- Good morning, believe nation,
my name is Evan Carmichael,
my one word is believe, and
I believe that entrepreneurs
will solve all the major
problems of the world.
So today's message is have energy.
Over to you, Bill Gates.
(rooster crowing)
♫ I wake up every morning
♫ Espresso keep me going
♫ I wake up every morning
- When I started Microsoft,
I didn't think of it as all that risky.
I mean I was so excited
about what we were doing.
It's true I could have gone bankrupt,
but I had a set of skills
that were highly employable,
and in fact my parents were still willing
to let me go back to Harvard
and finish my education
if I wanted to.
- You've always got a job with me, Bill.
(audience laughs)
- And the the thing that was scary to me
wasn't quitting and starting the company,
it was when I started hiring my friends,
and they expected to be paid.
(audience laughs)
And then we had customers
who went bankrupt,
customers that I'd counted
on to come through.
So then I got this incredible
conservative approach
that I wanted to have
enough money in the bank
to be able to pay a
year's worth of payroll
even if we didn't get
any payments coming in.
And I'm almost true to
that the whole time.
We have about 10 billion now,
which is pretty much
enough for the next year.
(audience laughs)
Anyway,
if you're going to start a
company, it takes so much energy,
that it better overcome
your feeling of risk.
I don't think that you necessarily,
if you're going to start a company,
should do it at the start of your career.
I think there's a lot to be
said for working for a company,
learning how they do things.
You know, if you're young it's
hard to go lease premises.
They made that hard for me.
You couldn't rent a car when
you were under 25 at the time,
so I was always taking
taxis to go see customers.
(audience laughs)
People would say, well we're
going to go have a discussion
in the bar, well I couldn't go to the bar.
(audience laughs)
But you know, that's fun.
Because I'll tell you, when
people are first skeptical,
and they think this kid
doesn't know anything,
then when you show them you've
really got a good product
and you know something, they
actually tend to go overboard
and they think whoa, they know a lot,
let's really do an incredible
amount with these people.
So our youth, at least in this country,
was a huge asset for us once
we reached a certain threshold.
It is hard, it's hard
to hire older people,
because they'll be a
little bit conservative
about whether they should
come and take the risk.
And it took three or four
years before we could go out
into the normal sort of employment pool.
But those problems that
come with starting a firm,
you better think of those
as part of the pleasure,
part of the challenge that
is part of the excitement.
- Having the energy to be resourceful
is one of the most important
criteria that you need to be
as an entrepreneur, you need to have it.
If you are not energetic and
resourceful to solve problems,
you're going to fail,
because there's going to be
so many problems.
For those of you who've already started
and who are further along
your entrepreneur journey,
you know what I'm talking about.
There's problems after
problems after problems.
And I'm an optimistic, positive guy,
you know I see through the
problems, I see the success
and I believe in your success.
But I'm also realistic in
that there's going to be
tons of problems, there's
going to be tons of crap.
And I don't believe enough
people are talking about
all the problems and crap
that you have to deal with
on your path to success, and
so you need to have the energy
to be resourceful to get through it.
And what often happens is,
people finally figure out something,
they figure out how their
industry is working,
they start having success,
and then something tweaks,
something changes, cause
it's always going to change.
An industry doesn't just
stay static forever,
something changes and people complain.
Right, when people get
a problem or when they
change something, people complain.
They complain to their friends,
they complain maybe to their customers,
they complain to the people around them,
and that is never the solution.
You're never going to win by complaining.
The entrepreneurs are the
ones who see those changes,
who see those problems that
are happening, the shifts,
and they see that as an opportunity,
for them to stand out,
for them to figure it out,
and to win.
I look at the recent changes
in the YouTube algorithm,
as an example, since we're
watching this on YouTube.
YouTube is really focused
on promoting people
who are making consistent content.
They want daily content.
If you are producing high
quality daily content,
you're going to win
really hard, right now,
in the YouTube environment.
And I go to Climber Con, which
is an event for YouTubers
with 100,000 plus subscribers,
and I'm telling people,
this is how I've been able to win,
I've been able to pass
people who I think have
better content, or better
channels, or are better speakers
than I am, and I've been
able to smoke past them
because I am playing
to YouTube's algorithm
better than they are.
And a lot of the feedback
coming back is I don't know,
I can't do it, why does
YouTube have to do this.
And just complaints.
I love it.
It's like, this is a golden era,
this is your chance to capitalize,
where the bigger players,
the people ahead of you
are not paying attention,
or they're complaining.
This is your chance.
Even if you have worse quality stuff,
even if you're not as good
or talented as they are,
you can start to beat them because you
understand the rules better.
This should be exciting for you.
I wish YouTube changed
their algorithm every month.
Because when everybody
else is complaining,
I'd be figuring it out
and starting to win.
That has to be your
approach as an entrepreneur.
Like where did Amazon come from?
Amazon shouldn't exist.
Amazon should have been
started by Barnes and Noble
and Borders.
But they didn't pay attention,
they thought the internet was a fad,
they complained about online sales,
and they allowed Amazon to come and eat up
a lot of their business.
And it happens in every single industry.
No industry stays the same forever,
it's constantly changing.
Disruption is the friend
of the entrepreneur.
You want massive disruption
in your industry.
You want the people above
you complaining about
how something is being done.
Complaining won't make it change,
and that change is
coming, it's coming hard
and it's coming fast, and
that is your opportunity.
When you see people
complaining around you,
that is your opportunity to win.
And so talking to these YouTubers,
you know I try to give them advice,
I try to help them out,
some people might take it,
a lot of people won't, and
those guys will start to lose.
And people will come out of nowhere
and crush them in their own space,
because they just understand
how the algorithm works.
And so you need to stay on top of
the change in your industry
and have the energy,
and have the belief system
that every change that comes,
I love it, and I'm going to crush it,
and this is my opportunity to win
while everybody else complains.
So the question of the
day today is I'm curious,
what is one complaint that
you've heard over and over
and over again in your
industry that you are
turning into an opportunity
for your business,
leave it down in the comments below,
I'm super curious to find out.
I also want to give a quick
shout-out to David Hurley,
David thank you so much for
picking up a copy of my book,
Your One Word, it really
really means a lot to me man,
and I hope you're enjoying the read.
So thank you guys again 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 Entspresso.
♫ I wake up every morning
♫ Espresso keep me going
- I have to show up at work
with the right attitude
and with the positive energy.
And I actually had a
T-shirt made that said
positive energy is a part
of your job description.
Right, so,
the idea that I want to show
up with the right energy,
I want to show up, you
know we're all here.
Even now we're all here,
we're trying to feed our families,
we're trying to have a good time,
this is an important part of our lives,
our time is all that we have.
So to me it's hugely important
to deliver positive energy
in a way because it's viral.
So if I come with positive energy,
then someone else is going to
pick up on the positive energy
and you're going to take
it home to your families,
and then you know so for me
it's just hugely important
to approach everything and
everybody at every turn
with the most positive loving kindness
that I can generate.
- One of the things that
people talk a lot about is,
what gets somebody to
become an entrepreneur?
You know, it's just a
fascinating mindset, right.
You really have to be slightly delusional
to be an entrepreneur,
because you have to suspend disbelief.
Or you have to believe
about your own idea,
and have deep passion to go pursue it.
So in some sense, quite honestly,
before I knew advice, I
take a lot of inspiration
from what you're doing,
it takes a lot of guts.
It takes a lot of energy
to be an entrepreneur.
And I think that therein
lies your secret to success,
which is your ability to
overcome every constraint
and every obstacle.
And do it with the boldness,
and the risk-on nature of
it, I think it's fantastic.
If anything, I would say,
especially for entrepreneurs,
is you got to keep sustained
that sense of energy
over a long period of time.
Because we all know, and
you are grounded in it,
the mortality rate is super high.
And that means you will
be thrown curve balls
day in and day out,
and you have to be able
to overcome that.
And so being a source of
energy in your small team,
especially if you're a CEO of a startup.
I like to sort of absolve them a lot,
because you can't have a bad day,
you're all the time.
You know, you get up in
the morning, you're coding,
and in the afternoon you're
talking to your investors,
in the evening you're hiring.
And that constant sense of energy
and passion for what you're doing
is what I think it takes.
And to never give up,
which is what makes you who you are,
in terms of the core makeup.
And I think that for me,
I am personally inspired by that.
And I think that even
from a Microsoft culture,
that's what really my dream is.
My dream is not that okay,
we have a large organization,
my hope is that every
team inside of Microsoft
feels both that sense of
energy and empowerement
and goes about it.
