This Is Your Chance: Why Take A Shot!

If you want to know how people like Mark Zuckerberg, Will Smith, and Bruno Mars take their shot, then this video is for you.

Taking a shot.

Take a shot.

What's up, Believe Nation? It's Evan. 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 onto the world. Now, I started the One Rule series to try to look at all the top 10 videos that I do and pull together the rules that come up over and over and over again and smush them together into one video for you. So Well, today we're going to learn how you can take a shot. Enjoy.

In a world that's changing so quickly, the biggest risk you can take is not taking any risk. And I really think that that's true. Right, I mean, a lot of people, I think, think that, you know, whenever it comes to— whenever you get yourself into a position where you have to make some big shift in direction or do something, you know, there are always people who are going to point to the downside risks of that decision. And locally, they may be right, right? I mean, for any given decision that you're going to make, there's upside and downside. But in aggregate, if you are stagnant and you don't make those changes, then I think you're guaranteed to fail, right? And not catch up. So to some degree, I think it's really right that over time, the biggest risk that you can take is to not take any risks.

Our nation's first orcish police officer.

Hey, don't get me stabbed. Why orcs always got to be the bad guys?

Will, when you were on Conan, you were asked to give your best description of Bright, and you said, think of it as the energy of Training Day meets Lord of the Rings.

Yes.

Which is a little bit baffling, but also surprisingly accurate in some ways. Yes, yeah, yeah. To both of you, were you confident that you could pull off this odd cocktail?

No, I wasn't confident at all. But that's what was exciting to me. It's so wonderfully weird. I was excited about taking a shot. The fact that it was so strange, you know, as an artist, it was— It was fun to get out on that limb and hoping it doesn't break under your feet.

The last straight job I had was 1981. Head manager of a Häagen-Dazs in Georgetown in Washington, DC on Wisconsin Avenue at the intersection of Wisconsin and O Street, making $3.75 an hour, $4 an hour, something like that, working 40 to 60 hours a week. I had a small apartment which I shared with an old pal of mine. I had a small record collection. An ailing VW automobile, and a little tiny life with my minimum wage job, which I liked. And I looked at my life and realized this is probably about as good as it's gonna get for me. I might quit this place and go work at my friend's record store, 'cause I liked being around records, and I could probably run his store very well, knowing what I knew about retail at that point. And then I got a very lucky break, 'cause at that same time I was very frustrated. I said, "Well, this is gonna be a very tough life. It's gonna be a life of a lot of standing on my feet, a lot of work, taking it from other people, and having very little to show for it by Friday evening." And then Black Flag, the famous band, who's friends of mine, they played in New York. I was in Washington. I took a ride up to go see 'em 'cause they weren't coming down to my town. I jumped on stage and sang with 'em that night. A song, because I had to go back down to DC and go work like some awful shift. They called me a few days later at the ice cream store and said, you know, we're looking for a singer because the rhythm guitar player wants to— I'm sorry, the vocalist wants to move down to rhythm guitar. You can tell I've told the story before. And we're holding auditions. You want a crack at this? Because we saw you on stage the other night, you're pretty wild. I looked at the ice cream scoop in my hand, my chocolate-bespattered apron and my future in the world of minimum wage work. Or I could go up to New York and audition for this crazy band who was my favorite. What's the worst that's gonna happen to me? I miss a day of work. Ooh, there goes $21. And I get humiliated in front of my favorite band. Yeah, humiliation and young people kind of go together. I was used to it. And so I took a train up there. I walked into this practice place in the East Village. I'm standing there with the band with a microphone in my hand. They said, "Pick the tune." And I sang every song they had, improvising most of it, 2 times through. We did the set. They said, "Okay, you have a seat. We're gonna go have a band meeting," whatever that means. And they came back like 10 minutes later and said, "Okay, you're in." I said, "What do you mean?" They said, "You're the singer in Black Flag." I said, "So what do I do?" They go, "Pfft, you quit your job, you pack your gear, you meet us on the road." Here's the tour itinerary, here's the lyrics. We'll see you soon. So fairly numb, I went back down to Washington with this passel of lyrics in my hand, went to my boss and said, I'm not exactly quitting, but here's this thing that happened. And he said, it's your shot. I said, yeah. He said, take it.

When I was 20 years old, I missed my shot because I was scared and I vowed never to do it again. I was in Paris, I was on vacation, I was in university, and I'm sitting here with my map. Outside the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, and a girl comes up and asks me for directions. But she was a French girl, and it didn't twig until later that why would a French girl be asking me for directions in English? Didn't really make sense, right? And then I thought, you know what, I should ask her out. I should see what she's doing tonight. I should take her to, you know, ask her out for coffee or dinner or something, see what she's up to. But I was afraid. I was afraid to do it. I was afraid to do it, and I let her walk away because really I was I was afraid of rejection. And as she's walking away, the Notre Dame is on a river, and I'm on one side of the river, and she crosses over to the other side of the river. And I was so upset at myself. I was so upset that I didn't take my shot. I was so upset that I didn't try, at least try. And what I did was I ended up taking a picture. And as I took the picture, she actually walked behind one of the market stalls, and I didn't actually get her picture. It's fine. So I had this beautiful picture of this French, you know, riverside. And what I did when I got home, I was still upset about it, so I blew the picture I blew the picture up and I put it on my wall. I was actually trying to find the picture to show you guys, but I couldn't find it anywhere in my files. I blew it up though and I put it on my wall. So I'm in university, I blow it up and put it on my wall. Everybody who walks in asks me about the picture. And it just looks like a nice, beautiful French scene, but I didn't tell anybody what it really represented to me, why it was really so important. And I looked at that picture every day because the next time that I had to take my shot, I wanted to go out and do it. I didn't want to be afraid. I wanted to conquer my fear and say yes. And this served me really well a year or so later when I had to make the really tough decision: do I take this job that I always wanted? I had these high-paying job opportunities, $80,000 to $100,000 starting salary with the companies that I really wanted to go at, or continue with my startup that was failing, that was making $300 a month. The logical, practical, safe, easy thing to do would have been to take the job. It's what I thought I always wanted, it's what my friends wanted, it's what you're supposed to do coming out of university. I didn't I don't want to live with the regret of not knowing what happened with my business. And looking at that picture daily reminded me to take my shot the next time it comes around. And so I gave myself a year to say, I'm going to push off those jobs. They'll still be there in a year. Even if it's not those jobs, it's some other job. I'm going to give this a shot. I can deal with the failure. I can deal with the rejection. I can deal with that not working out, even though that's a really kind of short-term intense pain. What I can't deal with is the regret of not knowing, because that's not some short-term minimal pain, that's forever. If I chose not to focus on my business and I took that job, I would forever look back on that moment and think, what if? What if I just tried a little bit harder? What if I gave it a little bit more? Yeah, you know, but it wasn't working, I wasn't getting results. But what if I gave it a little bit more? I did not want to live with that regret. And I'm sure you've had moments in your life too when you didn't take the shot, when you had an opportunity right in front of you and you didn't go for it. Like Eminem says, if you had one shot, one opportunity to seize everything you ever wanted, would you take it? And that picture on the wall helped me take my shot. And I hope sincerely that the next time you get your chance at something, that you don't shrink down, that you don't say no out of fear, that you don't say no because you find some practical reason why you can't do it, that you take your shot. And if you've had those moments that you regret where you wanted to take your shot and you didn't, give yourself a visual reminder like I did in my room. To say this is not happening again. Next time, I'm going to take my shot. I hope you take yours.

What's the biggest risk you've taken that you feel has paid off?

The biggest risk I've taken that has paid off. I want to say Cookie. I mean, I was very nervous when I received the script. She wasn't the most likable character, and I've played some pretty edgy characters, but this one was particularly a challenge because it was primetime network television, and I wasn't sure how people would receive her. I mean, she beat her son with a broom, even though he deserved it. She called one son a faggot. I mean, it was scary. But I'm the type of artist that if the role doesn't scare me, I don't want it, um, because it's not going to change me as a person. So I took a risk, and that's what you do as artists. You jump in feet first and you see where it goes. And I knew that we had something special. I don't just jump feet first for any project. I knew this was something special. I knew that What Fox was trying to do with Lee Daniels and Danny Strong were trying to do, and what I was trying to do, was shake up television. It's too safe. You know, life is not safe. And I think we did that with this show. So I'm so proud to be a part of this project, and I'm so proud that Fox believed in us and took a chance, 'cause that's what art is about, isn't it? Taking chances, taking risks.

People told me that Black Swan was an artistic risk. A scary challenge to try to portray a professional ballet dancer. But it didn't feel like courage or daring that drew me to it. I was so oblivious to my own limits that I did things I was woefully unprepared to do. And so the very inexperience that in college had made me feel insecure and made me want to play by others' rules now was making me actually take risks I didn't even realize were risks. When Darren asked me if I could do ballet, I told him that I was basically a ballerina. Which, by the way, I wholeheartedly believed. When it quickly became clear in preparing for the film that I was maybe 15 years away from being a ballerina, it made me work a million times harder. And of course, the magic of cinema and body doubles helped the final effect. But the point is, if I had known my own limitations, I never would have taken the risk. And the risk led to one of my greatest artistic and personal experiences, in that I not only felt completely free. I also met my husband during filming.

I encourage you, if you are sitting on an idea, whether it's on your laptop, whether it's in your garage, whether it's in your basement, whether it's in the back of your car, give it a shot, right? And the best advice I ever received: find out if your product can sell. Don't let anybody talk you out of it. Give it a chance.

Try.

Make it happen. This is our greatest asset as a nation, and one that we have to continue to encourage. You don't have to go broke. You don't have to bet everything on it, but you can start one day at a time taking a chance and seeing if you too can build a great company.

After you moved to LA from Hawaii, you got there and what was the reason to leave Hawaii in the first place?

I think I needed to take a shot at the big time. I wanted to make my album and start writing my own music and I've been performing my whole life in Hawaii, Waikiki, parties and weddings and shows and anything you could think of, restaurants, bars and clubs. And, you know, I feel like I did a lot in Hawaii and I wanted to, as soon as I graduated high school, I wanted to take the next step and hopefully do it even bigger.

So you got there to LA airport with just your suitcase, probably?

Wasn't even my suitcase.

Any money?

Absolutely not.

I probably had about $600 I saved up. $700 maybe.

Now, what was the plan then? I mean, how did you feel at this special moment? Getting there and having no clues about what's going to happen next.

It was exciting. I was young. My sister helped me out, you know, she let me stay with her for a year. And I got signed to Motown Records. That didn't really work out, but I had to learn, you know. It's such a learning process and a lot of rejection. I think people have to understand that that's just a part of the, you know, what it takes to kind of finally come up with your own album is that you need to be rejected over and over and everyone telling you you're not good enough. And to kind of break through that, that's what it takes.

I think people have terrible risk calculus in general. Even people who try to be really good about this are bad at it. The answer, I think, is almost always A, you're wrong about what is risky and what is not risky, and B, most people don't take enough risk. Especially early in your career, being young and unknown and poor That is actually a great gift in terms of the amount of risk you can take. And I think people don't capitalize on that enough. I think what risk actually looks like is not doing something that you will then spend the rest of your life regretting. And there's a quote, you know, people regret way more the things they didn't do than things that they did do. So if you really believe in something, if there's an idea that you're super passionate about, you know, and you take a calculated risk to start a company realizing you may forgo a couple of years of steady income at another job and whatever else, and, you know, maybe people call you a failure or whatever, that's a great risk to take. And if you don't take that risk, I think you have a very high chance that you end up regretting that. I think the wrong kind of risk to take is where people don't actually do things or don't commit to something because they don't want to fail and they overrate the risk of failure and the reputation damage or embarrassment or whatever. I think one really important thing to strive for in your career is to be a doer, not a talker. And the reason that people don't do stuff, one is it's hard and two is it's risky. And so you have these people that want to dabble in a bunch of different projects, but never be all in on one. And I think it's this combination of work and risk. And it's, you know, I think that's really bad. I think history belongs to the doers. And I think you should take a risk, actually do something. Don't just sit around and talk and organize and bring together groups and go to thought leadership conferences and whatever it is these people spend their time on other than actually building something. And just take the risk of committing to what you have conviction on.

And I go into the emergency room and I was like, Donald Smith? And they're like, I'm sorry, he passed. And they took me into the room. There's my father laying on a gurney, just dead. He still has a tube sticking out of him. They're trying to intubate him or something like that, but just motionless, quiet, no breathing whatsoever. And it was weird. It was, I mean, to say the least, you always know eventually your parents are going to go, but I wasn't ready. I wasn't ready for that moment. And then I walked out and I went outside and had a cigarette. I was still a cigarette smoker in those days. And I was just thinking about being half an orphan or halfway to being an orphan or something like that. My brother comes out and I was like, oh, can't believe it, right? He goes, yeah, it's pretty tough. And I said, how was it? Because my brother was there. He was staying with my parents and Donald. Without missing a beat, my brother goes, "Dad died screaming." And I was like, "What?" And he goes, "Dad died screaming." I said, "What do you mean?" He's like, "Well, he woke up and he was kicking the sheets off and screaming about being on fire and he was so hot and so hot and get him water and screaming. The screaming got louder and louder and it reached a fever pitch and he died. And I don't know how else to say it, but Dad died screaming." And that fricking hit me like a Mack truck. And I remember thinking, oh my God, in this world where even a good man like my old man is going to die screaming, there's no point in not trying to achieve every fricking dream that I have. This is my eventual end. One day, that's it. And, and I really felt like, man, that's like this. I can't— this is my future. We're all probably going to go out screaming. So the best thing to do prior to that is to try to pack that life with as much wonderfulness, fun, productivity. Surround yourself with people that are going to help you do that, you know, because in this world there's not a lot of support, a lot of negativity, a lot of cynicism. Even as I sit here and tell that story about my father dying, I guarantee you there's a cynical head in this house, maybe more, sitting there going, who cares? Move on, tell a joke. The world is full of why, man. You tell people something, they'll tell you why. Throw a rock and you'll hit somebody with why. Like, hey, man, I want to make a movie. Why? Why do you think you could do that? Why? Why? Nobody else is doing it. Why are you doing it? There's so much fricking why. You go out and you find why not. You surround yourself with why not. People are just like, why not? Where you're like, hey man, I'm gonna try something. Like, all right, why not? Let's give it a shot. People who will try to help you do your dreams, make your dreams come true, and shouldn't you do the same for fricking them? We're all in this together, and it costs nothing to encourage a fricking artist. That's why I get up here for almost 20 years now after the movie, man. There ain't a lot of filmmakers get up after the movie and spend more time than the movie itself talking, but I've been trying trying to impart one simple lesson for nearly 20 fucking years. Anybody can do this. You know what I'm saying? Like, I wasn't born into a business or the film business or born with a mic in my hands. I have no fucking discernible talent whatsoever, man. I have no connections to the business. We're from fucking New Jersey and stuff. I got lucky. Somebody picked up the movie and boom, I was off and running. And part of that manifests when you're brought into the indie film community. Part of your your job, part of your honor, part of your privilege is to make sure that keeps going, to encourage other people, you know, to tell people it's worth the shot. Just like Wayne Gretzky said, like, you miss 100% of the shots you never take. It's always worth the fucking shot. Now, if you're talking about like, if what your shot is, is you're like, I've always wanted to kill 12 children, Kevin, don't take that shot at all. I'm not talking about that, you know. I'm talking about artsy shit, you know, writing a blog, making some music, making a movie, making a fucking cupcake store, fucking a knitting store, fucking putting together a YouTube clip. Just anything that's just not fucking, oh, we must do this because it's part of my job or this will get money. Some shit you just do just to see if it could be done. Live a why-not life, man, because we're all gonna die fucking screaming. So make sure when you die screaming, you're totally fulfilled. You're like, I took all the shots, I did it, I went after everything I wanted to. Or at least tried. Take the shot. The shot is always fucking worth taking. Whether it's a dopey thing like fucking podcasting or writing a book or fucking writing a blog. Think about the encouragement you get. When you encourage an artist, think about the potential that comes out of it. You tell a dude, "Good job, man." That person maybe one day writes that blog that you meme out to the entire world because it says exactly what you always wanted to say but couldn't yourself. Or they write that fucking song that you play over and over after a loved one dies because it means the world to you. They make that fucking movie that is the one you cling to when everything is going wrong in life. Oh, you pop that in and things aren't bad for 2 hours. All that comes from encouraging an artist. Nothing good comes from discouraging an artist. So for fucking 20 years, I keep coming up here and going, go out and do it. Why the fuck aren't you doing this? It's so fun. You should fucking do it. Take your fucking shot. I took my shot and it's nothing but pussy and donuts, you know? Just so I'm here to tell you, man, give it a shot. Go out and try.

Thank you guys so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed. I'd love to know what do you think of this video? Whose point resonated the most with you? And how are you now going to take your shot? I'd love to hear from you. Please leave your comments down below. I also want to give a quick shout out to Frankie de la Torre. Frankie, thank you so much for picking up a copy of both of my books and posting that awesome rockin' picture on social. I really appreciate all the support, man, and enjoy the reads. 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.

I'll see you soon.

So 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 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.