just three years ago I was showering in
the at the Y and sleeping on the office
floor I was living six guys in a
three-bedroom apartment sleeping on the
floor and this check meant I could like
not use the same holiday in towels with
holes in them that I’d stolen I was
fortunate in that I was here during
probably the most interesting period you
could be in Washington during World War
two I mean I 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 onto the world now I
started to believe life series to once a
week try to bring you some additional
inspirational kind of content and maybe
some of the off beaten track kind of
advice that you wouldn’t normally hear
from entrepreneurs so to help you live
your best believe life today we’re going
to learn what highly successful people
were doing in their teens and 20s enjoy
[Music]
alright let’s kick things off with
number one Elon Musk he couldn’t get a
job and so he started his own business
what is the one thing that has surprised
you about your life oh one thing well
well I certainly I’m surprised by the
whole thing I wanna see I certainly
didn’t expect to be to be 20 of these
things to happen the only reason I
started a company back in 95 and here at
company was because I couldn’t get it
there were only a few internet companies
and I couldn’t get a job at any of them
I try to get a job at at Netscape and
tomorrow’s me and I tried hanging out in
the lobby but I was too shy to talk to
anyone and it was like okay well I guess
I’ll have to start a company because I
can’t get a job anywhere back in 95 they
weren’t very many people on the Internet
and certainly nobody was making any
money at all most people thought the
internet was gonna be a fad not this
South African entrepreneur musk sold his
first computer program at the age of 12
and he hasn’t stopped selling since just
three years ago I was showering in the
Hawaiian sleeping on the office floor
and now obviously I’ve got a million our
car and quite a few creature comforts a
year ago must sold his software company
zip to which enabled newspapers to
publish online for four hundred million
dollars cash so this is an ATM what
we’re gonna do is transform the
traditional banking industry
I do not fit the picture of a banker
raising 50 million dollars is a matter
of making a series of phone calls and
the money is there I’ve sunk the great
majority of my net worth into XCOM which
is the new banking and mutual funds
company on the internet that I’ve
started I think XCOM could absolutely be
a multibillion-dollar bonanza
because if you look at the industry that
X is pursuing
it’s the biggest sector of the world
economy
number two is Mark Cuban who was a
salesperson for a PC software retailer I
had a job out of college working for a
bank for a short period of time Mellon
Bank and I um decided to well first it
might have been ink magazine this away
back when but there was an article about
using changing something in how you
deduct social how you save Social
Security from employees paychecks and
literally hadn’t been working there for
three weeks and so I sent it to the CEO
of Mellon Bank hey I thought you might
be interested it’s literally some guy he
never heard of and I got an OPEC said
thank you nothing and okay you look my
whole job my whole motive in taking a
job working for somebody was to help
them become more profitable that’s the
way I always looked at it and then I
started a rookies Club where I reached
out to some executives and all the
people who had started at the same time
at Mellon Bank we don’t go out and get a
drink and we’d get this executive start
and I didn’t like run it through my boss
or anything and so my boss at the time
calls me in and said you’re doing this
as I said yeah I think he and he’s gonna
say great it’s just her screaming at me
and Reema Meade how could you do this
you go everything through me you work
for me yeah so I knew I wasn’t destined
there and then I left
and I went down to ended up down in
Dallas and got a job working for a
company called your business software
and we were we sold software and and I
didn’t know anything about software I
took one computer class at Indiana and
kind of cheated to pass but not that I
condone that but and so I had a customer
and I thought might stay up all night
teach reading I think you know computers
were new and technology was new this
technology was new so nobody had a head
start on me because it was changing so
rapidly like it is today that if I just
put in the time I can learn as much as
anybody else and so I taught myself I’d
stay up late reading software manuals
taught myself different little simple
programming languages and it kept on
getting bigger and bigger and better and
better but it was at a retail store and
one of my responsibilities was to come
in
sweep the floor wipe down the windows
and open the store and I had a customer
who wanted me to come out there and
close the deal and it was a fifteen
thousand dollar deal fifteen hundred
dollar commission to me told my boss he
said no you need to be there to open the
store and I made the executive decision
that I was gonna go get the check
because you know I was living six guys
in a three-bedroom apartment sleeping on
the floor and this check meant I could
like not use the same holiday in towels
with holes in them that I’d stolen you
know mom but anyway so I went and picked
up the check thank you when I came back
and gave the check to my boss all would
be forgiven and you know the sales cures
all fired me fired me and so those
back-to-back experiences confirmed what
I already knew that that I was a yes
employee and then I better start my
number three is Warren Buffett who had a
newspaper route from the age of 14 at
the age of 14 Warren Buffett had three
paper routes in Washington DC where he
spent his formative teenage years as his
father was a member of Congress you
learn a lot about human nature when you
deliver papers and one thing you learned
you got to pay for him at the end of the
month oh I mean whether the customer
paid you or not you pay for Buffett says
from delivering papers he learned the
importance of hard work and reliability
I also learned frankly that that if you
did a good job
you were you were gonna yeah you you
were gonna move up I mean had the very
fact that I did a good job in Spring
Valley got me the Westchester routes
later on I’m getting the five building
Westchester complex home to Washington’s
elite transformed a job into a business
by the time World War two ended Buffett
not yet fifteen had saved what an
average American earned in a year I was
fortunate in that I was here during
probably the most interesting period you
could be in Washington during World War
two I mean I I delivered the papers when
Roosevelt died and when the atomic bomb
was dropped
newspapers remain close to Buffett’s
heart he owned several and a newspaper
tossing contest is a regular event at
his Berkshire Hathaway annual meetings
you know man I still like to deliver
papers if anybody’s got an open paper
out out there I’ll be glad number four
is Oprah Winfrey who got removed as a
co-inky-dink ER woman and then it didn’t
quite work out yeah I got fired while
you know tit I was they didn’t they had
a contract so they didn’t say go by and
then how did you work out to be on a
afternoon show where you actually got to
be an interviewer how did that happen
well what happened was they this is how
this is what I now know what with age
and perspective that many times getting
demoted is an opportunity for something
else to show up or getting fired you
know a lot to people I’ve interviewed
over the years of these stories about
the best thing that ever happened to you
it puts you in the next best place I was
not a good television reporter I was too
emotional I would go out on the stories
and you know then try to take blankets
back to the people he was very young you
were there were 21 it was very also
empathetic and and I was always getting
written up for getting myself involved
in other people’s business and so I was
making $22,000 a year and my best friend
Gayle who I met there at the time she
was also working there and she said oh
my god you’re 22 they’re making
twenty-two thousand
25 number 5 is Richard Branson who
started a student magazine at age 15 I
started a national student magazine when
I was 15 years old I worked out of a
phone box selling advertising didn’t
have any money so I had to sell enough
advertising in advance to pay for the
printing and the paper manufacturing of
the magazine and I was fortunate enough
just to just to manage to get enough
money to kick-start the magazine and be
able to leave school to get it going how
much do you make I didn’t make much
money but it credit but it it it’s
enabled me through the magazine then to
start a mail-order company called Virgin
Records and and obviously it went on to
great things number 6 is Jeff Bezos
who after graduating from Princeton he
got a job on Wall Street you had a great
job you had I remember you had a great
apartment on the Upper West Side married
for a year had been married for you had
not been eating biscuits for nine months
and I’m just you know how did you go
through making the decision to drop it
was a very good job and take it take
this chance it all seems very obvious
now write this many years later that it
paid off but at the time it was not
obvious no no it was and and and I did
do a lot of soul-searching I went to my
boss at the time and I really liked my
job and I told my boss I was gonna go do
this thing start an internet bookstore
and my wife at I’d already told my wife
and she’s like great let’s go
and I said so my boss is gonna do this
he’s like this is a good idea so I think
this is a good idea but would be an even
better idea for somebody who didn’t
already have a good job and that sort of
made some logical sense to me and he
convinced me to think about it for a
couple of days so I went away I was
really trying to get my head around how
to think about this and I think for me
the right way to make that kind of very
personal decision because those
decisions are personal they’re not like
data-driven business decisions there
they are you know what does your heart
say and for me it was I could the best
way to think about it was to project
myself forward to age 80 and said look
when I’m 80 years old
I want to have minimized the number of
regrets that I have I don’t want to be
80 years old in a quiet moment of
reflection thinking back over my life
and catalog you a bunch of major regrets
and I think that regrets are biggest
regrets in most cases you can murder
somebody okay you’d regret that but in
most cases our biggest regrets turn out
to the acts of omission its paths not
taken and they haunt us we wonder what
would have happened
I loved that person and I never told him
and then they married somebody else I
did you know I didn’t do this and so
that’s the frame of mind that I put
myself in and I and once I did that once
I thought about that way it was
immediately obvious to me I knew that
when I’m 80 I would never regret trying
this thing that I was super excited
about and failing if it failed fine I
would be very proud of the fact when I’m
80 that I tried number seven is Larry
Ellison who did consulting for local
businesses they noticed when I was
writing programs for school that I was
like I was getting done faster than
everybody else so they offered me you
know they offered me a job offered me a
job and I figured out very very quickly
that rather than being paid by the hour
I was much better off being paid by the
program I figured that so I was working
for the University and then I started
doing consulting for local businesses
and that worked very well number eight
the last one before very special bonus
clip is JK Rowling who got her idea for
Harry Potter
while on a train going to work I was on
the train from Manchester to London and
it came just came kept something like
that ever happened to you before
yes truthfully I mean other ideas have
just come to me because I think if
you’re a writer and
that’s what you spend a huge amount of
time doing you do ideas do come to you
but nothing had ever come so with such a
I had this I thought I’d love to write
that and when I got off the train I went
straight home and I started writing
now I’ve got a very special bonus clip
for you from what the CEO of Goldman
Sachs was doing in his early 20s but
before that I want you to make your
commitment of the day what did you learn
from this video that you are somehow
going to apply to your life or to your
business what will you commit to today
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 we continue to believe in
yourself and whatever you’re one where
it is much love I’ll see you soon and
enjoy the bonus clip
after college I went to law school for
three years and then into my dream job
at a big New York law firm but even
though it had been my dream I didn’t
like it once I got there for the first
time I was feeling financially secure
but I knew I wasn’t passionate enough
about what I was doing and because I
didn’t love it I would never be
fulfilled from it or be really good at
it someone who loved it more would have
greater enthusiasm and focus for some it
was fun for me it was always going to be
a horrible chore after five years at a
law firm I decided I wanted to try
something different I came home and told
my wife I was quitting and she cried and
not out of happiness anyway it worked
out I got a new job at a small Wall
Street firm having been rejected at
every other one we got out by a larger
firm and I ended up remaining at that
large firm Goldman Sachs the most
important work ever if you had to think
of one word that’s most important to you
that sums you Apple so it would be like
a little beacon they 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
[Music]
the at the Y and sleeping on the office
floor I was living six guys in a
three-bedroom apartment sleeping on the
floor and this check meant I could like
not use the same holiday in towels with
holes in them that I’d stolen I was
fortunate in that I was here during
probably the most interesting period you
could be in Washington during World War
two I mean I 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 onto the world now I
started to believe life series to once a
week try to bring you some additional
inspirational kind of content and maybe
some of the off beaten track kind of
advice that you wouldn’t normally hear
from entrepreneurs so to help you live
your best believe life today we’re going
to learn what highly successful people
were doing in their teens and 20s enjoy
[Music]
alright let’s kick things off with
number one Elon Musk he couldn’t get a
job and so he started his own business
what is the one thing that has surprised
you about your life oh one thing well
well I certainly I’m surprised by the
whole thing I wanna see I certainly
didn’t expect to be to be 20 of these
things to happen the only reason I
started a company back in 95 and here at
company was because I couldn’t get it
there were only a few internet companies
and I couldn’t get a job at any of them
I try to get a job at at Netscape and
tomorrow’s me and I tried hanging out in
the lobby but I was too shy to talk to
anyone and it was like okay well I guess
I’ll have to start a company because I
can’t get a job anywhere back in 95 they
weren’t very many people on the Internet
and certainly nobody was making any
money at all most people thought the
internet was gonna be a fad not this
South African entrepreneur musk sold his
first computer program at the age of 12
and he hasn’t stopped selling since just
three years ago I was showering in the
Hawaiian sleeping on the office floor
and now obviously I’ve got a million our
car and quite a few creature comforts a
year ago must sold his software company
zip to which enabled newspapers to
publish online for four hundred million
dollars cash so this is an ATM what
we’re gonna do is transform the
traditional banking industry
I do not fit the picture of a banker
raising 50 million dollars is a matter
of making a series of phone calls and
the money is there I’ve sunk the great
majority of my net worth into XCOM which
is the new banking and mutual funds
company on the internet that I’ve
started I think XCOM could absolutely be
a multibillion-dollar bonanza
because if you look at the industry that
X is pursuing
it’s the biggest sector of the world
economy
number two is Mark Cuban who was a
salesperson for a PC software retailer I
had a job out of college working for a
bank for a short period of time Mellon
Bank and I um decided to well first it
might have been ink magazine this away
back when but there was an article about
using changing something in how you
deduct social how you save Social
Security from employees paychecks and
literally hadn’t been working there for
three weeks and so I sent it to the CEO
of Mellon Bank hey I thought you might
be interested it’s literally some guy he
never heard of and I got an OPEC said
thank you nothing and okay you look my
whole job my whole motive in taking a
job working for somebody was to help
them become more profitable that’s the
way I always looked at it and then I
started a rookies Club where I reached
out to some executives and all the
people who had started at the same time
at Mellon Bank we don’t go out and get a
drink and we’d get this executive start
and I didn’t like run it through my boss
or anything and so my boss at the time
calls me in and said you’re doing this
as I said yeah I think he and he’s gonna
say great it’s just her screaming at me
and Reema Meade how could you do this
you go everything through me you work
for me yeah so I knew I wasn’t destined
there and then I left
and I went down to ended up down in
Dallas and got a job working for a
company called your business software
and we were we sold software and and I
didn’t know anything about software I
took one computer class at Indiana and
kind of cheated to pass but not that I
condone that but and so I had a customer
and I thought might stay up all night
teach reading I think you know computers
were new and technology was new this
technology was new so nobody had a head
start on me because it was changing so
rapidly like it is today that if I just
put in the time I can learn as much as
anybody else and so I taught myself I’d
stay up late reading software manuals
taught myself different little simple
programming languages and it kept on
getting bigger and bigger and better and
better but it was at a retail store and
one of my responsibilities was to come
in
sweep the floor wipe down the windows
and open the store and I had a customer
who wanted me to come out there and
close the deal and it was a fifteen
thousand dollar deal fifteen hundred
dollar commission to me told my boss he
said no you need to be there to open the
store and I made the executive decision
that I was gonna go get the check
because you know I was living six guys
in a three-bedroom apartment sleeping on
the floor and this check meant I could
like not use the same holiday in towels
with holes in them that I’d stolen you
know mom but anyway so I went and picked
up the check thank you when I came back
and gave the check to my boss all would
be forgiven and you know the sales cures
all fired me fired me and so those
back-to-back experiences confirmed what
I already knew that that I was a yes
employee and then I better start my
number three is Warren Buffett who had a
newspaper route from the age of 14 at
the age of 14 Warren Buffett had three
paper routes in Washington DC where he
spent his formative teenage years as his
father was a member of Congress you
learn a lot about human nature when you
deliver papers and one thing you learned
you got to pay for him at the end of the
month oh I mean whether the customer
paid you or not you pay for Buffett says
from delivering papers he learned the
importance of hard work and reliability
I also learned frankly that that if you
did a good job
you were you were gonna yeah you you
were gonna move up I mean had the very
fact that I did a good job in Spring
Valley got me the Westchester routes
later on I’m getting the five building
Westchester complex home to Washington’s
elite transformed a job into a business
by the time World War two ended Buffett
not yet fifteen had saved what an
average American earned in a year I was
fortunate in that I was here during
probably the most interesting period you
could be in Washington during World War
two I mean I I delivered the papers when
Roosevelt died and when the atomic bomb
was dropped
newspapers remain close to Buffett’s
heart he owned several and a newspaper
tossing contest is a regular event at
his Berkshire Hathaway annual meetings
you know man I still like to deliver
papers if anybody’s got an open paper
out out there I’ll be glad number four
is Oprah Winfrey who got removed as a
co-inky-dink ER woman and then it didn’t
quite work out yeah I got fired while
you know tit I was they didn’t they had
a contract so they didn’t say go by and
then how did you work out to be on a
afternoon show where you actually got to
be an interviewer how did that happen
well what happened was they this is how
this is what I now know what with age
and perspective that many times getting
demoted is an opportunity for something
else to show up or getting fired you
know a lot to people I’ve interviewed
over the years of these stories about
the best thing that ever happened to you
it puts you in the next best place I was
not a good television reporter I was too
emotional I would go out on the stories
and you know then try to take blankets
back to the people he was very young you
were there were 21 it was very also
empathetic and and I was always getting
written up for getting myself involved
in other people’s business and so I was
making $22,000 a year and my best friend
Gayle who I met there at the time she
was also working there and she said oh
my god you’re 22 they’re making
twenty-two thousand
25 number 5 is Richard Branson who
started a student magazine at age 15 I
started a national student magazine when
I was 15 years old I worked out of a
phone box selling advertising didn’t
have any money so I had to sell enough
advertising in advance to pay for the
printing and the paper manufacturing of
the magazine and I was fortunate enough
just to just to manage to get enough
money to kick-start the magazine and be
able to leave school to get it going how
much do you make I didn’t make much
money but it credit but it it it’s
enabled me through the magazine then to
start a mail-order company called Virgin
Records and and obviously it went on to
great things number 6 is Jeff Bezos
who after graduating from Princeton he
got a job on Wall Street you had a great
job you had I remember you had a great
apartment on the Upper West Side married
for a year had been married for you had
not been eating biscuits for nine months
and I’m just you know how did you go
through making the decision to drop it
was a very good job and take it take
this chance it all seems very obvious
now write this many years later that it
paid off but at the time it was not
obvious no no it was and and and I did
do a lot of soul-searching I went to my
boss at the time and I really liked my
job and I told my boss I was gonna go do
this thing start an internet bookstore
and my wife at I’d already told my wife
and she’s like great let’s go
and I said so my boss is gonna do this
he’s like this is a good idea so I think
this is a good idea but would be an even
better idea for somebody who didn’t
already have a good job and that sort of
made some logical sense to me and he
convinced me to think about it for a
couple of days so I went away I was
really trying to get my head around how
to think about this and I think for me
the right way to make that kind of very
personal decision because those
decisions are personal they’re not like
data-driven business decisions there
they are you know what does your heart
say and for me it was I could the best
way to think about it was to project
myself forward to age 80 and said look
when I’m 80 years old
I want to have minimized the number of
regrets that I have I don’t want to be
80 years old in a quiet moment of
reflection thinking back over my life
and catalog you a bunch of major regrets
and I think that regrets are biggest
regrets in most cases you can murder
somebody okay you’d regret that but in
most cases our biggest regrets turn out
to the acts of omission its paths not
taken and they haunt us we wonder what
would have happened
I loved that person and I never told him
and then they married somebody else I
did you know I didn’t do this and so
that’s the frame of mind that I put
myself in and I and once I did that once
I thought about that way it was
immediately obvious to me I knew that
when I’m 80 I would never regret trying
this thing that I was super excited
about and failing if it failed fine I
would be very proud of the fact when I’m
80 that I tried number seven is Larry
Ellison who did consulting for local
businesses they noticed when I was
writing programs for school that I was
like I was getting done faster than
everybody else so they offered me you
know they offered me a job offered me a
job and I figured out very very quickly
that rather than being paid by the hour
I was much better off being paid by the
program I figured that so I was working
for the University and then I started
doing consulting for local businesses
and that worked very well number eight
the last one before very special bonus
clip is JK Rowling who got her idea for
Harry Potter
while on a train going to work I was on
the train from Manchester to London and
it came just came kept something like
that ever happened to you before
yes truthfully I mean other ideas have
just come to me because I think if
you’re a writer and
that’s what you spend a huge amount of
time doing you do ideas do come to you
but nothing had ever come so with such a
I had this I thought I’d love to write
that and when I got off the train I went
straight home and I started writing
now I’ve got a very special bonus clip
for you from what the CEO of Goldman
Sachs was doing in his early 20s but
before that I want you to make your
commitment of the day what did you learn
from this video that you are somehow
going to apply to your life or to your
business what will you commit to today
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 we continue to believe in
yourself and whatever you’re one where
it is much love I’ll see you soon and
enjoy the bonus clip
after college I went to law school for
three years and then into my dream job
at a big New York law firm but even
though it had been my dream I didn’t
like it once I got there for the first
time I was feeling financially secure
but I knew I wasn’t passionate enough
about what I was doing and because I
didn’t love it I would never be
fulfilled from it or be really good at
it someone who loved it more would have
greater enthusiasm and focus for some it
was fun for me it was always going to be
a horrible chore after five years at a
law firm I decided I wanted to try
something different I came home and told
my wife I was quitting and she cried and
not out of happiness anyway it worked
out I got a new job at a small Wall
Street firm having been rejected at
every other one we got out by a larger
firm and I ended up remaining at that
large firm Goldman Sachs the most
important work ever if you had to think
of one word that’s most important to you
that sums you Apple so it would be like
a little beacon they 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
[Music]
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