Evan Carmichael and composer Hans Zimmer argue that failure is necessary for creative work. Zimmer says musicians must experiment privately and push beyond comfort zones. Carmichael shares how his YouTube channel evolved through small tests: Enespresso, Top 10 series, daily uploads. He warns against all-in risks and advocates incremental experiments that keep failures manageable.
Good morning, Believe Nation! Today's message is: Have the courage to fail. Over to you, Hans Zimmer.
After finishing my adventures on Dark Knight, I decided we need to go into a completely different direction. When I think of the notes for the tune, I try to think of what's the sonic world we're going to pour this tune into. And that's what we're doing. Bassist, can you make your accents a bit more fierce? We're experimenting. Mighty big. Sounds awesome. That's what you're supposed to do. You're not supposed to— stand still. You don't really want to be observed at your greatest failures, and you have to invite failure if you want to go and experiment, and if you want to try to do something original, you have to have a certain amount of privacy to have the courage to fail.
Failing sucks, okay? Nobody likes to fail. Feeling like you lost, feeling like a loser, feeling like you're not adding value, feeling like people don't appreciate your work, feeling like the thing that you go and you do every day, it's not having an impact. Is not yielding results, that sucks. That's a terrible feeling. I know because I failed a lot. And what you'll find is the most successful people are also the ones who failed a lot. Because what's the alternative? If you are not failing, then you're playing your life so safe that you're not doing anything. You're not trying. You have to fail. Fail is a part of experimentation. It's only really a failure if you don't learn from it, you don't grow, you don't develop, you don't make it better. And I think the thing for me that's really helped is I try not to make my failures be massive failures. I like to test things on a small scale first. A lot of people, they start a business and they go all in and they'll mortgage their house and they'll take out a huge loan or get an investment from their families and just dig this huge hole for themselves that this has to work out. And then if it doesn't, then you played the rest of your life so safe because you made this one big mistake. And I think that's the biggest mistake of all, because now your life sucks, because now you're never going to take another chance, because that's the pattern that you've established for yourself. And so understanding that failure is a part of the path to success and making your failures as small as possible. You guys are watching this YouTube channel. When I started this channel, this whole thing was a whole— it was just a little tiny experiment, right? This Enespresso series was an experiment. It started off as one video as a test. Okay, I like that. It was fun, you know, people enjoyed it too. Great, I'll make another one. Okay, I'll make another one. You know what, this is— I'm feeling it. I like this. I like doing this every week. Okay, let's make it a series. Great, daily series. Love it. The Top 10 was once a week, once a week on the weekend, on a Saturday. Okay, it's going well. People are moved by it. It's having an impact. I like doing the research. I want to surround myself with more of this. Knowledge. Okay, let's do twice a week. Great, that's working out. Okay, let's move it to 5 times a week, Monday to Friday. And now it's a staple of my channel and what it's all about. And I've had tons of things that didn't work out, lots of series that I've cancelled that you guys probably even don't remember or know of, but you can go back on the channel. We've cancelled more series than we have currently running on the channel through different experiments and through failing. And seeing if that doesn't work. Okay, great. What was wrong about that? We're constantly running new tests. This week we're launching another series, the No Limits series. Let's see how it does. Maybe it has an impact, maybe not. Maybe we keep running it, maybe we blow it up and do something else. Failure is not this final point. If you failed before, don't let that hold you back from keep going, because that's the only real failure. The only real failure, the only real failure is having this idea, having this vision for yourself, that what you want to go and accomplish, having this potential and leaving it untapped, continuing to play your life small because you're too afraid to go out and do something about it. That's the only real failure. So the question today for me is, I want to know from you guys, what are you so afraid of? And not spiders and roller coasters, you know, like, what's your biggest What's your biggest fear that's holding you back in your life? I'm curious. Leave it in the comments below. I'm going to join the discussion. Thank you guys so much for watching. Have an amazing day. 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. I wake up every morning, espresso keeps me going.
