In this motivational video, host Evan Carmichael opens with his daily "Enespresso" segment, introducing a theme of critical thinking and the power of communication. He features Jordan Peterson, who argues that teaching people to write is essentially teaching them to think, positioning writing as the most potent weapon for success. Carmichael expands on this, emphasizing that entrepreneurs must master multiple communication channels—writing, public speaking, video, and one‑on‑one conversation—to convey a compelling mission and attract followers. He stresses the necessity of daily knowledge‑feeding habits (reading, podcasts, videos, conversations) and consistent practice to hone these skills. The video also includes clips from Russell Brand, who talks about personal truth, authenticity, and rejecting imposed systems, and from other speakers who champion first‑principles thinking over conventional norms, urging listeners to think for themselves despite social pressure. Throughout, the recurring motif of a "one‑word" mantra (e.g., "believe") is presented as a simple yet powerful catalyst for happiness and success. The host concludes with a call for viewers to share their daily brain‑feeding habits in the comments and a shout‑out to a fan who purchased his book.
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Rise and shine, it's espresso time! Good morning, Believe Nation, it's Evan Carmichael. My one word is believe, and I believe in you. I believe you have an amazing gift inside you that I want to see explode out into the world. So grab your coffee and sip on today's message: learn how to think critically. Over to you, Jordan Peterson.
The best thing you can do is teach people to write, because there's no difference between that and thinking. And one of the things that just blows me away about universities is that no one ever tells students why they should write something. It's like, "Well, you have to do this assignment." "Well, why are you writing?" "Well, you need the grade." It's like, "No! You need to learn to think." Because thinking makes you act effectively in the world. Thinking makes you win the battles you undertake. And those could be battles for good things. If you can think, and speak, and write, you are absolutely deadly. Nothing can get in your way. So that's why you learn to write. It's like— I can't believe that people aren't just told that. It's, it's, it's like— it's the most powerful weapon you can possibly provide someone with. And I mean, I know lots of people who've been staggeringly successful, and watched them throughout my life. I mean, those people— You don't want to have an argument with them. They'll just slash you into pieces. And not in a malevolent way. It's like, if you're gonna make your point, and they're gonna make their point, you better have your points organized. Because otherwise, you are gonna look like, and be, an absolute idiot. You are not gonna get anywhere. And if you can formulate your arguments coherently, and make a presentation, if you can speak to people, if you can lay out a proposal, God, people give you money, they give you opportunities, you have influence.
Being able to communicate is one of the most important skills that you can have as an entrepreneur. And that could be through writing, it could be through public speaking, it could be through one-on-one conversations, it could be by making videos or being a great interviewer. Being able to communicate your thoughts is important because you can't do this alone. You need to have other people join your mission. And the more of those skills you can develop— writing, speaking, video, all of those things— the more of the skills that you can develop, the more powerful you're gonna be. But you also have to have a message to share, right? You could be a great public speaker, great on video, or a great writer, but if you don't have powerful opinions and a powerful mission, you haven't thought through what you're saying, then you're not gonna bring people on board. And so that's where I find real value in a channel like this. Selfishly for myself, and hopefully you guys get value too. When I see Elon Musk sharing his vision for Mars, when I see Jordan Peterson sharing some of his thoughts, when I see Oprah Winfrey and Priyanka Chopra and all the people that we profile on a daily basis, every time I hang around somebody who's had massive success, a little bit of that magic dust, a little piece of them falls into me to help me think bigger, think more strategically, think more critically, get new ideas. And so I think it's that combination. I think in terms of the ability to communicate comes with practice, right? If you wanna write, you don't just wake up and you're a great writer. You need to practice. You wanna be good on video, you wanna be a YouTuber, you have to practice, right? I've done 5,000, almost 6,000 videos now on my channel. Some of them are not listed. And I've had people on who, are the most energetic, outgoing, fun-loving, bubbly people, but then you put them in front of a camera and they freeze up and they're nervous and they're scared because they haven't done it before. And so you need to practice to get that skill down so that you can be really good at it. For me, it's probably taken me a lot longer than how quickly other people could go. It doesn't necessarily need to take you 6,000 videos to get to be where our— my level is at, and I still have I have further to go too, to catch up to others. I'm not done on my growth. The other side though, about learning to think strategically so that then you can communicate these great ideas, I think really comes down to how much more are you putting into your brain. Like, it's the, the input in leads to good input out. The more great knowledge you're feeding yourself with, the more you'll think and digest it, and then be able to form your opinions and communicate it out in a powerful way. If you're constantly surrounded by negativity, small thinking, routine and boredom, and you're not growing, then don't expect to have this powerful message that's gonna be able to influence a lot of people. And so whatever that thing is for you has to be built in, at least in my opinion, into part of your daily routine. If it's reading books, if it's listening to podcasts, if it's watching videos, if it's having conversations, whatever your method of learning is, you need to be constantly growing and having that as part of your daily routine and then practicing the skill of communicating your mission and your message so that you can bring people on board and go off and change the world. You need both. So the question of the day today is, I'm curious, what is the thing that you do on a daily basis to feed your brain, fill it with knowledge, and help kind of bring up your mindset to thinking a bigger game? What is that habit? Leave it in the comments below. I'm really curious to find out. I also want to give a quick shout out to Greg Orlando. Greg, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book. The Top 10 Rules of Success and taking that picture and sharing it with me. I really appreciate it, man, and I hope you enjoyed the read. So 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 Enespresso. I wake up every morning.
Enespresso keep me going. Truth is a pathless land, you know. We've all got our own personal truths. Now there are certain principles that will help align us all. Just be true to your essential self. Don't fuck other people over. Now part of that, yeah, it is a bit annoying. Do you know what I think is really important? It's like, you know, like say when I was a kid, it was all like apartheid and all that sort of stuff. And I would pretend to be sort of angry about it. And obviously I agree with complete racial integration and racial equality. But actually when I was at home at night, I won't actually, I didn't really think, oh, bloody apartheid, I can't sleep, you know, didn't bother me really. Like, but like, say when I got ripped off, like a bus driver wouldn't give me my fare back, or when there's an ATM charge of £3.50, I'm prepared to go and fucking kill, you know. Or when Apple changed their charger, you know, like, hey, you bastards, why do you have to keep changing the fucking chargers for? You know, that stuff really affects me and impacts me, you know. So what I think we have to do is recognize where in our own lives we've been ripped off. We're ripping us off left and right, you know. Like, we recognize where those things are, recognize that those things are not necessary. And when people tell tell you there is no alternative. Look at the people who are telling you that. There's no alternative to this system that happens to benefit me. Oh, that's fucking convenient. We've looked at all the alternatives and the best one is me in a big castle.
Oh, thanks.
Well, we'll stop thinking. Debate over.
Think things out for yourself. Come to your own judgments. Don't simply conform to conventional ways of thinking, conventional ways of dressing. Conventional ways of acting. That a lot of this, a lot of things are based on fashion. Even morality at times is based on fashion. It was once fa— you know, slavery was once not considered not to be immoral. You know, people are shocked that the ancient Greeks had slaves, that we had slavery in this country as recently as, you know, 130, 140 years ago. So there are more moral values. You have to really go back to first principles and think things out for yourself, whether they're scientific principles or moral principles or business ideas or product ideas. You have to think things out for yourself.
And I was just so excited to tell my friends. I was like, "Man, they're gonna be just like so fired up for me. I figured it out. I'm not gonna be stressed anymore." And I'm like, "Guys, I'm gonna major in computer science." And one of my friends said, "Wow, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard." And I'm like, why? He said, like, you're at Columbia University. That's like a trade. You can learn that at DeVry. They'll teach you how to build computers, fix them, program them. Like, you should major in something real. And I was just thinking to myself, I was like, I'm talking about a limitless machine. You're like talking about a washing machine. But I was so frustrated I couldn't even really explain to him more I don't know why, but it was at that point, at my height of frustration, that I learned the most valuable lesson that I learned at Columbia, which is don't listen to your friends. And the more generalized case of don't listen to your friends is think for yourself. And thinking for yourself sounds both simple and trivial, but in reality, it's extremely difficult and it's profound. And here's why. As human beings, we wanna be liked. It's anthropological. If people didn't like you in caveman days, they would just eat you. So you really have a natural built-in instinct to wanna be liked. And the easiest way to be liked is to tell people what they wanna hear. And you know what everybody wants to hear? What they already believe to be true. And so the last thing they wanna hear is an original idea that contradicts their belief system. So it's very hard to even bring that kind of stuff up. But those are the things, those are the only things, things that you believe that everybody around you doesn't believe when you're right that create real value in the world. Everything else people already know. There's no value created. It's just business as usual. So it's so important to think for yourself.
Let me give you the one word secret to happiness. One word. This is all you need to be happy.
The most important word ever.
If you had to think of one word that's most important to you or that sums you up or that would be kind of like a little beacon.
Hey, Believe Nation, if you want to know what the most important one word is for Tony Robbins, Gary Vaynerchuk, Oprah Winfrey, will.i.am, and Howard Schultz, I have a very special secret video for you. Check the description for details.
