– Nothing is impossible.
– Impossible is just a word.
– None of this was possible.
– Ask the impossible.
– The impossible can happen.
(bright acoustic guitar)
Hello Believe Nation, it’s Evan,
my one word is believe, and I believe in people
more than they believe in themselves
and my sincere hope is that if you see in yourself
what I see in you, you’ll be able to change the planet.
So to help you on your journey,
today we’re going to learn how to do the impossible.
And as always, if you hear something that
really resonates with you, please leave it
down in the comments below and put quotes around it
so other people can be inspired,
and if you’re leaving a comment within the
first few hours of this video going live,
you have a chance to win one of
two daily prizes that we have.
Good luck.
(soaring orchestral music)
– As a child, my parents always told me
you can be whatever you want to be,
you can do whatever you want to do,
and you know that office, that position,
at the highest office on the face of the Earth,
it was something, I heard my parents sayin’ it,
but I didn’t totally believe it.
Yet I went out in the world and I carried myself
and I held my head high, and I stood there
and I looked people in their eyes,
and I talked to people as if I was deserving
of everything that this planet has to offer.
(audience applause)
Thank you.
I really want to say to children out there
and to people who are watching,
Confucius said one time, “he who says he can,
“and he who says he can’t, are both usually right.”
So I want to stand here before you and as I hold this award,
I want to give love to my wife, and I want you
to keep in your hearts, just know that you can.
Know that you can.
– Nothing, absolutely nothing, is impossible.
You can begin again.
You can believe God again.
You can trust again.
You can be successful.
You can overcome your addictions.
You can heal.
You can feel alive again.
This is when you realize that those things are possible,
you are getting a breakthrough.
So, I want to encourage you right now,
don’t give in.
Go for it, don’t give up.
Don’t throw in the towel, and even if
your back is up against the wall,
even if you are on the ropes, and you
are receiving a rope-a-dope financially, listen!
You got to fight back.
You don’t get in life what you want,
you get what you fight for.
And when you decide that my future,
my health, my marriage, my freedom, my happiness,
my joy, my peace, my children is worth fighting for,
you are securing your breakthrough.
– Just to go after it, I mean, the thing
about being an entrepreneur is, it’s just all to you.
You know, a lot of people like to make excuses,
“I don’t have connections, I don’t have money,
“I don’t have this,” but you know, if you find
something that you like to do or love to do,
be great at it, and see if you can turn it into a business,
and worst case, you’re going to have fun doing
what it is you love to do, and best case you can
turn it into a business.
I’m just not big on excuses, I just think if you’re really,
everybody has an opportunity to go for it,
they just got to do it.
– Here’s maybe the greatest thing a teen,
or anyone in this room and who’s watching on the television
at home can learn from the champ.
These are words to remember when anyone
tries to tell you to give up, tell you to give in,
because whatever you’re trying to do is impossible.
The champ said this: “Impossible is just a word
“thrown around by small men who find it easier
“to live in the world they’ve been given
“than to explore the power they have to change it.
“Impossible is not a fact.
“It’s an opinion.
“Impossible is potential.
“Impossible is temporary.
(audience applause)
“Impossible is nothing.”
(audience applause)
Greatest quote ever.
(audience applause)
As a relatively new dad and a former teen,
I’m here to say you will make mistakes along the way.
You will fall down.
I have many times.
Even Ali did.
But what we do after that fall is how we make history
because impossible is nothing.
– I don’t really need the money,
like I don’t need the money anymore.
I’ve made dream money from video games.
Like stuff that I, things I would have never imagined.
You know, when people say like, “Is this what you dreamt?”
I didn’t dream any of this!
None of this was possible,
or even considered reality when I was a kid.
You know, when I started skating,
the best you could hope for was your picture in a magazine,
maybe a pro board.
Maybe.
And, free gear, that’s it.
And then once you reach an age of responsibility,
and this is, I’m talking about when I was like 12.
Once you reach an age of responsibility, say 18,
your career’s over, ’cause you can’t make money doing it,
you can’t enter adult life.
– I’m a believer, bro.
Like, I see things, and I want to make them real.
No matter how hard it takes, no matter what obstacles,
no matter how many embarrassing meetings I have to imagine,
it’s happening when I leave.
(interviewer laughs)
Doesn’t matter, I’m a doer,
and a freakin’ make-it-happener.
– I learned a lot from our founders,
and one of the things I learned was,
ask the impossible and really dream big.
What you learn about people, is if you paint
a very broad vision, you attract people
who really want to make it happen.
‘Cause they’re dreamers too.
So you can inspire people, and with that inspiration,
you’re going to get to the smartest people,
then they deal with a lot of stuff.
– But can an organization like Google,
which espouses the idea that you’re going to give people
in the organization 15 or 20% of their time to do
almost anything they want in terms of innovation,
can that system work in smaller companies,
can that system work in any company,
is that a leadership canon that can work across
a broad range of companies?
– Well, in fact, it worked at Google when Google was tiny.
So the answer is yes, it does work in small companies.
Remember, we give this to engineers,
and engineers are not that clever, right?
If they’re going to work on something in their 20% time,
it’s going to be something that’s pretty related
to their training and their knowledge.
And that’s why it’s so powerful.
Very very few people get off the reservation
and do something completely different
from technology and so forth.
And if they did, we would encourage it.
– Has something manifested, that you can recall,
come from just that kind of incubation?
– Virtually all of the interesting apps now came from
a combination of an acquisition and a 20% time.
If you look at Maps, if you look at Google Earth,
if you look at Chrome and Android, all of them came from
somebody trying something, identifying something,
and then we would say, we have all these 20%-timers
but we need a real group.
– [Interviewer] Right.
– And the fastest way to do that was to
create a real group or buy a company.
– What’s the most important change,
and most significant change in your way
of thinking about the world over the last…
20 years?
– That the impossible can happen.
I never thought that the Soviet Union
would implode so easily.
And I never thought the Chinese would abandon
the communist system that had moved into
the free market so readily.
It was unthinkable 20 years ago.
And both have happened, the world has changed.
– And it’s not clear exactly how it’s all going to…?
– No, it is not exactly clear when it will happen-
– [Charlie] Exactly.
– But that it will happen now in the long term,
50 to 100 years, yes.
– [Charlie] And the center of gravity is shifting to Asia.
– It must be, because the population is there.
The talent pool of 1.3 million people plus the Japanese,
the Koreans and the Vietnamese and the others,
it can match Europe and America.
But the talent pool was inert.
It did not have science and technology,
did not care about science and technology.
But now everything that you do,
Asia’s doing.
(heavy rock guitar)
– Lou’s records is a very important place,
it’s one of the most famous record stores in San Diego,
and one of the most famous in the country,
and when Blink first started, I drove around in
a 20-mile radius of the store
and I broke into every high school at night,
and I made Blink flyers and I hung ’em
in every single locker in all these high schools
that we were playing at the club downtown.
At that point in time, everyone in San Diego
wanted to support the local bands,
it was just a really great scene.
So because I put those flyers in those lockers,
we ended up having our first show at a big club,
all the people came, and we had enough people
that watched us that the guy that owned the club,
invited us the following week to play on the big stage.
So what we did, is not only played that show,
we rushed and made a really quick recording,
it was our first recording,
with a little Buddha statue on it,
and people commonly refer to that record as Buddha,
we made that to sell here in this store,
so we would put five tapes in at a time,
it was a time when tapes were selling,
and every week we would call up and they were gone!
Come in the next week with five more, they’re gone.
Then we gave ’em 10, they’re gone.
And then gave ’em 20, and the next thing you know,
we’ve sold thousands of these tape cassettes,
all of these records, and then we got our start,
it was little suburban kids, we had a dream,
to be in the punk rock section.
And I’m here now looking at all these things I grew up on,
and they’re so insanely important to me.
– [Interviewer] Do you ever visualize you
winning anything again?
– Always. Always dreamt of winning the World Cup.
Hasn’t happened yet.
Still look back to ’98,
after the red card that
I got against Argentina,
what went on in my life and in my family’s life after that,
I think it was very tough.
It was probably the toughest moment of my career.
I was having death threats, I never felt safe
for three and a half years.
People used to turn around and saying, “Well you’ve let
“your country down, and you’ve let your family down,
“so how does that feel?”
And honestly, I never felt as alone as that,
as a person, as a footballer.
It can knock a person down so much that they just go under.
Outside pubs in London there was effigies hung of me,
and this was on the front of the newspaper.
It’s just something that sticks in my mind from that time.
Something they all said about me at the time,
there was a headline of 10 lions, one stupid little boy.
– [Interviewer] Still emotional, isn’t it, still raw?
– Yeah.
This is a saying that I use all the time,
and it’s true, it is a round world.
’98 was just before the World Cup when I was at the top,
and then after the World Cup I was at the bottom.
And then you work yourself back up.
The upside for me was the Greece game.
(bright piano)
Once the game started it was the start of
an incredible day for me.
It was even going to the World Cup that day
or it was going into qualifying games
which none of us wanted to do because
the expectations of us, I remember
getting a free kick on the edge of the box
and I remember putting the ball down
and I remember looking up at the clock and thinking,
this is it, you know, this is the only chance
I’m going to get now.
The only thing I could hear was the man
and his drum round about here, I think.
And now step back, took deep breaths,
run up, and as soon as it left my foot that was it.
(bright piano)
It was the loudest I think I’ve ever heard the fans,
it was such a huge moment for everyone.
I remember just running off and being that excited,
just jumping up in the air, you know,
I could have touched the top of the stadium
if I wanted to, because I felt that tall.
(dramatic sustained piano)
Right, the whole canvas is the idea of the goal,
there’s the boy in the corner, my celebration,
and the words belief, strength, and family,
what I needed, what I had to get through after ’98.
(piano flourish)
Finishes it off.
Being in front of a blank piece of paper
with experts around you as well,
I think that is much more daunting,
than stepping out in front of
90,000 people playing football.
(uplifting piano)
– Thank you guys so much for watching,
I hope you enjoyed the video, I’d love to know,
what did you think?
What was the single biggest takeaway that you took
from this video that you’re going to apply to your life,
or to your business somehow.
Leave it down in the comments below.
If you’re within the first couple hours of this video
going live, you have a chance to win one of two
daily prizes as well.
I also want to give a quick shoutout to Frank Hoffmann.
Frank, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book,
Your One Word, and posting it on Twitter,
I really really appreciate the support, man,
and I hope you enjoyed 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.
(electronic whoosh)
”
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