Stop Fixing Your Weaknesses! Focus on Your Strengths | Jocko Willink's Powerful Advice

Good morning, Believe Nation! My name is Evan Carmichael, my one word is believe, and I believe that entrepreneurs will solve all of the world's major problems. So to help you on your journey, today's message is turn your weaknesses into your strengths. Over to you, John Jocko Willick.

A person's strengths are often their biggest weaknesses, and so that also means that their weaknesses can be their strengths. So me, I am weak in all those ways that I listed. I am weak But I don't accept that. I don't accept that I am what I am and that that is what I'm doomed to be. No, I don't accept that. I'm fighting. I'm always fighting. I'm struggling and I'm scrapping and I'm kicking and clawing at those weaknesses. To change them, to stop them. Some days I win, some days I don't, but each and every day I get back up and I move forward with my fists clenched toward the battle, toward the struggle. And I fight with everything I've got to overcome those weaknesses and those shortfalls and those flaws as I strive to be just a little bit better today than I was yesterday.

I don't really spend a lot of time thinking about my weaknesses. I think it's important to have the awareness to know what you're not good at, to know that you might suck at accounting, or you might suck at sales and marketing, or you might not be great in front the camera, you might not want to, you know, write copy, like you're not good at these things. It's good to know what you're good at and know what you're great at so you can focus your time. This is your goal, right? Your goal is to focus as much time on the things that you can potentially be one of the greatest people in the world at. I'm not a big fan of focusing on improving your weaknesses. I think you have people who you're great at this one thing, right? Like you can be up here shining like a star, you've got Michael Jordan genius level talent at this, and you suck at all these other things. And you can either focus your time trying to improve all these things that you're not good at and spend time and improve and work on them and slowly get better and maybe get average results, or you can ignore all this stuff and focus on this and be amazing at it. I wanna be up here. I don't wanna focus down here. The world rewards the people who play up here. The world rewards the people who are amazing at something, can provide insane value at something, right? You get success by providing value to people. If you are average at a whole bunch of things, you're not really providing a lot of value. But if you're great at this one thing, if you are the world's greatest mechanic, you can provide a ton of value to people, you can make a ton of money, you can have a huge impact, 'cause you are the world's greatest mechanic, or surgeon, or basketball player, or coder, or videographer, or whatever that is that you can be great at. You're great at. And who cares if you can't sing, or if you suck at math, or if you don't know your accounting, or if your spelling is off, right? For me, this stuff doesn't matter. Focus up on here. And I think too much we talk about trying to work on our weaknesses, we try to improve these things, and it's a noble effort, but the biggest factor is this opportunity cost. You're taking away from doing this thing that you're great at. You're taken away from spending your time up here being a star, working your craft, because having the natural talent isn't enough. You could be the world's greatest mechanic, but you need to practice. Michael Jordan might be the world's greatest basketball player, but he practiced. Every day he practiced. He practiced, he practiced, he practiced. He was the first one to come in and the last one to leave, and all the clichés. He worked hard. And that time— we all have 24 hours in a day— that time he was spending it doing non-basketball stuff that he didn't care about. He wouldn't have the leverage. Even though he might have natural talent for basketball, because he wasn't working it hard, he wasn't going to have success. And so I think you need to have the self-awareness to understand what your weaknesses are. And the best entrepreneurs in the world understand that. They know what they're great at and they know what they absolutely suck at. And what they're great at is usually 1 or 2 or 3 things. That's it. Like a really tiny handful of things. That's what they're great at. And then they build up a team to support them in all the areas that they're weak on. So I can spend my time doing what I love to do, what I could be world's best at potentially, and I'm working towards. I look at this YouTube channel. When I started it, it was all me. And you have to have that approach that you're gonna do everything yourself. I will be an army of one. I will try to enlist help, get people to volunteer their time, try to get people on board to what I'm doing. But if I can't at the start, because I don't want to spend money until I'm making money, I'll be an army of one. I will will it into existence. I will just create it. I will do everything. I will film it, I will edit it, I'll be in front of the camera, behind the camera, researching, publishing, everything. But I realize that my strength and what I want to get better at is going to be the stuff in front of the camera, not behind. I don't really want to learn how to be a better videographer. I don't really want to learn how to position the lights and be the best lighting guy in the world. I don't really want to learn about different microphones and the technology and all of the stuff dealing with sound. I don't really want to learn about a lot of the stuff that has to do with my YouTube channel. I want to be in front of the camera and be as good as I can be and practice and work hard and make thousands of videos. 5,000 videos I've made to improve, to get better, to work on my craft. And I want to improve every video that goes out. I want to make sure that it passes my quality test. I see every video that we have before it launches and I say, "Yes, I'm proud of this. I would show my grandkids this. This passes the Evan Carmichael test." And I want to keep raising the bar on that. And for me to focus my time on making more videos to practice my skill and to review the videos that are coming in, the amount of time that that takes, I can't be spending it on other stuff. When I was doing everything all myself, I was lucky to make one video a month. And eventually moved to 1 video a week maximum, 'cause I was doing everything. And then as I hired my first person, was an editor, I could move from a video to a week to a video a day. And as I started building up more team, as I made more money, then I could hire more people and I could make more videos to 2 a day to now 3 a day. So think about it, 3 videos a day versus 1 video a week. How much better am I gonna get in front of the camera? I hope a little bit better, right? How many more videos am I gonna have to review to keep raising the bar on the quality and hone my eye on what I think makes a good video, right? I'm getting the repetitions in so my muscle gets stronger and I get better at the thing that I want to get better at. Where if you're not spending any of your time, if you're spending 80% of your time, 95% of your time working on the things that you suck at, just trying to get to mediocre level, and only 5 to 20% of your time on the things that you have the chance to be a star at, you're never going to reach it. You're never going to get there. You're gonna be average at best. And I want you to have an allergic reaction to being average. I want you to find the thing that you have the amazing ability to shine at, to be Michael Jordan level talent, genius level talent at, and try to spend as much time doing that as possible. Put in the reps so you can feel like you're having a big impact, so you can feel like you're growing, you're making a lot of money, you're doing a lot of damage in your industry.

And you're fulfilled.

So the question of the day today is two-part. I want to know what your greatest strength is and what your greatest weakness is as well. Leave it down in the comments below. I'm super curious to find out. I also want to give a quick shout out to Gavin Anderson. Gavin, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word. I really appreciate the support and I hope you enjoyed the book. So thank you guys so much 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. I wake up every morning, espresso keeps me going.

Knowing your strengths and weaknesses and knowing what you enjoy doing, you know, if you look at it as a job, you've already lost. It's not going to be your passion, and you're going to count the hours. If you look at it as something you love to do, and then you know what your strengths are, then you can leverage those strengths in your business and in helping others. And once you recognize your weaknesses, then you can work with people that complement you. I mean, every one of my businesses, I've had a partner who's very anal. Martin Woodall, Todd Wagner, incredibly anal people, perfectionists, because I'm a slob. I'm a big picture, think about what's around the corner, how is technology going to change things, how can I change this industry, and making sure that there's somebody there to dot the i's, cross the t's, and keep me in the baselines. Recognizing my weaknesses is just as important as recognizing my strengths, my core competencies, and having a passion to do them.

Being intuitive is important. And then surround yourself with really smart business people that can support your weaknesses. Know what they are. I know I don't know how to create an e-commerce platform. I'm well aware of that. So I surrounded myself with people who can and who do do that. And then as far as mentors go, countless. I really, I was not shy about making phone calls to many people. I've been fortunate enough to know people like Tory Burch and Diane von Furstenberg, and they, you know, got lots of emails and phone calls from me along the way with tears in my eyes saying, I don't know if this is possible. Why is everyone telling me no? What do I do? What does it even mean to go to get venture capital? What is venture capital? What's a board? Like, I just didn't know all all these business terms, and so they helped me understand it.

It's very important, and I also come back to chess, to learn how to recognize your own strengths and weaknesses. This is in fact the vital part of preparation for a big match and for anything in life. We always try to study our opponents, we always try to study the battlefield, we always try to study all the circumstances surrounding our venture or endeavor, but very often we forget to study ourselves. And this is very important because any choice of a ground for battle or, you know, type of strategy we want to employ depends on our recognition of our strengths and weaknesses. And this is a process of constant reevaluation because life is changing very fast and our opponents looking at our success, studying it and trying to be smart and outsmart us eventually. And we can look at the history and just to find a number of situations where the inability to recognize strengths and weaknesses led to an eventual disaster.