In this Believe Nation episode, host Evan Carmichael introduces the theme “think outside the box” and invites Conor McGregor to share a personal story about his coach John Kavanagh, who encouraged unconventional movement in mixed‑martial‑arts training. Carmichael then explains that outside‑the‑box thinking doesn’t require innate genius; anyone can do it by borrowing successful ideas from other industries they love and applying them to their own business. He illustrates this with several concrete examples: Howard Schultz’s adaptation of Italy’s café culture to create Starbucks, Carmichael’s own use of salsa‑DJ mixing techniques and business‑style comment‑response systems to grow his YouTube channel, and the practice of hiring a team to scale personal engagement. The episode closes with a call for viewers to share their own cross‑industry innovations, a shout‑out to Gary Wilson, and motivational soundbites from Muhammad Ali and Denzel Washington that reinforce the message that expertise should not silence fresh perspectives. The overall purpose is to empower entrepreneurs to combine diverse passions, replicate successful models from unrelated fields, and build confidence in their unique, non‑replicable approach.
Chapters
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 think outside the box. Over to you, Conor McGregor.
Every gym I went to was always, they had a set way. Every gym had a set way of doing things. Don't do it this way, do it that way. So that was just a normal thing that I thought. I thought just people just have their own set way and you must do it that way. You must stand this way, you must kick this way, you must punch this way. But with John, when I went to John and I met my coach John Kavanagh at Straight Blast Gym, it wasn't like that. He had a more open mind and he encouraged different movements. And I'd never experienced that before. I'd never heard a coach say that to me before. And that stuck in my head and I thought to myself, you know, this guy is thinking outside the box, you know what I mean? He has a vision that everything works and he encourages every movement because ultimately there is a time and a place for every single move. So I just, I just knew when I met John and when he spoke, it made complete sense to me. And that was it, I stuck with him and he stuck with me and the rest is history.
So here's the easiest way I know of to think outside the box. A lot of people think you have to be a creative genius, you have to be artistic, you have to think a certain way to think outside the box. You don't. Anybody can think outside the box. For me, the easiest way to do it is just take something from another industry that you also love and bring it to your market. This is where if you combine the genius of the end, if you embrace the things that make you you, that's where you win that nobody else can win because you have all sorts of different interests. If you narrow it down and you only pick one thing that you're gonna focus on, this is the only thing I'm gonna do, one, you're gonna feel left out because there's all these other interests that you have, and two, you're gonna get stopped because the people who love that thing more than you are gonna go crush you, where if you can combine all these things down into one, you embrace everything that you love and find a way to mix it up into a pot, people can't replicate you. You're unique. You have a unique voice, you have a unique approach. People can't just copy you. The best they're ever going to be is a junior version of you. And so you think outside the box by taking all these different interests and taking something that's worked in something else and bring it to the thing that you're doing, and people now will suddenly say that you are a creative genius. That you're so great at thinking outside the box. All you're really doing is just pulling from different industries. And this has worked over and over and over and over and over again. I look at Starbucks. I love Howard Schultz. He's on the wall in my office. He got the idea for Starbucks when he went on a trip to Milan. He went to Italy and he saw that the coffee shops were the center of life in Italy and had been for decades. That was the third home. They had their office, they had their home, and then they had the coffee shop. Where people would hang out, be a meeting place. And he looked at North America and he saw the Dunkin' Donuts of the world where you just come in and out and grab a coffee. There's more utility. And he wanted to create that same third home vibe in North America. Worked in Italy for decades, let's just bring it to North America. And boom, you know, one of the biggest brands in the world was born. Not because Howard was necessarily a creative genius, but because he borrowed from other industries and brought it to his own. You look at this YouTube channel. There's a couple things that I've brought here from other industries that have helped my channel grow. I have a salsa business. I was a salsa DJ. Part of DJing is taking lots of different songs and mixing them up in a way that makes sense for a dance party. I do that for a lot of my top tens and for a lot of the videos that I do. I pull together different clips that I feel work well together and we make it into an experience for you guys to enjoy. Nobody else was doing that, definitely in a business context, an entrepreneurship context on YouTube, and it's helped me win. I also approached YouTube as a business. I'm an entrepreneur. The idea that I want to respond to everybody who leaves a comment, and I've hired people on my team, and might need to hire somebody else because you guys are commenting so quickly that we're falling behind a little bit, right? I want everybody to have a response on a comment. When somebody leaves a comment, I want to respond to them. I think it's important. I think it's just part of business. If somebody calls your store or walks into your front door, you're going to talk to them. You're going to thank them. You're going to acknowledge them. And at the beginning of a lot of YouTube channels, creators will respond to every comment. They say, I respond to every comment. And it's easy because you have 1 comment a day or 10 comments a day. It's not that hard to respond to every comment. But when you're getting 200, 300, 400 comments a day, Hey, let's see if you can keep up. And so they can't, and so they just drop it. Where my approach is, no, you don't just drop it, it's still important. You just bring on people to help you. You don't have to do everything in your business, just like in the real business world. Keep knocking my books over. When you're in the real business world, you start off doing everything yourself, and then you bring on a team to help you, and you move up, and you start focusing on the things that you're really, really, really, really good at. Taking that approach and bringing it to my YouTube channel, where still most creators of my size are not responding to most of the comments. They may respond to a couple and then they just leave it. I love Believe Nation, I love the community, I think it's important that you guys are connecting and getting along and there's a vibrant discussion. I want to make sure there's recognition and acknowledgement, so I hire people to help me. And so I talked to the guys at YouTube with my account manager. He's like, wow, that's such an outside-the-box idea. It's not, it's not that outside the box. It's not that creative. It's just taking something that works in business and bringing it to YouTube, right? And so you don't need to be an insanely creative person. You don't need to be the wild character who's always thinking outside the box. The way to do it is just take other things that you're passionate about. If you love baseball, or you love Celine Dion, or you love beavers, Or you love grocery stores, or you love cars, whatever it is, your various interests, you love the Smurfs, you know, whatever it is, find out something that works there in that community, in that business model, and just bring it to what you're currently doing. And if it's different, it makes you stand out, people will suddenly tout you as the next creative genius and outside-the-box thinker. So the question today is, I'm curious, what is one of the more outside-the-box ideas that you've had that you pulled from a different industry and applied to your business? Really curious to find out, leave it down in the comments below. I also wanna give a quick shout out to Gary Wilson. Gary, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word. I really appreciate the support, Gary, and I hope you enjoyed the read. 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 an espresso.
My thinking is so superior and my knowledge is so positive and my logic is so wise until it clashes with their mentality, which is down here and I'm over there. So by me being so high, I can see more and see farther than you. And you're looking up at me saying, Ali, don't do it. Ali, please stop, you're making it hurt. And you on a job making 60, 70 pounds a week, or whoever this guy is. Never been out of the country, not known in his own neighborhood. Ali, don't do it. But I'm at such a high level until I don't think like you. I'm not like you. I know I say you, I mean the other person.
But you know why they say that.
I mean, it's for the best possible reasons though. They have fear and they are wary. It looks dangerous to them. That's right. It's not really that dangerous to me.
Don't let expertise silence you. Work to find new solutions to old problems. Think outside of the parameters that restrict other people's thoughts. Just because you're a novice on the job, just because you haven't faced the same challenges. Just because you haven't climbed the same cliffs doesn't mean that you can't contribute to solutions in very significant ways. When you're chided for your naivete, and you will be, remind your critics that an amateur built the ark, experts built the Titanic.
Man, statistics said if I did that and I stopped going to school and that's all I did was hang in the hood, that I wasn't going to be here today. So that's why I still hang with the same people that I was with back in the hood. And I changed my mentality. I don't think the same way I was when I was there. I opened my mind up. I thought broader. I thought outside of my horizons. Like, you got to think outside the box because that's the only way you're going to get out. When you trapped in the trap, you really mentally trapped in the trap. And it's me, me like, man, I want to make sure my people just know that that's just not the end of your life. Like, if somebody tell you these statistics, that's not you. You're gonna fight statistics and go to the next level. Like, statistics said I wouldn't even be here talking to you right now if I would have listened to them and tell them how my life would have been. They say 1 out of 10 people, they're gonna be like this, or 9 out of 10 Black males, if they do this, live this way, they gonna do this. You know what I'm saying? There's no way around it. They gonna tell you there's nowhere around. So if you in the hood right now, you standing on the block every day Them police just riding by, that old lady that's looking at you, just calling the police on you. The people who ride by just looking at you like, 'Laying nothing, your pants sagging.' They think you ain't gonna never be nothing. They think you're gonna be like that for the rest of your life. Like, who is the person to tell you that you're gonna be standing on this block all your life? It's supposed to be a point in your life where you only be here for— you give yourself a year or two. You from here, it don't do no good for you to be here all your life. And you spending majority of your life, 22 hours out your day, trying to prove you the hardest in the hood. You come from this, you was born in this. You, when you came home from the hospital, you went to the hood, you know what I'm saying? So you don't live your whole life this way for all your life. You deserve to live in a different neighborhood, better yourself for 3, 4 years out of your whole life when you've been living this way. Probably some dudes been living that way for 20 years, 23 years. Been in the hood since they came home from the, from the house building. They still trying to prove to the hood how hard they is, and they end up not making it because they didn't prove to theyself. You got to prove to yourself that you want more than what the hood have to offer.
