In this motivational video, Evan Carmichael frames his message around the "Wayne Gretzky Principle," which asserts that the most successful athletes—and by extension, professionals—are those who love what they do and are willing to work harder than anyone else. The video opens with a clip of Wayne Gretzky emphasizing that love and commitment drive success in sports and business. Carmichael expands on this by urging viewers to examine their daily schedules: if looking at a calendar feels like a burden, they may be in the wrong field. He shares a personal case study of overhauling his YouTube production process, moving from weekly shoots to a single intensive day of filming 70 videos, illustrating how passion fuels extreme hustle. The narrative is reinforced with additional athlete perspectives: Stephen Curry recounts his unranked high‑school status and the necessity of relentless work to achieve NBA greatness, while Tony Hawk contrasts natural talent with motivation, citing skateboarders Andrew Reynolds (hard‑working) and Matt Beach (talented but unmotivated) as examples. Throughout, Carmichael challenges the audience to reflect on whether they look forward to the next day’s tasks and to identify their "one word" that drives them, ending with a call to comment and engage.
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Good morning, Believe Nation. Today's message is work the hardest. Over to you, Wayne Gretzky.
Professional sports isn't much different than the real world. The players who love it the most and the players who work the hardest, the players who put in the biggest commitment, they're the ones who ultimately are successful as athletes. And then when they go into into the real world, the business world, those are the athletes that become successful in a whole different venture. So there's a very, you know, similar sort of mindset. For whatever reason, the good Lord blessed me. I was fortunate enough to play in the National Hockey League. Why I was chosen, I don't know. You know, you focus all your attention on being the best player you can become, and that's a full-time job. I mean, you don't have time to think about life after hockey, life during hockey. If you want to be the best athlete you can be, your focus is just doing that and playing the game of hockey.
The people who win work the hardest because they love what they do. They put in the hours and the hours and the hours and the hours for days and days and days and weeks and weeks and weeks and months and months and months, years and years and years, because they love it, because it's not work for them. The only way you're going to be willing to put in the work that is necessary to win, to be the best in your industry, The only way you're going to put in that amount of work is because you love what you're doing. And if you don't, you're going to lose. Because there's going to be somebody who will love it, who loves it more than you, and will crush you. And you'll be not even a number 2, you'll be mediocre. Because there's lots of people who love what they do. And there's lots of people grinding it and working hard. If you are looking at your calendar, like open up your calendar, look what you're going to do today, or look what you're doing tomorrow. What's on the schedule? If you're looking at it and you're like, "Oh, I gotta do all these things." If that's your reaction, you might be in the wrong business. Now, if it's a one-off thing, if it's a one day, you know, you got to deal with the government or something, fine. But if that's daily, if that's consistent, if that's always happening, if you continue to look at your calendar and you're upset and depressed and angry, you're in the wrong business. The work should feel like something exciting to go and do. Where other people might jump into your schedule and say, "That's crazy, I could never do that." That's great, that's why you're not crushing it like I am. Like, go, go crush it in your field, go do your thing. As an example, here's one change that I've made to my YouTube channel. You may have noticed this month the video series look a little different. I'm working with a videographer, Jason, and the only way we can make this thing work was if we did it on one day. So I used to film my videos once a week on a Wednesday for the week, and Jason works by the day. So, okay, you know what, I want to increase the quality of the videos. I want it to look more Hollywood. Do we look more Hollywood? Is it looking nice? Do you guys like the quality? Give a thumbs up for Jason down in the comments. And the way to make it work was to do it once a month. And so I'm sitting here filming my videos for the month. We're doing like 70 videos in one day, grinding them through. I've got 2 extra large coffees. I got one sitting behind here. I'm halfway through that. And here's the thing. To make this work, it's a lot of extra pressure on my team to get a lot of things ready and sooner and faster, right? So my team's been working extra hard to get it ready for this one time. And if we continue it, it's their usual job. It's not as stressful or hard. I'm thinking about them. I don't want them to stress out too much. But really, the person who has it hardest is me. 'Cause for me, it's not just a one-off thing. This is now gonna be every month. Like, do I have the ability to stay on, to have energy for an entire day? Can I get through making 70 videos in a single day? I don't know. But when Jason and I are on email, we're trying to figure this out, and I look at how hard it was going to be for me to do, to be on camera for that long, I'm like, I got to do this. This is awesome. I might crash and burn and like it doesn't work out and it totally fails and I can't handle the, the length and the time, but I want to try. Where so many people have a hard time making 1 to 2 videos a month, here we are making 70 in a day. Crushing it all down, and I love it. It's hardest on me versus anybody else on my team, but I don't even think about it because I love the challenge. I love the ability to work that hard and see if I can do it and see if it makes sense for what we're trying to do. What do you guys think? You like— you like these videos like this? You want more of it? Let me know. Leave a comment. And so in thinking about that, I don't think that I'm super special, by the way. I just found the thing that I love doing. I'm willing to put in this kind of hustle and work because I love making the videos, because I want to create more and better content for you guys. You could put in that same amount of drive, energy, hustle that I'm doing today in your business, but it's not going to happen if you look at your schedule and like, I like this. I was looking at my schedule last night and like, I'm so excited about tomorrow. I'm so excited about tomorrow. So good. I can see how it goes. Let's try to crush it, right? And Again, not every day is going to be super amazing, but you should love the work that you do net-net. You should be excited about the day that is ahead net-net and not feeling sad, depressed, angry, frustrated about the work that you have to do. The people who win work the hardest because they love what they do. So the question today, I'm curious, do you look forward to the day that you have tomorrow? Look at your schedule tomorrow. Look at what's on the calendar. Are you excited about that day? I know it's just a snapshot. but I wanna know for tomorrow, are you excited and what's the most interesting, exciting thing that you have on your list? Leave it down in the comments below and we'll join in the discussion. I also wanna give a quick shout out to Chase. Chase, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word. It really, really, really means a lot to me and I hope you're enjoying it. 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, and I'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot Avent Espresso. Hey Believe Nation, thank you so much for watching. If you want to learn more about this subject, get a little bit deeper on it, I'm going to share some extra bonus clips that I hope you'll enjoy.
You'd think there were no hurdles or obstacles that I had to overcome, but even when I got to high school, I wasn't ranked. I wasn't ranked, I wasn't highly touted as a high school prospect, I had nobody really running, knocking on my door saying please, please, please come play for our school. School until Coach McKillop called. And, you know, everything happens for a reason, and there's, there's a story to everything. And, and if you take time to realize, you know, what, what your dream is and what you really want in life, no matter what it is, whether it's sports, whether it's in other fields, you have to realize that there's always work to do. And you want to be the hardest working person in whatever you do, and you'll put yourself in position to be successful. And you have to have a passion about what you do, and basketball was mind, and that's what's carried me to this point.
It wasn't until I started my own team when I realized that there are people with incredible talent and no motivation, and then there are other people that are willing to work their ass off who don't have a natural ability but will become successful because they're so determined. And, and I saw it, I mean, I saw it especially in a couple of guys that I first put on the Birdhouse team, namely Andrew Reynolds and Matt Beach. Matt Beach was, in my eyes, the most naturally talented skateboarder that I've ever seen. Everything came easy to him. And when I would request these guys to go on tour, all I ask of them is that they skate for exhibitions and whatnot. Matt wouldn't skate half the time. I flew him to Europe. I didn't have any money then in our company, but I was flying these guys to Europe for competitions. He would go to the contest and not feel like skating. And I was like, how can you? How can you do that? I was just thinking, not just to me, but to yourself. You have this incredible talent and you just don't care. And then I saw Andrew Reynolds, who was the scrappy little guy, not very clean in terms of his style, but trying some of the hardest stuff, taking the heaviest hits, but always skating his ass off and always trying. And he has become probably the most well-respected street skater today. Andrew Reynolds, I mean, he formed Baker brand, Deathwish Skateboards. The community of the most hardcore skaters these days call him the boss. Because he developed his style because he worked his ass off. And he's the shining example of hard work.
