How to Turn Challenges into Opportunities | Mindset and Business Mastery in 61 Minutes

A lot of people have invested tons of money into college debt, but they don't care about the result. They don't care about getting the college degree. They don't care about that job that they get at the end of it. So why? Why do you care so much about this thing? And then are you around in an environment of people who are also caring about the same thing? Like, if you're around people who are working out all the time and eating healthy, you're going to start to work out and eat healthy. If you're around people who are always making content, you're going to start making content. But when you're the only person in your family where people think that you're crazy and you have no friends and no circle and nobody that you consume online is doing that, then yeah, it sounds nuts when you're investing into things. I love starting for free, especially if you have no money at the beginning. There's so many programs now, so many courses. I mean, when you and I were getting started, there was nothing. Like, the internet didn't exist. I didn't have the internet. I had to go to a library to read a book. I had to go to— remember those things? Libraries. Wow. Need motivation? Watch a 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. So today, let's learn from me and my team's take on my top 10 rules of success. Enjoy. Now, like, you've got, you've got Sean here making content. This is amazing. I wish that my mentors would be online making content, right? So whatever you want to learn, there's people out there who are making content and they're putting it out there for free. And so that's where I would start. Like, there's no reason why you can't do an audit of who you follow on YouTube and who you follow on Instagram and just ask yourself, are these people, people who make me feel better about myself, people who make me encouraged, people who help me believe more in myself, people who are fueling my ambitions. Where most of the channels we subscribe to are entertainment, you're like doomscrolling through your Instagram. I'm not doomscrolling through my Instagram. There's awesome stuff in my Instagram. There's amazing channels that I subscribe to because it makes me feel more ambitious. Rule number 2 is take small steps. Everybody here, everybody watching you, me, we've had moments of incredible self-belief. It's like, I could do anything. That was great. Oh, Oh my God, I'm amazing. This is awesome. I'm gonna go and change the world and start writing down your goals. And then the next day you wake up, it's like, I can't do any of those things. Who the heck am I to think that I can? It's not even our friends and our family and whatever. It's like us. We're telling ourselves that we suck and we can't do it. Yeah. Right? And so the two key things is one, when you are feeling that boldness to do something about it. So this is why I like to say the 2% difference. Like what's the first 2% of the action that you want to take. Where most people, what's the first thing they do when they get an idea? You start planning. Okay, I'm going to do this. What's my plan? I'm going to research. I'm going to do— I'm going to go to Google. I'm going to look stuff up. I'm going to make the perfect plan, right? The perfect plan. And then you wake up the next day, you're like, I can't do this. Who did I— I was the— I thought I could do this. That's crazy. I can't do that. And so even if it was the perfect plan, it doesn't matter because your momentum has gone to zero. And so you spend You spend your best energy on the wrong thing. You spend the best energy on planning instead of doing. So what's the first thing you should do? And it's going to be imperfect, but it's momentum. Rule number 3 is make an impact. I grew up in a family where my dad and his side was a lot into big business and government jobs and kind of super stable. My mom's side was into politics and So we got, I got my mom who's like gonna change the world through politics and my dad is gonna change the world through like big organizations. And it's like, I think it's entrepreneurs, guys. I think it's, I think it's us who's gonna change the, and it's not that those groups can't make an impact. I just think it's gonna be entrepreneurs. And it started off with me just doing little things. I mean, having a little impact. I mean, my first business was baseball cards and having little trade shows and, In '92, '93, I'm 12 and 13, and the Blue Jays, my hometown team, won the World Series. And so it was a whole big thing, and baseball cards were huge back then. And that was my first kind of little business, and that taught me how to make some money. And then I could hire people and started building other businesses. And you see the impact of it. Like, if you talk about having an impact, when you can take somebody who has a crappy job and you give them an opportunity, and then you see them change their life around, You see the direct impact that you're able to have on one person or your products or services that you sell. You see the impact that you have. Even if you had a kid doing a— your daughter doing her babysitting service, you know, then the parents come home. It's like, oh, thank you. That was like, we had a nice night out. Like you were able to give us that. Thank you. Right? Yes. You see the impact of the actual work that you're doing where a lot of times in big jobs, you never see the, like, what am I doing here? What I don't see any impact. How is me moving things from this box to that box leading to anything? Like, it's just so far disconnected. And so it's, it's a lot easier to see the direct results of the thing that you're doing. And then as you continue to build up in scale, you start to see bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger impacts. And as you start to study successful entrepreneurs, like, look at the people who've changed the world. It's a lot of entrepreneurs in there. It's like, man, well, they just had a vision. They created this product or service. Like, maybe I can do something as well. And maybe you make the dent in the universe like Steve Jobs, or you make your own, you know, dent in your community. But it's still like your wife going and creating that school and having the 300 or however many kids showing up. Like, that's amazing, right? Now, does she roll it out across the country and now there's this new— maybe, or maybe her mission is just to keep it local and 300. But in either case, it's having a major impact on the people who come out to the schools. Rule number 4 is believe. I'm a recovering perfectionist, so planning is really just fear. We're afraid of failing. We're afraid it's not going to work out, so we have to have it all perfect before we do anything. And perfectionism seems like it's a good thing, but it's like, it's not. It prevents you from doing amazing things, prevents me from doing amazing things. A couple of things that have helped. The first is I will tell myself, trust that great ideas flow through me, like great ideas flow through me. And hopefully it doesn't sound like too egotistical, but it's like one thing I'll tell myself is like, great, this thing came to me. Yes. So I have to do something about it as opposed to waiting on it or researching or whatever else. It's like because it came to me, therefore it's good and I have to do something about it. And that just takes the brain out of the equation because your brain will stop you. It was given to you. Why are you stopping it? You're stopping it. Trust that it was given you for a reason. So today I was doing a walk and I came up with this idea. I have two big name people who were about the book on my channel to do an interview with. Bless you. And we went back and forth and my schedule, I'm traveling, their schedule is crazy. Like we're trying to make it all work and we finally made it work. Right? It's like, yes, good. But on my walk, I'm like, no, no, no, you know what I'm gonna do? Instead of me just doing an interview with them, I need, I, I wanna have them present inside of Movement Makers. Mm-hmm. That's my, my community. Um, let's have them join Movement Makers and I'll interview them in front of everybody for the first half hour. And then we'll do an hour Q&A of them coming on stage and asking questions and having them coach my, my community. And then we'll take that video and put it up on YouTube. And that came to me, right? It's like, oh my, the first thought is then that I can't, you know how long it's taken to organize the schedules and my assistant is like, God bless her soul, is doing all this work and make it happen. Now I'm gonna change it all up again, but I'm not thinking about that. Like great ideas flow through me, so I'm just gonna do that. Yeah. And I've never had that backfire on me. Mm-hmm. Uh, and so I just trust that that's gonna work out. 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 is practice repetition. The second person I met was Steve, who you mentioned earlier on at the beginning of this call, who's a mutual friend. And I met him through an associate and he said that he had an agent. Like, what do you mean you have an agent? Like, you're a businessman. Why? How do you have an agent? And, uh, he said, yeah, yeah, you know, like sports people have agents and musicians have agents. I have my agent, his name is Steve. Like, can I meet Steve? And, uh, like, yeah. So Steve was this guy, he's in New York and he's got a huge heart, although he comes across as a typical New Yorker. Um, and he took a flyer on me, if I'm being honest. You know, a lot of the people who are coming to him At the time, they didn't have a great message, but they were already very well media trained. So they were great in front of a camera, but they didn't have a message. And he told me that he loved my message, but that I sucked in front of a camera. Like, what do you mean I suck, Steve? Like, I've been doing this for 5 years. What do you mean I suck? I mean, I could be better, but— He's like, no, no, no, compared to these people, you suck. And he gave me homework. And I started doing the homework. Right? And he said, the first thing you need to work on is your foundation story. And so he gave me homework to work on my foundation story. And I would work on the video, and this would be like a 20 to 40 minute video. I'd do a video in the morning, I'd send it to him, he'd give me feedback. At lunch, I'd do another version, send it to him, he'd give me feedback. At, at after dinner, I'd do another version, give me feedback. I'd be doing this 3 times a day until I got better at the skill. And it got to the point where, uh, Steve started using me as an example in the agency where I was the worst one coming in. I almost didn't get in and I was the worst performer to the point where I became the role model, the best, the one that he was showing other people in the agency like, "Do it like Evan," only because I was doing the work. I was not skilled. He just told me what to do and I would do it. And when people would take a week to get back to him on one thing, I was doing it like 3 times a day and he was giving me feedback and I was rapidly getting better. Rule number 6 is change your routine. So what are you doing every day to feed this energy into you? Most people wake up like an accident, and we wake up, go through our phone, see emergencies that happen, or doomscrolling on Instagram while you're in bed. Like, you haven't got out of bed, you're already like checking emergencies and everything else that's happening in the world. As opposed to saying, well, what are the things that help get me inspired? What are the things that help get me feeling more belief. And maybe it's watching this show, right? How many, how many self-directed episodes do we have? Go back and watch some of the other ones. Or maybe it's, uh, reading the book or listening to a podcast. For me, it's my own videos. Like, I, I need to have a Steve Jobs or Walt Disney or Oprah, Elon Musk video every day. And so I, I do long form on YouTube and short form on Instagram and other platforms because those, those are the videos that speak to me. Because I need it every day. No matter— today is great, I'm meeting you, it's awesome. And then tomorrow I'm gonna wake up, it's like, where— what the end? I don't wake up like, yes, today is gonna be amazing, right? I wake up, it's like, it's a struggle to get out. And what day is it? Where am I? What's happening? So it's the routines that get you set up for consistent success. And so we've all had these moments where we felt boldness. Great. What was the thing that led to that? So if it's watching videos that led to that, okay, you can choose to subscribe to channels that make you feel powerful. Rule number 7 is take action. How do you make sure that whatever you learn, whatever you read, you execute? Like, you make most out of it? Like, how do you do that? It's the willingness to put the book down and go do something. So if you're reading a book, especially a nonfiction book, or you're like, you're reading Christie's book and And how many different stories and how many different bits of advice and how many— like what most people will do is they'll blast through it and you get, "Oh, that's such a great story. Oh my God, that's such a great story. I get to learn from Naveen. Oh, I learned from St. Jude. This is all so great." And then you haven't done anything on it. And then you come back after the book is done and you're still in the same spot that you were. And so you got some motivation, but nothing changes in your life through motivation alone. It's the action. And so if you're reading through the book and you see Naveen's story and you get inspired to do something, stop reading the book and go do something, right? Like any book that you read, there's hopefully lots of good ideas in there that you can go and implement, right? It's 300 pages of good content, hopefully. So you don't need to blast through the book. As soon as you get an idea, stop reading the book and go do something. Whether that— and maybe it's late at night and maybe you can't call a friend, but you can send an email. You can send a reminder. You can send somebody a text. You can send a DM, especially when it involves somebody else. Now you're committed because you're going to show up because you told Christy you were going to do it, as opposed to just you for yourself. But I think that's the most important thing. So whenever I'm reading a book, I usually read books at night. I try to get I read 10 books at a time and I try to have 10 pages per night. I'm a slow reader. But as soon as I come up with an idea, I will instantly email myself or email somebody else so that it's in motion, so that when I wake up tomorrow, I'm not back to who I was earlier. I'm like, oh, what day is it? What am I doing? What's happening? And I think going from not reading to reading is already great because most people aren't even reading. Most people are not investing in themselves. Most people are not learning. Most people are not trying. So fine. But there's still a big gap between people who are reading and learning to people who are doing and taking action. And so, that becomes the key difference is like stop reading the book, put it down. It's still there for you tonight or tomorrow. It's still there and go do something on the idea that you came up with. Rule number 8 is start with why. A lot of how I operate is I pull from extremes depending on what I need in that moment. So, the push and the hug are complete opposite extremes. One is very aggressive and like you got to go do this and almost yelling at myself. And the other is very compassionate and kind, like we're here to serve. And I'll use both. With that example of like hunger, I would do both. That one I call the big Y and the little y. The big Y is the big mission. It's like entrepreneurs need to have some big thing that they're trying to go off and solve. And it's something— Save capitalism. Yeah, it's like that you never accomplish and you wake up every day trying to accomplish, right? And on some days, that big mission is inspiring and invigorating. It's like, heck yeah, and I'm motivated to get up. And then on some day, that's the big why. The little why is on some days it's too big. Like on some days that big vision is actually counterproductive. It feels impossible and it's not motivating. It's the opposite. It's demotivating. It's like, I'm never going to do it. I'm never going to make it. This is not going to happen. It's impossible. And the big goal actually causes you to retreat. And so, on those days, the little why is that you helped one person. So, what you said, it's like, "Well, I may not be able to help everybody believe in themselves, but I can look at my comments and there's one person in there who said that me showing up today made a difference." And, if you can connect the work you're doing to at least one person helping, it may not be your ultimate ambition. Your goal for this episode, it'd be great if 10 million people saw it. Awesome. And, if that doesn't happen but one person leaves an insane comment to say, "AJ, man, this was the episode that really flipped something for me. That would mean so much. Yes. And so I pull from both. On some days it's big why, and the little whys don't feel enough. It's like, okay, that's too small. That's great. I helped that person, but like, I'm going to change the world. And then on days when that feels too crazy and too big, it's back to the little whys. Like, okay, but I'm helping. I helped that person. Like, that means something to me. Right? And so I'll pull from both. Just depending on what I need in that day. Just like the, the push and a hug, the big wine, the little wine. Rule number 9 is do the work. Any of these people who are offering training that you can go and drop $15,000 on some course, cool. They probably have a free version. They probably have YouTube videos, and you may not resonate with everybody. That's fine. You don't need 1,000 mentors. Go find 2, go find 3 people who are in your industry. They've done the thing that you want to do. You resonate with their style, you love them. Awesome. Subscribe to them, watch all their content, do the things that they say to do. They give you advice in a video, do something about it. Go take action on it. Sean gives you advice, do something about it. Don't just watch another video, go do something about it and let it prove to you that it works. Because if their one strategy works, cool, then go buy their book. That's a $20 investment, right? And then do the things that are in the book. Don't just have another book that sits taking up space on your shelf collecting dust. Then take one of their courses and then hire them as a coach. You don't have to go— I mean, you're at the point now, both of us honestly, if we want to get into something, we might just drop $20,000 on something. Give me the expert. I want to learn. We'll pay for speed. Now it's worth it. When you're starting up this channel, you don't want to have to go figure out everything yourself, what microphone to use and how to edit and what software. You don't care about that stuff. You're past that. You can afford to write a check to hire someone to come in and do the work. Awesome. But at the beginning, when you're trying to figure it all out, then start, start with free. Like, don't tell me you don't have time to watch a 20-minute YouTube video every day to help get you ready, to help teach you a new skill, right? You have time. What are you spending your 20 minutes on every day? You don't have 20 minutes? Like, let's sit through your calendar and see how much time you spend you know, sitting on the toilet, looking on your Instagram feed, just doomscrolling, right? Like, we have time every day. It's just how are you allocating that time? And so that's what I would recommend is like start with the free, but then do the work. Like watching a video alone is not going to change your life, but you could be in a completely different spot 1 year from today if you actually followed the right people and, and took action on the advice that they were talking about. And rule number 10, the last one before some very special bonus clips, is discover your purpose. Your purpose actually comes from your pain, where if you recognize that whatever pain you went through, whatever struggle you went through, your purpose is to help other people who are currently like that. And there's many, many, many, many people who are currently like that. That ends up being the unlock for the rest of your life. It'll, it'll never get old. You'll never get tired of helping the people who are currently going through the pain that you went through. And so I wrote the book when I was on tour. I went on tour last year. We did 90 days, 23 cities, crazy tour across the US. I wasn't talking about this. I was talking about other stuff. And it kept coming up in every city. How do I find my passion? How do I find my purpose? What am I supposed to be doing? I don't have clarity or direction. And I just help people in the workshops. Oh, that's actually pretty easy. Like, you don't need to go sit on a mountaintop for 10 years to figure out your purpose. You don't have to hire a $40,000 business coach or something like this. A 3-step process that I want people through: who, why, how. And then in a lot of those sessions, somebody else was able to pick me and pick me. And then my workshops kind of got hijacked by helping people figure out the purpose of this process. And so about a third of the way through the tour, I decided I need to make this a book. I mean, it's crazy how much people are struggling with this in every city that I'm going to. I don't know that I've done anything every single day with intention without fail. I mean, to the spirit of the question, I think I do the most consistently would be injecting optimism into my life, whether it's a video, whether it's a book, whether it's something that I, you know, I'm reading on the airplane or a film that I'm watching, a documentary. Injecting positivity is probably consistently over the past 20 years the most consistent thing that I've done. Now, I'm very disciplined and I have a lot of habits, and most of my habits I'm hitting 85 to 95% of the time. The health routine that we talked about earlier, you know, but if I'm traveling from here to Japan, I'm probably not hitting my sauna for the day. You know, they're like just some things that are not practical or is more detrimental to do it than not to do it. In some cases, like it's better to go and sleep than to go and do that thing, or it's better to serve because this is a big opportunity than to go do that thing. So when it says, you know, do this daily without fail, I think the most consistent thing is just injecting optimism into my life. And I'm okay with hitting 85 to 95% consistency on, on my habits. As long as you're proud— for me, as long as I'm proud of the reason why I'm not doing it right. So even making videos, the only time in the past decade plus that I have not made videos— I made videos when I broke my neck, I made videos when I went on tour, I made videos through everything. The only time I did not make videos is when my dog died. My dog passed away on video day. And I was just this family dog for, you know, 13, 14 years. And, uh, I just, I was destroyed and I could not make videos. It's you are what you consistently do, not necessarily what you do every single, every single day. I make the content for me 'cause I want Grant in my ear and Steve Jobs in my ear and all these people who've done amazing things. And when you're around it every day, then all of a sudden, like, this is no big deal. Compared to what all these other people have done. And so it makes you feel like it's possible and that all of those successful people that are profiled on the channel, their first answer is not just, okay, I guess, I guess we quit. It's like, no, no, we'll find another way, or at least let me try to find another way. And so the more you have that being poured into you from entrepreneurs, from athletes, from musicians, the people who have accomplished, then it just makes you start to shift your perspective and mindset. The people you've had on your show and this show, this podcast, it's always encouraging people. It's always hopeful. It's always giving people optimism and that they don't have to stay where they are right now. They're not happy where they've accomplished a lot to be here. That's why they listen to Josh. But you don't have to stay there. You could be way further. You could be out here. And you're bringing on guests to kind of help make that path happen. And so the more you feed your mind with it, the more you start to become it and think that way. Because chances are the people listening to this show, your audience, they're already the most ambitious people that they know. Like, you're the one pouring in other people. You're the one for your community encouraging other people saying you should do this. Go and like, you're, you're the one from your high school who's already accomplished the most, probably. And that's great. Like, continue to pour in other people, but who pours into you? And, and the more successful you become, the fewer there are who can pour into you. And so that's not to say don't go off and get mentors and join groups and connect with people. It's super important. But you can get a lot from virtual mentors. So you can learn a lot from guys like Grant and Steve Jobs and whoever your heroes are, even if you never meet them. And it forces you to become a better version of you. Fail? Okay, great. Go. So if you buy a stock and it tanks, does that mean you're done? You're never going to invest ever again? Or if the ETF has a bad month, what, you sell and then you're you're out. I mean, you have to keep going. You got to keep learning. This is a forever game that we're playing here. And successful people do that. And the ones who don't reach it, there's nothing— there's not that much that's different. Like, they're not more talented. They're not more skilled. They're not more— they're definitely not smarter. They believed in themselves when they shouldn't, you know, when they air quote shouldn't. They started and they just kept going. And here they are. And I think that's why The mission becomes important. Like, why are you doing what you're doing? It's got to be something that in the face of constant failure, you're still going to get up and keep going because you love the thing so much. Whoever's more confident wins. The reason why that conversation goes your way is because you believe in love more than they believe in hate. There you go. As strong as their belief in hate is, or negativity, or whatever this— as strong as their belief is You just believe in love and hope more. Yes. When you're around people who believe in the thing more, you gravitate towards them. So you will pull them— they will not pull you down. You will pull them up. May not happen right away. It may be a process. It may take a week, a month, a year, 10 years, but you will pull them up. They won't pull you down because whoever is more confident in the thing wins. That's how you're able to pull them up. I think at the start, I was very shy, introverted. Still am, man. Still an introvert. But 11 years later, 6,000 videos later, here we are. And belief is the core. But I think, so I mean, I guess maybe lesson for your audience or a tidbit is, yes, is belief in yourself and your abilities to close and to help and to serve and to do a good job. And, but also I think belief that what you're selling will actually help the client. Yeah. Like, I think that's what really helps move the needle forward is you know that this thing, you know that these people are struggling with an issue and that your product or service can help them. Then it becomes your duty, your obligation to persuade, to influence, to help because it's of service to them. It's not just you trying to get the commission, right? You gotta hit that number for the end of the month, which is important, but then that When it's, when it's selfishly motivated like that, it can be hard to still have that belief all the time. And it's easy for the customer to kind of see through it, where if you're actually thinking of them and their own best interests, and you know that your product or service can help them solve that problem, uh, it makes you way more persuasive and convincing to actually get those numbers for yourself. You probably don't need more learning. You need more courage. More boldness, or doing, to do the thing. Right. And this is where a lot of people will get stuck up is like, oh, I need to learn more. I need to learn more. I need to learn more. I need to learn more. There's so many people like if learning was the only thing that mattered, then, then university professors would all be the richest people in the world. Right. I mean, it's like, and the most successful. And but they're not because learning alone is not enough. It's the doing. And so the most important part of a morning routine is the feeling you get by the end of it. You know, if you're thinking about how you even started, who you want to be, you said, I want to be— you started with, I want to be a great father. Then you said, I want to be a great husband. Then you said, I want to be a role model for my community. Right. So that's actually the order of priorities. If I'm you, I look at if you just went and you work this job that, you know, you don't like and you're trying to figure out a way kind of to transition out of, how do you make sure you show up at home to be the best husband and the best Father. It's probably not listening to movement-based training. Maybe. I don't know. I don't know if we talk much about that. It's your health. But parenting. Do you get the vibe? Right. So, so on the way home, maybe it's actually better to listen to something else, a parenting podcast, a medit— I mean, we don't meditate on the way home if you're driving, but something that makes you want to be a better father. And a better husband. But you don't even need action steps. Like, you don't need to necessarily listen to a podcast to say, here are the 8 ways to be a better husband. If you just felt like walking in the door, I've put my work behind me for now, and I want to be a great husband, you'll come up with ideas of what to do. And you'll just be a better husband as opposed to having to learn how to be a better husband. How do you determine who to interview or whose top 10 to put together? I have to learn something from it. So everybody that we've profiled, I've, I've learned something from them. And this is where I think a lot of people get messed up, is that you only want to learn from one kind of person. Where I think the real unlocking comes when you're willing to learn from people who maybe you hate 98% of them, but there's one thing that they can still teach you. So, you know, I've got Steve Jobs up on my wall, I've got my parents up on my wall. I don't want to be a father like Steve Jobs was a father, right? He wasn't a very good one, at least one that I don't aspire to be like. I want to be like my father was. But I don't want to be a visionary like my father was, because he's not, and he's not an entrepreneur. I want to be visionary like Steve Jobs was. And so your ultimate goal is not to be the next anybody, it's to pull different things from different people to be the best you, right? Right. I have Kanye up on my wall back there, and Kanye used to bother me a lot in my younger years. Like, I didn't like the bravado and the ego and the brashness and all that. But there's still a lot of that. There's a lot you can learn from Kanye. And so everybody that I profile on the channel is something that I have personally learned something from, that I've gotten a takeaway. And if we— if I can't, then we don't publish. There's a lot of people that people have said, hey, you should do this person and that person, this person. We have thousands and thousands of requests for people to do. I see them in the comments. Lots. I mean, every day, right? We get hundreds every day. It's wild. I'm super fortunate. But if we're researching them and I can't, I haven't learned something from them, then we don't make the video. Especially for your business, referrals are so critical. I mean, I don't have to tell you that, but for people watching too, thinking about who could be good referral partners. If you're taking Canadians and then taking them to Europe, the lawyers who are experts in moving businesses over, the accountants who are experts in Italy or Greece or wherever you're going to go. And send people to. Those are great relationships to start to build now. And then that sets you up because they could help refer clients into you as well. It's like, oh, okay, well, we already have clients who are moving here and we're helping them with the legal. We need somebody to help them figure out their finances. Talk to Serge. He's the guy. So building those relationships is the fastest way to start getting that business off the ground. Now, how do you do that with— you're talking YouTube content or Instagram content. I guess I could call them and say, hey, you want to do YouTube together with— and interview them and say, hey, what do you about people coming over to whatever, Italy, and what are the things? That's, that's the show. So the show, because of all the compliance and because of the kind of timeline that you're working on, the show is not actually for, uh, the consumer. The show is having people on who are your potential referral partners. It's a business development show. Yeah. So lawyers never get asked to do interviews on anything. Yeah. So If you go in and say, hey, do you want to be a potential partner for me and maybe refer business to each other? They're getting hit up all the time with business opportunities. And you're just another financial advisor that they have to kind of swat away and decide if they actually want to do something with you. But if you say, hey, I'd love to interview you for my YouTube channel that's going to talk about how Canadians can either invest if it's a Canadian market or how Canadians can move overseas. This is what my channel is all dedicated towards. Like, really? You got a channel for that? Sure, I'd be happy. I'd be happy to come on. And then you spend an hour with them interviewing them. Now you go through the relationship and now they're asking, hey, Serge, what do you do? Like, you're the financial guy, huh? We might have some clients for you. Yeah. So it almost doesn't matter how well that video does. It's— the point is to not reach consumers but to connect with potential referral partners. So it's business development for you. Time is scheduling things. So Thursday is my public-facing day, so I'm doing all my interviews and podcasts and Hangouts and Some people that works and some people it doesn't. Like, if you didn't agree to do a Thursday, this may not have happened because Thursday is your whatever, swimming day or something, I don't know. So that plays well because I have different days for different things. And then stress comes down to doing work that you love. So I love my days, not every moment of every day, you know, like if my microphone breaks or my camera is out of focus or I fall off my trampoline or something, right? Like Stuff's going to happen every day that you don't love, but net, you love it. Where if I was an accountant, I would hate my life and be stressed out constantly because I don't like doing accounting, but I like doing this. So this isn't stressful for me. This is fun for me. But for somebody else, it'd be the most stressful thing of all time. So the things that are causing you deep stress, uh, would highly question whether you should even be doing those things or if there's something better for you that you want to chase. In terms of working out, the first is 3 hours outside every day. That's been a new addition to my life. It's been an amazing new addition to my life. I try to work in chunks of 10 a.m. to noon is focused work. We're filming this actually here at 10 a.m. Eastern, my time. So this is part of my focus work block. Obviously I'm inside and then 12 to 3 is outdoor and I'm in Canada, Toronto, Canada. So It's— that's the hottest point. You know, we don't get like super crazy hot. So I want to get vitamin D. We don't get as much here in Toronto as other places. So 12 to 3 is outside and I try to do work. This is a big adjustment for me is how do I do work when I'm outside? Because I don't just have 3 hours to go on walks every day. So I do all of my phone work and I've been especially happy with voice-to-text. So I'll speak a lot of things because typing on the phone is just too slow compared to doing it here in my office. And so I'll do my DMs, I'll do my text messages, I'll do my social media, I'll do calls with people, anything that I can do. I'll do all my emails when I'm walking and it's all just me talking into my phone. And that's been a huge game changer for me. I'm used to standing up, so I'm on a trampoline. Right now, I mean, I'm, I'm bouncing on my trampoline. That was a big game changer for me earlier on in my career. But getting outside, getting sunshine, getting the activity is, is pretty low impact, right? It's just walking. I'm not coming back with like my heart beating. I'm not sweating like crazy. But it's, it's shocking how just walking every day can have a big impact on how you feel, on your health. Etc. So I think most people just aren't getting the bare basics of, of activity. And you don't have to go and prepare to do a triathlon or something like just walk every day. It doesn't even have— doesn't have to be 3 hours. That may be a little extreme, but like 20 minutes of walking every day can change your life. You have to remind yourself of the things that make you feel bold, confident, powerful, alive, and then put that into your morning routine because it's a daily thing. You might have the greatest day of all time today and feel like you're unstoppable and you're the king of the world and you can do anything, and then you wake up tomorrow and that feeling's gone. Yeah. It's a daily thing. So, whatever the thing is that made you feel bold, powerful, confident, alive, put that into your morning routine. You know, if listening to Jake is the thing, great. Jake's got a bunch of episodes. Go listen to one every morning. Like, start your day with Jake, right? If it's my YouTube videos or if it's somebody else's podcast or reading a book, something, whatever the thing is that gets you feeling amazing. This is one of the biggest things that people don't recognize about high achievement. People expect, you know, Tony Robbins or Brendon Burchard or Evan Carmichael, whoever, wake up and go, yes, Thursday, let's go crush today, right? Like, that doesn't happen for anybody. Yeah, not for me, not for Jake, not for Tony Robbins, not for Michael Jordan, not for anybody, right? The difference is Successful people, high achievers, have a set of excellence for themselves. They have a routine that they demand that excellence from themselves on a daily basis. So if you wake up and don't feel motivated, welcome to being a human being. Jordan didn't feel motivated either, but he did things every morning to help him get to that spot. That's the only thing that's missing. You have to figure out what is your routine going to be to get you feeling bold, powerful, confident, alive, which is why I like having the office environment because I don't even have to do anything. I just walk in and that's— that gives me an instant hit already. If you think about who your role models or heroes are and just trying to be around them more, whether it's virtually or in person, I mean, you're here, you know, learning from me, learning from the group, but virtually too. Who are the people who help push you to be the version of Hardy that you're really proud of? You know, like the ultimate version of Hardy. For me, that's why I still make the videos on my channel. Like the top 10 videos I make for me, because in the morning I want Oprah in my ear and Elon Musk in my ear and Steve Jobs in my ear. Because no matter how great a day that I had, it's still starting up every day. Like, today is great. Today is like, okay, we got mastermind, we got film. It's easy to get up for today, right? I barely slept last night. I'm just so excited to come in here and be with you guys. But on a normal day, it's like you're waking up and there's nobody telling you what to do and there's no kind of boss over your shoulder. And sometimes it's hard to connect to the big mission. And so having something— you mentioned environment— having something that you feed into yourself that makes you want to step up and play a bigger game. Denzel Washington had this great line where he's saying, hey, we're on a mountain journey of growth, like we're climbing up a mountain. Mountain. And the mountain is growth. And every time you take a step on the mountain, you reach back and help somebody else get to where you're at. Right? Like, you're never done climbing. You're never done climbing. So there's always more that you can, can continue to grow and get better and learn because we feel like we haven't— there it is, you know, always, always be improving. And we feel like an imposter because we don't know enough, because there's always— we only look into what we don't know. But recognize that, you know, if If Denzel or Oprah or whoever is at step 1,000 and you're only at step 10, you think, oh my gosh, I'm nothing compared to them. They're at step 1,000. But you're at step 10. And where are most people stuck? Right at the beginning. Yes. Most people in the world are at step 0. Help them get to step 1, 2, 9. You can do that. You can't get them to step 20 because you haven't gone there. Cool. Don't stress about that, get them to step 9. And as you go from 10 to 11, then you help them get to step 10, right? Like every time you learn a little bit, you then pull and help people climb the mountain with you. Whether you're an introvert or not, achieving your big scary dream will come on the other side of all of these fears. So for me, I was massively afraid to— if you hit me up 10 years ago, I would have been terrified to come and do this show. I still get terrified when I'm going and doing speeches on big stages. For you, even before we started recording, you said you were nervous and scared to do this interview, right? Like all of— and maybe even in messaging me or making that video, you were nervous or scared to do it. All of the great things that you want in a life are on the other side of your fears. And if you tap into the fact that I'm not even doing this for me, I'm doing this to serve, I'm doing this to help, like you're doing this Sure, it helps your show, but it's to reach more people. It's to spread a message. You want to help other people. Anytime I tap into service, it reduces the fear. It takes away that fear for me, and I remind myself, stop being selfish. Like, you're here to try to help people, so go off and try to do that. So I broke my neck, and everybody said, go home. Okay, it's time to go home. But I couldn't fly because the pressure that the airplane creates. You can't fly with a broken neck. And the doctor said I had a 50% chance of spinal surgery, which was scary thinking about spinal surgery. But I said, I'm going to keep going. I want to keep going. I want to at least try. Like, why is the answer just to stop without even trying? So I said, my, my stop was in Denver and I had to cancel it because I was in the hospital. But I said, okay, tomorrow we can just, we'll refund everybody the money that they paid and just like have them all come over to where we're at. And I'll just do it lying down. And the guy, the doctor's like, dude, you have a concussion. He didn't say dude, but he said, you have a concussion. You cannot do this. Like, okay, fine. So we canceled. We just completely canceled and refunded. Everybody understood, obviously. I mean, I'm in the hospital, uh, broken neck, concussion. But my favorite part was in Kansas City. That was our next stop. So instead of just going home, let's just try. Let me try Kansas City. I don't want to just default to giving up. And so I was wearing this and I didn't know if I'd be able to make it or not. So we already, we refunded everybody who showed up to Kansas City and, and then we messaged him and say, hey, uh, we already booked the hotel room, like the venue. We can't get that money back. Um, I'm coming to Kansas City anyway, so how about we just, you just come for free and we'll jam and I'll, and it'll go as long as I can go, you know. So it wasn't the usual 4 hours, about 4 hours, 3, 4 hours on my sessions. And so we get there and my wife Nina is like not happy. She doesn't want me doing this. And she's eyeing me. It's like the deal was I would go if she had control to pull me off because I would never pull myself. I would faint again, right? I would just go until I passed out. So the deal was I would go until she said no. And I ended up going an hour and a half. And I knew that she was paying attention to how dry my lips were getting. So I probably should have quit about 45 minutes in, but I kept licking my lips just to make sure that they were moist so that she wouldn't pull me off. But an hour and a half in, uh, she said, okay, we have to stop this now. Evan's like, I was starting to slur my answers and it wasn't, it wasn't great. But it's like, I've never been pulled off of, like, that was, I was at my physical max. That was it. And a lot of times when we say no, we're not actually at our max. You could go probably a lot more if you just went through it, if you just told yourself that you can. And so that was probably my worst speech of the whole tour, but it was my favorite because it's like I had actually nothing left. I had to be pulled off a stage and say goodbye to everybody. And then I had to wear this for the next at whatever that was, 56 days. But I'm proud that I did it. It wasn't my best speech and every session got a little bit better. Doing a presentation with a concussion is pretty rough. I'd never had a concussion in my life before, but I'm really proud of myself that I did it. Being in the industry so long, watching so many— if you think about what I do and how many videos I watch of how many successful people, they all have some core themes to them. And whether it's entrepreneurs or athletes or artists or musicians or whoever, they have similar themes. And, you know, turning lemonade or turning lemons into lemonade, you know, turning the negative into a positive is a consistent theme across everybody. And so I think it just, it happened subconsciously just by being in the environment of having those people around me virtually to the point where I was doing that exercise, being forced to sit with negative thoughts. And I had changed, but I didn't notice. Like, I don't— there was no moment of coming out of the cocoon and now I'm a butterfly. It just slowly became, here I am as a butterfly. Gotcha. So it was just going through the process. Yeah, it's like, imagine if you were working out your legs every day. You don't see a day-to-day difference. There's no one moment like, oh, you did one extra hard set and now you've got these rippling calves ready to go, right? But I think the only difference was I wasn't even consciously training. It was just because it was in my environment. And I think that happens for a lot— I think that happens for most people just in a negative way. You're constantly watching news and Twitter streams and all of this negativity, and all of a sudden, you know, you start to become a negative person because of all all the things that are happening around you, but it's not that you can pinpoint one thing that that was the moment you became negative or even notice that you're becoming negative. It's just happening. And so that's the power of when you shift your environment and you're controlling what you're consuming into your brain. So I was conscious of what I was consuming. I wasn't conscious about a lot of the transformation that happened as a result. It's only in looking back or doing exercises like that that I notice a difference. Stop getting pulled in a thousand different directions that other people want you to do because you know what feels true to you. So that has to come from a real place. I don't think you can just pick one and say, "That's what I'm going to be." It has to come from inside. I would encourage more prayer. Pray. I think people often pray for help, like, please help me with this, please take away this problem from me, as opposed to praying for wisdom. Yeah, pray for wisdom, pray for guidance, pray for helping and figuring out what your core value is. Yeah, right. Pray properly, right? Don't pray to win the lottery. Pray for guidance on how to figure out your most important core value. And I think if you open yourself up to that and create that channel you're much more likely to be able to find it. I think people should pray for wisdom more. The willingness to say yes to the next thing because I'm not trapped by what I said I was going to do in my 3-year plan 3 years ago. But it's got to be big. Like it's got to be towards the mission. I want to solve the world's biggest problem. That doesn't change. I want people to believe in themselves more. That will never change. So the next thing I do, it's like, maybe it's not YouTube anymore, right? At some point YouTube's been a great run, but If Clay and I are doing this in 10 years, we're going to be in each other's living rooms or something. We're going to be in our VR headset, a hologram world or whatever. So it's not being so attached. If my X-year goal was to have X number of subscribers on YouTube, I think that's a silly goal because 3 years in, maybe I'm supposed to be jumping off of YouTube and starting a company with Clay, changing the world in VR. Yeah. Ready to hop on the next opportunity, whatever in service of the mission. But that's terrible financial planning. Oh, Bitcoin's here, so let me just put all my money in Bitcoin. You have to know trends, but you have to have a solid plan. If you're looking at this as your life, you need this money for the rest of your life, you're creating the plan for yourself, then you have to have more long-term forecasting. And you can do that to a high degree in the finance world. You can't do it in entrepreneurship and life. If you felt like today you're going to wake up and you weren't going to serve, like it doesn't matter if you show up today, you go to work, whatever, nobody cares. That's the path down to depression, anxiety, suicide, all of that, because you feel like you don't matter to anybody. Yeah. But if you felt like today I was going to do something that would matter to somebody, whether it's the world or one person. He's like, today is going to mean something to somebody else. That's how you get to purpose and happiness and fulfillment. The book without marketing is not going to generate more business for you. Okay. So I would love to see you start making more money, and then you can afford to hire whoever you need to to do whatever else you need to. Right. So people tend to default to more like, okay, oh, I need to write a blog or I need to write a book or I need to like just create more. But creating more doesn't mean that you're going to get more clients and get paid more. So if you're a coach, having a book, does it add some credibility? Uh, maybe, you know, like these days it doesn't really matter that much if you have a book or not. If it's with a publisher, maybe if it's in a bookstore, maybe, but are you still buying books in bookstores? You know, I don't know. It's not what it used to be. The reason I write a book is because you want to birth it into the world. You got a big message. And for my books, this is better in a book than it is in a series of videos. But I didn't need this book to immediately generate business for me. If I was you, I would focus on how do I grow my coaching business. You might have big ambitions and huge things you want to do, and maybe you start your own publishing company. I don't know. You got lots of things that you want to work on. But what's the fastest path to start making some money inside of your big mission? And if you're self-coaching, the fastest path is coaching. So what's going to help you generate coaching clients? Your two best bets are coaching content. So like a book isn't coaching content. A book is you being a thought leader again, right? So coaching content, ideally videos where you're showing, right? And any potential partnerships, like who are they, who are people going to when they need a reset? So for example, you mentioned divorce. Cool. Go talk to the top 50 divorce attorneys in Calgary and say, here's what I do. Pay attention to where they're— the person you're trying to target is themselves personally. If you tried to get a hold of me through my main YouTube channel, or even through Instagram, it would be, it would be rough because, because I have barriers up because lots of people are trying to access me that way. On my YouTube gaming channel right now, there's, I don't know, 8 people who show up in the chat consistently, right? So like, if you're one of those 8 and you're giving love, I'm gonna pay attention to you, right? And I stream for an hour and a half to 2 hours, 4 times a week typically. And if you're there, you you have access to me. And so you reverse engineer that. Whoever you're trying to get, where are they spending their most time right now? And you want to be there giving love, giving value. You could, you could be on my LinkedIn all day long posting great comments and feedback. I'm just not seeing it, right? Just because that's not where my attention is right now. So that's, that's step number 1. Step 2 is once you get something, so you got this with me, now you should look at Who is following me on Instagram? And then doing outreach to them to say, hey, we had Evan Carmichael on, do you want to come on? And, you know, Evan Carmichael means nothing to most of the world, but to people who follow me on Instagram, they know who I am. If they're already following me, they're following me for a reason. They may not know who Mark is yet, but oh, Evan was on. Okay, that's cool. I might— let's— maybe I say yes. And if you're trying to get after somebody bigger, Um, you know, if you wanted to have Grant Cardone on, I would look at everybody that Grant follows on Instagram, and there'll be some big names who'll be impossible to get, you know, The Rock and whoever else, but there's gonna be a bunch of smaller names on there too who would actually be super easy to get. And if you have something that you like about their story, so now, you know, Grant follows me on Instagram. If you had me, and then you had 3 or 4 other people that Grant followed who are smaller, who you may not have heard of before, but they came on your show. And again, it's, it's not just about the biz dev to get the grant. They have to have a story. They have to have something that, you know, authentically you would want to share with your audience, right? It's not just for the, for the access, but if you got 4 of those people on and then you reached out to Grant to say, hey Grant, we had these 4 people on, do you wanna come on next? It's a much higher chance of a yes cuz Oh, all these people said yes who I follow and I know, he's much more likely to say yes. Saying yes to the opportunity, even though it doesn't make any sense and your brain is like fighting you, don't do this, stay with the job, stay at UPS. You know, it's hot, but you're making money. You have to pay rent. Like, you can— you have a paycheck, right? Versus I'm going to go and seize the opportunity to take the risk. So it was a risk. I remember I met with Alex a couple multiple times over, like, late night walks outside to talk about it. And I don't want to force anybody into something that's not a fit for them. Talk to his fiancée at the time and, like, getting her blessing and seeing, making sure everyone would be happy. And then he just said, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take the risk and I'll say yes. And that was, I don't know, 7 years ago. I don't know how long ago that was. 9 years ago. Wow. You know, and so now, like, biggest salsa school in the country, maybe again North America. They have lots of upward growth potential at recruiting. So otherwise now he'd be, who knows, selling some other Interact machine door-to-door somewhere, hating his life. Right? Like taking the risk. Right. But you don't know because when you look at the website, you come through the studios, looks successful. If you came at night, you'll see a whole bunch of students in here dancing, having a good time. You'd assume Alex grew up and was a great dancer and learned this all his life. And it's like, no, he sucked. He was the worst. Who are you? Who is Evan Carmichael? Just a human trying to make an impact. Like, I think to different people, I'm different things. Oh, oh, cool. You know, it's like at that event with Ed, I was focused on talking about YouTube strategies. You know, to you here, we're talking about built to serve and purpose and introvert, right? The other groups I'm, you know, I run the largest salsa dancing school in Canada. It's how I met my wife. In that group, I mean, I didn't know my videos or books, but I'm the guy who owns a salsa company. Right. To my son, he doesn't care about any of that stuff. You know, he doesn't care about my book and my— I'm a dad. Yeah, I'm, I'm different things to different people, happy to dance with whatever energy they're throwing out. And, um, I'm just a human who wants to make an impact. Whoever's more confident wins, right? So you need to feel confident before you ever pick up the phone. And that starts with, you know, morning routine rituals, but also the environment that you're in, the clothes that you wear. All of it really matters to your confidence. So I want to create an environment of belief whenever I walk into my office. So, you know, what Jake's talking about, I've got 5 canvases up on my wall. The first one you can't actually see on this angle, it's a Steve Jobs picture kind of staring me down. Yeah. Then we got A.P. Giannini, who's my favorite entrepreneur of all time. Then my parents, and this is me and my parents. I'm about 8 years old here, my parents. And then Howard Schultz and then Kanye West. Kanye West, yeah. I'm in Calabasas. That's awesome. And this is, you know, these people are staring me down every time I come to my office. And the great thing about setting up your environment is you only have to do it once. Like, I set this up with intention once, and then I show up every day, and I got these people staring me down, giving me belief, you know, every day. And so, it's a super powerful hack to think what makes you have that confidence, have that self-belief, and then whether it's your computer background, your cell phone background, the art on your walls, How you dress and show up, even if you're working from home, will make an impact on your mental. And when your mental is strong, that converts super easy to your customers wanting to buy from you and feeling like you're speaking the truth. I think the biggest problem for most people is they just never start. If you're listening to this and you want to start investing, start. I get it. It's scary. You can make mistakes, but you've got people like Clay and the guests coming on to help you and give you guidance and teach you, but you'll never get ahead by sitting on the couch and never doing anything. So many people sit on great ideas. Even if all you do is buy an ETF and sit on it for 5 years, it's better than sitting here doing zero and then 5 years later looking back and say, "Oh man, I wish I did that 5 years ago." We're stuck living in regret instead of actually doing something, making a change. So I think of financial education, a lot of I wish my parents taught me this, or why didn't we learn this in school? How does school not teach us how to invest and take care of us? Great. I mean, so you didn't learn it in school, learn now. That's not going to change anything for you. So the only thing that will change is taking some kind of action. I think you always need to be your biggest critic. You always need to be your biggest critic and tell yourself that you suck and couple it with also being your biggest fan. And telling yourself that you're the best. Where I think a lot of people are often their biggest critic, but not their biggest fan. Yeah. Right? Yes. So, in the moments where I feel great, I tell myself that this sucks, this is nothing, I'm just getting started. This is peanuts compared to what I'm capable of. And in the moments where I'm feeling low, I'm like, I'm amazing, look at all these people that I've helped. Right? Right, okay. My baseline is usually very positive and optimistic, and I live in, I'm amazing. So, so then I force myself more onto that I suck and this is nothing and I'm capable of way more. I need to force that— negativity feels like the wrong word— but force that pressure on myself that this— I'm just starting, I'm— this is just a start, this is nothing, I can do way more, I need to push harder. But if you're living in a world of negativity and depression, and then you need the opposite, you need to remind yourself of how awesome You need to start with the heart. And our brain often will tell— our brain is designed to keep us small, keep us safe, keep us protected. And it doesn't agree with the things your heart wants to do. Like, come to Toronto and do this thing with Evan. Yeah, but this is stupid. All of the reasons why— I lost my voice. I should cancel the flight. Yeah, yeah. It's not going to work. Yeah. Right? And that all makes logical sense. And like, your brain keeps you safe where your heart Your heart wants to create something brand new. So you need both. But the big decisions are with the heart and the starting point is with the heart. That's where creativity is born. And then as you get going, you can use your brain to figure out, do I keep doing this? How do I build? How do I inject the science into it? So top 10 profiles, yeah, I love that all day. Let's get smarter at it. Dance challenges, one and done. Right, right. But I guess back to the story, It didn't start with science. It didn't start with target market. It didn't start with knowing your audience. It didn't start with creating an avatar, right? It started with, I'm gonna do a toy review. I don't know, there's this dinosaur here, let me do this toy review. And whatever sparked the seed after that, whether the video did well or you got a couple comments or it was just fun to do or like, I could do more of this. Then you brought the science in and that's how you blew up, you know, a channel to having a billion views. Right. But it starts with the seed of creativity that you just said yes to and followed. For 10 more amazing rules, check the video right there next to me. I think you'll love it. Continue to believe, and I'll see you there. I was telling my team the story about the two wolves, where you have two wolves inside you, and one wolf is the one who's making the right decisions and makes you proud of yourself, and the other wolf is the one who's making all the wrong decisions and you don't end up liking yourself. It's like, well, which, which wolf wins? And the answer is the wolf that you feed.