Unleash Gratitude for Happiness & Success | @jamescalderuk

Alright, we're live. Welcome everybody to another Hangout. Super excited today to have one of my friends, James Calder, on with me, and he is starting up a new podcast called The Inspired Life and asked if I would be a guest on his show. And so I thought, absolutely, let's do it. And why don't we also turn it into a video so that you guys can learn more about him. His website is jamescalder.co.uk. I'll link it up in the description below too so you guys can go check out what he's up to. Site is still being worked on 'cause the podcast doesn't come out till March. It's like a sneak preview for you guys. But James, welcome aboard, man.

I appreciate that so much. I'm so happy that you got the pronunciation of my surname right as well.

Calder, what do people call you?

I get everything. I get, I had Cladder before, I've had Calder, everything. But when you said that, then I was like, This guy, he just gets it. He understands it.

All right, we're ahead of the game. I like it. But I do butcher people's names. There are some names that I have no idea how to pronounce, but Calder, that seems easy enough.

Quote's my favorite one when people butcher. I love that. People go, "I'll try remembering this quote a minute, but I'm probably going to butcher it." Okay, well, let's turn it over to you.

You have your usual podcast intro. Use that, and then we're going to be talking about living an inspired life, so I'm ready to answer your questions.

Awesome. Appreciate it. Right, welcome to The Inspired Life, my friend.

How are you? I'm good. How are you?

Fantastic. Um, it's, it's exciting and surreal and nerve-wracking to finally now spend some time with you, so I appreciate you coming on ever so much. If, if I may, I just want to start by, um, by how much I admire your consistency Now, I've been following your journey for just over 2 years. You've uploaded over 2,400 videos since 2007, so very much congrats on that.

Those are the public ones. There's another like 600 that are not listed.

Wow.

Yeah, it's pretty intense.

What's been the most exciting moment for you then in your YouTube journey since that first video was uploaded back in 2007?

Exciting thing, I don't know, man. You know, the best part for me is just watching the comments. The best part, I mean, even meeting you, right? Like, you know, you feel you know me, you've had a— you've grown by listening to my stuff. That means something to me. Like, that's, that's why I do it. And I'm lucky enough now that I get that on a regular basis where every day I get comments and people telling me how much they love the stuff. At the start, it was harder because nobody comments on your stuff, and like one comment would give me fuel for the next 2 weeks to keep going until I got my next comment. But I think that's just a highlight. It's a daily rush. It's a daily— like, I still love looking at my comments every day and seeing what people are saying and the impact that we're having. And I get to share that with my team, and I don't know if there's a single moment moment or a single comment, um, but that, that's what's meaningful for me.

But there's certain feelings that you get then that you wouldn't really be able to sort of express, is that it's those comments, it's that engagement. And this is going to be about the hero's journey today, about believing in yourself, because we are just getting started out. So before we get going, like really diving into it, yeah, you'll be happy for us to dive into gratitude for a moment.

Dive into whatever you want, man. It's your game. Whatever you want to ask, I'll answer honestly.

Right. Well, gratitude is something that I live and breathe. So I want to ask, what are you most grateful for recently in your life?

So this is funny because I have a habit that I don't consistently do. You talk about consistency is what I'm working on, but basically waking up and thinking of 3 things that I'm grateful for. The ones that always come to the top of the list is my family. I'm grateful for my wife. I'm grateful for my son. I'm grateful for my parents. You know, I'm grateful for everybody being healthy and alive. And then sometimes it goes more macro, like I'm grateful for my country. I'm grateful that I can live in Canada and I love my city and my friends. Sometimes, you know, I'm grateful for the sun. I'm grateful for the bed that I'm in. You know, like it gets— it's just whatever comes to mind. I think just having a daily ritual where you are trying to express gratitude and think about it makes you happier and more appreciative. That doesn't mean I want— I don't want more, right? Like, I want to— I want more growth. I want more. It's like this constant— it's not maybe fighting that. I kind of— they seem opposite, but they're not. Like, I'm— if nothing else happened, if I had no more growth on my YouTube channel, that was like the end, I would still be super grateful and happy with what I've built. But then still I want more, right? Like I want to do more, I want to impact more lives, I want to have a bigger reach. I know my time on this planet is limited and I want to be able to touch as many people as I can. Gratitude was not something that I did much of, I guess, in my younger years. I don't know if I read a book or where I heard about it from, but I find that helpful and interesting just to start the day with a little bit of gratitude. And recognize that this is a great life that I have and that I should be appreciative and thankful and recognize it regularly.

And you built it through consistency and like with gratitude. Sometimes I'll just wake up and just look around at things and just be like, I'm grateful for that. You, you, by the way, I'm grateful for you.

So yeah, yeah, I think what helps is it just makes you happy. It just puts you in a better mood, at least for me. And I find this a great way to start your day. If you start your day, like you maybe had a bad sleep or maybe you're stressed out about some project you're working on or whatever, just starting the day with a little bit of gratitude puts you in a good mood and just sets up the rest of your day, sets up like that next call you have to take instead of being angry with that person. Now you realize that that, you know, it's a small thing in comparison to where you're going in your life. And maybe you're a little happier on that call. Maybe that turns into a much bigger opportunity because of the, just a change in your demeanor. So I'm not super consistent on it, but I'd like to get better. And there you go, you're motivating me to make that gratitude 3 times, the 3 things every morning more consistent.

I like it. That's cool. And then we'll step it up to 4 and then 5 and your morning routine will just be gratitude then. I want to talk about how this all began because you're a speaker, you're an author. If we just get real for a moment, you're a mentor. You're very active in the YouTube scene. So there's a lot of different things happening for you, but how did it all begin? Did it start with you simply sending out your good vibes in front of a camera? How did your sort of #Believe message all begin?

So I guess I could break it down into two things. One, I started helping entrepreneurs before I thought about Believe. I had my first company when I was 19. I almost I quit. I told my partner I quit. It was the most amazing and terrible experience in my life, I guess. And when I went from making $300 a month and being below the poverty line and like just sucking to selling my business in 3 years for 7 figures, and a lot happened on that journey, but we can get into if you want. What happened after that was, man, I wanted to help other entrepreneurs who were going through that same thing. Like, I wish there was somebody to help me through the path that I had to go through, uh, and YouTube wasn't a thing back then, and, you know, there was articles and stuff, but there wasn't anything, you know, super valuable. Um, so that's why I started. Just, I didn't have a business model behind it. It was just, I love helping entrepreneurs. Um, I started by doing presentations. I did workshops. I went to a local YMCA and offered to do a free workshop for their entrepreneurs. They had an entrepreneur program. Do you have the YMCA in the UK? Is that an international thing? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, okay.

I'm not too familiar. I gotta be honest, I'm not too familiar with it though, so I can't really expand into it that much, but.

Yeah, YMCA is just like a, it's a community organization that tries to help the local, they do a lot of athletic stuff, they put on programs, and my local YMCA had an entrepreneurship class. I said, hey, How about I come and help your entrepreneurs? I, you know, built my business up and sold it. And I did a session for them. And I got so excited, I was so nervous. Like, I gotta— you got 2 hours with them, we got to put in like my best stuff, you know, really help these guys out. And I promoted it, and they promoted it. And then I showed up, and 3 people in the room. And it was super devastating. I thought, you know, this is not— how am I gonna ever make a career off of this? If I can only get 3 people to come to a free thing that we've both been promoting, how am I ever going to turn into a business. But those 3 people showed up, so I decided, let's, let's do it. You know, I'm going to try to help these 3 people. And it was amazing. You know, I just, I felt so good. It was such a rush to help these 3 people and know that I had an impact on them. And that they were motivated and they had ideas to go out and grow their business. That just, I had to find a way to keep doing it. Even if I never made money, I would just, I had to keep doing it. And I did more presentations and more presentations and ended up speaking, like we filled up the YMCA and then I moved to a bookstore and we filled up the bookstore and had, you know, we had one event where we had the second most number of people at this bookstore show up. The first was when Sting came and was doing his book tour. So second to Sting is not bad. But I still never had a business model. I didn't have sponsors. It was just me. Speaking, because I would love to help with these entrepreneurs, and I took time out of what I was doing to help these guys out. Um, and then that just transitioned at some point to, uh, making videos. Um, I don't know if somebody recommended it or what. I, I've always been, I've always been a visual learner. I'd much rather watch a video than, than read something or listen to something, you know, like I wanted to see it, right? It was, that was me. And so I just started making videos and the first one sucked and I sucked on camera and they were brutal and, you know, but I just started because I wanted to, you know, somebody would ask me questions and I would take, you know, half an hour writing a response on email. I said, this is not a good use of my time, even though it really helped that person. Like, I was running out of time so that I can make a video, I can send it to them and then anybody else had that same problem could watch the video. Believe came a little bit later. Believe happened. So, you know, my, my one word is believe. It's on the wall, it's on my shirt on the back. I believe that everybody has one word that kind of defines them. When you figure that out, it helps you live on purpose as opposed to just reacting to the world around you. So my word is believe, and it's always been a part of who I am. I believed in entrepreneurs. I did all this stuff for free just to help out. And when I realized that, then it helped me make smarter decisions. It came out of, you know, I had my website, I was growing content, I was adding stuff on there, and the website started to become a, it's an advertising game and you just, you put up articles and, you know, the more searched they are, the more revenue you would get. And it became a game where I handed that off to my team and it turned into something that was just, let's try to get as many articles as we could regardless of if it's meaningful or helpful or impactful, just like try to rank and get ad dollars. And I spent less and less time in that business and started spending more and more time doing stuff that I was interested in, which is actually having a meaningful impact on people's lives. And I got frustrated looking at the website, said, okay, we gotta change this. You know, we gotta, this isn't, this isn't who I am. And I was trying to think about what do I, what do I, what's my tagline? What do I call myself? I had a bunch over the years from, you know, hungry entrepreneurs deserve help to over 20 million entrepreneurs helped and counting to a bunch of different things. And I got to believe by just writing down lists of words that I felt were core values to me, and believe was one of them. I had this list, and then I looked at it the next day, and some people get this instinctively, like some people just know. I didn't have the self-awareness to really know. Um, the next day I looked at the list, and I like believe, but I believe it's too short. Believe you can, that's like, it's, it's too big, it's too bold. You have to say something, you got to be more specific.

Yeah, what do you believe in?

Right. And then the more I looked at it, the more I tried to add stuff to it, the less I, I liked those additions. And then I just became more comfortable with believe. And then that became, that became the mantra. And if you look at my past, I mean, the idea of finding your one word is you look, you look back at your life and it's been consistent. It's not just your word for the year. This is something that's always been there. So, you know, the movies that I watch, are about inspiring the little guy. You know, the songs that I listen to are the uplifting, you know, believe kind of songs. The friends that I gravitate towards, the, you know, people in my life, they believe in what I'm doing. And so you could do the same exercise and find yours. So, but that started after I was already helping entrepreneurs. The helping entrepreneurs came out of a frustration of me being an entrepreneur and not having great resources to help me. And then Believe came out of the frustration of feeling like I wanted to do something a little more meaningful and impactful.

Wow. And what I actually really got from that then, and it felt like a new idea really, was when you mentioned the YMCA, I thought to myself, I'm going to contact the YMCA tomorrow.

Go for it.

And actually, to be honest, that entire message there was about giving giving service away for other people, um, building up a reputation, and then being able to sort of offer a service then. And I, I was thinking the entire time then, I'm going to contact the YMCA.

Well, here's the thing, uh, when you're starting a business or when you're doing anything like that you're passionate about, you have to put— to get good at it, you have to put a disproportionate amount of time into it to get good at it, to build the skill set, to build the, the momentum behind it. Most people quit because it's too hard, because they're not willing to put in the work. That doesn't make sense. Like, it's illogical. If you looked at how much work it takes to make this successful, it's illogical. It does not make sense to do, uh, and so the only thing that gets you through is, is the love of the process, not just the result, but I love the process. So for those people listening thinking, yeah, I should contact the YMCA too. If all you do is look at it as a marketing strategy, then it's not going to work. It's like you love the idea of talking to people at the Y. You love the idea of helping out local entrepreneurs, right? YMCA or some other groups. There's tons of groups. So I think that's where a lot of people fall down. They pick up on the marketing strategies and they're all going to try that, but they don't stick with it long enough. To get really good at it and to really have an impact. And so they quit. It's because they don't enjoy the process. So you got to enjoy what you do, not just— you got to enjoy the journey, right? Not just where you're trying to go.

I love that logical comment then, because when you're starting, you're not going to be making minimum wage an hour. You could be spending 12 hours a day less, like, yeah, plugging away on something, but you might actually be making nothing. And that could go on for years.

Yeah.

Still trying to learn what works.

So I was making $300 a month. It's like nothing. I had to pick, you know, my friends want to go out for beers and pizza and like, I couldn't, I couldn't go, right? Like I had to pick one thing a month that I could go to because that's all, because $20 was too much. I didn't have it. And I was too embarrassed to tell my friends because they thought I'm living the entrepreneur lifestyle, you know, I got my own boss, right? And I was too embarrassed to say, guys, I'm like massively struggling. I have no idea what I'm I'm doing. That was like too much pride and ego, I guess, of former me embarrassment. And so why did I keep doing it? Like, any logical, sane, rational person would have stopped. Just, I loved it. And you, when you love something, you find a way to do it. It's illogical.

I know the feeling all too well. I really, really do. So I can relate. Evan, what were you like in school? Were there any particular classes that your energy then and your ambition really shined through? Was there a particular teacher that inspired you? Because I find that when you're around people that make you feel good in your own skin, then it really does sort of change your perspective and it's great to have these influences around you. But what were you like in school?

I was never a fantastic student. I wasn't a terrible student. My parents had high expectations. I have two sisters, one older, one younger. Both my sisters were like straight-A students, did fantastically well. I was sitting like B, C students, not failing, but always below the family expectations. Every time we had a report card come back, I always had to go have the talk with my parents to their bedroom and sit down and talk about what's going on. The thing that you know, believe. I think a lot of it comes from them. They always told me that I'm a Castrilli Carmichael and I could do anything I wanted. And my mother's last name is Castrilli, my middle name is Castrilli. And so that's actually a tradition I carry on to my son. His name is Hayden. And so, you know, we'll say, I'm Hayden Carmichael and I can do anything. And he'll like yell, anything! Like he's 6 years old and he's into it. But I think that self-belief and self-confidence came from them where even if my teachers didn't like something I did, I remember it was an art project that we were given and I did my own interpretation of it and my art teacher, you know, didn't like it and I didn't get a good score on it. And then they showed my parents and my parents stood up for me and said, hey, listen, he just did it this way. 'Still what you wanted?' And, you know, said, 'Stupid teacher,' and made me like back me up, right? Like, I'm trying to do something different, and they always, uh, they always had my back, made me believe in myself. There was a point in, in, um, in high school where my own expectations exceeded my parents' expectations for the first time of what I thought I could do. I don't know why, I don't know where that came from. There's basically the year where I graduated I just decided to turn up and thought, okay, my parents want me to get, you know, straight A's, and my, like, 80 wasn't good enough anymore. And I ended up getting straight 90s in my last year. Um, and I don't know why. I don't know. I don't remember anything specific happening. Maybe I blocked it from my memory. Um, so I was like, I was always an okay student. Uh, I think I, I always look for a different way, uh, an unconventional way. Which helps me immensely as an entrepreneur. I always look for like faster ways to get something done and shortcuts, and doesn't always make the teachers massively happy, people who like, like to go by the book. Not that I clashed or fought or like got kicked out of school or any of that stuff. There's still like a— I had a healthy respect for authority, just I like to, I like to find another way, and that wasn't always encouraged, I guess, in school. It's great as an entrepreneur, you know, you get to find your own path and do exactly what you want to do. So yeah, I mean, I thought I wanted to be a banker. My high school yearbook, where you have to write down— I don't know if you have that tradition in England, but we don't— a tradition in, in, uh, here in North America is you— everyone, there's a yearbook at the end of the year that shows all the students and like recaps all of the events from this, that year, school year, and it's put together by the students. Uh, and then the graduating class is all there, and it usually shows them when they were young at the school and now when they're graduating, their photos. And they ask you questions, and one of the questions is always, where do you see yourself in 10 years? Everybody answers and puts down their thing, and mine was banker. I thought it was going to be a banker in 10 years' time. In 10 years, yeah, like VP at a bank is what I put on my resume. I didn't have entrepreneurial— like, my parents weren't entrepreneurs. My, you know, my friends' parents were entrepreneurs. So that's what I thought I was going to do. I'm so happy I didn't do that.

But what do your parents think of you now then? They proud?

They've always been proud. My parents, their most important thing was— this is, you know, good, good props to my parents on this one is that they both had very safe, stable You know, my dad worked for the government for his whole life, basically. Um, and even though they lived in a pretty safe world themselves, they, they always encouraged the kids to do whatever they wanted. So, uh, I'm actually the safest of all the kids. Like, my, my older sister started a business and moved to California. My younger sister, uh, went to Africa just on a whim and ended up staying there for 10 years working for the UN and going into danger zones and getting like danger pay and fighting, you know, trying to, trying to get child soldiers to like stop fighting and to, you know, it's like just insane stuff, which gave my parents heart attacks. But they, they've always been proud of us for doing— their most important thing is they want us to be happy. They want us to chase our dreams, to live the life that we want to live, which is a lot harder life than a simple get a job, you know, go work for a company, 9 to 5 kind of existence. And so I think that's the greatest thing that they instilled in all of us is the confidence to chase what we wanna do, even if it's crazy. Like they were always there, even if it was, they may not understand what we're doing, they may not be able to give practical advice. You're like, oh, you should do this. You know, I can't go to them with business problems, but they were always there to help us emotionally and give us the confidence to do whatever we wanted to do. And I try to instill that now into my son too. I think it's the one of the best gifts that you can pass on.

Wow, I can, I can see why people love you and why people love your Believe message. Um, so learning then has been a big thing for you, obviously, from school. You said you came out with Bs and Cs, which I was exactly the same. I didn't do great in school either. So my next question is, because I think self-learning then is obviously the next big thing, because you see people on YouTube nowadays, they're building massive YouTube brands, and that's just because they're passionate about what they're doing. They're passionate about how they're using their time. How important is learning new skills and improving your mind for you? So Are you reading a lot? Are you listening to podcasts? Do you watch other YouTube videos? What basically gives you that high then of personal development? When you— well, when do you make time for it as well?

Yeah, this is super important because, uh, I believe you're a product of your environment, and you'll find that most people never break free from their environment. Most people end up like their parents.

Why do you think that is?

It's your environment. Like, there's nothing— there's no spark. Like, for me, one of the sparks was connecting with those two entrepreneurs in university. I thought I was going to be a banker. Those two people who had that company that I was then invited to join as an owner in, that set me on a new path. If I didn't meet them, I would have gone the path that was— that my friends were going down and my parents went down. It's not that it's nothing— there's nothing wrong with that necessarily, just You are a product of your environment. There's a saying that you're gonna make as much money as your 5 closest friends, and it's true. And you would take on their mindset, you take on their mentality. And so if you wanna do great things, you have to be surrounded by greatness. And so look at your environment, look at, you know, there's a reason why I wear this, there's a reason why this is on the wall. It's not just for you, it's for me, right? Like I wanna come in and I wanna be inspired, right? You can't see, well, I got other stuff happening here, but I know it's kind of narrow view on here, but where you work matters, right? The lighting in your place matters. What's on the wall matters. The information that you feed yourself matters. Are you watching reality TV shows, or are you watching something that's gonna fill you up? Do the people around you say you're crazy, or do they try to help you accomplish your dreams. You know, the reason why I made the Enespresso and top 10 videos on my channel was because I wanted to be surrounded by great ideas, like regularly, every day, right? What happens to most people is they may stumble on something, like maybe they stumble on this interview, right? Like, oh, you know, James has this thing, I heard about it from some tweet, and I'm gonna go check it out. Great, they listen to it, they're inspired. I'm gonna live an inspired life. Yes. It's 5 o'clock on a Thursday afternoon, they're off like the rest of the night, they're up till 3 in the morning, like planning their life, everything they're going to do. They wake up the next day, they're starting over again, like the motivation's gone. And at least for me, that's what happens for me. Like I'll watch something and get inspired and then the next day you wake up and it's like I'm starting from scratch again. And so I need to create an environment that supports that bigger thinking, breakthrough thinking on a regular basis. And so, you know, I surround myself with videos from Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and Walt Disney and, you know, big thinkers who've done huge things every day. That's how I start my day, you know, and that makes me think bigger and realize that these guys started in a position that is often worse than how I started. And were able to create these huge things. And maybe I won't reach those heights, but I can do a lot better than what I'm doing right now. And if I look at the things around me, uh, most people live a life without serious intention, you know, like, oh, I wish I could be this, but they don't believe it and they don't have the environment that supports them. So like, what is your morning routine? You start with gratitude. Great. Most people Most people don't have a morning routine that is designed. It's, I wake up, I get coffee, I rush to work, you know, put on my clothes, whatever. You want to design it, especially that first start. I find that when you have, when you have something easy to do in the morning that sets you up, like if it's gratitude and you keep that habit, you're much more likely to keep the other positive habits. If you miss it, if you miss the gratitude habit, you miss one of the, whatever your first one is, then it's easy to, ah, I'm not gonna work out either, and I'm not gonna go read that book either, and I'll just start over tomorrow, and you just like throw away the day. So I wanna throw away as few days as possible, but the overall concept is if you wanna do great things, you need to be surrounded by greatness. So everything around you, your daily routine, your environment, what you consume, the media that you put into your ears or into your eyes, it all matters. That helps you accomplish things. You need to push. You need something to push you beyond your comfort zone. And most people don't have that in their lives. They don't have friends or family or anybody to push them beyond. And it's uncomfortable to go beyond. And so you don't do it. We don't do the things that are painful and uncomfortable in general. So that's why most people never escape their environment.

You've literally just broke down self-esteem 101 right there.

I love that.

One thing I was thinking now, and you actually, you inspired this question. It wasn't one I was initially going to ask, but then I was thinking about a college student and I was also thinking about someone who maybe works a job, maybe like 9 to 5, and they can't necessarily change their environment too much because they're working at a set location and they're still in school at the moment. What are some things then, and some influences, some ways that they can adjust their environment? Is this something that they maybe have to do when they get home later on? Is it they can change around their morning routine? You mentioned a lot about motivation there, and I personally think it's having a reason why, maybe in your downtime then, to go out and build something. So that's kind of my thought on it, like personally. I've kept a morning gratitude routine now, haven't broken it for one day in over two years. And I feel like that helps me build self-esteem in other areas as well, because I know I can consistently keep a routine that is empowering to me. But going back to the college student and maybe the person that— someone who has a job where they can't change their environment, what are some ways that then they can influence— you said about information they take in, or just some key rituals and routines?

Yeah, so let's— I'll attack down a couple levels. The first, you know, everybody has 24 hours in a day. You, me, Bill Gates, Richard Branson, everybody has 24 hours. You know, nobody gets extra. Now you're spending however many sleeping— 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 hours sleeping, whatever— your time awake, you have a chance to influence what you consume, what your habits are, you know, who you're hanging out with. Even if you say, I can't change because I'm a college student or I have a job, we'll leave that aside for now. There's still tons of hours that you are not at your job or at college, right? So what are you doing with those hours, right? Where are you living, right? You could transform your room. When you wake up, what do you see around you? What's on the walls? Is it things that inspire you, or is it another boring wall, right? If you wake up to a boring wall, you're probably gonna have a boring day, right? Like, you want to set yourself up for greatness every day. What's your first thing? What's the first thing that you do every day after you wake up? Do you write a gratitude journal? Do you watch a YouTube video? Do you, you know, fill your head with— do you review your goals and fill yourself up with what you want to get done? For the day. And what do you do that makes you— like, I find I need to do it every day. I wake up and I'm— I need to get the, the motivation, the excitement. For me, it's from the YouTube comments. Like, I look at the comments and that— you okay?

Yes, sorry. Yeah.

Oh, okay. I look at the comments and, and it just, it makes me feel like, hey, the stuff that I'm doing is, is important. Like, it's massively touching people's lives. I need to keep doing it. That's fuel for me. But for the college student or whoever, you want to fill yourself up in the morning with something that makes you come alive. And then what do you do on your way to work? You know, what are you listening to? Are you listening to audiobooks? Are you listening to this podcast? You know, are you listening to music that gets you pumped up and excited? Or are you just sitting on the subway with your head down and buried and just like tired because you don't have enough sleep? Whatever. Like, these are all moments. If you take 10 minutes out of your daily routine and did something a little more empowering, especially in the morning, that has a ripple effect on the rest of your day, you know.

And then did it consistently over time?

Yeah. And then ideally you do it, you take those 10 minutes and that becomes 20 and 30. Like, you dissect your life into 10-minute chunks and try to make the most out of each chunk that you have. Uh, if we attack it from a higher level You know, if you're not happy about, as a college student, you have a terrible college environment or you have a terrible work environment, it might also make you think, is this actually what I should be doing? Right, like, should I be at that college? Should I be studying this topic or not? Like, do I wanna spend the next 5, 6, 7 years of my life studying this topic? Maybe you shouldn't, right? If you're waking up every day dreading to go here, maybe you shouldn't do that anymore. The reason to get a job is not to make money, it's to learn. So you wanna work somewhere where you're gonna get skills and learn and improve yourself and have an inspired life, right? So are you getting that at your job? If not, well, maybe you shouldn't be working there either, right? Like if there are things that you dread doing on a daily basis, maybe you shouldn't do those for too long, right? Like if it's pushing you, if it's making you a better version of yourself and it's pushing you to get stronger, then yes, like that fear is something that you should conquer and get better at. But if it's just something that's like you're dying and you're drowning in, then, then maybe you just don't accept that as I can't change my environment. Maybe you shouldn't be doing that at all and go do something else that's more inspired.

Wow. So this is another question you've now inspired then. Do you try to balance your life when you have so much going on? Excuse me, I need a drink of water. You have so much going on that you're passionate about. Like, I read in your 99-word bio, you love salsa dancing, you love the Blue Jays, you love League of Legends. Yeah, big fan.

Look me up, I'm Believe Team on the North American server. Nice, nice.

I'm serious— well, kind of weaned off it ever so slightly, but serious video game nerd with an OCD for personal development. So I'm gonna do that, I'm gonna look you up later on. I was playing on it like 2 or 3 hours ago.

Oh, well, I'm not very good, but I like it.

I'm silver 5 or something, so I stopped playing it because I was too good. That was, uh, that was my thing.

I'm kidding. Balance.

Balance your life. I'm gonna go and drum. Yeah, grab a drink of water.

Go for it. For balance, here's what I find, um, on a regular day I do, you know, uh, if I find myself doing too much of something in general, then I'll, I'll feel out of whack. Like if I haven't spent time with my for my son, I'll feel it. You know, like, I'll feel— I'll get edgy and like, I need to— I need that time. I need the downtime. I need to spend time salsa dancing. If I don't, I start to feel it. There are moments in time where you push through because you're on an adrenaline rush, because something is so important that you're like, you can push other things aside. You know, like, you're playing a game of League and it's ranked, you know, You got a marathon going on, you don't need to go to the washroom. You're like, I'm gonna hold it, I'm gonna hold it in, right? And then game ends and you jet, right? Uh, so the same thing can happen. Like, I just finished writing my book and I have 20 review copies going out to people. Uh, and so yesterday was all about getting all the review copies together, connecting with all the people who I'm going to be sending it to. I met up with 9 of them yesterday and like handing them out and signing each one. And so, like, that took a huge chunk of my day. And that was time that I didn't spend with my wife, I didn't spend at home, I didn't spend doing salsa, I didn't spend doing League, I didn't spend doing other stuff. But it's okay. Like, every now and then that happens. If that was every day, then I would burn out. Like, I can't do this. I need to spend time. It's like traveling for me now is too much. I just came back from Seattle working with Microsoft on a project. Like, I don't wanna go traveling anymore 'cause I miss what I'm doing here too much. And so I think what's helpful is to have somewhat of a daily routine or weekly routine of where you're gonna spend time and schedule the things that are important in your personal life into your schedule, just like you would business stuff. And there will be times when there's some crazy things that happen that overlap, right? It happens on the personal side too, right? My mom was in a car accident recently and flipped her Jeep when a dog ran across the street. So, you know, now we're like, are you okay? Right? Like business is now all off to the side and we're all worried about her and she is and everything's okay. But—

You okay now?

What's that?

Is she okay now?

She's okay. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. She's okay. But at the moment it's scary. It's crazy. And you push everything else aside to handle this issue. So I think for regular days, I have a daily, I have a weekly routine. Things I do on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Thursday is my public-facing day, as an example. We're doing this interview on a Thursday because that's the day that I spend talking to people. But there are some days that business, you know, something huge happens that you take advantage of, and personal, it could be a good or bad thing that blows up your day. I just try to minimize those as much as possible. Obviously, I can't control my mother get into a car accident. I can't control some of the things on the business side, but I try as much as possible to keep a regular routine where there is some kind of balance. Because if it goes too out of whack, then I'm not happy. And at the end, this all is here to try to make me be happy. This is about Evan being happiest. That's what I'm trying to do.

I love that so much. And because we're on Blab right now, we got someone who is absolutely loving your message. Saying that Evan, you're so helpful and that's what I like about you. You're not just trying to sell stuff. So Evan, we all love you, right? This next question then, um, it was asked— I was asked this question a few days ago. It was on my daily commute to a coffee shop. Um, really quick shout out to the guys in Cumbernauld Costa, you're doing a fantastic job. And I bumped into a friend, um, I haven't spoken to him in a few months and we got talking about what we were working on right now. This was the conversation about the podcast, and he wasn't too sure. I think we were just talking about this before we started, and he wasn't too sure what a podcast was. And I was like, oh, well, basically I'm a radio show host, if you're not sure.

Right.

Yeah, try explaining that. But the conversation got me thinking about a mission statement. So I'm going to hand this one over to you now. And this question, what is your mission statement? This is a set of words your mission statement?

For me, it's I believe in entrepreneurs, and that, that always generates interest and, and a conversation. My, my longer-term kind of goal is I want to be able to help a billion entrepreneurs. But if you look at my, my social media bios across every Twitter, Facebook, it all just says, I hashtag believe in entrepreneurs. I think whenever you're picking a mission statement, it has to be something that actually means something to you, like deeply, you know, like believe is on the wall, it's in all my marketing, but it's not for marketing. Like, I didn't do that because of marketing. This comes from a very real place. I mean, hopefully it comes across on this video and it comes across in all the videos that I do. It has to be something that's deeply meaningful. And when I hire people, I always lead with the mission. We lead with, you know, we believe in entrepreneurs and we've designed this business to help entrepreneurs. And if you don't, you know, then that attracts people who have the same mission. You know, Christina, who's my video editor, almost got a tattoo that said Believe across her arm. Wow. Before meeting me. Because she loves believe, like that's her personal mission too. Yeah. And it's like, it's attracting people who have the same mindset and it attracts customers, it attracts suppliers, it attracts investors, it attracts employees. I think most people never put that out. They don't even know what they stand for. And so they attract randomness, uh, where I, you know, some people will see if I do a job posting, say I'm looking for a Believe videographer, you know, a lot of people would see that and then leave, leave, see the intro all about Believe in an Entrepreneur and say, this is the stupidest thing I've ever seen in my life, right? Great. I do that all the time. Like, fantastic. I, I, we would not work well together, right? I don't want you as my videographer. It's great. And there are other people who look at it and say, wow, this is awesome. And so that when you lead with your values, that helps attract the right people to your team because you don't want just, you know, so if you're making a podcast, I don't know if you need to, you need to hire a website developer or you need to hire anybody else on your team to help you build up your business. You don't want just any website developer. It's a commodity service. You want somebody who believes in living an inspired life. You can't have people working for you who don't want to live an inspired life and inspire others to live an inspired life. Like somebody who's doing it just for the money to be a web developer is not gonna give you their best stuff. And so if you're not forthright about it, if you just hold these values, we all have them, we all value different things. If you just hold it in and you don't explain it, then you're just gonna attract those random people instead of purposely attracting the right people to your business.

Well, I'm hooking that up, that you lead by your values, because that's powerful. I think you said your value was believe. Mine personally, I can bring it down to one. My message is obviously believing in yourself. That's the message of the book. But now I have this funny story in there about the day that I learned about laughter, because I never used to— I always took myself too seriously. I was always trying to be perfect. And now I think my values are love, laugh, and inspire. And I know it doesn't have the word believe in there, but I think it helps me with self-worth. Like, I don't measure productivity to self-worth anymore, which is something I massively used to do. I thought if I'm not being productive, then it would damage my self-esteem. But values, leading by those values, being able to love, laugh, and inspire, I think has really, really helped out so much with just my overall focus and my productivity and how much meaning I bring to, I can bring to work now. And that's something personally that I see in all of your videos. And I think it's, I think it's for that affirmation you've got standing behind you that allows you to bring out so much. Um, I'm just going to use the word authenticity. I am And I appreciate you sharing that with us. So I'm going to share with you mine, which is— I wrote this, is written down in front of me now with a big grin slapped across my face— is that this is my mission statement right now. And I've had a few people sort of help me with this actually, is to inspire and educate 1 million people to believe in themselves and do more of what they love and what makes them laugh. Because I believe if everybody has taken the time to pursue what's important to them, And that doesn't have to be build a business or work towards somebody else's definition of success, but more of what allows them to live a good life. Doing the things that you're most passionate about, I believe that's the gift of wellbeing. Um, and it's also like a cure for pain and inner gremlins. So I think that our relationships are going to be better and people are going to do what they love and feel like what they do matters. There was some grammar missing in that. There really was.

No, that's okay. I think I'm getting some feedback on your speaker. I think the challenge with— I think the challenge— like, you look at companies, they all have a mission statement. They all have values. They all have a mission statement. How many people in the company can actually recite the mission statement? Actually knows what the— ask the CEO. Of any, you know, footsie company what their top 10 core values are and they won't know.

What's the vision? What are you working towards?

So, so the point of getting it down to the one word, at least for me, is clarity, right? Like people know me as the believe guy, right? They remember it, they embody it, they can share it. Where the longer your thing is, the harder it is for you to remember. And then you're like, my mission is to This, I left something out, right? It's like, if you don't remember it, then how is it actually guiding you, right? So this is the challenge with a lot of company mission statements. For me, there's also a difference between the word and then with the hashtag, because I think you can assign your own meaning. So for me, believe versus hashtag believe is different because believe is just— most people think of believe as just self-confidence, which it is. For me, that's a big part of it, but it's also equally important for me is believing in what you're doing. So having passion for what you're doing, right? That's still, that's still #Believe for me. You're believing in what you're doing, and then believing that's going to work out. So not just self-confidence, but that's, that's what gives me persistence, right? You talked about I'm persistent, I'm consistent, because I believe that it's going to work out. And so those three ideas form #Believe for me. And I think just having something. You know what, I've already forgotten your 3. Laughing was one.

Love, laugh, and inspire. The laugh one is very inspired. But, um, yeah, yeah.

So it's like, it's— people have, have ADD. We can't remember things. We haven't— a ton of things happen. Like, the inspired life is easy, is easy to remember. Like, I can, I can share that. I've had other people with crazy long podcast show names that they're promoting. I, I, like, I'm on the interview and I already forgot what the name of their show is. Um, and this is me who actually cares, and it's like I'm a guest on the show, right? Imagine people who just quickly tune in and pop out. Uh, I think there's immense clarity in getting it, getting it shorter to one, motivate you, but also allow other people— you want— you're on a mission, this is something important, you want people to spread it for you. So it's got to be something that's easy to spread. The longer and harder it is to remember, then the harder it is to spread.

And that statement gives you purpose as well, because you believe it, you think about it, you do it, and then it all just falls into place as well. So I think it's valuable, um, to have that grounding no matter where you're at, and even if you don't actually fully believe it right now. So I'm going to go on to this next question now, which I always love to find out about people's roots, but I think we've already gone over this. This question was already put down here beforehand. But tell me about your family life. I know they were supportive. Where are you living right now? How do they sort of support you then? Just tell me a bit about your family life.

Sure. I've got about 5 minutes. We have to hop onto something else. I'm happy to answer that. Just make sure this—

We'll leave out that question. We'll cut it out and I'll take that out of the podcast. I'm going to go on to this one then. A couple of questions left. Your local school sends you a small piece of card in the post. This is one of our— this is one of my favorite questions. At the top it reads, Evan Carmichael's message of self-belief. Your words will be displayed in every school, college, and university in your area. What one truth about believing in yourself would you write? And what inspirational quote would you sign the card with?

Um, what's the question? What one, one truth about believing in yourself?

One truth about believing in yourself.

The one truth— I think, I think I would tie kind of both into them. I'm reminded of Henry Ford who says, whether you believe you can do it you can't, you're right.

Love it, love it. Final question: who inspires you?

A lot of people inspire me for different reasons. I'm a big believer in modeling success. It's the name of my YouTube channel, Modeling the Masters. I'm inspired by my parents just for the life that they live and, and by, you know, how— what I view at least— greater job they did with me and instilling belief and confidence in myself.

Myself.

Um, but I, I, with intention, daily try to get inspired by great ideas. You know, that's the point of the Top 10 series in the Ian Espresso series. Every day I'm listening to wisdom from successful entrepreneurs, actors, musicians, inventors, creators, politicians. You know, uh, I've had Barack Obama on my channel. And I've had Donald Trump on my channel, and I've had Hillary Clinton on my channel, and people are, um, feel like, oh, why do you have this, this person up on your channel? They have a terrible message. And even if you don't like the person, there's something that you can learn from their success. Uh, and somebody who's not willing to learn from Kanye West because he did something stupid to Taylor Swift on stage, they're really missing the point. There's a lot you can learn from what he's done, even though you may not agree with what he believes in. And so I find that surrounding myself with those ideas every single day, the point of it is not to be Bill Gates or be Richard Branson or be Steve Jobs. It's to use their knowledge and wisdom and strategies to help me be the best version of myself. At the end of the day. That's my goal. I want to be the best Evan Carmichael possible, not some copy of somebody else. And the way to do that is to be stretched. You know, I watch something from Richard Branson and he stretches me one way, and then Donald Trump will stretch me a different way. And, and, you know, I may not like 8 of his 10 rules, but those 2, man, has some juice to it that make me think and stretches me a little bit further so that I can be a better Evan Carmichael. And so that's the goal. And I'm inspired by anybody who's had— anybody who's like following their passion and doing their thing inspires me to want to push just a little bit harder.

That's perfect. I love it so much. Where can we find you online and support your dreams?

You know what, just search Evan Carmichael. You'll find me on Twitter. You'll find me on YouTube, Twitter, my website, whatever, whatever path you like best.

Taking over the internet by now. Evan, thank you so much for every drop of inspiration that you've poured into my life during the past 2 years. And really, thank you for the passion and energy that shines through in all of the videos. Thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate it.

I love it. Thanks for having me and honored to be your first guest. Good luck with the show.

Appreciate it, buddy.

Cheers.

Cheers.