In this motivational video, Evan Carmichael urges viewers to "just do it" by combining big‑picture thinking with small‑scale action. He frames entrepreneurship as a balance between the visionary "CEO" role and the hands‑on "janitor" role, stressing that success requires both strategic vision and gritty execution. Carmichael shares his own YouTube journey, describing how he initially performed every task—filming, editing, tagging, promotion—before building a team and delegating, illustrating the transition from solo hustle to scalable operation. The video intersperses curated clips from J.J. Abrams, Steven Spielberg, and Henry Rollins, each reinforcing the core message: start with whatever camera you have, embrace imperfect beginnings, and adopt a DIY mindset. Abrams likens filmmaking to having a child, urging immediate creation; Spielberg recounts his Boy Scout photography merit badge project that sparked his lifelong passion; Rollins recounts founding a publishing company from hand‑made books, embodying punk‑rock self‑reliance. Carmichael also outlines his production workflow (Evernote, editors, tagging) and invites the audience to share a "CEO" task and a "janitor" task they are doing, fostering community engagement. The overall narrative blends personal anecdote, practical advice, and inspirational quotes to motivate creators and entrepreneurs to act now, think big, and gradually scale.
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Good morning, Believe Nation! Today's message is "Just Do It!" Over to you, J.J. Abrams. I wake up every morning. Espresso keep me going. I wake up every morning.
Because the resources have been so limited for so long, there are a lot of people who would say, "God, if I only had access to a camera, I would make a movie." There's a lot of talk about it. I remember when I was in college, I would spend most of my time in my room writing screenplays, really bad screenplays, but I was in my room doing that when I probably should have been studying or something. There were a lot of people I remember at parties who would talk about writing and that they wanted to be a writer, but I would always notice they were out every time I would happen to go out. They would always be out, and they— I just know that there are people who talk about what they would do if but they're not actually doing the thing. And so it's a lot easier to actually write a screenplay than you think it is. Might not be good, but most people talk about writing screenplays but don't actually write them. The people who write them, you're already like in, you know, the top 10% because you actually have written it.
To achieve your goal in business, you need to think big and start small. To achieve your goal in business, you need to think big and start small. Be the CEO and the janitor, both. Too many entrepreneurs just wanna be the CEO, just wanna be the visionary, just wanna come up with all the ideas, but they don't wanna do any of the work. And you need both, you need the vision, you need the guidance, you need the high-level thinking, but you need to do the work. The janitor does the work. And that's what so many entrepreneurs are missing. You just wanna play in the big picture, but you don't wanna actually get anything done. And if that's you, then your idea is gonna die with you. You're gonna die this really bitter old person who always had these big visionary ideas but never had the team to do it, never had the resource to do it, never had the support to do it, and whatever excuse you want to throw out there. But really, it's because you didn't want to get down in the trenches and clean the toilet. You didn't want to do the grungy, grimy, hustle, daily in-and-out work. And at the start, you need to do the work. Like, yes, as you get up, as you build the team, as you start having success, you can move higher and higher up the chain and just, you know, be more of that visionary. But at the start, when it's just you, you got to do everything. You got to hustle it out. If I look at this YouTube channel, I started doing everything. In my first video, I collabed with a friend of mine. He helped me film it. But most of my videos at the start were me. Me with a camera with no lighting and no microphone, and sometimes it was wobbly and the focus was out of, you know, date, and, you know, it was hard to see me. Me doing the editing, which was Windows Movie Maker at the beginning. Very basic, very simple, very plain. Me doing the naming, me doing the tagging, me doing the promotion, me doing the background research, me doing the in front of the camera stuff, me doing the audio recording, everything me. It was me. I did everything. I planned everything from a CEO level, and then I did all the work from a janitor level. And as I built it up to the point where I started making some money, I started handing off some of those tasks. And that let me go from a video a week to a video a day. And I moved closer and closer and closer up the chain to the point where now I'm guiding everything. I'm still the on-camera talent, right? I still do this work because I love it. Not only because I'm good at it and getting better, but I love it. This is what I love doing. I still review every video that goes out and all the research behind it because I love it, because I learn from it, because I care about the product that we're creating. But my team puts all that together. You know, even this, like, I have— we use Evernote. Oh, let me load it up. You know, I use Evernote here and I've got a list of all the topics I need to talk about today. All the topics, who I'm doing shoutouts for, where the research is, what the clip is that I need to watch, all of that stuff. My team puts together for me. This thing gets filmed. I have Jason behind the camera filming it for me. He's going to send it to Christina, our video editor. We've got 3 editors who are going to cut it all up, post it to the YouTube channels, title it, descriptions, tags, playlists, all that stuff. It goes up and I'm guiding it from a high level. But I built it up to that point. If I was just starting out and that was my, my idea, like, I'm going to do this and I'm going to just wait for other people to do things for me, it's not going to happen. And so it's thinking big. I love it. Think big. You need it because a lot of people don't think big enough and they stay stuck doing— being a janitor for their entire life. Think big. It's great, but start. Be the janitor too and work your way up. Add more value. Focus on what you can add the most value to so you can bring on people to alleviate some of the task force. For you and help you build closer to that big thing that you want to do. To achieve your goal, you need to think big and act small. So question of the day today is, I want an example task from you guys, your CEO task and a janitor task, the big and the small. Give one example of both that you're currently doing today in your business or plan to do today in your business, one CEO task, one janitor task, Write in the comments below and we'll join in the discussion. I also wanna give a quick shout out to Kate Marie O'Brien. Kate, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, "Your One Word." I really appreciate the support and I hope you're enjoying it. Thank you guys so much for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. And I'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot of espresso. <LYRICS>I wake up every morning, espresso keep me going.</LYRICS> Hey, Believe Nation! Thank you so much for watching. If you want to learn more about this subject, get a little bit deeper on it, I'm going to share some extra bonus clips that I hope you'll enjoy.
Just do it.
Just pick up a camera and start shooting something. Don't wait to be asked because nobody's going to ask you, and don't wait for the perfect conditions because they'll never be perfect. It's a little bit like having a child. If you wait until the right time to have a child, you'll die childless. And I think filmmaking is very much the same thing. You just have to take the plunge and just start shooting something, even if it's bad. Bad. You can always hide it, but you will have learned something.
It was a lot harder to get started when I was growing up and wanting to be a movie director almost at 12 years old, because when I first picked up a camera, in order to get up— where were you living when you— I was in Scottsdale.
You're in Arizona?
You know, I got— I was looking for a way to get— fulfill the requirements to get a photography merit badge. I was in the Boy Scouts of America, and the man—
you want to be a filmmaker before?
No, I don't want to be a filmmaker at all. I just want to be a Eagle Scout. That was my only aspiration was to become— I wanted to get the highest rank I could in scouting. And so on my way to being an Eagle Scout, I had to get a certain requisite amount of merit badges. And one of them I wanted to get was photography. And the requirement was to tell a story with still photographs. And my dad's camera broke. He did not have a still camera. Like the Brownie Kodak that he had wasn't working. But he did have an 8mm Kodak, 8mm movie camera, and I went to the scoutmaster and I said, "Can we change the rules just so I can tell a story on film?" Because we don't have a still camera. And the scoutmaster said, "Go ahead and do it." So I got 3 minutes worth of film, which is, by the way, all those cameras used to take, these little 3-minute rolls of film. And I made this Western on a weekend. And I showed them that. How did you edit? Did you camera cut it? Camera cut. You know, a little shot of it. My friends and cowboy outfits robbing a stagecoach, which was sort of an exhibit out front of a place called Pinnacle Peak Patio, a restaurant which is still there outside of Scottsdale.
How did you know to camera cut?
You just— I just figured out, you know, you do a shot in this direction of the bad guys with their guns and masks on, and my sisters played the damsels in distress in the stagecoach, giving away their costume jewelry. Well, my mother's jewelry. I didn't tell her we took my mom's jewelry to give away to 12-year-olds, you know, pretending to be about robbers. And I made this little movie and then showed it to the Boy Scout troop that weekend and they all went crazy for it. They screamed and applauded and I suddenly got bitten by that bug and I wanted to do this for the rest of my life. It was like, became so clear to me. But it was hard then because to make movies you had to pay for film and pay for developing of the film. So I had to go to my dad and say, "Dad, you know, I'll earn some money but I can't earn all the money because I go to school. I can't get a job to earn the money to pay for all this equipment." So my dad helped me. However, today it's easier. Today everybody seems to have a camcorder. Everybody has some Hi8 digital camera. And it's a lot easier to get your hands on— You can buy that editing program for the computer. You can buy a software program for the computer and go out and make a movie and tell a story and figure out who you are as a storyteller. And so in a sense it's easier today for young people to at least prove to themselves this is what they want to do for the rest of their lives or at least in the interim of the rest of their lives. And it's also, if you get bitten by that bug, you can make a lot of little movies and somehow those films will get seen by people, hopefully, that will hire you to do a music video someday or a TV commercial or a television show or someday a feature film.
I was a very headstrong young person. And by 1983 or '84, had started my own publishing company to publish my own books, realizing that no one else will publish me. And I was right about that. And so my first book, I saved my food money from Black Flag, a little here, little there, and I saved enough to make a fold-and-staple book. I couldn't type, so I handwrote out the things, and I made a dummy that I could offset print, fold, and staple, and I sold them for $2. Mainly gave them away, but I sold enough, and they blew out. 500 just went. And then I took that money to make another print run of that. And from that money, I made my first paperback. And 33 years later, that's a fully staffed company with books in translation and hardcover editions and the whole, you know, the whole nine yards. But it started with, I'm going to do my thing. I'll be City Lights Jr. without the talent. And I did that at the same time I was doing my first spoken word gigs. And why did I have the gumption and the audacity to start my own book company? Because I come from punk rock. I come from watching Ian Mackaye invent Discord Records on his mom's kitchen table. I come from folding and gluing picture sleeves together. Black Flag had their own label. Of course you do it yourself. You wanna make a book? Sit down and write it. Then go to the printing place. Where's a printer? Get in the phone book and find a printer. We make records, make some books. It was, you just do it. It's like you don't even think about it, you just do it. And I'm sure that writing is just awful, but I did it. And without even hesitation, I'm making my own book company. Stop me, I dare you. I never thought about it twice. Just because DIY, man. Like let your voice be heard.
