just terrible. But by making videos every single day, I got better, and I was able to conquer what I didn't have any natural talent in because I learned to develop the skill by beating on my craft every single day. And so this is one of the major problems for entrepreneurs. I think a lot of people could have done what I've done. I think a lot of you watching, you could have done what I've done. You have more natural talent than I do. The difference is I got up every day for 5 years and did it. And so I don't think it's that special. I think it's just putting in the effort and the hustle every single day. And that's a big reason why so many entrepreneurs don't win. You are just not consistent enough in your effort. Rule number 9: Find your genius. I like to say that everybody has Michael Jordan-level talent at something. I believe it. I think, I think you have Michael Jordan-level talent at something. I think you're a genius, a legit, bona fide genius. You should be out there changing the world. I believe it. I think you have that talent. I think you have that capabilities. Most people don't. Most people, one, they don't believe in themselves enough to actually go off and chase it. And most people, two, don't go off and explore to find the thing that they have genius at, that they could be Michael Jordan at, Warren Buffett at. And instead, you try to photocopy somebody else's life. You try to be the next somebody. No, you're a genius. Let's go. Let's chase it down. That's why I'm on my mission. I want to solve the world's biggest problem: untapped human potential. So I think everybody is that genius, and they either don't know what the thing is that they should be doing, or they don't believe in themselves hard enough to go and chase it down. So let's work through those two things. Whatever camp you fall into, there's gonna be advice that will help you. One, you don't know what you're a genius at. Amazing. What's the path? You explore, you test, you try. People settle way too early in life. You settle, you settle. How do you know if you like sushi or not until you taste it? You don't. You should be trying everything. I think everybody should try to be an entrepreneur. Everybody should try to have a YouTube channel. Everybody should try to have a podcast. I should try to be an accountant. Like, you should try. You should pick up everything just to get a sense. Say yes to everything once. Adopt that mindset mentality. We get locked into career paths way too soon. Why? Because that's what our parents did? Because that's what we went to school for? Why? You're gonna now live the rest of your life doing something because you've only tried 5 different things and now you're gonna pick? Like, that's the recipe for disaster. That's why 95% of America wakes up and drives to the job that they hate. You have to try. You have to say yes. And don't tie your self-worth to the results. You will suck at the beginning. Whatever you first start doing, you will suck. It will not work out. My first YouTube videos sucked. Sucked. Go back, watch it so you can see how bad I was when I first started my videos. I sucked. I was awkward. I was nervous. I was introverted. It took me 350 videos until I wasn't completely embarrassed by myself. 350 videos. And so the acid test needs to be Do you like the process? Do you want to go back and do it again? You may not have been good at it, but do you want to go off and do it again? So you need to say yes to a whole bunch of things. When you don't know what you want to do in life, you need to say yes to almost everything. As long as it falls within your personal, you know, values, ethics, you're not harming yourself, you know, most things you should go off and try. I think you should try. I don't think you've tried enough. If you don't know what you want to do in life, you have not tried enough. And rule number 10, the last one before a very special bonus clip, is don't obsess with perfection. Stop trying to be perfect. One of the biggest things that holds entrepreneurs back is you have an idea in your head and you want to launch it, but you're afraid to launch anything until it's perfect. You're afraid to put anything out into the world until you have the perfect plan, the perfect product, the perfect competitive advantage, and that does not exist. And the biggest danger of all is that just stays an idea for you for the rest of your life, that it never actually gets created because you can never reach perfection, because you're afraid of releasing the thing out into the world. And so you never will. Where everybody who you look up to, the people who've had massive success, any entrepreneur, they released something before it was perfect. They got feedback, they adjusted, they listened to it, and that became the thing that propelled them to massive success. And so you You need to move from that place of trying to have everything be 100% perfect before you launch and just get used to actually creating, actually doing, actually putting stuff out there into the market instead of sitting on your couch hoping, wishing, dreaming, planning, strategizing, but never actually doing. Now I've got a special bonus clip from me on how to be driven that I really think you're going to enjoy. But before that, it's time for the 3-point landing questions. Let's go from just watching a video to taking action. Here we go. Question number 1: What are you obsessing over being perfect that you just need to start? Number 2: What do you need to be more consistent on that you will put into your calendar every day this week? And number 3: How can you better surround yourself with greatness every single day? To be an entrepreneur, you have to be a little crazy. The most successful people In entrepreneurship, in any field, they're crazy. You're a little bit crazy. You're on a mission that is crazy that most people don't understand. And listen to the Elon Musk talk, you think he's crazy. I think he's crazy. It sounds nuts. Like, there's a 70% chance that you're gonna go on a one-way ticket to Mars and never make it there and die there, right? It's like, and that's what he wants to do and he's excited to go off and do it. It sounds nuts, but that's what you need to have as an entrepreneur. Doing the thing, building the business up that you want to build, will be so difficult, so crazy, so challenging, that it's that insane drive that gets you there. But you have to love doing it so much to have the courage and the passion, energy to keep going when it's difficult. And for me, I don't want to go to Mars. There's a 0% chance I'm going to Mars. But I love helping entrepreneurs, and I could get lost in helping entrepreneurs. I could spend all day long helping entrepreneurs, and I won't eat and I won't drink, and I'll forget to go to the bathroom, and I'll have a fever and not even notice it. I'll be sitting there helping entrepreneurs for hours with a burning fever and not even notice it because it's the thing that I love doing. And that's what you need to find for yourself as well. If you want more Evan Carmichael, check out my last top 10 rules video. The link is right there next to me. I think you'll enjoy it. Continue to believe. And I'll see you there. I hate spending money till I'm making money. If you do not have money, it's because you are spending your money on things that are not making you money.