In this #Entspresso episode, host Evan Carmichael introduces guest Ray Lewis to discuss the central role of effort in achieving lasting success. Ray emphasizes that his 16‑year NFL career, 12 Pro Bowl selections, and personal responsibilities were sustained solely by relentless effort, not innate talent. The conversation expands as Speaker B and Evan share personal stories of using effort to overcome language barriers after immigrating, and Evan recounts how consistent daily video production—over 3,000 videos—has built his YouTube channel despite early poor performance. The dialogue repeatedly stresses that effort is an internal, controllable force, and concludes with a prompt asking viewers how they will motivate themselves to put in effort.
Chapters
Good morning, Believe Nation. Today's message is put in the effort.
Over to you, Ray Lewis.
There's not a person on my team in 16 years that has consistently beat me to the ball every play. That ain't got nothing to do with talent. That's just got everything to do with effort. Nothing else. 15 straight years, 12 Pro Bowls later, if you want numbers. I done saw all of it. And the only thing that's kept me around is my effort. So when you put on this, all I ever knew, because I wasn't the number one recruit, I wasn't the number one linebacker, I wasn't even an immediate guy, all I ever knew was effort would get me seen on tape. Effort will get me noticed to get to the league. Effort would one day take care of my mom and my kids.
Effort.
Which is between you and you. Nobody else can give you effort. Effort is with inside, man.
So what do you think?
Well, I think that putting the effort in anything is really important and definitely more important than getting fixated on what other people think about you, even if you haven't put the effort so far. Like, a good example is actually myself. When I first came to this country, I didn't know any English and people really picked on me. What country are you from? I'm from Iran. People picked on me on the way I spoke, and instead of getting discouraged about what they say and just kind of going to my own corner, I started watching a lot of movies. I started getting outside of my personal bubble and speaking to people no matter how silly I sounded. And right now my English is much better than it was before. I'm not saying I'm a motivational speaker or anything, but I would say I've improved more than I would have thought, or if I haven't put the effort.
When my mom came from Italy, she didn't know any English and she watched movies too as a way to learn English. And now we get a lot of comments below from people saying that they learn English by watching these videos.
Exactly, yeah.
So it's like a full circle moment, it's really cool. I love this message. I think if you look at my own experience, I've never been the most talented at whatever I was doing. It was just by putting in the effort and being consistent. One of the comments that I always get about my YouTube channel is the consistency, right? We're putting up mostly 3 videos videos a day, every single day, not always on the weekends, but almost every single day. We're responding to every single comment on the channel, and it's just a lot of work. It's a lot of grinding. It's a lot of effort, right? I sucked when I first got on camera. You can go back to my channel, look at the first videos. I was really, really bad, and I took— I see other people who are starting now and look at their first videos, and I look at where they are after like 20 videos, and they're so much further ahead than I was after 20 videos. And they look at their progress and go like, ah, I'm I'm still not good enough. And they want to quit and give up. And it blows my mind because I was just so much worse than they were, and the thing that got me through was just another video and another video and another video. And we've put almost 3,000 videos up on the channel. Not all of them are public. That's 3,000 videos worth of practice that most people can't keep up with. And so whatever it is that you want to get better at, Expect to suck at the start. It's something new. It's something that you're trying for the first time, so you are gonna suck at it. And the way to get better is to just keep practicing and practicing and practicing every day. Get a little bit better, a little bit better, a little bit better. By putting in the effort can overcome any mountain. Regardless of how skilled or talented you are, the answer is hard work.
So the question of the day today is: How could you do something different to motivate yourself on putting the effort? Hmm, what are you gonna do differently motivate yourself to put in the effort?
Leave in the comments below, we'll join in the discussion. Thank you so much for watching, have an amazing day, continue to believe, and we'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot of espresso.
