How Dre Baldwin Thinks About Personal Agency for Success

Speaker A: Now, again, now let's be clear. I started putting videos on YouTube in 2005. I didn't start making money from making videos till 2009, 2010. So I served the audience for 4, 5 years with no financial return on investment. I, uh, was just serving because they were responding. Their response was serving me because it was showing me that I had something that was useful for them. And it was kind of validating my experience and how I learned that I could sell this same thing to somebody else. And they were doing it, and they were like, hey, this is actually working. I made the high school team. I can dribble now. I can make a three pointer. I can dunk now. So the information was helping them. This is the way you help a mentor. By the way, if you can't pay them with money, you pay them by implementing what they give you. Because your success becomes the validation of their knowledge. And you have to actually follow through on what they said because you become a success story, which is more valuable than the amount of money that you can give them in the long run because you become social proof of what they know.

Speaker B: Welcome to the How Leaders think podcast, a show that transforms you by renewing your mind and giving you new ways to think. I am your host, Kenny Lang, and with me today is the Dre Baldwin. He is the founder and owner of Work on your game. He built it to turn discipline execution into dominance. A four times TEDx speaker. This should be like a TED4x speaker. I don't know. They need to come up with something for that. And a 43 time author, so he's got a book for now until Jesus comes back, which is fantastic. And I'm a little jealous. Dre has played pro basketball for nine years. Today he helps experts and entrepreneurs install mindset systems and strategy to scale from six to seven figures with presence and power. Welcome to the show Dream Kenny.

Speaker A: I'm m excited to be here. Thanks for having me on.

Speaker B: It's going to be a blast. I felt like I should have matched. Like we could have been like a, uh, matching assassins. If you're not watching, maybe you'll feel the classiness of Dre come through here. I aspire to be at that level one day, but I think all I have is like a tuxedo T shirt. But I'm excited, Dre, to talk to you. You've done so much and have so much wisdom to share. But tell me what today is on your mind.

Speaker A: Uh, biggest thing on my mind right now. A couple things, actually. We're Working with a lot of artificial intelligence stuff to maybe do some cold calling for me is one thing to do with the writing, another thing with the cold calling. So, uh, my CRM is offering that and I'm working on tailoring it and fine tuning it right now. That's one thing. Another thing is getting systems into enterprise level companies to where they're buying into something. An asset that I have, not buying it to me as the individual. So I don't have to be the star anymore in my business. So those are really the two biggest things I'm focused on.

Speaker B: I like both of those. The first one I think you and I could probably have a good at length conversation about because that's something I'm also starting to dig into. But I really am intrigued by the second one because myself have, I've tried to position some things that way and I talked to several other people who are trying to make that same transition and it seems trickier than it seems sounds and building up business that has really benefited from and focused on your name, your Persona, your presence, but really buying into the solution you're offering and that and the way in which you can help people that isn't attached to you physically being there or being a, uh, hands on part of that talk me through what leads you to even want to go that direction with somebody of your name and your brand and your recognition books, all those things. What would, what's a catalyst, uh, for you to say? I actually really want to focus more on the service and product I'm offering. More so than just the interaction and benefit from me directly.

Speaker A: Several things. One is for 20 years it's been me, the personal brand, slash influencer, slash creator, slash superstar, whatever you want to call it. And we're not just talking business. My background's in sports. So in sports you are the asset. If uh, you can't play, you don't get paid. So as an athlete, you have to go out there and you got to be the guy. And at the same time I started putting content on YouTube and I was an influencer before we were calling them influencers and I was creating content before you can make money making content. And I made a ton of it, made a ton of content and built an audience and started selling products, courses, coaching, et cetera, some of which I still do to this day. But all of it requires me to be the star. Then getting into the speaking business, writing books, doing the coaching, doing the consulting. All those require my physical presence. And the uh, challenge is at some point, what if you want to go on vacation? What if you get sick? What if your voice is not working? What if you want to just relax? What if you want to spend time with your family or your kids? What if something happens that stops you from being able to do the performance? What do you do? I'm based in, I'm based in South Florida, Kenny, and I know a lot of people in the fitness industry, personal trainers and such. And something I heard many trainers say to me, I wasn't asking them, but they would bring it up. They said I can't afford to get injured. They would say that I cannot afford to get injured because if they get injured, they can't train their clients, they can't do their classes and therefore no money. And even though I don't have the exact same situation, I'm always thinking long term, okay, what do I do 20, 30 years from now if I decide I just don't want to do it anymore? How can I make sure that the money is still coming in through my intellectual property? Because I have a ton of it. How can I make sure that my intellectual property can still make me me money even if I am not actually doing the work? And that's why. And I'm a systems person, I'm a process type of thinker. So I like taking the information I have in my head and putting uh, it into something that is outside of me physically. Such that thing can still benefit you even if you never meet me. It's the reason why I write books, it's the reason why I make a ton of content, make courses, etc. How do I make a system that can do that exact same thing? And artificial intelligence actually helps with that because it can download and synthesize. You have to download it, but it can synthesize a lot of what you know if you're good at explaining it, which I think I'm pretty good at.

Speaker B: Uh, yeah. 43 books in I would. And for Ted Tedx talks, I would hope that those skills are there. But you bring up several good things. One of which maybe we could come back to at um, another episode would be just the ability. Communication skills are not going away just because AI is becoming easier to access. If anything it. I wrote in my weekly email scale weekly that it's just uh, AI is just a magnifier. If you're terrible at something, it's going to really magnify that. But if you're good at something, it can help magnify that as well. I also tell to uh, let younger people Know, um, that marriage, uh, is the same way if it doesn't fix anything in a relationship, it just magnifies it. So I've had a few people, including myself, have some rude awakenings thinking those sorts of things. Fix it when most often really innovative or different things are magnifiers for yourself. And thinking about, how do I scale this beyond me, how do, or how do I scale myself? Right. Systems and processes are really the way in which we scale anything. It's that move from, I found something really effective and now I want to make it efficient. Right. What sort of process did you take yourself through when considering this? Because it's a sizable shift from the way in which you've been operating. And I can't imagine not. Uh, very few things in life are just total net positive. There's often some measure of sacrifice involved in switching gears like that. Can you talk me through that a little bit?

Speaker A: Yeah. So the first thing is just figuring out what is the end outcome, the end result that I can help an individual or a company achieve. And as I thought about that, what our company's actually looking for. Because the company doesn't want, when we're talking on the enterprise level, they don't care about motivation, uh, they don't care about an inspiring story. They don't even care about some superstar individual expert. They don't care about those kind of things. They're thinking bottom line. And the closer that your result affects the bottom line, the more urgent or important it can be to the right company. So my thing has always been about execution. So it's figuring out how can I come up with something that is based on my expertise, my knowledge and my experience. And how can I translate the language of how I talk about that to the enterprise level to where somebody hears it and they say, okay, that guy actually is speaking my language. He knows what we need. All, uh, right, let's have a meeting with this guy. Let's take a look at what it is that he has. And it is as, ah, you mentioned earlier, not on. Not everybody knows this, but you clearly know it, Kenny. These are two completely different worlds. So I can go and give a keynote speech about execution in my sleep, but going into a, some Fortune 500 company, Fortune 1000 company and talking to them about it, it's a completely different conversation. They're not asking the same questions, they're not using the same words.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And if you don't, you can't pitch them the same way. They're not answering your call. They're not responding to your email. So you have to figure out how to break into that space. I'm. That's something I'm working on now, how to get in that space to where you can even have the conversations. I know I had a conversation to book a keynote. I know how to sign a coaching client. I know how to sell a course and sell a book. But that world is a completely different world. So really, it's. It is the thing that you're going to offer them, the offer the system, whatever. But it's also just as much 51% of the game in business is marketing. How do you even have the right conversation with the right person, let alone, do you have the solution that they want? But if they're not even listening to you, then it doesn't matter what your solution is. So that's the real challenge.

Speaker B: Yeah, just getting a chance to have the conversation. And I've talked to different people about that, and I find that's a common trait amongst a lot of entrepreneurs. If they can get into the room, if they can get on the stage, if they can sit down at the table, get on the call, usually they could sell, they can close. Right. Because as founders, as visionaries, as entrepreneurs, we were generally talented on some level of casting an exciting vision, showing enthusiasm, that's a little contagious. We believe in what we're doing. We're willing to work hard. Was it. Mark Cuban and many others have said an entrepreneur is someone who will stop working 40 hours a week for someone else to work 80 hours a week for themselves. But that does have a shelf life. That does mean, though, that you're not getting as many at bats, or maybe not even the right at bats, because it doesn't matter what you can sell if you can't even get into a sales conversation. What has it been like to take something that clearly what you've been doing has worked well and gotten you to where you are? But I think it's. It sounds like you're realizing that what got you here won't get you there. To borrow from Marshall Goldsmith, what are you having to surrender about yourself and the way that you've been able to find success for decades in order to pivot? I find that's usually the internal friction with a lot of the executives that I coach and entrepreneurs is, no, but this has been working. This has got me here. Can't, uh, I just build on top of this and do more of the same or do it a little differently instead of I've actually got to set something that has worked aside. Like Marie Kondo, thank you for your service. You no longer spark joy and move into a new way of doing things. Because that's tough. Especially when you've broken through and found success before.

Speaker A: Great question and key, especially if you're coming out of a space like where I'm coming out of is you got to turn your ego off. Because not about you anymore. It's no longer. You're no longer the star. See, once you create a system, process, program, whatever you want to call it. Mhm. That you're trying to get into the enterprise space, they don't care about you personally. What they care about is the thing that you're offering them. So the thing that you're offering them is useful. Then they want the thing, but it's not really about you. Now maybe they'll say, hey, you come here and do some workshops or some training so we know how to work it, et cetera. But they're not booking you the same way that you get booked for a keynote or the way that somebody signs you to a publishing deal. That's based on who you are as a person. This is based on what you, the person, the business owner has to offer. So the thing becomes the star and the person is no longer the star. That requires a person being willing and able to put their ego aside. Me, I have pleased my ego enough. I, uh, played a sport, I've been an influencer, I've done a ton of speaking, I've written the books. You can find me on Google, you can find me on Chat GPT. Uh, you can find me. I don't need to appease my ego anymore for it doesn't feel anything for me. I've done it already. So the next, um, and also just thinking in practical business terms, practical business terms, you can just take whatever you charge to do stuff and ask yourself how much of your time can you farm out to do it? Okay, that's the ceiling of how much money you can make. Because you have to do every speaking gig, you have to do every coaching call now.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker A: Different ways you can do it. You can hire other coaches, they can teach your stuff and you can do it that way. You can make m a bunch of money farming out your time. Take that money and go buy some real estate or invest in the stock market if you want to do it that way. And there's nothing wrong with doing things that way. You could maybe do a combination of all of these. But I'm thinking about how can I make sure that my IP is getting the proper roi. And I don't think I can get the proper ROI for my, uh. Let, uh, me make sure I'm using the term. People know what I'm talking about. How can I make sure my intellectual property is getting the proper return on investment? And I think that's going to be getting it into bigger companies that have thousands of people working for them to where this stuff is affecting thousands of. Instead of me affecting people by the ones, the tens, and maybe the 20s. Because there's only so much one person can do, no matter how hard you work.

Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Someone could argue that. Because you have done things that have been able to. You could let it go to your head. I don't. It doesn't sound like it has, but things that could make you feel very good about yourself and your accomplishments, that could be a really hard thing to leave behind. Right. Like, it's fe. It can feed something. There's nothing wrong with feeling good about people going, oh, my gosh, like, your book was so impactful to me. Your course helped me. That speech really, uh, inspired me to go and make a change and the way in which I live and lead and things like that. Was there something. And maybe maybe I'm. I know the answer, but maybe I don't, because you do seem very focused on the outcomes, and maybe I want to get into that in a minute. But what in you made you realize I've got to pivot this thing? Like, I've got a. There's an internal switch. Because it's not just a business decision when it's your name attached. Right. It'd be one thing if it was the, uh. If it had always been work on your game. And nobody really. People sort of knew who Dre was, but they knew your business names, but they know who you are and can find your name. Was there a catalyst moment or a clarifying moment for you when you go, oh, this is the part that I'm gonna have to change if I want to get to that next place to scale beyond myself.

Speaker A: Just looking at bigger, uh, companies, you TV show like Shark Tank, and listen to what those entrepreneurs talk about, how they got to the positions that they got to. They didn't get there by one deal. One deal individually doing the work themselves. They got there by doing big deals where the. There's a leverage. Basically, that's the word I'm looking for. The leverage. Leverage. How can I take my knowledge, and, yes, I can leverage it in one way, by, let's say I book a speaking gig and they pay me, uh, $25,000. Okay. I leveraged my time and knowledge and I made 25k for a 60 minute speech. But what if I could take the same material in that speech, repackage it in a different way to a company and they will pay a licensing fee of 250k per year for 5 years and I don't have to talk to most of the people who work there. So it's the same, exact same information just packaged in a different way, has a different price tag on it and has different value. So me, I'm just thinking about how can I play a bigger game business wise? Because I believe I have the tools. I know I have the tools. And I've worked with some small business owners and some small businesses and I know that they have organizational issues that I can help solve. But as a consultant, all you can do is talk to the leadership to say, do this. You don't really control. They actually do it. And a lot of times they don't follow through on the stuff you give them and, or they'll do some of it, but they don't stick to it. So you kind of, you get paid

Speaker B: and then blame you when it doesn't work.

Speaker A: And then they don't want to renew because they say we already have so much stuff we haven't done yet, so get back to us in six months. It's not because my stuff didn't work, because they didn't do it. So how do we install it in such a way that you're removing the bottleneck of let me give you information and then hope that you do it? How do we install it so that it becomes part of your fabric, so that it happens automatically. And again, we remove the bottleneck of the leader having to implement because they already have enough on their hands.

Speaker B: Gotcha. So part of it was also, uh, pivoting to potentially having more hands on or a different delivery mechanism for the same tools, which I have to imagine, uh, I was having this conversation yesterday, in fact, with a client about looking at their business model. They're trying to grow and they're trying to scale. And I was like, you've already been in business for eight years. You have a lot of the tools, you're delivering a service, you have people who are looking for you, but you've gotta up, uh, like you said, marketing. You've gotta get in front of more people so they know what you're doing. But we also need to look at your business model so that it can be fuel for your Growth instead of just trading time for dollars. And in looking at what all they offer, they're like, we offer this. I was like, you already have everything everybody wants. You just have to package it differently so that the way in which they access it is beneficial to them and beneficial to you. And when we started talking about that, you could see there was a bit of a relief on their faces because they realized I don't have to like come up with the next great idea. Which is what I imagine a lot of entrepreneurs think because they're like, oh, this big idea is what got me into business. That's what's going to take me to the next level instead of iterating and evolving what they're already doing. And it sounds like that was key step for you.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's the trap. That's the entrepreneurial trap. Because entrepreneurs have a ton of ideas. Uh, we wake up with the ideas in our sleep. And uh, uh, entrepreneurs often when they find themselves stuck, they come, they decide, let me come up with a new idea, a new product, new funnel, new course. That's not what you need. What you need is to figure out what people are already coming to you for. How can you make that produce a multiple of returns? So in business there's only three ways to increase your income. You either get more sales, more customers coming in, buying from you, a higher frequency of repeat purchases, or, uh, like a subscription or something like that, or you just raise your prices. There's uh, only three things you can do. So, right, I can take, as I said, take what I would give in a keynote speech and whatever they can pay me for a keynote, multiplied by how many times I can give a keynote because I physically have to show up, even if it's virtual. And how can I get that into a company to where that quote unquote keynote lasts for an entire year and is affecting thousands of people and the company is paying for it. And that way I'm producing a much higher return. I'm affecting more people, is producing a bigger result for a bigger company who has bigger consequences. So I'm just playing a bigger game with the exact same material that I already have. That. So it's asking a better question, not coming up with a better idea that that's really powerful.

Speaker B: And I also love that you said that. It's, you're not really doing anything differently.

Speaker A: You're.

Speaker B: The game is bigger, but everything else grew proportionally. So I think we can entrepreneurs again. We can get these big visions, but then when we get in these bigger rooms and these bigger meetings, these bigger deals, we can go, oh, my gosh, everything's different. And one of my coaches, who's done a ton of great stuff, he's started, I don't know, uh, like a dozen businesses. Like, he's just a very smart individual. He went and started working with this, like, nine or ten figure level business. And he went and he did, like, the first couple of sessions. And I was like, hey, so what's it like compared to some of the other businesses that you've worked with? He goes, they have the exact same problem. Their balance sheet just has more zeros at the end. And I was like, it's a bit of that for me. I was like, oh, yeah, okay. It's just the same thing, but we're going to affect more people. It, like, it didn't mean it was a wholly new thing. I've got to create this monster. It's this big, complex thing that I have to birth. From day one, I keep stacking, learning, getting feedback from the marketplace, letting it. Like you were saying, let the market tell me what it wants, what it's valuing. Now, one cool thing that maybe we'll end up with the AI is we can get a, uh, hologram version of Dre, and then hologram Dre can go on tour doing speeches, and you can make the frontier.

Speaker A: Yeah. At least on Zoom, you can definitely do that on computers.

Speaker B: There you go. Yes. But maybe live on a stage, we'll have. We'll have Dre AI coming to us. So in. In doing that, the other thing that's really interesting, and maybe this is just me, selfishly, as a fellow coach, consultant, uh, advisor, is the whole thing of I'm giving information. People clearly had a pain. I presented the solution. They liked it. It seemed like a fit. Well enough, good enough for them to sign an agreement, but then they're not really doing the work right. Because it's still. No matter how involved I get, it's still never going to be my business. It's never your business to run or control it. They still have agency, free will, autonomy, all these different things within their company. But it sounds like one of the things that you've started to see is how can I take this information which is proven and I know can help people, but there seems to be this friction between me delivering it, uh, and people applying it. Can you talk a little bit about what you noticed and how that's starting to change? Because I think whether it's for our fellow coaches and consultants and advisors in the world, or even on the inside, uh, if I'm a senior leader and I'm like, how come when I bring these great folks in like a dre, that my people aren't latching on and taking hold of this? I just spent a ton of money. He's definitely worth it.

Speaker A: But.

Speaker B: But my people aren't grabbing it. Uh, what did you notice and what are you changing that is making this. That you think is easier for people to implement and actually see the benefits of your program.

Speaker A: We call it execution lag or execution drift. That's when something is supposed to be executed, but for whatever reason there's a delay, or people just slowly drift off of the process because they're human. This is what human beings do. So what our system is about is actually called execution reliability. So it's all about adding an execution layer, a enforcement layer, an enforcement layer on top of whatever existing system is already there that ensures that the system is being followed to a T the way it's supposed to be. Because most companies or organizations, they already have systems, and when they're not getting results, they tend to think, okay, it must be something wrong with our system. Let's fix the system. But there's usually nothing wrong with the system. What's wrong is the compliance. People are not complying with the system. Same way that somebody hires a personal trainer and they don't lose weight. It's not because the trainer is not good. It's because you didn't do what the trainer told you to do. You skipped three sessions. They said, don't eat ice cream and stay off the potato, uh, chips and eat vegetables, but you didn't do that. So now you're not getting the results. But there's nothing wrong with the trainers, nothing wrong with the gyms, nothing wrong with the weights. What's wrong is you're not complying. So the non compliance has to be noticed immediately, has to be corrected, and the system has to be continually enforced because people follow what's enforced. And human beings can want standards, they want rules more than they let on. A lot of people, when you talk about rules, standards, enforcement, they tend to say, that feels constricting. It feels like somebody's breathing down my neck. It feels like I don't have any freedom, I don't have any space. But when you look at people's actions as opposed to their words, most people actually relax when they are held to constraints, when they have standards, and when they are continually corrected for non compliance. Why? Because it removes the burden of him. Them having to figure out on their own, what to do, when to do, where and how to do things. Because they're told what to do. Most people would rather be told what to do to be left to their own devices, do whatever they want. Even though everybody says they want to do what they want to do. Get leave people to their own devices, let them do whatever they want. What do they usually do? Whole bunch of nothing.

Speaker B: Um, the least amount that keeps them employed.

Speaker A: Exactly, exactly. So that's why the enforcement layer make sure that they actually follow the system that's in place. Because the system is put in place because it says we know with a pretty reasonable expectation that the system is followed consistently over an extended period of time. We expect these results. And these results are enough for the company to be company to be profitable people to make money. Leaders make money, the company expands, it grows. If everybody follows the system. Biggest challenge I see in every organization I work with because you mentioned, as you said, it's the same problems that other companies have, just with more zeros at the end. Biggest problem I find is people say something along the lines of this is from the individual entrepreneur just trying to launch a book or a course to the big companies is I know what needs to be done. We're just not doing it. We are not following through. We're not doing the jobs we're supposed to be doing. We have, they have some initiatives, some things that they want to change, some things you think might need to get better. But often it just comes down to the execution of the information that is already in their laps in front of them. They're just not getting down to getting it done because other things are taking priority.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's the. I had an equation on a sheet of paper I printed out and um, put in a cubicle long time ago selling insurance. God awful job. But it just said information plus application equals transformation is. If more information was the answer, we all be billionaires with six pack abs.

Speaker A: Makes the street.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Especially now more so like and you know with AI and uh, just on the chat side, the most simplistic version of AI you can ask any question you could ever imagine and you have access to really thorough, detailed records of the history of something and how that came to be and how that works, but that doesn't. You could research the best diet and exercise program, but if you never lace up the shoes and go to the gym or get outside or grab an apple and instead of a big ball of cotton candy or something, I don't know why I feel so hungry right now, but then nothing's gonna change. Nothing changes unless you do.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: And. And it sounds like you are a personally, but you also advocate. You. You're an advocate for personal agency.

Speaker A: Oh, yeah.

Speaker B: Like, can you talk? Where does that come from for you?

Speaker A: Even coming out of. We go back to high school. I. My background's in sports. I didn't make my high school basketball team, so I was a senior and sat on the bench that year. Nobody recruited me to play in college. I walked on in college, which is for those who don't understand the lingo that's. You go to college, but you're not recruited to play a sport. You just walk into the gym or on the field, wherever, and you try to play your way into a roster spot, which I was able to do. But is that the Division 3 level? And Division 3 is not the level that the pro scouts go looking at to find the next wave of players. They look at Division 1, those are the guys on TV. So coming out of college, nobody was calling my phone to play professionally, so I had to do it again. I had to sell myself. I had to hustle. I went to an event, several events called exposure camps, which are basically job fairs for athletes. And you don't just go there and talk about what you can do. You bring your sneakers and prove what you can do. I went to several of those events. They are paid to play, so they're not free. You pay for the opportunity to possibly get a job. And I went to many of those events, played well, played myself into opportunities when I wanted to get my first agent in basketball. Agents in sports are like agents in the literary world or the entertainment world. They're the middleman to get you a job. Uh, no agent wanted to represent me because they didn't know who I was. I came from Division 3. I cold called 60 basketball agents, sent 20 of them video footage that I had, which is on this thing called a VHS tape for your younger audience members. Y' all can Google that.

Speaker B: I'm just a museum.

Speaker A: Yeah. I mailed 20 VHS tapes out to agents, trying to get them just to represent me. Understand, having an agent doesn't mean you have a job. This means you have somebody helping you find a job. I mailed the tape to 20 of them. One of them I got back in touch with. He became my agent. I had to sell myself to get an agent. That's usually not the way it works. Usually they sell themselves to you. I had to sell myself to them. I got the agent, and that's how I Started my career, and again I played almost a decade overseas. Every year was in a different country, in a different place. Every year I was having to sell myself again. I had to get different agents because agents would leave the game and go do something else. Different teams. Sometimes I didn't know when the next call was coming in. Then at the same time, to build my. Get my name known on the Internet, this was not a strategy at first. I just took that vhs, got to put on a data cd, and that's the first footage I put on this new website in 2005 called YouTube. And that's where I started to build an audience of basketball players. It was just drills. I would just do basketball drills, showing people how to practice.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker A: And that's how people started to know who I was on the Internet. From there, they started asking about the mindset of basketball. So I started talking about things like discipline, confidence, mental toughness. Here's the mindset. You need to show up every day and train, even though you don't feel like it, even though you don't even know. I would tell them, I don't even know when my next call is coming. I don't know if I'm gonna get another job playing professionally in between jobs right now. But I train every day because if that call comes, the way it works in that world is you have to be ready within 24 hours to get on a plane and go to Portugal and be ready to play. So you can't say, hey, give me a week to get in shape. No, they don't give you a week. It's tomorrow, and you had to be ready. So confidence. How do you perform under the lights when everybody's watching? Mental toughness. How do you show up and bounce back when you just had a setback? Your last speech just bombed your ass, Client just fired you. You just tried out for the team. You didn't make it. You got fired from your last job, Whatever it is. How do you bounce back? And then the personal initiative. This is what you're talking about, the personal agency. How do you get started doing this stuff? Because there's no blueprint to being a professional speaker, kind of sort of. Not really. There's no blueprint to writing a book, kind of sort of. There's no blueprint to playing basketball overseas. There's no blueprint to being a creator or an influencer. It's just people just doing stuff. And I started talking about discipline, confidence, mental toughness, personal initiative. What happened, Kenny, is people who didn't play ball started Seeing those videos and they said, dre, this stuff applies to me and I'm not even an athlete. So that told me this stuff can be used for a non athletic audience. That was in 2010. So this is five years into my career. So from 2010 to 2015, I'm talking to the athletes and the non athlete professionals and I'm, um, starting to focus on this mindset thing. And as I saw, more entrepreneurs were coming my way because entrepreneurs like. And business professionals, they like athletes because of these very things. We have to show up every day. We had to compete. You got to bounce back. You got to be willing to take. No, you got to take it on the chin and you have to focus on the scoreboard and the outcomes. And we know how to show up. We are coachable, we can take feedback and we are team players. Every profession, every professional organization loves people like that. So they love athletes, especially sales. And entrepreneurs are salespeople. So they were really connecting with my message because my ability to extract from the sports world and translate it to people who had never picked up a ball, that's really my superpower out of everything that we talk about. So in 2015, when I stopped playing, I just dropped the basketball part and I just kept on this part. As I talked to more professionals and entrepreneurs, I learned more of their business challenges. And as I learned more myself because I'm running a business that became more of the expertise. So that's really where I've been for the last 11 years. So it's a long answer, but that's how I. That personal agency piece has been. That's in me. It's not on me. It's in me.

Speaker B: Yeah. And it sounds like didn't come all at once. It was what's. The next thing is. Okay, what's in front of me is high school basketball. Let's figure that out. Okay. Now college, now pro, now, uh, the next thing. And I have. So I. And honestly, I think that there's a ton of entrepreneurs out there who have those different stories of that they have a great. You can call it a resume or what have your story, but it wasn't. Oh, yeah. Totally envisioned. I was going to be here in 20 years and work my way backwards. And I think at some point maybe you do start to see further on. But when you're getting started, you have no idea. You're just scrapping and fighting and saying, no one's telling me not to. It is. I'm trying to think of a good, uh, analogy, but it's like seeing the Matrix is, you realize, oh, I don't have to do anything. Which you could go, oh, cool, I can just be lazy and eat Cheetos and lay on my couch and try to watch the Price is Right. Or. Or this means. Because there is no blueprint or no one telling me what to do, it means I get to make this up as I go and figure this out. And that. That, uh. And when you start to find a little bit of success, that's really empowering because you're like, oh, my gosh, I made something happen that I just figured out, which now you've turned around. And obviously, if you're watching on video, you'll see the different books behind Dre that he's written, like the overseas basketball blueprint. Uh, and things like that is he's turned around and transferred that knowledge. And that's definitely. Not everybody does that. A lot of people get out, achieve for themselves and aren't turning around and saying, look, like this was hard. I had to figure it out. Here's a way to move forward. Not saying it's the way. I don't hear anything in what you're saying. This is the one true path to growth or anything like that. But you're sharing your story little bits at a time along the way, as you find people that it resonates with and people that you can help, which is really encouraging. And honestly, I think is at the heart of being an entrepreneur is can I take my superpower, like you were saying, my God given abilities, and can I apply those to help a certain kind of person, a certain group of people? And that may change over time, but it's constantly a serve first, help first mentality.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Do you think that's at the center of what's helped you sustain, Sustain yourself? Not just, hey, I got another gold star. Because obviously you've encountered a lot of adversity along the way. Like, not every nothing. It doesn't sound like anything was really handed to you. But is it that desire to. To serve, to help that keeps you motivated?

Speaker A: It's an interesting question, because the only way you can, uh, generate money in life is you must help somebody else solve a problem of theirs. That's the only reason anybody would give you money. If, uh, you have a hot dog stand, you saw somebody's hunger problem, they gave you $2. Right. So you're always solving a problem for someone else. But I would be lying to say that my main motivation from the beginning, or even moving forward was helping others. It was about serving Myself, because I want to get a job playing basketball. Now, here's the thing. The only way a basketball team will sign me to a contract is what they looked at me and said, dre can solve our problems. I knew a coach who played overseas, and I remember I asked him. I, uh, was interviewing him once for some publication, and I said to him, hey, there are a lot of Americans in the USA who want to play overseas, and they want to hear from a coach. What exactly do they Does a coach want to see in a player so that he. You. The coach want me as your player? And the coach said, solve the problems. We sign players who solve problems. We look at our roster, and we say, what problems do we have? Okay, we have these three problems. We're going to sign the player who best solves these three problems. So even when you're trying to serve yourself, the only way you can serve yourself is by solving problems that serve others. That is the equation. That's the first principle of exchange. Nobody's going to give you anything unless you're giving them something that they want. If you're not giving anybody anything that they want, they won't give you what you want. That is a paraphrasing of the great Zig Ziglar. That's what he said. Give people what they want, you'll get everything that you want. So even if you have selfish. Your origin is selfish intentions, which I would say it is. For me, I could not satisfy those selfish intentions unless I figured out how do I help someone else so that they take what they have and they're willing to give it to me. So either way, you still end up serving.

Speaker B: I love that. I think that there's a key part in that that I feel is hard for a lot of people, uh, possibly myself included. M. I just get the benefit of having some smart people, coaches, getting to have podcasts, guests such as yourself give me, uh, free coaching. But what helped you figure out what problems you solve? Because that's a great equation. I. Okay. I solve these types of problems. I need to see who has those kind of problems and work how to solve them. Great. Everybody in business agrees with you, but I think the waters are murky. And figuring out what actually am I really good and unique at solving, what helped you figure those things out, whether it was in basketball or in business or anything else?

Speaker A: Excellent question. The first thing is, let's see where, uh, how far back I can go here. So let's just start with, uh, when I want to play basketball, I want to play Basketball overseas, I'm coming out of a Division 3 college. There are about a lot of people don't notice for an American born player, only passport you have is a USA passport. There are about 5,000 jobs in the entire. Not 5,000, that's overestimation. About 2 to 3,000 jobs in the entire planet to play basketball. About 2 to 3,000 every year. And notice that every year they don't swap out every player, players come back. So every year how many open jobs you have? Less than a thousand. So I'm coming out of a Division 3. For every one job there are probably 5,000 young men who think they can fulfill that job. So I had to ask myself what can I do that they can't do? Because if most players mindset will be what I just think I'm that good at my sport so if I just play then they'll obviously see it. But I was realistic enough with myself, Kenny to say, okay, I'm coming out of a Division 3 college. It's not like I'm LeBron James or Kobe Bryant. So my talent doesn't jump off the page so much that I'm that much differentiated from every other player at my level. So what can I do that they won't do? And I knew that most players didn't think like, they didn't think like business people, they thought like athletes, which is if I just play, that'll be good enough. I knew that wasn't enough for me because if it had been, I wouldn't have been at a Division 3 college in the first place. So what I did was figure out how can I sell myself. I know the other players are not going to sell. I know other players are not going to make 60 cold calls to agents. They're not going to go email teams. I sent emails directly to teams at times and those are the things that got me in the door. Not because I was so good at basketball. I was good enough that I was eligible. But I had to do something that separated me out of the pack, the big pond fish that was in basketball. Then when it came to building my name on the Internet, I put footage out there. Not because I was trying to strategically become an influencer. I put it out just because I had footage. I just wanted to see if I looked the way that I felt like I looked when I was playing. So it was really for me what happened was, and this is the key, the audience started responding to what they were seeing and their commentary told me what to do next. So this is listening to the audience, I just paid attention to what they were saying. So when the players saw my footage, they said, who are you? Where do you play? How often do you practice? Can you show us how to do this and this? And they were asking questions that I could answer. What I realized very early on, Kenny, was that I, ah, was talking to myself 10 years old, 10 years younger than me. These are just me. 10 years younger. They're sitting in a seat that I used to sit in. Difference between me and them is that they could go to the Internet to get information, whereas I was on my own to figure it out. Luckily, I had figured it out. Now I could be the resource for them. Now, uh, yeah, now again, now let's be clear. I started putting videos on YouTube in 2005. I didn't start making money from making videos till 2009, 2010. So I served the audience for 4, 5 years with no financial return on investment. I, uh, was just serving because they were responding. Their response was serving me because it was showing me that I had something that was useful for them and it was validating my experience and how I learned that, ah, I could sell this same thing to somebody else. And they were doing it and they were like, hey, this is actually working. I made the high school team. I can dribble now. I can make a three pointer. I can dunk now. So the information was helping them. This is the way you help a mentor, by the way. If you can't pay them with money, you pay them by implementing what they give you. Because your success becomes the validation of their knowledge. And you have to actually follow through on what they said because you become a success story, which is more valuable than the amount of money that you can give them in the long run because you become social proof of what they know. So that was what I was doing with basketball. Eventually the players started asking, can you give me a program? I started selling programs for $5 a piece. All, uh, I was doing was responding to the audience. I was selling five dollar training programs. That's the first thing that made me an entrepreneur, in fact, on paper. And then it was books they were asking about. When I did the mindset videos, they said, you write, you make. I called it Hoop Handbook for Basketball. So somebody said, since you make Hoop Handbook for Basketball and you do this mindset stuff, why don't you make a mental handbook? And I literally have a book called the Mental Handbook. Uh, to this very day, I wrote the book called the Mental Handbook because people kept asking for the mental handbook. I just kept. Every book that I wrote was just an answer to a question that people were asking. I didn't come up with any of these. Just sitting in a dark room by myself. And an epiphany hit me. It was just responding to what the audience was asking for when it came to the entrepreneurs. Again, business people are coming to m me on the mindset side. But as I learned more about business, they were telling me about their business challenges, and I started helping them with that. When it came to getting out of basketball, 2014, 2015, my. My mentor in speaking business, she said to me, dre, you have substance here because you have this brand. You call it work on your game. You play the sport. You have all these attributes that professionals like because of your athletic background. But the challenge is you have to figure out how to package this in a way that people who don't understand sports can understand you. How do you package that and make work on your game matter to a business audience? Because they don't care that you play basketball. They care, but they don't. So I had to figure out how to translate that. Okay, here's how the discipline on the court applies at work. Here's how confidence applies for you. Here's how mental toughness applies. Here's how personal initiative applies. And I came up with, uh, a framework. I have a signature keynote called work on your game. And I use sports examples, but I translate it for an audience of people who've never played a sport, and they can understand it very well, because, as I told you, my superpower is my ability to articulate and translate material from one place to another. So that's how I did it in the speaking business. And then as I learned more, again, it was different business people coming to me. Entrepreneurs, leaders of organizations. Then I realized, okay, this is how I can help people on an organizational level. And that's what I'm trying to. That's what we talked about, the start of this conversation. How do we get this to the organizations?

Speaker B: I love that, man. I think we got. We could probably have an episode for every book you got, but so we'll have to have you back. But if somebody's listening and they're saying, okay, this resonates, I want to have agency. I want to make my own version of what Dre's going through. I want to scale myself. I want. I want to move into something new, means I'm going to have to figure some stuff out, all that, whether it's mindset or an actual behavior or something else. What's a baby step a leader can take in the next 24 hours, spending little to no money to put themselves in that position, to take their next step to grow.

Speaker A: The first thing they want to do is ask yourself, who do you see when you look in the mirror? And then the second question is, who do you want to see when you look in the mirror? And, uh, we don't look at the contrast between those two answers. And, uh, what we need to work on is closing the gap between those two answers. And when you close the gap between those answers, that becomes an unconscious and unspoken communication that you're making not only with yourself, but with the world. And the world will start responding to you differently. But you have to ask those two questions, and you have to answer them honestly. That's the starting point.

Speaker B: Yes. And if you have trouble being honest with yourself, find a loved one. Not your mama, maybe your mama, but find someone for me. I go to my wife sometimes. She comes to me. And I didn't even ask for that level of honesty. But maybe you can find some friends that can help you answer that question as well. But I think that's a great exercise and it's not one to be taken lightly. I know it. I think it'll sound deceptively simple. If you're listening, don't brush it off. Really sit with that, because there's a lot of power and a lot of clarity is going to come from doing that. Dre, if people want to know more about you, your books, work on your Game Inc. Or anything else. Or maybe they just have some follow up questions to what they've heard from you today. Where should they connect with you, get more information about you and your work?

Speaker A: I do offer a free copy of my most popular book. Can I share that?

Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker A: The most popular one is the Third Day. I think you mentioned it earlier. Third Day is the decision that separates the pros from the amateurs. And this book was answering the challenge. How do you show up when you don't feel like showing up? That's what this book is about. Started with the basketball players, but translated to the business alt audience. And they love this concept. We get this book out for free. Just go. Just ask that you cover the shipping. Just go to third daybook.com. that's all spelled out. We'll send you the book for free physically to your doorstep. Other than that, you can find me on any of the social media platforms. Just look up my name, Dre Baldwin. And our homepage, regular homepage, is work on your game.com gotcha.

Speaker B: And then you also have the work on your game podcast.

Speaker A: Yes, that's, uh, a solo show. About 20 minutes every episode comes out every single day. Has been going for 3,000 plus episodes since 2016.

Speaker B: Good Lord, man. All right, that's. I got some more recording to do if I'm going to attempt to catch up

Speaker A: much more.

Speaker B: Yeah, I just go solo, and I'm recording 10 episodes a day. Dre, this has been a great conversation. I've really enjoyed it. I've gotten a lot out of it, and I'm sure our listeners have, too. So thank you for making time and sharing, uh, your knowledge and your wisdom with everyone. Listeners, thank you so much for taking the time to listen. We know you have many choices when it comes to podcasts, and we thank you for flying Dre and Kenny. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, email them to me, but leave a comment somewhere on YouTube or Apple or Spotify or any of those fine platforms. Great review the show that. That interaction gives me good feedback, but it also helps more people like yourself get this content and these conversations in front of them, just based on how the algorithms work. It is a free and easy way for you to pay it forward. And won't that make you feel warm and fuzzy inside? But until next time, change the way you think you'll change the way you leave. We'll see you.