In this 14‑minute motivational video, Evan Carmichael opens by urging his "Believe Nation" audience to "execute your idea" and frames the discussion around the balance between unwavering vision and adaptable execution. He introduces Jeff Bezos, who emphasizes that entrepreneurs must be "stubborn on the vision" while remaining "flexible on the details," stressing persistence, relentlessness, and the willingness to pivot when preconceptions prove wrong. Carmichael expands on this, describing the inevitable push‑back entrepreneurs face, the need to create markets that don’t yet exist, and the danger of clinging to a perfect plan. He illustrates the point with historical pivots of companies like Starbucks, BMW, and Wrigley, arguing that flexibility to listen to the market is essential. Carmichael then shares his personal mission: to help a billion entrepreneurs, describing the personal fulfillment he derives from impacting lives and the strategic use of platforms (YouTube, books, website) that may evolve over time. He outlines his macro‑strategy (platform selection) and micro‑strategy (specific video series) as examples of flexible tactics within a stubborn mission. The video features short interludes from Gary Vaynerchuk, who bluntly dismisses the romance of ideas and declares that execution is the only thing that matters, using Uber as a cautionary tale. Robin Sharma reinforces this by stating that mastery comes from disciplined practice, grit, and the willingness to suffer for one’s vision. Arnold Schwarzenegger contributes a perspective on wealth creation, describing how he turned modest real‑estate investments into large returns, the importance of turning ideas into money, and his philosophy of loving to pay taxes when the revenue funds societal infrastructure. He underscores that without capital, ideas cannot be implemented. Throughout, Carmichael repeatedly asks viewers to share a pivot they made in their own plans, turning the talk into an interactive call‑to‑action, and offers daily prizes for early commenters. The overall message is a clear, actionable framework: be relentlessly stubborn about the why and mission, but stay fluid and data‑driven about the how of execution.
Chapters
Good morning, Believe Nation. It's Evan. My one word is believe, and I believe in people more than they believe in themselves. And my sincere hope is that if you see in yourself what I see in you, you'll be able to change the planet. So to help you on your journey, today's message is execute your idea. Over to you, Jeff Bezos.
So it's easy to have ideas. It's very hard to turn an idea into a successful product. There are a lot of steps in between. And it takes persistence, relentlessness. So I always tell people who think they want to be entrepreneurs, you need a combination of stubborn relentlessness and flexibility, and you have to know when to be which. And basically, you need to be stubborn on your vision, because otherwise it'll be too easy to give up. But you need to be very flexible on the details, because as you go along pursuing your vision, you'll find that some of your preconceptions were wrong, and you're going to need to be able to change those things. So I think taking an idea successfully all the way to the market and turning it into a real product that people care about and that really improves people's lives is a lot of hard work.
I love this message. It's one of my favorite messages. I 100% agree with Jeff on this one, and I think you need to be insanely stubborn about the mission, insanely stubborn about the why you're doing things, but really flexible about the how. And I think you need to have that stubbornness, especially as an entrepreneur, because when you're getting started, you're going to get so much pushback, right? What you create, your product, your service, won't be really great at the start, and so it It'll be hard to get people to buy from you. You'll have people around you, friends, family, coworkers, you know, people in your community telling you that it's not gonna work out. You're telling yourself that sometimes this is crazy and it's not gonna work out. And so everything around you is saying that this is crazy and that maybe it's not the smartest thing to do, right? Being an entrepreneur is rarely the smart thing to do. It might be the best thing to do, but what we do is we create a world that does not exist. The best entrepreneurs have a vision for a world that they want to create that doesn't exist yet. So from a practical perspective, it doesn't make sense. Like, we're doing something that has never been done before. You guys need to be doing something that has never been done before. Right? Like, you can model some success, but at some point you have to find your own path. And when you go and create your own path, it's not practical. It's not logical because it doesn't exist yet. You have to go and create it. And so you need to have that stubbornness for the mission, for the vision, for what end objective you're trying to create, because of all of the pushback and negativity and zero progress you're going to make at the beginning. If you don't have that stubbornness, if you aren't willing to say, "No, this is going to work out," to yourself and to the people around you who are naysayers, then you're going to quit, which most entrepreneurs end up doing. They quit. They don't have enough stubbornness for where they want to go. The flexibility though is about how you go and accomplish it. I want to make this world better. Here's how I want it to look like. Here's, here's what I want to change in the industry. But how you go out and do it should be flexible. And this is where I think too many entrepreneurs are too stubborn. It has to be this specific way and this way only. So you spend all this time making this perfect plan, right? The perfectionist You want to make this perfect plan, and all your time is working on this plan, and this is exactly how it's going to play out. No matter how much planning you do, it's never going to go according to that plan. Every successful business, look at how they started. It's not how they started that led them to their ultimate success. Sometimes it's a radical shift in their plan. Sometimes it's a minor shift in their plan, but it always has to change. Just look at any company. Look at how they started. Look at Starbucks. They started selling just beans. You couldn't get coffee going into Starbucks. They would only sell you the beans. BMW started selling airplanes. That's why their logo is an airplane propeller. You know, Wrigley's, the gum company, started selling other household products, and gum was just used as a, as a giveaway that if you buy X packs of this other product, we'll give you some gum. And eventually became the gum company, right? It's like it changes so often, and too many entrepreneurs are stuck on that has to be this specific way. And if you're not listening to the market, if you're not combining what you love with what the market wants, you're never going to get to the success that you're after. And so that insane stubbornness for the vision but total flexibility for how you accomplish it, that's what's really important as an entrepreneur. If I look at my, my mission, what I'm trying to do here, I want to help a billion entrepreneurs. I feel I have the potential to do it. I want to do it because on a one-on-one level, it's just fulfilling to know that what I do is meaningful, that I have an impact, that I wake up daily and I get to do something that impacts somebody else's life. You know, that means something to me. Seeing your comments come in every day fills up my soul, knowing that I put work out there and it's being received well and it's having an impact on your lives. That means a lot to me. On a big scale, I think entrepreneurs are going to solve all the problems of the world, right? It's not companies, it's not corporations, it's not government. It's us. We're going to solve it. And if I can help a billion entrepreneurs do something greater in their companies to help solve real problems, that's a major impact I've had. And so having a, you know, half a percent impact on your life makes me feel like I'm having a huge impact on the world, and that's what I set out to do. A lot of you guys see me as a YouTuber, and I've said many times that I'm not addicted to YouTube. You know, I see YouTube as the best platform right now for someone like me to spread my message to someone like you. So it's the best path for me on my mission to achieve my big goal. But that may change, and I anticipate that it will change. YouTube will not be the big player probably in 10 years. So what's the thing that's going to come along that will replace YouTube that I have to jump in on? Because I want to hit my goal, I want to have that impact, right? And so even the types of videos— so that's like on a macro of the main strategy, right? The main strategy is YouTube. And book and website, and that will change in the future. But even the micro strategy within YouTube, okay, so YouTube is one of the main strategies. Micro strategy: Believe Life series, Top 10 series, Meant to Be series, Enespresso series, 7 Ways series, right? Those are constantly in flux. What's working? What's having an impact? What's helping us achieve our mission? And which ones are hurting the channel or just stagnating that we know that we need to eliminate and bring something else in? Right, so not being so attached to say, this is a series that even if it doesn't work, I still have to do it. This is the only series that's going to work. If I was like that, then we wouldn't be having the impact that we have right now. It doesn't help me further my mission. And so I think too often entrepreneurs who start businesses are not stubborn enough about where they want to go, about the mission, vision, and they end up quitting too soon. And they're too stubborn about how they go out and execute their plan, and they're not open enough to other feedback to say, hey, I want to help you get that mission to happen. Here's another way to be able to go out and do it. So the question of the day today is, I'm curious, what is something that you've had to change about your plan since getting started? You went out with this plan and you realized that something didn't work and you had to make an adjustment that then ended up working for you. What was that change? What change in your plan, that little tweak that you made, how did it work? I'd love to hear from you down in the comments below, and I think it could help the other entrepreneurs watching as well. And if you leave a comment within the first couple hours of this video going live, you have a chance to win one of our two daily prizes. I also wanna give a quick shout out to Mike Lamott from ChartYourTrade.com. Mike, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word. Really, really means a lot to me, man, and I hope you enjoyed the read. Thank you guys again for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love, and I'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot of espresso.
<LYRICS>And spread it so keep me going.</LYRICS> My assistant's got a great thing now in this. Once in every 4 months, somebody sends an email saying, I've got a huge startup that I want you to invest in, but you've gotta sign this NDA, right? Which literally every time gets an email back that says, fuck you, right? And the reason is, I'm a humongous believer that ideas are shit, and that execution's the game, right? We've all got ideas. Everybody's got ideas. Do you know how many fucking ideas we all have here? We could probably sit here for the next 2 hours, draw them all out, record them, and predict the next 78 great startups over the next 9 years. And? So I think the thing that is another theme in entrepreneurship is there is way too much fodder brought to the idea. Uber was Magic Cab 3 years earlier. Uber is not an idea, Uber existed. It was called Magic Cab. But the guys that executed it sucked. So they lost. So I think, you know, if there's any level of romance left in this room about your idea, I'd like to suffocate it. Because I think the actual situation is what you actually do with it.
I mean, the reality is, reading a book or going to a conference or having a great conversation where you get this golden information, that's all fantastic. But what makes mastery is execution on the ideas, not the ideas. And so no idea works unless you're willing to roll up your sleeves, do the practice, invest the time, put in the effort, do the work. I think we've all observed a lot of people who, they love reading the books, they love showing up at the courses, they do all the online training, and nothing ever changes. And they say, well, you know, I don't know why it doesn't change, why my life doesn't change, why my thinking doesn't change, why my performance doesn't change, why my relationships don't change? Well, it's because ideas don't work if you don't execute on them. So if you look at the great business builders, you look at any great performer, one thing that makes them great is their grit. One thing that makes them great is their hunger to practice. One thing that makes them great is they are willing to sacrifice. I mean, yes, they're passionate, but did you know the root of the word passion is suffering? You've got to be willing to suffer for your vision. You've got to be willing to suffer to reach BIW, best in world. You've got to be willing to suffer the ridicule and laughter of your critics and your cynics to get to a place called world class.
I mean, not a lot of people know that you are a fantastic direct response marketer with your mail order business.
Can you talk to us about the dollar into two concept? Well, you know, we all pay taxes. And we all hate the idea that we're losing that money. But there's a difference between hating that you lose that money and hating to pay taxes. I love paying taxes. If it is the fair amount and if it is used wisely, I think we all have to contribute that because that's how you set up social programs, that's how you build infrastructure, That's how you have a military and all of those kind of things. So that's great, but I always had the belief that the money that I pay in taxes, I want to make up through wise investments. So this is why I got into real estate right away in the '70s, and I started buying raw land and developing that. I started buying apartment buildings, and you know, just think about it. I mean, I remember in 1974 I bought my first apartment building. And we bought it for $215,000. That was then a lot of money. And I put only down like maybe $35,000, $37,000. But within 2 years, that apartment building was worth instead of the $215,000, $350,000 and I sold it. So imagine now how much gain there was. I mean, so we made Hundreds of percent of my initial investment. So that's what I'm talking about. So it takes, you know, thoughts and ideas can make much more money than actual physical labor. And physical labor is always part of the action because I always say you got to work your ass off no matter what you do because now you have a great idea but then you still have to implement it and you have to hustle, you have to go to the bank, get your financial statement, do this and that. And they raise money sometimes and you go and look at 1,000 apartment buildings to find the right one and all those kind of things. So you still have to work. But normally, if it is just physical labor, you can never make the money that you can make when you have ideas. So this is why it's important. I always tell people, I say, the secret is, is there are certain times don't think. Like when you get up in the morning, don't think. Just roll out of bed, go on your life cycle or go on a bicycle ride or go to the gym, work out. You know that's what you have to do. And then read something and learn something. So don't even think about it. But there's other times where you have to really think and you really have to get creative and have a clear vision of where you want to go and what you want to do. And that's what I always had and that's what I always believed in. I always believed in making money so that then you can do something with that. You invest in it and all this. Eventually you create a family, you give some of it to your kids and all that stuff. But also for charity. Look, I have the Schwarzenegger Institute at USC. So we have to raise money all the time and make money to pay for that and the to support that. We have the R20, the environmental organization. Well, any organization and any idea is great, but if you don't have the money, you can't implement anything. And so this is why it is important that if it's an environmental organization, or if it is my after-school programs that are nationwide where we raise millions and millions of dollars every year, or if it is just, you know, living in a great mansion or driving a nice Bentley and a Bugatti, you know, this is the kind of things It takes money to do all this kind of stuff. So therefore, I believe in making $1 into $2 and having a good time when I pay my taxes. So when someone says to you, says, Arnold, I say, we have bad news, you owe $15 million in taxes. I say, wow, yes. And then they look at me and says, why are you happy about that? He's finally lost it. Because that means we must have made a lot of money.
Yeah.
You have to pay that much money in taxes. And they say, yeah, that's the way you look at it. And so that's the way I look at it.
