Evan Carmichael and Andrew (@SKellyCEO) argue that belief and courage unlock your inner ability. They tell the story of Lorenzo from São Paulo who asked to shadow at a summit, and say most people trap themselves in wrong careers through fear. Try new things, ask for opportunities, and you can become the Pelé of whatever you choose.
Chapters
D-Live is writing in asking how to unlock— I want to unlock my inner ability. How do I unlock my inner ability?
I think, you know, I tell you, this guy's great because that word believe. I see so many amazing entrepreneurs who just sometimes lack conviction. And actually, just— I've got a great guy Lorenzo, we might give him a shout out. Hey Lorenzo, come around here, right? Come on, come on back to say a word. But Lorenzo's up from São Paulo, he happened to be here. His dad emailed me, said, you know, you're doing this amazing thing called Safe Summit. Lorenzo, can he come and do a day's work shadow? Yeah, of course, why would I say no? But there's a thousand kids out there probably who come from disadvantaged backgrounds who either haven't got the confidence or conviction or just to say, Stephen, can you do this? But there's, you know, thousands of people like Evan. Always, keyword is ask, ask, ask. And it's all about belief. It's all about conviction. And if you do that, you'll explode your inner passion and able to externalize it and really get people on your kind of movement and your crusade to follow you, your customers, your partners, your colleagues, and everybody out there on social media as well to really be part of your volunteer army to build your success.
Thanks, Andrew.
There you go.
I think if you don't know what your inner ability is yet, you need to explore. You got to try stuff. I think people get locked in too quickly on a career path that is not the one that's meant for them. And it might be because your parents want you to do that. You feel stressed out that, you know, you're 20 years old and don't know where you're going to go. Just as an example, what's your favorite sport?
Got to be Blue Jays now. I'm converted.
Baseball?
No, no, no. Probably hockey. Field hockey.
Field hockey is your favorite sport?
Because I played a lot. I played till last year. I played field hockey. I love soccer, obviously. Actually, I'll be honest, Evan, I love any sport. Anything with a ball in it, I love it.
Okay.
You know, I love it.
Let's go soccer because it's kind of more well known. Who do you think is the greatest soccer player of all time?
That's a great question. I would say probably Pelé.
Pelé. Okay. So, and you know, Pelé, whether he's number 1, whether he's number 3, whatever, right? Like there's always in the list. I would say that Pelé is not the number 1 soccer player in the world of all time. The greatest player of all time is a manager at Starbucks because he never picked up a soccer ball.
Yeah.
Because he never explored, because he never tried, because he got stuck on a path and then never went out to explore his options. And so like, that guy could be Pelé or greater, but he's not, and he's doing some menial job or low-level job or middle management job, right? The point is, you guys could all be the Pelé of something, and you got to figure out what that is. And you do it by exploring and not settling. Like, if you wake up and you look in the mirror and like, ah, gotta go do another day of this, like that's not the right thing to do. You got to go and find something else. It takes a lot of guts and courage to not know what you're going to do next, but know that what you're doing right now isn't enough. And so if you don't know what your inner ability is, that's great. You got to have the courage now to go and try different things and see what makes you come alive. And the thing that you love doing, even doesn't make any logical sense— like maybe you're too tall to be a jockey, or you're too short to be a basketball player, or whatever— like don't let that stop you from potentially finding your greatness, because you could be pele at something instead of doing what you're doing right now.
Yeah, I think we've got some amazing sort of explorers here talking about the parallels in terms of entrepreneurship and exploring and adventurous. So I've got a great guy, Justin Pangshaw, who's climbed Everest, sailed around the world. He's taken loads of disabled service people off to the North Pole on expeditions, South Pole. And the reason why I'm telling you that is because none of these guys thought it was possible to do what they've done. And I think entrepreneurs would encourage you to be adventurous explorers and reach new heights, climb new mountains. And unless you climb them, you'll never know. And the biggest tragedy about life is you kind of sit there when you're 50, 60, 70, 80 and said, I wish I'd done that. You can grab that opportunity. The old Latin bit of carpe diem, seize that opportunity, seize that moment, give it a go. No one's going to die if you fail. And I've failed loads of times. Stuff I've done, and I've always learned more and become a better entrepreneur. And I just think we would say entrepreneurs, the spirit of adventure and the spirit of exploration has to be in your heart, and that fuels your passion.
