You Won't Believe What Will Smith Does Instead of Chasing Money

If you want to learn how Les Brown, Casey Neistat, and Will Smith make a lot of money by not chasing money, then this video is for you.

Don't just do it for the money.

The vast majority of the work that I do, including here on YouTube, I get paid for, but it definitely is not why I show up.

I never did anything for money.

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 unleashed out into the world. I started the One Rule series to try to pick up on some of the most common rules that are said over and over and over again by the people we profile. And so today we're going to learn how to not chase money. Enjoy.

When I speak, It's not about me. My prayer is more of thee, less of me. I'm encouraging people who are serious about speaking, don't just do it for the money. You can make a lot of money. I earn more in 1 hour than 90% of the American public earn working for 5 years. But when you find something that you love, you will study it. Something that you love, it becomes a difference between being in speaking and speaking being in you, that you You will become not just confident, but you will become competent on that.

So like 10 o'clock last night, I was at the gym getting swole. I was listening to a guy named Dan Ariely, who's a behavioral economist. He was talking about why we work. And his entire sort of thesis was predicated on the idea that we work because we want to, not because we have to. It made me think about my YouTube channel and the fact that I've made like 600 videos in the last couple years and how much I and all the things I don't get to do in life because I'm so focused on my work. The vast majority of the work that I do, including here on YouTube, I get paid for, but it definitely is not why I show up. I did it out of this like longing or hunger for accomplishment or this idea of needing to complete something. Professor I was listening to, he equates it to like climbing a mountain, which is a perfectly It's an appropriate analogy because I love climbing mountains. Look, here is a picture of me and my homie Graham at nearly 23,000 feet above sea level. My brother Van put that note in there right after we got back. So why would we climb mountains? I don't get paid to climb mountains. It's not fun. Do I look happy there? I'm not happy. I'm close to death right there. We climb mountains for the same reason that we work. It's because as As human beings, you have this desire to do something, to complete something. Have you made a lot of money out of your music? Money? I mean, what is— how much is a lot of money to you?

Yeah, that's a good question. Have you made, say, millions of dollars?

No.

Are you a rich man?

What do you mean rich? What do you mean?

You have a lot of possessions, a lot of money in the bank?

Possession make you rich? I don't have that type of richness. My richness is life, forever.

For me, I never did anything for money, right? So it was never about money. My experience has been when you do things for money, you make bad choices. Find what you love, and then you'll learn how to make money doing what you love. When I changed careers, I was never changing to something for money. I was changing to something I loved more, right? And that, to me, that's really the only way to keep the passion. If you have two choices, do the one One is playing the piano and another one is—

How is it?

Bowling.

And you can make more money bowling, but you love playing the piano more. You gotta play the piano. It's like you'll tear yourself apart if you're not doing the thing that you love most in life. And you know what it is right now. Right now there's something that you love more than everything. Whatever it is that you love crazy has to be the thing that you dedicate your life to.

If you just focus on the money, you're never gonna get it. This is what so many entrepreneurs do and why so many entrepreneurs fail, is their number one goal is money. Now money is important. If you're running a business, money is important. You know, even if you're running a charity, money is still important. Money is important, it's just not the number one thing. It's number two or three. There has to be something more important than money for you to have success, ultimate success as an entrepreneur. Sure, you can make a few bucks, but you look at the people who are the top in any field, money was never the number one goal. Look at the people who are self-made millionaires and billionaires and read their biographies and read their story and understand why they started their companies. Watch the top 10 videos on all of them. It's never been about the money. It's always been about making a profound change to the way something is done in their industry, having a deep passion for their craft that they needed to bring this thing out into creation. You know, when George Lucas created Star Wars, he thought it would be a flop. He thought it would only be for a select few geeks who really loved that genre. He never expected it to be this huge thing that turned him into a billionaire. But he loved making the video, and he poured every ounce of creativity he had into making that, that movie. And that's a story over and over and over and over and over again. Successful entrepreneurs love their craft. They want to do the work. And as a result of creating something valuable, because they put so much love into it, then they start making money. Are you going to get paid upfront from this from Lloyd? Is Lloyd going to cut you a check?

Am I getting paid upfront for this?

You didn't get your check?

I don't know, but it's not about money for me. Like, it's not. I wanted to do— I wanted my own network. I wanted to put— I wanted to do something cool. And it's always about just me doing something that I think is awesome. And the money will come. I'm not, I'm not worried about that. That'll, that'll come when the universe decides for it to come.

What I do love is if I can partner with a brand who has the same goals and values and, and brand awareness as me. That's like when it becomes truly organic because every brand deal I've ever done has literally been the best ever. Like that they've ever done. I am the best in the world at integrating brands into content on social media. There's no one better than I am. And that's because I carefully choose who I'm gonna do it with and how I'm gonna do it with. Hanes was one of the first big brand deals that I did that was like, okay, like I have enough money to move to Los Angeles. And they let me do my thing. They gave me creative control. Granted, we went back and forth, but it's become just this, it's, a flawless integration into my life.

But what you're saying, I think, is that you and your values have to be on the same page as the brand and its values.

Absolutely. It has to. Otherwise, otherwise I'm a sellout. Otherwise I'm just doing social media for money. And I've never done that. I think that's also important. I've never created content for money. Like, I love making videos and If a brand can also increase or heighten the Logan Paul brand, the Maverick brand, and make a video that's shareable, that helps me as well. It's not, it's not just about the money.

Do not make any decisions based on money. None. It's the worst way to make a decision, which I know is so hard to say. I mean, I didn't grow up with any money, and I know so many of us are our families have a lot at stake. They've put a lot into us, made a lot of sacrifices for us. And you say you don't have the luxury of doing that, but I actually think you do. You will be more successful if you make decisions based upon what is going to feed your soul, make you feel value— valued, validated, you know, have you waking up in the morning and racing to work, whatever it might be. And I can tell you after a short amount of time, money will not be enough. At the end of the day, a bigger paycheck is another suit or more real estate, more square footage. That's what it comes down to. You end up with another room and a fuller closet. And after a while, that's not gonna do it.

Even if I wasn't making videos now, I've learned that I should— you should really follow your heart and you should do what you want to do and what you are passionate about.

I really—

it's hard for me to talk about this, but I really wasn't happy before because it felt like I didn't enjoy what I was doing and it felt like it didn't have a purpose of me doing it. So the future for me was something really like, ah, I didn't even want to think about it. And I've learned a lot from this YouTube, even about myself, and that I always, no matter what, I want to do what I love to do and what I'm passionate about. And I hope I can carry that message on to you, bros, that I'm not saying fuck school or anything like that, but you should definitely follow what you want to do. Absolutely. Life is too short for doing things that you don't like. Money is a topic that I purposely try to avoid for the 5 years that I've been making videos because I just— I just feel like it's not important to anyone, and I just want to make entertaining videos. Don't get me wrong though, I don't hate money. I'm not gonna pretend like it doesn't matter to me because it matters to everyone. But when I started doing YouTube, I was in college, I was on a student loan, and I couldn't even afford a proper computer that I could record gameplay on. Uh, so I was lucky I managed to sell some artwork that I made online, and that's how I was able to get started. Some of you know this story, but shortly after I quit college, and so I had to get a job, and I took whatever job I could get, which was to work in a hot dog stand. And a lot of people like to take this story as something negative, or like, "Oh, he did that?" or "I can't believe he used to sell hot dogs, now look at him making videos." make bucks. It wasn't like that at all for me. I was the happiest I was at that time because I was finally, for the first time in many, many years, doing what I wanted to do. Uh, and the fact that I could make videos was so much more important to me that I had to spend a few hours a day doing a job that wasn't that prestigious. I didn't know you could be big at— well, I know people were big at other type of videos, but there was no one big at gaming. And I didn't know you could make money out of it. So it was never like a career that I just quit college to pursue. It's just something I just love to do, and here we are 5 years later, and it's— it's exploded. And what people, I guess, don't really think about until it's in their face is that I have 9 billion views, and that translates to something. There's ads on my videos. I make money out of those. So whenever it comes out how much I made a certain year, people just get so shocked. And a lot of people also, which I saw, were very, very angry. They thought it was unfair. They thought I just sit on my ass all day and I just yell at the screen over here, which is true, but there's so much more to it than that. And I understand that people just— haters gonna hate, right? But I don't know, I really think that money doesn't make you happy. I am just as happy as I am now as I was 5 years ago. I'm very happy that I don't have to worry about paying rent because that was a huge issue when Marzia came over to Sweden. We could barely afford it. So I'm happy about that, but other than that, it doesn't change much.

That our love and desire for material things can cause us to miss the most important thing in life. People don't realize that money is dangerous. Somebody says, "Well, what could be dangerous about money?" It's what it does. It's the attitude people have that if I have enough money, I can go where I want to go, do what I want to do, marry who I want to marry, wear what I want to wear, drive what I want to drive, live where I want to live, eat where I want to eat, and on and on and on it goes. That may be some of the things that money can do, but that doesn't satisfy you. But think about this. You can have all the money in the world you want. If you don't have good health, you can't buy it. If you're not— listen, if you don't have anybody to love, you can't buy it. If you don't have anyone who loves you, you can't buy it. In other words, you don't— you can't buy peace, joy, happiness, Happiness, contentment, and you certainly cannot buy eternal life. Money can do some things. It can do many good things in the right hands. But it can't satisfy the longing of your soul. It can't satisfy the longing of your heart.

Thank you guys so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed. I'd love to know what did you think of this video? Who had the most meaningful message that you're going to immediately apply to your thinking somehow? Let me know, leave it in the comments below. I'm really curious to find out. I also want to give a quick shout out to Kat Harvey. Kat, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book and having me on your YouTube channel to do an interview. I really, really appreciate it, and I'm so glad you enjoyed the book. 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.

I'll see you soon.

Raise your standard. Apple at the core Its core value is that we believe that people with passion can change the world for the better.

Not one drop of my self-worth depends on your acceptance of me. I don't ever give up. I'd have to be dead or completely incapacitated.

Hey, Believe Nation, if you want to see my all-time favorite top 10 rules of success, I have a very special secret video for you. These are the individual clips that I have personally learned the most from and applied to my life and my business. Check the link in the description for details.