The video is a motivational mashup in which Evan Carmichael, alongside clips from Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, and other speakers, emphasizes belief as the foundational element for entrepreneurial success. Throughout the transcript, the speakers stress the importance of self‑confidence, visualizing goals, persisting despite naysayers, and treating belief as a form of manifestation that can overcome external doubt. Carmichael shares personal anecdotes about hustling in the late 1990s, the need to rely on one’s own energy, and the challenges of being misunderstood as arrogant. Schwarzenegger illustrates visualization by recounting his run for California governor, while Stallone discusses perseverance versus innate talent, arguing that champions win through relentless effort. A segment on sales highlights that belief in a sales cycle is essential to closing deals. The video concludes with a call for viewer feedback, positioning the series as a collection of entrepreneurial lessons drawn from famous figures.
Chapters
Believe, believe, believe, believe, believe, believe, believe. So much of success is seeing yourself as victorious. You have to see yourself, you have to really believe in yourself. And sometimes it's hard. You know, you've had failures, you've had weaknesses, you've had other things. You have to see yourself as a one-man band. Don't rely too much on other people because they'll let you down. You have to see yourself as victorious. And to be a winner, you have to think like a winner. If you don't think like a winner, it's just never gonna happen.
Anything and everything can be done if you can visualize it and if you believe in yourself. It was the same thing again when I ran for governor. You can imagine when I went on The Tonight Show and I announced that I'm going to run for governor of the great state of California. People came to me afterwards and said, "You're crazy. You don't announce something like this on The Tonight Show. You have an official press conference at the state capitol. Plus, you don't start with governorship. You go start first with mayor or with state senator." And I said, "I don't want to be senator. I don't want to be mayor. I want to be governor. Don't you understand that?" Well, the rest is history. I won in 2003, and I won also in 2006. Let me tell you, you're going to find the naysayers in every turn that you make. Don't listen. Just visualize your goal, know exactly where you want to go, trust yourself, get out there and work like hell, and break some of the rules, and never ever be afraid of failure.
You know, I thought I was ready in '97, right? And I didn't have a major record company marketing to promote my project till 2003, right? You know, so for that time period, I had to be run on my own energy. You know, I had to convince myself that I'm gonna make it, you know, regardless to how people felt at that time. And what it does is it makes you feel like— well, it made me feel like um, there's going to be points that people are going to mistake my confidence for arrogance because I've had to— they don't understand the process I went through and how much I had to believe in myself in order to make these things happen. I kind of— I feel like you can will yourself into a good space. Things that are meant to happen will, and if you believe in yourself enough, you can help yourself learn. You can inspire, you know, yourself in different ways where you can actually discipline yourself, you know, to the point that you can become good enough. Like, from '97, like, when I started writing, it was full-time. Like, every day I was writing music because I had no choice. If I was gonna stop hustling, then how was I going to provide or create, continue the lifestyle that I created for my son's mom, my son, and myself? I'm not going to sit inside of a corporation for 20 years The time is now. The time is now to express and for people to believe in themselves. The time is now for it to be okay to be great. People in this world shun people for being great, for being a bright color, for standing out.
But the time is now to be okay to be the greatest you.
Total believer. Yeah, I believe in manifestation. I believe in, you know, Putting a rocket of desire out into the universe, and you get it when you believe it. You get it when you believe you have it, and that's the key. It's like people still, they sit around going, "When's it gonna come? When's it gonna come? When's it gonna come? When's it gonna come?" And that's the wrong way. You're facing the wrong way. You're facing away from it. You have to go, "It's here. It's here.
It's here." Whatever the truth is, your perception on how you see that truth outweighs it 10 to 1. So it's a motivation and why you're doing it. You know, in the journey of getting in shape, it's a long, long run, right?
But what—
the person who's standing at the end with their hand raised isn't the person with all the genetics. It isn't the person with the most potential. It's the person that has the greatest perseverance, that's always willing to get up. The difference between a champion and a loser is that, you know, they both fail. It's that the loser allows the failure to stand for life. With a champion, even though he gets knocked on his ass— Fonzie tells us fortitude to stand back up, reface that endeavor until it becomes his favor, until he wins. That's the difference. Champions get back up and do it again. And the difference between someone that's successful here or someone's a spectator here is that a person is successful, you know, they believe in themselves so much, and their belief overrides any crowd's disbelief.
Originally, when I brought the script to them, they were fairly enthusiastic about it. The one thing they were not enthusiastic about was me playing the part, and I really can't blame them. At the time, Ryan O'Neal was a candidate. Burt Reynolds, Robert Redford, Jimmy Caan, and they all, you know, were at the top of their game. And so I could see it, but there was something inside of me that, you know, this opportunity is never going to come around. And I really wasn't used to money, and I had no idea of what I would be missing. But the temptation started to come forward. First it was $25,000, then $100,000. I never heard of $100,000 because I had like $106,000 dollars in the bank and like I said I had to sell my dog and things were not looking very, very good. My $40 car had just blown up so I was taking a bus to work and still it didn't matter. I wanted to stick with it. Then it went up to $150,000, $175,000, then it went up to $250,000. Now my head was starting to spin and it went up to $330,000 and probably I heard it went up to $360,000. And I thought, all right, you know, you've really managed poverty very well. You've got this down to a science. You really don't need much to live on. I had, I had like sort of figured it out. So I was not, um, in, in any way, uh, used to, to the good life. So I thought, you know what, if I, I know in the back of my mind, if I sell this script and it does very, very well I'm gonna jump off a building if I'm not in it. There's no doubt about it. I'm gonna leap in front of a train. I'm gonna be very, very upset. So this is one of those things where you just roll the dice and you fly by the proverbial seat of your pants. All right, I gotta try it. I gotta just do it. I may be totally wrong and I'm gonna be taking a lot of people down with me, but I just believe in it.
Once again, there's no blueprint on how to beat me. I can crack any Da Vinci Code when I'm in that ring. I'm the best. Right now, do you believe you're the best in the world? I feel I'm the best ever. I broke everybody record. Tell me who record I haven't broke. It's not bragging or boasting. The proof is in the pudding. Men lie, women lie, numbers don't lie. Doesn't matter who it is. Doesn't matter if it's Sugar Ray Leonard, Sugar Ray Robinson, Muhammad Ali. Doesn't matter. I respect them. I take my hat off to them. But you think I gave this sport my whole life to say there's another fighter that's better than me? Absolutely not.
You know, I mean, there's so many mistakes salespeople make. I think you need to get down to like the, the main ones. But, um, you're not selling the solution. I mean, even before that though, I would say, Corinne, is the biggest mistake— people are not excited, they're not alive, they're not, they're not showing interest in the cycle, and they lose interest. I was in, um, uh, Barcelona recently, and I was looking at a watch, and the cycle didn't didn't close. I could have bought the watch. I was qualified to buy the watch. I'm the one that walked myself in the shop on my vacation to look at the watch. I knew exactly the watch I was looking for. And when I left, my wife said, "What could he have done to close the sale?" I said, "Well, he could have kept life in the cycle. He could have kept the cycle open." So what I mean by that is, look, if you're not interested, if you don't believe the cycle can be closed, it will not close. So the number one mistake I think salespeople, managers, and the store makes is they assume a close can't be had that day. I go into every cycle, every sales cycle, with every prospect, every phone call, every, uh, no matter how complex the sale is or how simple it is, with the belief that I can sell that product that day, this time, now.
Yeah, I think when I was like really young, I said I want to be a cop or something, but I kind of always knew that I wanted to make games, and I said so in school to my like career counselor thing. And she said, "Oh, well, that's probably not gonna happen." Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Thank you guys so much for watching. This is a new series that I'm testing out that I love your feedback on by taking common lessons across the famous entrepreneurs and compiling them into a mashup and having a different theme each time.
So let me know what you think of the video.
I love your feedback. Leave it in the comments below.
Thank you so much for watching. Continue to believe.
