Dre Baldwin: Undrafted, Unknown, Then 8 Countries Deep

0:00They are plenty of times where I am not motivated at all. And I don't feel like doing anything. But what I tell people all the time is, fuck your feelings, do your job. I love it. Because motivation, I like to tell people are motivations for eighth graders. Because you can't depend on motivation. Because motivation shows up when it feels like showing up. And if you compromise on a standard, you don't have a standard, which you have as they suggest you have a wish, but it's not a standard if you won't stick to it. Welcome back to the build pod where authenticity trumps authority here on the build pod, we always love to exhibit and showcase the women in the boardroom, but more importantly, anybody that has an incredible story of triumph and really is a boss that someone would like to follow. But today's guest, I am really excited about this conversation, because he's probably one of the most prolific people out there in content creation has done over almost 13,000 posts written over 30 books,

1:02content creator since 2005 when no one was doing this. But his story, he's not really a content creator. His story really starts as a division three walk on basketball player. So we need to really talk about this because I've watched many episodes, but first welcome to the show, Dray Baldwin. Welcome. Mara, thank you for having me on. Hopefully I can live up to that introduction. I did good. That was good. That was like hype. I'm like, hype today. It's you can tell I really want, I want to have this interview. I think this is going to be incredible. Me too. So I did. So I actually did some research on you and your story is incredible. How you, how basically went to college and didn't get drafted. Then you correct me if I'm wrong. I it's your story. But I love how you say like, so I didn't, you know, you're explaining like how you walked onto a team. This is not like a draft. Like there was no appointment. You just kind of showed up. So let's talk about that. Like that's kind of, I feel like that's really, really where your story begins for triumph. That's, that's a lot about your character. Didn't get drafted, but still persevere no matter what.

2:04True. So it was actually coming out of high school where I had barely played because I started playing sports for that sport basketball pretty late. So I was kind of what they call sports a late bloomer. So going to college, I just walked on, uninvited because in college, technically anybody can try out for the team. Doesn't mean you're going to make it. I happen to make it. Played in college, then after college was not drafted. As you said, and nobody was calling me to go play. And I knew my future would probably take me abroad into playing in Europe, but nobody in Europe knew me and I didn't know them. So I had to go find the middleman, which in the sports world, just like an entertainment is an agent. But I had nothing to show an agent. So I had to go to an exposure camp, which is like a job fair for athletes. I played pretty well at that. And the footage and scouting report I got from that event, then I went and found an agent called 60 agents sent my video to 20 of them. One of that 20, by the way, that video was a VHS tape. That was not a YouTube link of VHS. Yes. Yes. This is before YouTube. Right when YouTube came out the same year, 2005. And then one of those agents said, OK, I'll represent you.

3:07That agent got me my first job. So that's how I got it in playing pro ball. I mean, that just says it in itself. You know, so many times we give up. I mean, there's still I'm in sales. That's what I do for a living. And the number one thing I always say is that people will give up, right? Everybody wants it. But then people will give up before they get any traction, but won't even try. They'll just give up. Like I can't first fail your first rejection. I can't do it. I'm done. But in your case, I mean, you're like, all right, well, you know, I didn't get the cards that I was dealt, but you know what, I'm still good enough to do it. You believe full belief in yourself. And there you were. You go and you advocate for yourself, which many people don't do. I've seen it all the time. And and you played correctly from wrong in nine different countries. Yeah, eight countries nine years. So yes, okay, I got a little back. Well, listen, you can tell like sports is not really my thing. I do like basketball, but the terminology is like a little left yield for me. So feel free. No, so if I say like touchdown and it's really, you know, it's not, it's not applicable. You can just say that.

4:07I'm just kidding. I know the difference a little bit. I'm just kidding. I mean, it's okay. So you pay list. So you play overseas. And from there, after your basketball career, what happened? Well, we got a jump into the middle of the career because when I started, when I started playing, which is 2005, I took that VHS state and I got it transferred to a data CD and I uploaded that footage from the exposure camp to this new website. That was YouTube. And I wasn't trying to get myself known on the internet. I just put it there because you can lose a VHS tape, but you can't lose a something that's stored on the internet along with the website stays around. And people came and found that video. So when I went and checked YouTube, began six months later, because again, it's not like I'm trying to be an influencer. That wasn't a turn back then. People were commenting on a video, like, hey, who were you? Where do you play at? Who told you how often do you practice? I realized this was an underserved audience. It was basically they were me, but just 10 years younger than me. So I already went to the gym every day to train because that's what athletes do. But now I had this little $100 camera. I said, well, I just take this to the gym and just show these people the very things

5:09they're asking about because I'm doing it anyway. So again, this was not a business strategy. It was just they're asking, I'll give it to them. So I just start putting footage on YouTube sporadically. So about five years into my career. So this isn't an appeared between 2009 and 2011. I found myself in between playing jobs because it wasn't a steady, you know, up until the right thing for me. And I had this audience growing online and I just finished reading 10 Ferris for our work week. Are you familiar with that book? Sure. I am. Yes. Yes. Okay. So many entrepreneurs salespeople know about it. So I had just read that book and 10 Ferris in the book is talking about, hey, here's how you can sell products online. So I already had an audience and he told me how to sell the product. I started doing it my first product before I was in 99 cents piece. And I started making sales as soon as I put the product out. And I was only advertising through YouTube. I never had a marketing budget ad budget, anything just YouTube. And when I made the first sale, Mara, I said to myself, I can do this forever. I'm not going to be able to run and jump forever. I'm still playing, but this expires athlete careers are very short. But if I can take an idea out of my head and turn it into something that can be sold,

6:10I can do that without a subject, not just sports. So that planted the seed for becoming an entrepreneur. Second thing to happen, three things happened in that time period. The second thing was the athlete started asking me questions about mindset because they saw that I was coming to the gym every day, training every day. They knew a bit about my backstory, what we talked about. And they said, that's interesting that during some days, I don't feel like going to the gym. How do you bring yourself to do it? Or Dre, I do well when I'm practicing by myself, but then I get in the game. And as 500 people watching, I don't perform as well. I get performance anxiety. Or they would say, Dre, you said you got cut from your high school team as a sophomore and as a junior. Well, me too, I just got cut. I feel like quitting basketball. How, what can you tell me to help me keep going? So I started talking about things like discipline, confidence, mental toughness, personal initiative. And also initiative was based on, hey, how do you play overseas? So a lot of players want to do that. It's not everybody makes it to the NBA. So when I started talking about the mindset thing, the athletes appreciated it. But the other thing, Mara, is that people didn't play basketball started finding me. And they started saying, Dre, I don't even play sports.

7:10But the way you break down mindset, this is useful for everybody. And that was the thing that told me here's who I can serve, even if I don't play basketball anymore. Because I knew I was going to stop eventually. And I knew I didn't want to be a coach or a trainer, which is what a lot of athletes do when they stop playing. I wanted to serve people who didn't play sports, but how? I didn't know what I had that they could use, but this was it. So I kept that in mind. And then the third thing was now you had this platform of self publishing now. This is Web 2.0 and it's hey, this is you can make your own courses, you can sell your own products, you can write your own books, you can publish them. I started doing all that again, that's 2010, 2011. I kept playing until 2015. So when I stopped playing in 2015, I just dropped the basketball part. Then I kept mindset, I kept courses, I kept books, I added coaching, speaking, et cetera. And it's pretty much what I'm doing for the last 10 years. And just casually not to launch a say it like that. I mean, let's just hold on. Hold on. So you're playing basketball and then in between, you know, you're basically coaching people with mindset and you're writing books. I mean, that's that's pretty, you know, that's just a overachiever over there.

8:14I mean, that's nothing to like, you know, that's pretty amazing. It absolutely is incredible that you were able to see that. I think a lot of people get caught up in the hype. I know a lot of sports players and what it just growing up like that was so many of them. Even my daughter, she just graduated in a few of them are going, they were drafted, right? Whether it was like you were for wherever they were and their whole mindset is, I'm going to play ball. So I'm always like, well, what's after that? They're like, no, nothing zero blank. So just that you had, you know, you had a goal, you executed it, but more than that, you had a plan. And what's even more fascinating is that you were way ahead of the time selling digital products because now digital products we hear about all the time. In 2000, what 2009, 2009, nobody knew what that was. Nobody zero, nobody even knew about content creation then. So you really should look in your trophy room, take a moment in inhale and just take that all in because you were able to do that, which brings you to where you are today and what you're doing. And I love that you said that you're helping and serving other people. So despite, you know, not playing basketball anymore, you know, you took that craft

9:16in your able to help others really understand motivation. And I think motivation and discipline or discipline versus motivation, which is a little controversial because most people say you have to love what you're doing in order to be motivated. But I agree with you, you have to be disciplined over being motivated. And then they work in conjunction. So let's talk a little bit about that. Sure. So in that, that combination does matter in the order of operations matters because motivation, I like to tell people more motivations for eighth graders because you can't depend on motivation because motivation shows up when it feels like showing up. And it's not consistent. And you don't even know if you're, you don't know when it's going to show up or how it's going to show up. But as a professional, right, as a professional, which means you do something as your main paid occupation, you're expecting to show up every day consistently. And you expect to deliver consistent. So you cannot build a consistent output on inconsistent input. That's that goes against the laws of physics. So you can use motivation to get started, but motivation must very quickly hand the job

10:18off to discipline. Because discipline is based on structure and structure is consistent. It doesn't have feelings. It doesn't have bad days. It doesn't have headaches. It doesn't need a restroom break. It's the same thing the same way every single time. And discipline is the, I like to call it the hidden secret or the secret in plain sight that everybody knows about. Everyone has access to if you ask the 100 people on the street about discipline. They all know what it is. Yet a lot of people will also admit in the next breath that they're short on it's in certain aspects of life. And it important thing is people don't understand where discipline comes from. Because a lot of people look at discipline as if it's a personality trait, which I, that's not true. Discipline is not a personality trait. And as a matter of fact, neither is confidence. Discipline and confidence are byproducts of things that are upstream from them. So if you are structured, highly structured, and you follow a structure, what it looks like is disciplined behavior. And when people see that, they put the discipline not on your behavior, but on you. So when people see you show up every day, they say, well, Mar is very disciplined.

11:20The Mars behavior is disciplined and people judge you by your actions, right? You are what you do. And then when you're disciplined consistently, because you have done the work, now what does that afford you? The thing that everybody wants, confidence, belief in yourself. So that when you show up, you have an inner belief and inner conviction about what you do. When people see you, they can read that off you. They say, damn, she or he is extremely confident. They think you're just born with that or you're just this type of person. That's not true. It's because of the work that you did that they didn't see the structure that you follow, that either they know about or they don't know about, but you're following it. That produces discipline and it produces confidence. And the point of this reason I'm breaking it down this way is, so Mar, everybody understands anyone listening to this, you have full access. The same access to discipline and confidence that everybody else has, as long as you're going to plug into and be obedient to, for lack of a better term, compliant to a structure. Structure is the starting point of all of this. Yeah. I, I would 100% agree with everything that you're saying as a sales person and as a sales

12:21leader, you see this all the time in my line of work that people fall victim to, yeah, you know, motivation. You're exactly they start, you know, everybody wants to do it, right? So you get the ones that are highly motivated. And then what starts to happen is the monotony sets in, right? No, I don't think that sale, what we do is, you know, it's not super, it's not super high, but you're not loving this every day. They're on the phones, but it's the discipline that really set buries, the achievers from the non achievers and the number one reason that people fail in sales lazy, number one reason. And it all comes down to discipline. People hate when I say it, but it's so true. My, I mean, you should see what's doing over here because my, my office is over there, but my high achievers are the most disciplined. They're the ones that come in. They're here promptly at 8 a.m. They stay until 8 p.m. They work the weekends. They stay consistent with the schedule because at the end of the day, all sales is, is numbers. And if you stay disciplined, you'll make the sale. But no, for whatever reason, this concept doesn't seem to resonate.

13:23And then people fail. I don't know. I don't know what it is. It seems very easy to me, but I don't know what it is with people. But let's talk about your, so you stand on three principles. This is like something big for you, right? You're, you talk about no emotional bag or no emotional. What's the term that you use leakage? I'm like baggage. So let's talk a little bit about that because I was very interesting when I was reading this. Sure. So we call that containment. So the easy way to remember is like a container. You put something in the container, you put the lid on it, it doesn't leak out. Long as the lid is pure tightly. So emotional leakage is what happens is a release of pressure and release of energy that comes out of people when they just don't understand the concept they usually just do it naturally because they haven't thought about or constantly thought about how do I contain it? Now the bigger question then is why contain it? Why contain your emotional energy inside rather than letting it out? Or as some people like to say, wearing your emotions on your sleeve, letting the emotions come out. Reason is because emotions contain energy.

14:23And being emotional can drain your energy because emotion does drain energy. But being a moat, have any emotions period means you're a human. Only robots don't have emotions. All humans have emotions. Just some of us are better at containing and directing our emotions, managing them than others are. So when you contain and direct your emotion, let's say you feel sad, frustrated, angry, happy, whatever, you can extract. First of all, you recognize the emotion is there. So you're not suppressing it and act like it's not there. You recognize it. But then you pull the energy out of that, whatever that energy is, and you use that the way that you want to use it. The metaphor that I give people, Mara, is that emotions are great gas pedals, but terrible steering wheels. So your emotion is what you use to push you in a direction once you have logically chosen where you're going. If on the other hand, you allow your emotions to grab the steering wheel, those who know, may remember back in the, that's probably the 90s, maybe 80s. There used to be this commercial called the crash test dummies. Remember the crash test dummies that be those two like mannequins,

15:24they be driving it was supposed to show drunk driving. What happens when you drive drunk, you're a crash test dummies. You don't know where you're going, but you're pressing the gas pedal. That's what happens when you're allowing your emotions to take the wheel, your logic and rational thinking controls the wheel. Then you use your emotion to push you in that direction. But if you do it the opposite way, you end up fresh. Yeah, absolutely. It's, it's absolutely insane. The amount of emotionally driven decisions I've seen because my philosophy is you never make a decision within the first 24 hours. It doesn't matter what happens when it comes to business. Just don't do that, especially if emotions are involved. But you would be astound by the amount of people I've seen completely lose their shit in front of other people, which, you know, they, I guess arguably some people would say, well, that makes you vulnerable, which makes you a better relatable leader. I don't know if I believe that. I think when you lose your shit and you show emotion to that caliber, I don't think that makes you more vulnerable. I think it makes you look a lot weaker and it shows that you can't keep it

16:25together under pressure. So I don't know. Maybe other people don't agree with me, but I've seen it myself in full force that I don't think that makes you a better leader to be completely emotionally driven at all. No, I agree with you that it doesn't unless you're doing it in a calculated way, kind of like a coach in basketball may yell at the team at halftime, but he's doing it in a calculated way to get control to get the attention rather of the tool. But if you lose control of yourself, maybe because the other person lost control or something happened unexpectedly and then you just, well, you're stacked, then it looks like you don't have that containment. You're not containing your energy. And now people, once they see that, they can't unsee it. And even if it, right, even if they can understand it and you can explain it, and later on, you apologize about it. People don't forget that. It's still sticks in their memories, even if they don't say anything about it. So that does cost you an alarm run often in ways that you can't count. Oh, I've seen it a million times. I've seen people implode their teams just from being emotionally unhidden. And doing absolutely crazy things. I mean, I am definitely crazy, but you would never see me act crazy ever in front of my agents.

17:30Ever. I don't care what happens, what's going on. Like once we're in the workplace, everything outside of that is just noise. It doesn't matter. But when you become emotionally unhinged or, you know, you start to lose it in front of people, your credibility goes out the door immediately. There's, I mean, people, they never forget that. I don't care what happens. And I've seen it. Like I said, a million times, people have completely lost their entire sales teams because of their emotional reactions to, to pressure or whatever's going on around them at that time. So it is pretty, it's unfortunate, but it does happen. So I'm glad that you do talk about that. So today, what are, so tell, let's talk about what you're doing today. Outside of outside of, you know, mentoring, what are you doing? The main thing we do here is, well, the main thing we just talked about with the emotional weak is we call that the power presence and the power presence is not just about controlling your emotions. It's about how can you change the emotional temperature of a space before you even open your mouth? That's what presence means.

18:30When people say a person has presence, that's what they mean. This person came in the room and the room shifted. You know, anytime you've described that energy, everybody has seen that before and felt it before. Some of us have been that person. That's the power presence. And basically what it is is structure, disappointing confidence, all embodied in a human being. You have to put an image to it. That's what power presence is. And it's not just the containment is also stillness, which is watching what comes out of your mouth. It's groundedness, which is staying focused in the present moment. And this is something that you've alluded to already, Murr. Staying focused in a present moment, regardless what's going on around you. And also making sure that you have that just overall control of yourself, which allows you to have more influence on everybody else that you are around. So that groundedness, that stillness, that containment and the last pieces of calibration, calibration means responding in a way that is proportionate to the situation in front of you. In other words, not overreacting, but also not underreacting to a situation in front of you. So where power presence is one focus, that's usually on the leader and individual level.

19:34And then on a team organizational level, we have what we call the execution reliability index, which is something you talk about. A moment ago, you alluded to, you said some people on your team, the highest performers show up early, they work weekends, they follow the process like they're supposed to. And then you have other people on the team. There is a process, everybody knows the process, but for whatever reason, they kind of drift off of the process. So execution reliability is about making sure that everyone within a group stays on the system, whatever the process is and sticks to it. And we catch any drift or deviations early before it starts affecting the bottom line. So those are our two focuses. Team level is execution reliability. Individual level is the power present. So you do this with, like you said, with teams and then you also go into corporations or businesses, whatever the case may be, and you teach these specific principles to team members or employees or 10, 90, whatever it is, that's your specific focus right now. Well, with the individuals, usually I can work with a person and let's say on a coaching level with execution reliability is more on a consulting level.

20:36It's not necessarily just teaching it to them because you could teach something to a team and they forget it by the next ones. Yeah, absolutely. And really helping them have a layer and execution reliability layer on top of their process so that it works even when I'm not there anymore. Have you seen this? So like, my, I would say my experience with people, you were saying that people aren't born confident or people are born with these certain characteristics. I would, I would kind of debate you on that. I think people are born, I do think that people are born with natural characteristics. I think you can develop them. I do think that, but I think for the most part, your character is like, that's who you are, that's your makeup. Can you improve them? Yeah, you can. You know, I have three children. Do you have children? Yes. So I have three children, right? All raised by me, you know, all lived with me for all their life, whatever, but they are completely different. But they, their characteristics have been the same since their little. Now do I think that you can develop, I think it's, I think you can develop their skills.

21:36But I think that people are just, that's why you call them natural born leaders or naturally born like this. But I think that for the most part, people are just naturally born with their characteristics. I would say you're, I don't know if you would agree with me or not, you're probably more of an expert on it than I am. What do you think about that? Because that's a little controversial. Yeah, what's digging to it? So I have a son. He's three years old. Your kids are a bit older than my. I have one that's 18. That's just graduated from high school. I have one that's 15 and I have eight year olds, a little one. Okay, so eight year olds pretty close. So here's what happens. My three year old is 100% confident. And it's even younger than that. Confidence, everybody is naturally. We're talking about that level. Everyone's naturally more of a confidence. You can remember your kids when they were two years old, when they start walking and they learn how to talk, they want something, they stick to it, they do not accept the know and they're demanding. Right? That's how they are. And they'll keep making noise until they get it. What happens is once we, once the kids get introduced to the world, they go to day care, free school, right, your school start knowing with other people, other kids, they get

22:37taught. You can't always have what you want. You must accept the know. You have to negotiate. Sometimes you got to sit down and shut up. You can't get what you want when you want it all the time. And that gets, they internalize that. And when kids internalize that, that's when they become quote unquote good. They learn how to quote unquote behave. And what happens is if they take that with them into young adulthood and then into adulthood, then it translates as well as this person is shy or this person doesn't have confidence is because they never unlearn that and they don't learn that yes, there are times to be quiet. There are times to accept the know. There are times to fall back and not make all the noise about yourself. But those are, you use them strategically when necessary. That's not a way of living. It's not a way of being it. So for example, someone like yourself, not you're in sales and you're a leader. So you understand if you carry that into sales, you won't have a career. You won't even last past training period. But a lot of people go through their entire lives, depending on the industries they're in and the people that they're around and they never learn that. So then they come across somebody like you, they don't get what they want.

23:37They don't even try. You get what you want. And then they're looking at the situation like, wait, what just happened? Who is this person that I just dealt with? Then it's because they never unlearned what they were taught. And it's not that what they get taught will be get taught and were socialized. It's bad. It's just that it's designed so that the teacher can control 30 students. I think they can't give everybody individual attention. And if the kids aren't unlearning that at home or anywhere else, well, they don't know any better. And then they're in school from the time they're free school at A's three and to college when they're 23, 20 years of that. Then they go, what do you do? Get a job. And what do you do with your job? Sit down, shut up. Wait until somebody tells you what to do. So a lot of people never unlearn that. So it gets ingrained into them. So I agree with you that everybody's more with confidence. It's just most people never unlearned that it's to be that shutting it down is a temporary thing you use strategically, not just a way of living. Yeah, absolutely. No, I mean, that makes sense. And you can see that with my just with my kids development in general, like my one son is he's out of control. He's really, I don't think he's not he's not unlearning anything.

24:39This kid is confident. I can't even I don't know where he gets all of this from probably from me, but is it from up? Yeah, probably, but this kid he does not accept no for an answer. Real talk though, has there ever been a time where you just weren't motivated or you just didn't want to do it, whether it was like getting up and going to practice or even today in your everyday life? Yes, sometimes I'm not motivated. And listen, you're a parent of three kids and you're the mom. So listen, I know from my wife raising my son there days where mom doesn't get me sleep. You don't get any breaks. You're making breakfast. You're making lunch. You're changing diapers. You're dealing with a loud screaming demanding kid. You add on to that breastfeeding add on to that your own hormones and your own female stuff. As a dad, I understand sometimes I don't get sleep. Who am I to complain? So yes, there are days where I really do not feel like getting up. I'm tired. My back hurts. I got a headache. It was making noise all night. I don't miss a day of engine because it's a principle that I'm not missing a day.

25:39It's a principle that I'm not missing a day at work. That's a principle. That's my responsibility not only to myself, but also my responsibility as a head of a household, responsibility as a man, my responsibility as a parent, especially with a boy as a child because he's going to follow what he sees dad doing. So there are plenty of times where I am not motivated at all and I don't feel like doing anything. But what I tell people all the time is, fuck your feelings, do your job. I've been saying that for a long time, but your job is your job and it's a job because it's not always fun. If it was always fun, then it'd be the playground. It would be Disney Road, it'd be Sesame Street. It's not always fun. It's not supposed to be fun. That's why it's called a job. And every profession has a part of it that's not fun. I know all of us, Laura, I'm sure you, me, everybody, we're pretty good at making it look fun on social media, but not every part of our work is fun and is not supposed to. Yeah, I'm smiling because this is exact. I mean, I have the same principles. I'm working out no matter what. I mean, first of all, it's my body and soul and that gives me my time in the morning just

26:40to kind of decompress and get myself together. And I think that going, I do think that going to the gym and working out and staying healthy is synonymous with me and successful. Some people might not agree. I don't really care, but I can tell you from my own personal experience, it goes hand in hand. And you're right, it is a principle. And when you have kids, it's important for them to see the routine from the beginning, the discipline, the days that you don't want to, but you still have to persevere. And I, you know, with this generation, we can talk about, I don't know how you feel about it, but this COVID, ever since COVID, these people have become the laziest people I've ever seen in my entire life. And they don't feel like doing it. They don't feel like coming to work. I've never seen anything like this. And it's a, it's a very hard generation right now. It's kind of reprogrammed their brain that it's not about your feelings. It's about what needs to be done in society. And as a functioning member of society, these are the things you do in order to progress. And then people want to wonder, you know, why they're not successful. And it all comes down to all the principles that you're talking about.

27:42So it's very cliche that we're talking about this. I love everything that you're saying. It's so true. Yes, I agree. And I think it's a generation probably people who are right now probably in their 20s because they were high school college, maybe early professional when COVID happened. And there was this long period where you kind of couldn't do anything. And then you could do something that was optional. And now we're kind of getting back to, okay, now this is the expectation. But if you went through all those years of it, not being the expectation, you push back against it. I think you and I and probably many listeners, we came up in an era where it's just do your job. There were no options. It was just do your job. You show up every day, do what you're supposed to do. And especially as leaders, when you're in a leadership position, you can't afford to smack off because everybody is watching and following your example. So whatever you do, they're not going to do any more than you. So you have to show up in the liver because you're setting the tone for everybody else. Oh, absolutely. The speed of the leaders, the speed of the team. But I think it comes down to also the way that you are raised. Like, I didn't know that there was a choice to go to college.

28:42That was just the way I was raised. Like my, my mom said you're going to college. So that's what I thought I was doing. I mean, I knew that there was no option. I thought maybe there was an option at one point and she definitely let me know early on that there's no option. You're going to college. And after college, you're going to get a good job. And after that, you're going to support your family. So you know, the way that I was raised obviously has a lot to do with the way that I am now. But you know, in general, this generation has just forgotten. It's just laissez faire. They come and go as they, it's at a control. But I see it. I'm trying to teach my kids, especially as a parent, that that's not the way society works. You know, society works, whether you want to do something or not, you have to do it. It doesn't matter. And then there's penalties if you don't do it. I think that's a hard concept for people. But let's talk about the books. So 30 over 30 books you've written just in your spare time. You just write books. Yeah. I've written, I've taken me over in 43, but who's counting? I said over 30. I said over 30. I said over 40.

29:43I'm, I stand corrected. So you just like, you know, just leisure your book writer. So I'm just talking about that. Yeah. The way it started was I was just taking the stuff I was talking about mindset was that I saw everybody connecting to and I just wrote books about that. I was really using my own videos as source material. So just point confidence, mental toughness, personal, I wrote books about all that. I played basketball overseas. It was a lot of players, a very niche market, but a big niche market. So I wrote books about that. And then the work on your game's name of my entire brand and company, I wrote a book about that. And about first half of it was pretty simple. This is what our people responding to. And then it would be more specific things. So to power presence, I wrote a book about that. And then just getting into the smaller niche things, leadership skills, people skills, communication skills, the things that I saw people asking me about. So from the sports world to the business world to selling to communication skills, anytime somebody, I kept getting the same questions over and over again. I would be able to make content about it, write a book about it. Now I don't write as much as I, I don't write books as much as I used to.

30:44I did most of that publishing probably between 2015 and about 2022. But now I'll still maybe write another book if I see I go enough or big enough idea. And these days now we have talk text. I don't even have to type my fingers anymore. Now I can just talk the same way I'm talking to you to transcribe it, do some editing and whom the book has done. So I can write pretty quick, pretty quickly compared to the average person. That's some super impressive. I wrote a book, but it took me a lot. I mean, like two and a half years to write the book. I wrote it, I did write it myself, but that's pretty impressive because that was definitely not the easiest task I've ever done. So who does to you for doing that? But what's next for you? So you, I mean, there's really nothing you haven't done. You've played basketball, which is, I mean, how many people really get to play professional basketball? What's the percentage less than 1% of people get to play less than 1%? I see, I know, I know a little bit about so. So you played basketball. I mean, you are, you know, you're helping in serving people. You have this amazing platform.

31:45So what's next for you in the next five to 10 years? The biggest thing next five to 10 years is slowly working to remove myself from being the star of the business. So right now I'm still the star. So I have to, I gotta do the coaching calls. I'm doing this appearance. I love doing these, but doing appearances. I gotta write the books. I, somebody becomes a client. I gotta go serve the client. So slowly creating the asset to where the asset is the star of the business. And I can just own the asset. That's eventually where I'm looking to move myself from. And that's a, it's not a difficult ego thing for me. Maybe what it meant 10 years ago, not now, but my whole business started with me being the guy. Everybody knows my name, my face, my voice, name, imaging, like this. And now it's, how do I make the asset the main thing? And I just happen to be the guy that owns it and eventually five to 10 years from now. I want there to be clients paying six figures a year to my business and they barely know who I am. AI. You can duplicate your voice. You can do, they would have no idea that it's not you. AI is where it's at. Yes.

32:45Exactly. Yes, 100 percent. I think that AI, I think everybody is going towards AI. I think if you are not, if you're not versed in social media and AI, I think 100 percent you'll be left behind in the next few years. Yes, I do. Right. Yeah, I'm not someone that's not even tech savvy at all. I'm not. Right. So I want to make a, I can AI version of myself that can do my coaching calls. Just knows everything I say the way I respond to things like frame. I know. I know. So it's taking all the recordings, all the calls, all the notes, everything, programming in there. And now you can have a Zoom call with AI Dre and you don't even know the difference. That is amazing. And you just have one child, right? Just one child. So far. So far. So there's more in them. Oh, so that could be in your next five to 10 years. Another child. That could be another thing coming for you. Yeah. And that one I can't control. So I could, I just say, I want to, but I can't control. You would like, yeah, in a perfect world. So what would you tell somebody they come to you and they're like, because this happens to me all the time, they come to me and they're like, I'm going to tough spot financially.

33:49You know, I really want to do this. I'm having trouble. I can't get up. I'm like, about to get evicted from my house. Like, how could you help this actually just, actually, I'll give you a real situation. An agent comes to me and tears she said to me, I did really, really well in my first three months. I did, I hit all my milestones. I did everything I was supposed to do. Now I'm in my second, you know, my second, 13 weeks, I'm about to get evicted from my house, not making any money. And I really just don't know what to do, but I need to make this work. How would, what would you do? How would you handle that? When I say make this work, that means they want to stay in the job. They want to stay, they don't have a choice. Because no matter where they go, I mean, it's still, you know, you still have to get higher. You still two weeks to where you get paid. At least in our business, you can have paid same week. Mm-hmm. Okay. So what this person in this hit is what we call the third day. So the third day is, that's another thing, that's another book that I read. So the third day is all about how do you show up and give your best effort when you

34:49we feel like it is actually my most popular concept. The third day is all about, the first day everybody is all excited. So you talk about the 13 weeks. So that's the starts. People are all excited at the beginning, I would assume. Then they are still doing pretty good in the middle. And then they eventually get to a point where they say, oh, okay. This is actually a job. This is actually real work that goes into this. It's not all fun and games. It's not one big party. And every industry people run into that. And the third day is about, what do you do once you come to that realization? What do you do when you realize, oh, I actually have to follow up with these people. Oh, every deal is not going to be easy. Oh, it's not going to be so simple. And that person, what I would say to them is, I would define what they've hit. And often people are, people can better deal with challenges when you can define the challenge. And that's exactly what it is. And they understand it and not the first person to run into it. And it's won't be the last time that that person runs into this. And if you want to stay in the industry, you don't have a choice. Okay. Then you don't have a choice. That's quadrupled down on the process. Quadrupled down on the system. What exactly could you be doing right now?

35:50What's the most important thing you need to be doing for your work right now? All right. Did you follow up with everybody? Did you send out the new, the emails you did? Did you knock on the doors? You need to be knocking on. Let's do everything that needs to be done in the situation that you're in. If you're about to get evicted from your house, call whoever's in charge of that. Negotiate with them and say, here's my situation. Here's what I can do. What can we work out? How can we make this work? Usually I find that even when there is a technical paperwork type of situation, if you can tell it's a person who's on the other end of that paperwork, people are usually pretty negotiable when you communicate with them. I'm sure, Mara, you understand that. You communicate with people. They're willing to negotiate. And when you ghost them and they don't hear from you, they don't know what they're getting from you. That's when they go the more policy, quote unquote, route. So go negotiate by yourself sometime. In that time, now you have no choice but to get done what needs to get done. And this is when we talk about execution reliability, Mara, this is what we call removing hedges, removing optionality and human beings do their best work. Not when they have unlimited options, but when they have very few options.

36:51Why? Because you have nowhere else to go but to press the gas on the current lane that you're in because you don't have another lane to switch into. That's actually when people do their best work, not their worst. A lot of human beings try to avoid this though because human beings, we have this mindset if we want to be able to do anything and everything, but doing anything and everything often becomes much more of a distraction than it becomes an asset. So that's what that person needs to do. Yeah. So speaking of that, everybody I think has an aha moment, right? A time in your life where you're like, okay, this is not working. You know, whatever, one was your aha moment where it just like everything around you was kind of like not clear. And then you have this like epiphany that I need a lock in. I need to get it together. Or did you never have one of these moments? No, no, I had more than one, but I think the most important one was the moment that took me from just an athlete in my mind to who I am today. And that was when I was in between, when I first saw some of those programs before I was in 1999 since the piece, I was in between jobs.

37:52The phone was not ringing. And I didn't know if I was going to get another job playing basketball. I was five years in and I played another five, but that other five was not guaranteed. This is not a 10 year contract. It was every year was a new deal. So when I sold that first product for $4.99, I said, I could do this forever. If they don't call me back to play ball, I'm just going to triple down on seven East because I already have an audience. I know how to make them. I can get on a computer and sell these. This will last longer than basketball. So from that last five years that I was playing, I knew that this thing, which back then they were starting to call it a personal brand and influencer or content creator, all that. I knew that this, the internet, and my presence here was going to be bigger than anything I did on a basketball court. And here we are. Most people don't know me from playing basketball in the Slovakia. People know me from YouTube, they know me from being on shows like this or from the internet, but not because of me on the actual court. Yeah, no, I love it. I mean, everybody, I think we're talking about all the good things and the mind frame, the mindset, but I think what people don't realize is that in order to have this mind

38:55frame and mindset and these valuable principles that we stand on, that there was a lot of things that happened in the background that got us to, you know, to believe it or not even believing, seeing that these things implemented will change your life. And that's the hard part is trying to instill this. So, you know, for me, it was at a whole bunch of sales agents walk out the door at one time. They all quit via WhatsApp. And all of them, my whole entire sales team left. They were recruited to another team. And at that moment, I was like, you know what? It doesn't matter because I could still sell. So no matter what was going to happen, if I lost my team tomorrow, it wouldn't matter because I still have the one skill, which is sales. I can still sell no matter what happens. And I think a lot of people, what they do instead is they throw in the towel. Instead of keep going, you know, keep on going. And I see it all the time here, but it is noteworthy that you too have bad days. You know, there are days that are not rainbows and sunshine. It's those days that really, I think those are the days that push us harder.

39:56And you said it, you alluded to it. You said, you know, when your back is up against the wall, that's when you perform the fast. That's right. When you don't have any other options or the options in front of you are just not going so great. I can give you one more example. Of course, I love them. Yeah. Sure. So when I first stopped playing, which is in 2015, at first five years, I was really focused on professional speaking. So I'm doing a bunch of dead of onto free gigs. I've actually got to some paid gigs and the dissent TED talks and things like that. And I remember one gig I did, I did it for free one year. They liked me. They called me back and said, come keynote the same event next year. We'll pay you just something. So they were going to pay me and it was like, well, give you half the money up front. We'll give you the other half of the money in the back end. I don't take those deals anymore. Now you pay me all my money up front. But you know better now you already know the deal. Right. So that's the story. Right. So I'm giving you the money after the event and I'm like, okay, I've reached out to them like, right, when I got back home, like, okay, how do we get the rest of the money? And this organization is like eight people on the email CC. So you already know it's a ton of red tape.

40:58This person got to talk to this person and they got to release the money to that person. And I'm getting annoyed because they're taking them all into pay me my money after they asked me to come speak. And I remember I was sitting in the, I was sitting in the jacuzzi at my building in Miami when this happened. I'm going to read the emails and I'm getting annoyed and I just started writing. I went my notes at and started writing one of the things that I'm no longer going to accept in business. Like I'm not accepting somebody giving me some of the money up front or we pay you 30 day net 30. Like I don't do net 30. So you pay me up front. All right. That's the way it's working. And I'm not accepting all these things that were happening in business that I really just didn't like anymore and I just wrote a list. And this means I'm going to have to turn down some deals. It means I'm going to have to say notice some things that I'm willing to say no because the sacrifice of turning those down to get one person to go on with the terms that I'm setting is work 10 deals that you turned down. Why? Because of who you become in the process, the tone that you set, the energy that you're carrying yourself with. And now once you get the first one, now the next one, next one, next one will become

41:59that much more easy. And the biggest challenge a lot of people have these days is as I mentioned what we call hedging. Hedging is you say you want terms like this, but as soon as somebody steps outside of those terms, because you have this scarcity mindset, oh, if I say no to this, I can't get another one. Then you end up compromising. And you compromise once you compromise again. And if you compromise on a standard, you don't have a standard, what you have is a suggestion. You have a wish, but it's not a standard if you won't stick to it. Love it. I absolutely love it. What would you say with your lowest moments? Your lowest moment and how did you, how did you overcome that? That was 2005. It was right when I started playing pro. I got my first job that I mentioned. I came home from the first job. It was only, I was only there a couple months and I got a job working overnight at a super market. So for people who don't know what happens in supermarkets, all the stuff that gets bought off the shelf during the day, if you get replenished, those are not robots. Those are humans. And a bunch of humans come in at night. We unpack all these boxes and we put the cereal boxes back on the shelf. And that takes supermarkets a big.

42:59That's an eight hour shift. That's what I was doing. I worked there for about two weeks. That was the most depressing job, the most depressing period of my life. And I was living still at my parents' home. I would borrow my mom's car, drive to work at 11, get off at seven in the morning, come back home, drive my mom to her job, and then I could use her car during the day. That's when I would go to the gym and work on my game during the day, waiting for that next opportunity. And I remember just being in there working. I remember the guys who worked here, the veterans. I got hired as a management position because I had a cows degree. That has to do with putting stuff on the shelf. I had no idea. But I remember the first couple days we would go to, we would break from lunch at like two in the morning. And I was just eating lunch over by myself or just hanging out by myself because I wasn't hungry. I'm like two in the morning. I'm not hungry. And the my boss who was training me said, hey, Dre, you probably should go sit and eat lunch with the guys because if you don't eat lunch with them, they're not going to respect you. I remember him saying that to me. I still remember it to this day. I'm like, they're not going to respect me. I just remember thinking that to myself.

44:00It's not even that it was anything wrong with them as people, but him telling me I need to go sit and eat with them where I won't be respected. It was just, it still sticks in my mind to this very day when he said that to me. Good thing is my agent called me after about two weeks and he had another job for me. So I got out of there before I even got my first paycheck. But that was easily the most depressing part of my life. Yeah, we all have them. I think everybody has a little moment, but it's just how you deal with it in the end. And you can tell, I mean, I think your whole story is very impressive, just how it started and how it's still going because you're probably still just scratching the surface. So if anybody wants to find you or getting contact with you, where would they find you? Best place. So you can find me on any of the social medias, but you can also go home page is work on your name.com. That's where you can see both of those programs we talked about. Power presence also the execution and reliability index. Amazing. Absolutely amazing. I think, you know, this was one of the most profound talks that I've ever had because I think we resonate a lot on our beliefs and principles.

45:00So for today, anyone that's watching, I hope that you had, you know, your notes out, your recorder out because everything that J. said is applicable in any line of work or any line of life or that matter. I mean, this is a true story of somebody that persevered no matter what the circumstance was. So if you like more of these episodes, please tune in and watch some of our other build talks with Tiffany Carter. But if you like what you see, please go ahead and like subscribe, unlike unsubscribe. I don't know. Do something. Tell a friend. But great. Thank you so much for hanging out with us today. You are a true bill. You're a real bill out there. Thank you. It was amazing and thank you for all the amazing advice that you gave. Mara, I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you for sharing your audience with me. Thank you.