In this motivational compilation, host Evan Carmichael presents five core business skills that successful entrepreneurs—Steve Jobs, Les Brown, Gary Vaynerchuk, Jordan Belfort, Damon Dash, and Kevin O'Leary—have used to achieve greatness. The video opens with a rallying call to "Believe Nation" and introduces the five skills: (1) Influence and persuasion, illustrated by Jordan Belfort’s story of Warren Buffett’s advice to study sales and communication; (2) Amazing customers, highlighted by Les Brown’s emphasis on exceeding expectations and modeling integrity; (3) Articulating a clear vision, with Kevin O'Leary teaching a 90‑second pitch and the importance of knowing your numbers; (4) Having a concrete plan, explained by Damon Dash’s practical approach to drafting actionable business plans and visual tracking; (5) Questioning everything, featuring Steve Jobs urging entrepreneurs to challenge entrenched business folklore and seek deeper understanding. After the core list, Evan prompts viewers to reflect on their weakest skill and invites comments. A bonus segment follows with Gary Vaynerchuk emphasizing listening and Casey Neistat discussing two‑way communication, reinforcing the overarching theme of effective communication. The video concludes with a motivational sign‑off encouraging belief in oneself and a teaser for further content.
Chapters
If you want to learn the critical skills that made Steve Jobs, Les Brown, and Gary Vaynerchuk successful, then this video is for you.
It's necessary if you're going to compete today that you look for ways to amaze your customers.
If you're willing to sort of ask a lot of questions and think about things and work really hard, you can learn business pretty fast.
All of my success has been predicated on listening, whether I'm doing it with my ears or with my eyes.
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 into the world. So to help you on your journey, today we're going to look at the 5 most important business skills that every entrepreneur must have. Enjoy! Coming up at number 1 is learn to influence and persuade with Jordan Belfort.
Warren Buffett was doing a speech with Bill Gates about 10 years ago, and he was asked by a college student, "What can we do as students to make ourselves more valuable in the workplace?" So you'd think Warren Buffett would say, "Learn how to pick stocks, learn how to— investments," you know, whatever he would say, right? Not what he says. He says, "Go out and take a course in sales and communication." Yeah, he did Dale Carnegie, changed his life.
There you go.
And that was the point, because he took that. He says, "I took Dale Carnegie." Change without that? You know what he'd be without that course?
Yeah.
He'd be the richest money manager in Omaha, Nebraska that no one ever heard of.
Yeah, and he met his wife that way, the love of his life.
Because without the ability to influence and persuade, you can't put yourself out there into the world and be known for what you really are.
Number 2 is Amaze Your Customers with Les Brown.
This is a customer-driven economy. It's necessary for you to always explore various ways in which You can improve the quality of service that you're providing for the people in your organization. I remember something a major company had talked about, the extra value service they were providing for their customers. And the lady who had the news conference summarized it this way. She said, it's not our intention to satisfy our customers or to please our customers. Our intention is to amaze them. It's necessary if you're going to compete today that you look for ways to amaze your customers by being one of those individuals that keep your commitments, that keep your word, that's relentless. It's necessary as you work with the people that you bring into your organization that they see that you are a good example of a person to work with because you model integrity and determination and ambition and truth and honesty and the way in which you conduct business.
Number 3 is Articulate Your Vision Clearly with Kevin O'Leary.
It turns out in corporate America today, and I teach this now, you know, I taught at Notre Dame and MIT, the graduating cohorts, I explain this to them. When you're leading, when you want to be a leader, you have to articulate your idea in 90 seconds or less. You have to explain why you're the right person to lead, and above all, you have to know your numbers. You can see it happen on Shark Tank. It works in the real world too. And frankly, Shark Tank is the real world because it's real capital. So I use that and I teach it, and I think everybody should think about that, explaining your vision clearly, succinctly in a short period of time ends up being really important.
Number 4 is Have a Plan with Damon Dash.
A business plan that's about a business that doesn't exist is a lie because you can't say, like, what are your facts based on? 'Cause it hasn't happened yet. You can't really determine who's gonna buy what and how much it's gonna sell. You can't say, I'm gonna make a million this year. Did you make a million last year? No, but what I'll do is put together what I, it's like a script I'll put together How I'm gonna make the goods, how I'm gonna market the goods, how much it's gonna cost to buy the goods, what's my margin, and then when I'm gonna sell it, and then how much I'm gonna put back into the business and how much I'm gonna put in my pocket. You know, it's that kind of thing. You know, I write things out. Like, if you look on the— look on the, um, put that on the wall right there, right? If you can see it, you see the piece of paper, all that on the— on the— that's the shit I gotta do. You know, I, I like to put things on the wall. I can even know what I got to do. I need to look at it, I need to cross it out. I don't consider that a business plan per se, but I have a plan, you know what I'm saying? Like, I have a plan. Plus, you want other people to understand the plan because you can't do anything on your own. So you want to be able to articulate it to them a way they understand and that they can look back at it. Because I talk quick, and like you said, a lot of times I say shit, you like, I didn't understand that. You're not gonna tell me until a year later. Yeah, you know, so you want to have something someone can keep looking at. And they can see you crossing it off, and then they can kind of get it by absorbing pause, you know, by watching what you're doing.
And number 5 is question everything with Steve Jobs.
Throughout the years in business, I found something, which was I always ask why you do things, and the answers you invariably get are, oh, that's just the way it's done. Nobody knows why they do what they do. Nobody thinks about things very deeply in business. That's what I found. I'll give you an example. When we were building our Apple IIs in the garage, we knew exactly what they cost. When we got into a factory in the Apple II days, the accounting had this notion of a standard cost where you'd kind of set a standard cost and then at the end of a quarter you'd adjust it with a variance. And I kept asking, "Well, why do we do this?" And the answer was, "Well, that's just the way it's done." And after about 6 months of digging into this, what I realized was the reason you do it is because you don't really have good enough controls to know how much it costs, so you guess and then you fix your guess at the end of the quarter. And the reason you don't know how much it costs is because your information systems aren't good enough. So, but nobody said it that way. And so later on when we designed this automated factory for Macintosh, we were able to get rid of a lot of these antiquated concepts and know exactly what something cost to the second. So in business, a lot of things are, I call it folklore. They're done because they were done yesterday and the day the day before. And so what that means is, is if you're willing to sort of ask a lot of questions and think about things and work really hard, you can learn business pretty fast. It's not the hardest thing in the world. It's not rocket science. It's not rocket science, no.
Now I've got a special bonus clip with Casey Neistat and Gary Vaynerchuk, but before getting to that, the question of the day today is: which of these 5 skills are your weakest? What's the one that you need to improve on the most? Leave it down in the comments below. I'm really curious to find out. 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. Much love. I'll see you soon, and enjoy the bonus.
This is going to blow away people, especially your fan base. Listening. You know, I speak a lot, and I talk over people, and I'm loud and intense, but all of my success has been predicated on listening, whether I'm doing it with my ears or with my eyes.
Skill I use is probably communication, which I think is building on what Gary said. I think communication is a two-way street, but being able to articulate and communicate what it is that I'm trying to communicate It is something that I find I focus on all day long, every time I speak.
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 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.
