In this YouTube video, Evan Carmichael opens with a call to "believe" and emphasizes the power of mentorship for personal and business success. He features Robert Kiyosaki discussing how early desire for wealth led him to seek multiple "rich dads" as role models, illustrating that mentorship begins with a strong desire and the habit of seeking wise people. Carmichael expands the concept, distinguishing between face‑to‑face mentors and "aspirational mentors"—people whose achievements you can study even if you never meet them. He shares his own experience of rescuing a struggling software business by modeling Bill Gates and later applying lessons from SoulCycle’s culture to improve his own company. Additional anecdotes include Arnold Schwarzenegger’s early career encounter with producer Dino De Laurentiis, and a story about Curt Kampmeier, where boldness in asking for a breakfast meeting created a lifelong mentorship. Throughout, Carmichael urges viewers to actively seek mentors, model successful behaviors, and take initiative to connect with potential guides, ending with a call for the audience to share who their biggest mentor has been.
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Good morning, Believe Nation! It's Evan. My one word is believe, and I believe that you have something special that when you unleash it, it will be able to change the world. So to help you on your journey, today's message is seek mentors. Over to you, Robert Kiyosaki. If you did not have the rich dad in your life, what would you be doing today?
It's hard to say if I didn't have my rich dad because, um, as a young kid, starting at probably about the age of 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, I really wanted to be rich. So I think number one is desire, you know, and then you naturally seek your role models and teachers. And in my lifetime, I've had multiple rich dads. You know, my rich dad was my best friend's father starting at the age of 9. And then today I still seek mentors and wise men and wise women because that's how you get wiser is by hanging out with smart people.
I'm a big believer in mentorship. One, in terms of, you know, face-to-face people that you can go and learn from. And two, from what I call aspirational mentors, people who've done a lot more than you, who you may never meet, who may have passed on, but you can still learn from their success. It comes from the core understanding that whatever challenge you have in front of you right now, somebody else has already solved it. Whatever big problem you're facing in your life or in your business, somebody has already solved it and you don't need to come up with every ingenious solution yourself. This is one of the things that saved my first business. One of the two most important lessons that I've ever learned in my life was whenever I don't know what to do, whenever I have a big problem and I don't have the answer, I look for somebody who has already solved it and I try to learn from their lessons. In my first business, I had a software company, I was struggling, you know, making $300 a month, barely able to survive, and I was just trying to come up with all these ideas myself. Like, okay, how about we do this, how about we do this, how about we do this, and nothing was working. And I told my partner I quit and it was the worst day of my life. And when I woke up the next day, I realized I didn't want to quit, I just couldn't keep going the way I was going. And the light bulb moment was I realized I'm not the first guy to try to sell software before. Maybe our specific kind of software, yes, but in general, other people have figured out how to sell software and make lots of money and target lots of customers. How did they do it? And I looked at Bill Gates and how he got started, and that started the process to me being able to build a real company. And that lesson that I learned at 19 years old has stayed true for the past almost 20 years, where every time I don't know what to do, I look at who can I model. It's, it's why the name of this channel is Modeling the Masters. It's why I try to showcase lots of different successful people from all walks of life, because you can learn from them. I'm learning from them. And even today, in all my different businesses, earlier this week I went to SoulCycle with Alex. So SoulCycle is a spinning company that has a great culture, recently came to Toronto. I think they're based in New York, might be LA, but they came to Toronto, they opened up a location, and I heard so much about their culture that I thought I'm trying to build a culture here at TDS. We have a, we have a, what I think is a really good culture. If you can compare our culture to most businesses, I think it's amazing, but it could always be better, right? I want to model even greater success. And so Alex and I went to their class and we learned from them. We saw how they set up their store and their merch and how the staff greets you and how the instructor starts a class and runs a class and ends a class and what happens within the locker room, like all the different pieces You learn from them. It doesn't mean you're gonna apply everything, but if you take one lesson here, one lesson here, one lesson here from people and companies that have had great success, it just makes you better. And so I would seek out mentors that you can meet face-to-face, or you can do now Google Hangouts with, or ask questions from. If anybody's doing a livestream, you get a chance to ask a question. I wish that existed when I was getting started as an entrepreneur. You have so much more access to people than we've ever had before, but even if you're not going to the direct approach and hitting somebody, look into the aspirational mentors. Finding people who've done it before, even if they've passed on, their legacy have left a series of clues that if you can follow those clues, you can apply it to your life, to your business, to achieve success. Whenever you don't know what to do, instead of trying to figure it all out yourself, Understand, people have done it before. Seek them out, learn from them, apply it to your business, and you can have success as well. So the question of the day today is, I'm curious, who has been your biggest mentor, either in your personal life or in your business career? Who has been the biggest mentor for you and why? I'd love to hear from you. Please share your thoughts down in the comments below. I also wanna give a quick shout out to Roberto Latini. Roberto, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word. I really, really appreciate the support and I hope you're enjoying 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 guys again tomorrow morning for another shot of Enspresso.
I wake up every morning, espresso keep me going.
Where you had an early meeting with Dino De Laurentiis and it didn't go so well.
What? That was different because Dino De Laurentiis had an office and he wanted me to be in Doc Savage. And he wanted me to play the villain in Doc Savage. And I walked in and I always kind of have a mouth that sometimes goes a little bit too fast and I step on myself. I walked into the office and I saw Dino standing behind his desk. And it was this huge desk. Ornate with gold and kind of like French looking or Italian looking, I don't know what, but it was gigantic. It was one of those partner desks, right? And Dino, the only thing that stood out was kind of his chest and his head because he's a little guy. Dino is a really short guy. So I walked in his office and I looked in and I said, "Hi, Dino. Why does a little guy like you need such a big desk?" And to Dino De Laurentiis, you never say you're little, right? Because he saw himself as a giant. So he looked at me and he says, "Ah, a Schwarzenegger. You have an accent. I cannot use you. Ah." And I said, again, stupidly, "Who is talking about having an accent? I mean, listen to you." Ah, you're a Nazi. Ah. You know, he walked away because I had a German accent. So that was the end of that. So I left the office and my agent came up to me, grabbed me really forcefully by my arm, and he said to me, he says, I've been an agent for 15 years. This meeting was exactly 1 minute and 14 seconds. It was the shortest meeting we've ever had. You just 'You fucked everything up! Goddamn it! It took me months to get in here!' So he was mad at me also. So anyway, so that's how the relationship started with Dino. But then when he bought Conan, he came to Spain where we were shooting, and the third day of filming, after he saw the dailies, the footage that we filmed, he came up to me and he said, 'Schwarzenegger, you are Conan.' Ah! And he walked off. And Milius came to me, the director, and he says, this is the greatest compliment that you can ever get. He said you're Conan. Isn't that great? And I said, I guess so. And from that point on, we created this really great relationship. And we did movies together. And Raw Deal, and then Red Sonja, and Conan the Destroyer, and Conan the Barbarian. And he became kind of like a father figure. He became kind of the Reg Park that I had in the bodybuilding world. In Joe Weider, he became that character in the movie world that I could go to for anything, who would give me advice, who always had wonderful compliments, and kind of took me in as part of his family. And so that's why I always will miss him very dearly after he passed away.
How do we find our personal Curt Kampmeier? Somebody who can really speak into our lives and change our trajectory. Well, I can't take credit for it. I went to a seminar that Curt was teaching on success, and when he finished teaching, I went up to him and introduced myself, and I asked for an appointment with him, and he came then to Lancaster to the Holiday Inn for breakfast, and we had that breakfast meeting that did change my life, and then I never saw him again from that time until my 65th birthday when my staff brought— I never had seen him. I talked about him. I talked about— and on my 65th birthday when we were having a party together, they brought him into the room. And I hadn't seen him for 40 years. I just wept and I thought, you know, but I think the key was when I went to hear him and he began to speak to my life about being successful, I kind of broke out of a barrier and I went up to introduce myself and then I asked, could I take him to breakfast and could I learn from him? And I think the key is once you see somebody that is helping you, be bold and ask them, you know, can I take you to breakfast? And by the way, here's a thought. Buy the breakfast, okay? Just don't go and say, "Hey, how about buying breakfast for me?" But just, I took that step, and I've always been glad I took that step, but I've always thought to myself, you know what, if I wouldn't have taken the step, then I probably would have never had that relationship, and never maybe would have asked that question, and maybe never would have had this seminar, or would have written the book. So I think once you see somebody that you think can really help you, take the initiative and step right up.
