I
would never get too hung up on
Mistakes... I make mistakes all the time. I need mistakes. Learn from their mistakes. We have to learn from our mistakes
[I] continually learn from my mistakes learn from
[your] mistakes
Hello believe nation my name is Evan Carmichael
My one word is believe
And [I] believe [that] entrepreneurs are going to solve all the major problems of the world [so] to help you on your journey today
We're going to cover how you can learn from your mistakes and as always guys if you hear something that really resonates with you
Please leave it down the comments below put quotes around it, so other people can be inspired as well
And when you write it down, it's much more likely to stick to yourself to enjoy I
Was just wondering. What is what would you consider to [be] the worst investment you've ever made?
The worst investment I ever made how long do you have?
I've made some very bad ones, but that doesn't really bother me. I am they bother the shareholders, but that's another question
see
You know you're going to make you're gonna make mistakes in life. I mean, there's no question [about] it
You know want to make them on the big decisions
You know who you marry and says and things like that, so there's no way
I'm going to make a lot [of] business and investment decisions without making some mistakes. I may try to minimize them I
Don't I don't dwell on them at all. I don't I don't look back that the biggest mistakes
Are the ones that [actually] don't show up they're the mistakes of omission rather than commission?
We've never lost that much money on any one investment
But it's the things that I knew enough to do that
I didn't do we have we have missed profits of as much as you know
Maybe 10 billion dollars and things that I knew enough to do and I didn't do now the fact [I] didn't by Microsoft way back
Is not a forgone opportunity because I didn't know enough to make that decision, but there have been other
Investments where I did know enough to make the decision and for one reason or another?
I either didn't do it at all or I did it on a small scale
I was sucking my thumb when I should have been writing checks
You know basically and and and you know those don't show up
There's no place where it shows missed opportunities, but I've missed some big ones the triumphs in life
Are partly triumphs because you know that everything isn't going to be a triumph and and and I would never get too hung up on
Mistakes I know a lot of people that really agonize over them, and it just isn't worth it
I mean tomorrow's another day, and you live it forward and just go on to the next thing
So when people come up to me and say gary it's so hard
I look at their instagram, and they're not posting any of their content with hashtags
Which is a by accident way to pick up exposure?
In a world where they have no money
When you have no money when I took over my dad's business
It did three million dollars a year ten percent gross profit
Three hundred thousand dollars before expenses my first year marketing budget was fourteen thousand [dollars]
when you have no money
[and] I built that business from a three to [a] sixty million dollar business in five years
[I] had to make every penny perfect, so I was right about email marketing in [ninety] [six]
And I was right and because of that I had [ninety] [one] percent open rates
When Google Adwords came out the day it came out
I paid five cents a click for words before anybody bid me up, and I was super right and that worked
[this] [is] that luck or preparation, and you ever get anything wrong. What do you do? I get a [commit] I give everything wrong
It's just that I can't recall it because once it's wrong
I'm moving on to the next thing like Dwell
Dwelling on [what] you stopped on is the quickest way for the next thing not to work
right yeah
So like so I think I do everything I mean you know this this is a fun thing to say
Some people in the back know this I was a breakout [YouTube] star in the first year 2006 [I]
Decided that the right strategy was [to] leave YouTube completely and go to viddler
Because viddler offered me equity in their company
And I've left an enormous amount of attention I deviated from my intention [thisis] to do short-term economics and equity in a company
And I lost I lost wendy [brock] finally came in my life two years ago
We started to try to build up my youtube for the first time I was sitting on 40,000 user
followers in a world record I've had millions if I just stayed the course so I make mistakes all the time I'm
reorging vaynermedia everyday
Its based on a mistake I made the prior year
I just don't give a about my mistakes everybody else cares about your mistakes if you're worried about your own mistakes
You've already lost. You know, I never want to be always right because then there can't grow I can't learn
so
I have no desire [to] be always right. I need mistakes
You know and luckily [enough] and not going on this wooden piano here that like you know my mistakes are never
Crucial enough for me to be like you know. They're always great learning experiences. Before you succeed you must first learn to fail
a lot of people have failed if they get down on themselves, but
the
best of sports Stars learn from their mistakes
Though I shouldn't do this okay. We'll do that
Next year. You just keep learning until you get to the point to review the champion then everybody else to co-teach
You should be [eight] [years] before [grammar] [for] [a] championship and after that one three in a row lost key
And I got another one, and [it's] [get] [loose]. So it's not easy, but you
know it's not a it's not a specific time period of how long it takes you to sort of
Norm for your mistakes you make mistakes that they may just [rather] capitalize over
Earlier this summer you were in a donut shop. You're in California. You said some hurtful things about
Americans and about people's weight a lot of people watching felt offended by your words. What do you want to say?
First of all I mean my behavior was very offensive, and I apologized [there] is no
Excuse or there is nothing to justify it
but you know I think that as human [beings] we all say and do things that we don't mean at all sometimes and
We have to learn from it. I mean, that's part of our process
We have to learn from our mistakes, and that's how we grow. I continually learn from my mistakes and other people's mistakes
The entrepreneurs think that hey to create that billion dollar company 100 million dollar company or even million our company had to be really smart
and
Sure brains is part of it luck is a huge component
But what I've learned over the years is
Everyone no matter. How smart you are, you're going to fail many times you're going to make mistakes just with your Mark Zuckerberg
Facebook worked out his version of Snapchat that was a copycat did not work out, right?
So there's other areas in which Facebook failed, but Facebook overall the company has been great
Just because you're smart doesn't mean you're always going to succeed with everything you try or touch
but
Every time you do [something] you will learn new things you'll make mistakes and if you learn from these mistakes
And avoid making them over and over again
You'll actually increase your odds of succeeding as time goes on and the best way to do
This is not just to learn from your mistakes. There's also to learn from the mistakes of others
Rockefeller, Carnegie... all these people who are entrepreneurs years ago in the 1800s - 1900s
they themselves
Use business principles and concepts that are still applicable in today's world surely have the [internet]
But the same strategies and concepts that they use are still applicable right so learn from their mistakes learn will work for them
What didn't work them why and bring that into what you're doing today? You haven't gotten every investment right tell me about the worst
Misses that you've had or sort of the biggest [setback] there every investment you get into you're getting in there because you think you have
An airtight case as to why this thing is going to work out. You're convicted you're passionate
You're putting not just your money in
so I put all your time and effort near your own brand and your reputation is on the line and
More often than not we're wrong
But even more painful are some of these ones where I
didn't invest at all and they've gone on to be the mega unicorns. [I] think about
AirBnb and they told me the pitch about renting out a room in somebody else's house while the owner was still there
[I] literally look those guys the eye and I said
Guys [this] is so dangerous man. Somebody's going to get laid. They're murdered and the blood is going to be on your hands
[I] think this is a really bad idea
I think [they're] currently raising at a twenty billion dollar valuation now. So it is my fun
Probably missed out on hundreds of millions as a result right. You have to learn from your mistakes
[no], see I have this attitude that no situation is impossible. There is nothing impossible there. Just continued season and obstacles to get around
so if I went out and
I'm just trying to think of my obstacles. Let's just say you did an opener and she'd heard it already you did your line
She heard [it] already
Because your friend just [approached] it with the ten minutes ago
Do you run screaming and maybe that happens the first time the second time you say if that happens again?
What do I do you say? Oh my God? He [must] to mind my friend. That's really funny
We were just talking about that and problem solved whatever it may be say you any problem has a solution
So I kind of had that attitude you know, what if she's with eight guys
what if
You know she is on her way out the door or any problem is going to have a solution
so you have to have that attitude and
if something goes wrong
And I'm saying this in a positive way, not a negative [self-esteem] way if something goes wrong. It's always your fault
That's what I feel like without being hard of myself if something goes wrong. It's never her fault. She's not a bit
She is not [mean] she is not uptight [I] did something wrong to make her uncomfortable
So for example with the openers. [I] would start walking up and saying hey guys
I want to get it hitting on something I got this question
I'm trying to ask and I start asking it by the notice they were they weren't listening. They were tuning me out
They're kind of giving [a] bad body language
So I realized what are they thinking? Why is that happening? [what's] happening because I'm standing around
They don't know what I'm going to leave, so I added what's called a time constraint
I'd walk in I'd say hey guys want to get quick opinion on something
By the way it can only stay for a second because I got to rejoin my friends over there
you know problem solved so
Every [anytime] something went wrong or was I coming up
Maybe I would do everything and I felt like I was doing them perfectly
But people weren't interested while I was doing it doing all the right things
But I was doing it in a very needy way a lot of people will read the material and they'll say this doesn't work
Everything works what I say is going to get them in what what zan says and different than what someone else says it all works
You just have to do it right so [for] example the opinion openers. We're talking about an opinion openers
how you start a conversation if you go and say can I ask you a question on something and
Then they say no, we're talking get lost
well
The opinion openers don't work. You just did it wrong you walk and say hey guys
I want to ask a quick question on something now you haven't asked them. I guess no question and it's going to work
There's so many little subtleties. Did that make sense?
Okay, so there's so many. I saw someone looking at me strangely
[so] there's something a little subtleties they get to work in and it's always always
going to be
Your fault if it's not working not in a negative way now and being a hard on yourself. It's it's feedback
So you can improve yourself that whole idea. There's no such thing as failure
There's only learning lessons. So that's what I did, but you know
I'm a guy who's hard of myself, but I'm hard to myself because it makes me excel usually in a long time since I
told stories about my boat
But jay, and I bought a schooner the schooner Elizabeth, and this was the bell off from it
And it's only important because the boat sank she [was] kind of a nice little boat, but she leaked a lot
That was our first big sailing experiences
But we bought it. We won on that. We sank and had long many boat since then you learn from mistakes
[you] got started with faith and belief in yourself. Is that something you better make it your business to do
Knowledge is priceless, okay, even when you [make] mistakes and you learn from your mistakes. I lost half a million dollar on one stock. I invented in my bestfriend's dad's company in which case we had two prints at home today. They went bankrupt the ceo
Evil
President Ceo bought them in
Bankruptcy changed the company name kept all the same contracts we had to [retool] the company for like 30 million
I was made by 10 billion well, but I got wiped out [that] was a good lesson for me
I broke my trading rules, and I didn't really know [you] know at the time
I was like batting a thousand and I had that loss so your loss of your [mistakes] make you better
[I] tell this story of that Pete Sampras
You know Pete's a majestic right when he was [a] junior in I don't know I want to say 13 14 15
He was one of the top-ranked players in the US
But his coach had a radical
Transformation plan to get him to number one and [he] said kick the ball as hard as you can do you know this girl?
Hit the ball hard you can in there, but I'm not gonna be able to control it if I do that right esther
[sorry], yeah, sorry and the coach would he trust me [replay]? Yeah, it's pick up all stories
You can't so for like
How about a face to face nine a month being even a year?
He hit the ball as hard as he could and the balls were flying out. He's ranking drops. He was like number six
He dropped to like 200
It's just like nobody right, but then he gradually learned control, and he became their one far and above anybody else
So sometimes you have to like [moves], or you know lose your stature effort, and then come back stronger
And we come back so much better
But it's tough for people to accept people just want to accept like they think it's like gradually building
But they don't we know success
There's a group in the ground got a post out in genetics like this is success whatever here
But eventually be murder and everything so you made [it] to defeat
You weren't if you think not to do any to wiser?
But most people learned what not to do enemy [do] not be done half isn't so [frustrating] where I can't original
Thank you guys so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed I'd love to know what was your biggest takeaway from this video
What are you going to immediately apply [somehow] to your life or to your business leave it down the comments below
I'm super curious to find out I also want to give a quick shout out to Craig Severinsen from Brightworks PR. Craig
thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book Your One Word
I really, really, really appreciate it
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. Much love. I'll see you soon