Becoming the Most Successful Version of You

J: Welcome to the BiggerPockets business podcast show number 84,

Dre: problem with fake it till you make it is that the human brain takes everything literally. So if you tell yourself that you’re faking your brain knows that of industry to Costco strike 12, right? And then like send the roadway you turn from that.

That beautiful ball gown back to the rag. So you got to go back to who you were of your faking.

Welcome to a real world. MBA from the school of hard knocks, where entrepreneurs reveal, what it

J: really takes to make it,

Dre: whether you’re already in business or you’re on your way there. This show is for you. This is bigger pockets, bigger.

J: How’s it going everybody. I M J Scott, I’m your co-host for the BiggerPockets business podcast. And I am here once again this week with my lovely wife and co-host Carol Scott. What’s going on, girl.

Carol: Everything is just good right now. Right? It’s that time of year when or taking a look back at all the different things we have going on and looking at the future, seeing what we want to simplify, what we want to expand and how we want to streamline everything.

And. Just such a great spot to be in because you can look back and see what you’re most proud of what wasn’t working so well and where you want your focus and initiative to be for the following year. So I love, love, love this time of the year.

J: Absolutely. It’s also that time of the year where we start looking forward to what are we going to do next year and what are we going to focus on?

And for some of us, we look towards who are we going to be? Because a lot of us are. Always in the process of reinventing ourselves and reinventing our business and reinventing our livelihoods. And we have the perfect guest for anybody out there that is trying to figure out what you’re going to be next year or how you’re going to be a better version of what you are next year.

His name is Dre Baldwin. We don’t do a whole lot of mindset and motivation episodes on the show is just one of the things we decided early on that we weren’t going to do. But for reasons, we’ll talk about when we get into the episode. We decided to bring Dre on Dre is a former basketball player, professional basketball player, and he is a motivational and mindset expert.

He’s also the author of 27 books. He’s a public speaker, he’s a consultant. He’s done four Ted talks and he’s here today to talk about his framework that he calls. Work on your game. And so framework all about being more productive, more successful, and basically becoming that person or that entrepreneur that you want to be.

This episode is absolutely jam packed with tips to improve your motivation, to help you focus and just to provide a path for you to help define who you want to be right now and how to get there. This is just an absolutely great episode. I’m positive. You’re going to love it a little bit different than, than our other episodes again, because we are focused on motivation and mindset here, but I think our listeners you’re going to absolutely love it.

If you want more information about anything we talk about on this show, if you want more information about Dre or the stuff he’s done done, please check out our show notes at biggerpockets.com/biz show 84. That’s biggerpockets.com/biz show 84. Okay. Without any further ado, let’s welcome. Dre, Baldwin to the show.

Carol: Dre, welcome to the BiggerPockets business podcast. I’ve got to tell you, we have been long time fans from afar. We love your message. You’re so motivational. So inspirational. You have an incredible backstory, but I’ve got to share something with you that I think is. Super important for our listeners today.

Right? You did something that absolutely plays into one of the four principles that you live by and teach other people to live by, which is take some major personal. Initiative, you sent us a custom tailored personal video of why, what you have to offer is a perfect mix for what we talk about here on the show.

And it’s extra going the extra mile, doing things like that, really putting yourself out there, going above and beyond that can make a difference in everyday life. So I had to mention how crucial that was in getting you on the show and we can’t. Thank you enough. So thank you for living by your example.

Thanks for being here today.

Dre: Oh, excellent. I definitely appreciate that introduction, Carol and Jay. I definitely appreciate both of you having me on here and yeah, thank you, absolutely. Right. That does play right into what it is that I do. So I’m glad that it worked.

J: Dre Carol is spot on. I mean, part of the reason, big part of the reason we don’t do a whole lot of mindset.

Episodes on this podcast, there are plenty of other podcasts, including yours. That’s heavily focused on mindset, but when I saw your intro video that you sent to us, I knew we had to have you on. So thank you so much for being here now for our listeners who don’t know, you don’t know your backstory. Start with, start at the beginning.

What got you to where you are today? What is your backstory? It’s truly inspirational. And I think our listeners are going to love to hear it.

Dre: Sure. Well, I’ll give you the three minute version. I’m sure we’ll fill in the blanks along the way. So come from the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania grew up always into sports, so playing backyard sports, and we didn’t have backyards.

We had driveways. So we had the concrete, not the grass. So. Playing kickball in the streets. So basketball on the portable backyard courts, touch football, eventually migrated the playing team sports. I tried to play football first, but, um, a family couldn’t afford football equipment. So I never really played football.

Now I played baseball for a few years until I realized I had no talent in baseball, I couldn’t hit throw or catch. So I moved on to basketball and that was where I felt like even though I started out not very good. I felt like I had some talent and maybe something come a basketball. So I kept playing this around the age of 14.

When I started with it’s pretty late for a player. Who’s even thinking about going college to college, to play, let alone want to play pro, but I kept playing now. I kept working on my game and this is we’re talking to mid nineties here. So there’s no YouTube, no Instagram. Nobody’s showing me how to breathe.

I basically was self-taught in basketball. Didn’t make my high school team. So I was a senior average, two points, a game. And for those who don’t know basketball, two points is not about an in-basket ball, maybe in soccer or hockey. But in basketball, that’s not too much. So I ended up walking on in college, meaning I was not invited.

I did not have a scholarship. The coaches did not know who I was. I just literally walked into the gym, try it out, show what I could do, made the basketball team in college. But I’m at an NCAA division. Three school was the third tier of sports. Most athletes at this level don’t even think about going pro let alone, did they actually make it happen?

But I was able to make it happen coming out of that D three school simply because. I know how to sell myself. I know how to market and promote myself and get people to notice what I’m doing and the positive attributes of what I’m doing. So, because I was able to sell myself, I was able to connect with an agent and agents work in sports the same way they work in modeling or acting or in movies, the same way there that connects the Go-Betweens Asian and got me my first deal playing overseas while I started playing overseas at the same time started publishing videos.

So this brand new platform called youtube.com. And it’s 2005. And so I do literally mean brand new. So all my content was basketball material. All my audience are basketball players and there’s Watson. My stuff I’m playing overseas. It was no big deal. It was, you all remember 2005 to 2010. YouTube was just cat videos and your baby did something funny.

There was no money to be made on YouTube. So around 2008, 2009 players started asking me more questions, not about how to dribble and dunk. They were still asking about that. But they were asking about my approach to the game because they just saw the way I was showing up every day. And he said, who is it?

Is this guy he’s not on TV? I’ve never heard of him. Why do you show up every day to work out? Or you had a confidence in the game that you have in practice? They figured I would have that answer. Or Dre, you said in the comments that you got comes from your high school team three years in a row. But now you’re playing overseas.

Like why’d you even keep playing how’d you have the mentality to even keep trying, or how do you get yourself known on the internet? Because by Oh eight Oh nine, this is the early days of influencing branding. We just started using the phrases, social media, content marketing. These were brand new phrases at this time.

And YouTube was just now offering this way to, you can make ad revenue off your videos. So all of this happened at the same time. And at the same time, I found myself unemployed in basketball. I was a free agent without a contract. So I asked myself a really important question. And this is the big question that turned me from just the basketball player into what became a brand and an entrepreneur.

And the question was this, how do I take the things that I love doing, which is playing basketball and something that I’m really good at, which is being all computers slash the internet. I’ve always been a computer geek. Even though I’m an athlete. And how do I combine those two and make money from that question?

I did not initially have the answer, Jay and Carol. This is an important insight that I always tell my audience. That insight is not always about having the answer. It’s about asking the right question. So when I asked myself that question, I eventually came upon the answer, which is invest more time into this, this interview, that thing that you have going here, mind you, we weren’t calling it Branson.

We weren’t calling ourselves influencers, but I had his audience and there was this energy too. And I remember telling a friend of mine. What I’m doing on the internet right now is going to be bigger than what I’m doing playing overseas. And then people who know me these days don’t know me from playing overseas.

Like I bet neither of you have ever seen an overseas basketball game, even though, you know, I play, but everybody’s seen a YouTube video. So when people see me in the street and they know me is from YouTube, not from overseas, funny enough, but that’s what led me to invest in more into my brand, into, you know, coming up with this phrase work when you’re getting with I’m.

Sure. We’ll talk about. And just people getting to know that, Hey, this guy plays ball, but the stuff that he’s talking about, it’s not really basketball. It’s stuff he’s talking about his life. It just happens to come from sports. So that’s kind of where I started at. And fast forward to now the full-time CEO owner of my company, working on your game, where we take the tools you need to succeed in sports to get to that top 1%.

And we teach how they apply at work, how they apply in life. And I’m sure we’ll fill in the gaps along the way here.

J: Yeah, I definitely want to fill in the gaps and I love this and I’ll be honest. I talked to a million people that started on YouTube in 2005. It wasn’t that uncommon. 99.9% of them stopped in 2005 or maybe they made the 2006 or maybe they made it to 2007.

Like you said, nobody really knew what YouTube was. Certainly nobody figured out how to monetize it. Nobody, most people just didn’t have the motivation and the discipline and everything else that it takes to keep. Just powering through and building their brand. And you saw that you had that vision. And so there’s clearly something that separates you from the 99.9% of people out there that were on YouTube in 2005, listening to some of your stuff, though, what I’ve realized is there’s.

Plenty of stuff about you that separate yourself from 99.9% of all the people out there. And a big part of that is what you have deemed your work on your game. These four principles of work on your game that you’ve kind of built your brand and your business and your motivational mindset around. So can you talk to us?

What is work on your game? What are those four principles and how have you personally use those? For principals to kind of push through and do again, what 99.9% of people haven’t done

Dre: we’re working on your game, came from, was answering those questions that the players were asking me. So I started talking about discipline, why I showed up every single day to the gym to work out and how I even learned how to play basketball because nobody was teaching me.

I’m on an outdoor court, on the asphalt and Philadelphia practicing on my own, just trying to figure it out. Second one was confidence. Putting yourself out there, boldly and authentically. And that came from me answering questions for the players. This players will say, well, drain, I go to the park and practice by myself the same way that you do.

But then when I get in the game and everybody’s watching, I get performance, anxiety, I get nervous. I know everybody’s looking at me. I don’t want to mess up and I make mistakes. So how can I have that same confidence when I’m being watched? So that was the second principle is confidence. Third principle is mental toughness, and I think this is.

I would say, this is one of the biggest ones, but then I can say that about all when I’m actually, so that’s what makes, that’s what I love about this philosophy. The mental toughness is about continuing to do the work showing up every single day and continuing to believe in yourself and in your plans, even though doing the work and believe in yourself has yet to produce the desired result.

And I tell people is not mental toughness until things don’t work. It’s not mental toughness everything’s working. So all those times I got cut from a high school team, having a walk on at a D three and getting out of college and not having any prospects to play professionally. Nobody is not like agents were beating down my door.

When I finished playing in college, I had to manufacture that opportunity so that mental toughness was required to me to even keep trying, even though I had the ability and then the last one was personal initiative, making things happen instead of waiting for things to happen. All this mindset stuff sounds great.

And like you said, Jay, there are a million people out there talking about it, but there comes a point. You got to take all that mentality. You got to turn it into something tangible. And you had to actually take action with it and make it into something real. So that’s where you take all this stuff in are now, how do we make a strategy?

How do we make a plan and actually do something with this so that we get a real result so that we’re not just talking this woo mentality, motivation stuff, but there’s something real behind it. And people can say, okay, I see, I see you’re talking about the mindset, but now I see the real results that came from it.

That’s what work on your game is about. So I want people to understand. Working on your game is not the last step in the process. It’s the first step you work on your game first, then you get an opportunity. Then you perform, then you produce results and then you get all the stuff that you want. The love, the fame, the attention to money to girls, whatever it is you like.

That’s how it works.

Carol: Love it. So Dre, I would really absolutely love to dig into each one of these principles a whole lot more, especially like, think about it. We’re business owners or entrepreneurs. We are husbands and wives and partners and parents and friends and community members in so many different roles that we’re all having to fulfill simultaneously.

Right. So. In the midst of all that walk us through, what are those things we need to be doing in terms of discipline? You, you say, you know, you just need to show up every day and do the work while, heck I don’t know about you, but for me, that’s a whole lot easier said than done, right? We always feel like we’re being pulled in so many different directions.

We’re fighting fires as they come about. How do we focus and just get some discipline to begin showing up every day and doing what is needed to be successful.

Dre: Underneath this whole framework of working on your game. We have frameworks within the frameworks. So the framework for discipline is called the third day.

And I talk about this in my book, work on your game. The third day principle works thusly the first day. Let’s say someone has taken some time away from working out even this year with COVID and all it is, gyms were shut down for six months. Couldn’t go to the gym and you find out finally started to go back and work out.

So you haven’t been there for a while. The first day you feel great, right? Because. Going to the gym is voluntary. It’s something you choose to do, you know, is going to help you. You’re going to be healthier. You’re going to live longer. All of that first day, you feel great. You work out the workout, kicks your butt.

You drag yourself home, look in the mirror and you say, I’m doing this second day. You’re still excited for it. I mean, think about the second time you drive a brand new car still smells brand new. Right? You get to the gym, you work out hard. Now it was a little bit harder the second day, because you have that fatigue from the first day and you’re still not conditioned for working out every day.

So your body’s like, okay, this is something different. Workouts a little bit tougher, but you still push yourself through it. It’s only the second time you look at yourself in the mirror and you say a little bit less enthusiasm. I’m doing this the third day already. Things change on the third day, your body and mind are having difference of opinion.

On the third day, those new workout sneakers, as you laid next to the bed, cause you read the article about going to the gym. They put the sneakers next to the bed. Those sneakers feel like they made a seaman on the third day. You don’t want to look at that bubbly, friendly person standing at the front desk and says hi to you when you walk in, because you’re just not feeling it mentally.

On the third day. You don’t want to hear it from your trainer or the instructor in a bootcamp class because you just, your body, your mind is just not feeling up to it on the third day. This is the day when you send a text to your trainer and say, Hey, just charge me for the session, but I’m not coming.

The third day is when your self-discipline or lack thereof, reintroduces itself to you. And the third day is all about it is not. The third day is not necessarily one, two, three days in a row. The third day is an internal thing is any situation in your life where the newness has worn off the novelty is gone, but there is work that still needs to be done.

And you’re the one responsible for it. And the reason why, or anytime I give a speech or I’m talking to an audience of professionals, entrepreneurs are open with the third day, because this is what separates the pros from the amateurs, because an amateur can choose not to show up, but they don’t feel like it.

And nobody’s going to care because nobody’s paying them. But as a professional, when you’re getting paid for your job, or you have customers who are buying from you or somebody who’s subscribed to you, you might not feel like being at work, but those customers are your boss. And if you don’t show up. All right.

That opportunity that business may go away. So that’s what the, when it comes to discipline and showing up every single day is a decision that you have to make to be the professional and show up every single day and do your job because that’s what makes the pros, the pros. Now, technically the dictionary says a professional is a person who gets paid for something is your main paid occupation to work on your game definition of professional person who shows up every single day in performance, regardless of how they’re feeling.

J: I absolutely love that. And I know all of us as entrepreneurs, we get go through this. Just like, I mean, people, when you, when you worked out, I mean at first day you get up and it’s like, I am excited. Everything is great. I’m going to conquer the world. And then by the second day, you’re just kind of like, Ooh, okay.

I guess this is a little bit harder than I thought. I’m not like, I’m not rich yet. I’ve been doing this 24 hours. I’m not rich yet. But I’ll keep going. And by the third day, it’s like, your mind starts telling you, what are you doing here? And are you really cut out for this? And you’re starting to question yourself and I’m guessing that’s where that second piece comes in.

That confidence piece, because I know for me, and I talked to, I talk to other entrepreneurs all the time and the one thing we all have in common is it’s a roller coaster. So basically right now is great. And 10 minutes from now, I could feel like I just want to crawl into bed and give up. And then an hour after that, I’m feeling great again.

And so I know for me, a big part of that is, is the confidence, the second piece of the work on your game. I have this confidence that I might lose the confidence, make, get some of it back then. I lose it again. So talk to us about the second piece, talk to us about confidence and how we build that. But just as importantly, how we maintain it.

Dre: Absolutely. So with confidence framework that I explained is called the super user and a super you is you still being yourself, but as you at your highest possible level of confidence. So an example that I give is this kid he’s playing high school basketball. He gets the practice one day and the coach says art today.

And we’re going to do something different. Now, a coach on a sports team, we all know the archetype. The coach is going to yell at you, point out your mistakes, tell you how you’re messing up. That’s what the coach is supposed to do, right? So the coach says today, We’re not going to do that. I’m not going to point out anybody’s mistakes.

I’m not yelling at anybody because today I’m going to make each one of you pretend to be one of your teammates. And you’re going to show each other who you are as a player. So whoever is assigned to be you, you watch them because they’re going to show you who you are. So every mistake that they make, you make it every mistake, every good thing they do.

You do that. So you show your teammate who they are today. And this player, his name is Tucker. He is. Basically a marginal player. So it it’s 12 players on a basketball team. Let’s say he’s in ninth or 10th, best player mediocre on his best day. On this particular day, he randomly gets assigned to be his teammate.

Mike, it might just happen to be the best player on the team. So I usually ask audiences, how do you feel like he performed that day in practice? His assignment is to be the best player on the team, but what do you guys think? What do you think he did?

J: I’m guessing that, that he probably stepped up his game.

He told himself that he was better and he convinced himself because I know mindset is so important. And so I’ll let you tell me if I’m right, but it’s something that I love this, so yeah, I would assume he stepped up as Gabe.

Carol: Yeah. I’m thinking he’s supremely kicked, but like he stood a little taller. He moved a little faster, was a little bit more skilled in what he was doing.

And he performed like never before that. Right.

Dre: You both got it, right? Yes. He went and he performed, he said he performed that day better than he ever performed in his life. He was making all kinds of shots, doing all kinds of moves that people had never seen. His teammates are looking at him like, where is this coming from?

And when practice was over, the coats looked to him and said, man, if that’s what it takes, you need to pretend to be Mike every day. Because what he had tapped into was this super you and super you is not. Fake it till you make it with is something that a lot of people talk about when we talk about confidence, pretending to be something that you’re not, and no, the problem with fake it till you make it is that the human brain takes everything literally.

So if you tell yourself that you’re faking your brain knows that eventually the Costco strike 12, right? And then like send a roadway. You turn from that, that beautiful ball gown back to the rag. So you got to go back to who you were of your faith, but when you’re being the best version of yourself being.

Is a permanent change. You chose to change into this version of yourself and the thing, that’s how, when I told that story, this guy, Tucker, didn’t all of a sudden come up with these skills out of nowhere, he already had these abilities within him. It’s just what confidence is. One of the main things that nobody ever brings up.

It’s you giving yourself permission to no longer conform to being who you’ve always been. And that’s really the key that changes everything. When you say, okay, I don’t have to be this person. Everybody knows me as this person. But I’m going to have the courage to step out and be something else. And people are going to look at you.

Funny people might laugh at use. Somebody might ridicule you or question you or challenge you, but you’re still willing to be that person and stand on it. That’s when things actually change in life, because the principles of achieving is you be at first, then you do it and then you have it right. Is be doing hair.

So the being part comes first. The challenge that a lot of people have in life is that they first start with the doing, they just start doing stuff. And then when it’s not working, they’re wondering why they’re not getting the result. But, and the answer to your question, Jay, to answer the rest of this is how do you maintain that?

Confidence is a choice. See confidence and discipline work off each other. And I tell people, discipline breeds, confidence. So when you’re confident, you have to have the discipline to continue sticking to that super you, even if let’s say you step into the super you and you fail and you come up short, you don’t make the sale, right.

You don’t get the promotion, you don’t make the shots. Do you still have the discipline to keep stepping into that highest version of yourself every single day until you start getting the results that you want? It is a choice.

J: I really love that. And I it’s a subtle distinction, but you talked about the don’t fake it till you make it, but you’re still kind of faking it till you make it.

It sounds like the distinction there is that the, or the difference there is that in your version, the version that works is you’re being honest with yourself. You’re saying I am, I’m not the greatest in the world, but I’m going to go out there and act like I am. But in the back of your mind, you know, You’re doing this for your own benefit, as opposed to lying and trying to deceive others.

So it’s really an internal honesty. That is the difference. And I found that in this world, when you’re honest with yourself, with when you’re honest with others, it gives you a freedom to just perform. And when you have to keep up a lie doing the, the true definition of fake it till you make it, you end up in a situation where you’re so concerned about trying to keep up that lie, that you can’t be the best person that, that you could possibly be.

Carol: And I’d like to add to how powerful it is. And I really want to reiterate a thing. You said a couple of minutes ago, Dre is that it’s imperative that you give yourself permission to be the best version of yourself. It’s about giving yourself permission, right? Because so many of us feel like we’re just out there, we just need to prove ourselves and get others approval and make sure that people are cool with what we have to say and do.

And we’re not quite sure how we should step around that. So again, I just want listeners, I want you to remember this point, give yourself permission to be that bold, authentic version of yourself that, you know, gives you the most potential to reach the things you want to do. So thank you for that nugget, right?

I think it’s hugely powerful. So take us to the next, the next principle of work on your game, talking about the mental toughness. And I like to call out another side note. I absolutely love how these all. They don’t only stand on their own, although they do stand on their own and we could dig very deeply into each one, but I think it’s looking like they all play into each other and they’re all very interconnected.

Right? So it’s, it’s this wonderful ecosystem, these principles that have created. So talk to us about once you have got this confidence working, how we really look at mental toughness as far as work on your game.

Dre: Well, the thing that I think we all know by age 12 is that not everything in life is going to work in our favor.

All right, there are going to be times when we miss the shot times when things don’t go well, we launch a product and it’s crickets. Nobody’s interested in what we have, what we’re doing. And we thought it was going to work out perfectly. And this is when our mental toughness gets challenged. And the way that I describe mental toughness is your willingness.

To continue to be disciplined, meaning showing up every day, doing the work and being confident, putting yourself out there boldly and authentically, even though being disciplined and confident has not produced the result that you thought you would have achieved by this point. So when you’re playing a sport and you got cut from the team three years in a row who tries out the fourth year, most people don’t make it to the fourth year of tryouts.

They got cut three years in a row, or you keep releasing products and they’re not selling. Many people don’t release the next product or you don’t try anymore. Right? Jay, you said, you know, a lot of people who started on YouTube in 2005, and they ended on YouTube in 2005, because there wasn’t a lot of, they weren’t getting the traction.

They didn’t quite know where it was going. They didn’t see a future in it. So he pretty much gave up. And this is what I mean in life, in so many areas of life. And some people call it grit, perseverance sticktuitiveness persistence. I put them all into the same umbrella. As mental toughness, can you keep showing up and doing that job when things aren’t working?

And the keyword that I tell people when it comes to mental toughness is until a lot of people use. If maybe I might. Until is I’m going to keep working on this. I’m going to try different ways. I’ll get different information out, use a different approach until I get the result that I’m after. Whereas many people look at things and say, well, I’ll try this.

If it works, I’ll try this. Maybe if I’m seeing some results, but mental toughness is your willingness to keep going and stand strong on it and keep trying and trying a different approach, trying a different approach, trying a different approach until you get the outcome that. You’re after. And I think mental toughness is the key that separates the talented people who become great from the talented people who become.

Wasted potential or wasted town or could have been, or should have been,

J: yeah, this is great. And it really boils down to consistency and not giving up. And it’s, it’s no different whether you’re a Navy seal or you’re an entrepreneur it’s, it’s really just pushing forward and not taking. Give up as, as a response, but here’s my question.

I mean, we all end up getting this negative self-talk at some point we tell ourselves, no, we’re not good enough failed the last five days in a row or the last five months or less five years. And just, are you ready to give up? How do you get. Past that negative. Self-talk do you just not talk to yourself?

Do you talk to yourself in a, in a better way? Do you say different things? I mean, what do you do when those negative thoughts start to creep in and you can’t push yourself any further because you’re just like, you’re, you’re convincing yourself. You’re not good enough.

Dre: Oh, the framework that I use for mental softness is conditioning.

And in a sports world in basketball, for example, we do conditioning workouts where we get on a court and we’re doing all these sprints all over the court, the long way, sideways stopping at certain lines, going back and forth, all kinds of sprinting back and forth. And the whole purpose of the conditioning extensively is so that when you get in a game, you don’t feel fatigued, right?

But what a lot of people don’t understand about conditioning and sports is the purpose is not that you don’t feel fatigued because if three of us went out to a court right now, we did a bunch of full court sprints. All of us are going to feel some fatigue. Now, the differences between a well conditioned person, the well conditioned person might need 30 seconds of rest before they can sprint full speed again.

Whereas the poorly conditioned person might need 30 days before they can sprint again. It’s the same way mentally when being. Properly conditioned or well, conditioned, mentally does not mean that you don’t have setbacks or that negative self-talk or you don’t question yourself, or you don’t have that self judgment or you don’t hear negative talk from the outside world is a matter of how long does that negative talk or negative.

Self-talk slow you down before you get back on the horse and keep doing your thing and the more properly, well conditioned you are. The better, you will be able to get back and do your thing. Versus when you’re a poor, weak condition, you might have had a setback three years ago, and you’re still using that as an excuse today.

So that’s the difference when it comes to how well conditioned you are when it comes to your mindset.

J: So basically your mind is just like another muscle and if you use it enough and you tell yourself positive things over and over and over again, um, you’re, you’re going to get that muscle memory, that mindset, memory.

Um, and, and yeah, I like that. I like that.

Dre: Yeah, you can turn it forward and it’s a discipline. So like you said, Carol, these all work together, disappointing yourself to be in condition. Again, going to that mental gym every single day. And that is a lot of things you can do for that. A lot of methods for that.

Builds that mental stuff.

Carol: I love it. I love it. So the fourth principle met our personal initiative. Again, it all rolls into all of the other principles, right? You need to take the personal initiative to have this discipline, to maintain this confidence, to remain mentally tough, to continue showing up to just simply make things happen.

So talk to us more about personal initiative.

Dre: And personal one is, I would say, this is my favorite one, but they’re all actually like all of them, when it comes to personal initiative, again, this is where the rubber meets the road. So to speak. This is where you take all of this mentality that you’ve built up, all these things that you worked on and you turn them into something real.

And the biggest challenge for a lot of people. At least people who are into notes self-development or mindset, things like that is it feels good to take this stuff in and talk about it and to write it down and to listen to it. But then when it, it comes down to, okay, now you learn as much as you need to learn.

Now, do something. That’s the step that a lot of people get, they get a little bit shaky at that point. And it’s being willing to just put yourself out there into the world to be judged, to be criticized, to be looked at, and maybe it’ll work and maybe it won’t work, but you had to be willing to take the first step.

And the thing that I tell people all the time is leadership is something that they say, take the lead. Nobody gives you the lead. You take the lead. When it comes to initiative, nobody gives you an initiative. You have to take initiative and in life, the boldness. It’s followed by four 14 favors. The bowl is how the saying goes.

So you had to be willing to just step out there and make the move and try something and put it out there and see how it goes. If it doesn’t work, at least now you have the activity knowledge. If it’s a complete failure, now you have a story to tell. Now you have something that you can share with an audience later on down the line.

And what I tell people in life is that you’re either going to become a story or a statistic. And the statistics are the people who tried and failed and they become part of the numbers of okay. Out of every note, 5,000 books, they get options. Maybe two of them make back their earn back their advances or every 300 TV shows that comes out.

Only one of them makes it past the first season. But the stories are the people who have been through the same challenges, the same setbacks, the same problems, the same negative self-talk or outside talk. They fight through it, make it through to the other side, and then they get to tell their stories because they created success.

And we only get to hear from the people who have a story to tell, because they made it through the challenges. We can learn a lot from the people who failed as well, but, you know, nobody wants to pay them. Nobody wants to have them on their pockets because they failed. But when somebody succeeded, we want to hear this story.

So it’s just understanding that you’re going to go through stuff no matter who you are. So you might as well keep going so that you have a story to tell any, and then personal initiative is where you actually put all that into action. Don’t wait for things to happen. Go make something happen. And what I’ve found in my life.

Jane and Carol, you all can tell me, is that whenever I take initiative, even if nothing’s happening, nothing’s working and I take initiative and just start doing things, good things start happening. And I don’t think that’s random. I don’t think that’s, I think that’s just the energy of the universe. I know that’s kind of woo, woo.

But it’s really how it works. I mean, they say the energy you put out is the energy that you get back. Everyone seems to agree with that. So when you put the energy out, good things start happening for you

Carol: could not agree more with, with everything you just said. And just a side note, I’m putting that energy out there.

And when you just begin to do things to take that initiative, think about it. And it’s simplest terms. When you start doing things, you’re connecting with more people, you’re reaching out, you’re talking with more people, you’re learning more things and just naturally it organically grows. And what you’re doing just continues to prosper.

And I think, again, it’s really worth noting one quote, you said a minute ago, you’re either going to be a story or a statistic, right? That’s I, that is just so absolutely hugely powerful. And you have clearly right. Become a story, not a statistic. So talk to us a little bit about how you personally have used these four principles to grow all of these amazing things you have going on.

I mean, you’re wildly successful in your YouTube channel. You’ve authored how many books, how many now?

Dre: Yeah,

Carol: 27 books. You are a keynote speaker. You are a consultant to corporations in getting teams to do better work together. You’ve had four Ted talks for crying out loud. That is so many things. So can you talk us.

Through how back in the beginning, like you talked about back in the day when YouTube was still a new thing and people weren’t yet influencing building their brand, which is becoming a lot more popular now, how did you use these four principles to realize that, you know what, there is something here I’m going to go out.

I’m going to take action. I’m going to become massively productive. I’m going to help others. Can you talk to us about the

Dre: Genesis of that? Absolutely. When I first started playing basketball, period, the way that I learned how to play was about going to the park every day in the middle of the summer is 90 something degrees on asphalt and just practicing until I figured it out.

So I could become better at basketball. There was no one teaching me or training me. So when I became a professional in 2005, I put that video up on YouTube because I’ll give you another funny wrinkle to the story. Coming out of an NCA division three school, I didn’t have any professional basketball prospects.

There was no one asking to sign me. So in order for me to get even known by that world, I had to go to this event called an exposure camp. Now, most people listening to this may not know what an exposure camp is. It’s pretty much a job fair, but for athletes. So instead of you showing up and just shaking hands and hand out a resume, though, you bring your sneakers and you play that sport football, baseball, basketball.

In front of an audience of decision-makers. So these are not just random people off the street watching. These are agents, coaches, Scouts, managers, owners of professional basketball teams around the world. They come and watch you. But, so I went to this exposure campus in Orlando, Florida. Here’s a personal initiative for you.

We drove from Philadelphia to Orlando, 17 hours overnight. We left on Friday. They can’t start at 9:00 AM on Saturday. We hopped out of the car in the parking lot at 9:00 AM and started playing. Now I can do that at age 23. Probably couldn’t do it now, but we did it. And I did my thing of that exposure can play pretty well play.

We played two games a day for two days, so I have four games on tape and I literally mean on tape. This is on VHS. Those of you. I think everybody remembers VHS. The three of us. Remember it. Okay. Now, any new millennials listening, you can Google it or ask your parents. They’ll tell you now I had this VHS tape, right.

And I knew I couldn’t keep this forever. And you know, if you drop it, it gets wet. You might lose it. So I said, let me put this somewhere where it will be safe for the future. So I had just heard that there was this new site where you can put video on there for free as much as you want. And that was YouTube.

So I got this VHS, I took it to audio, visual story, put it on a data CD. And that’s when I uploaded my first YouTube video. So I initially started, it was really for selfish reasons. Like, I don’t want YouTube just for me just to put my highlight video on the internet, so I wouldn’t lose it. Now, mind you, I haven’t played a game of professional basketball yet.

I came out of a D three school. Nobody knows Dre bobble. So when I put the video on YouTube, I was not looking for attention. It was just for me. Then I came back to the video six months later, Jay and Carol. And there were comments on the video from random people that I didn’t know. They were like, yo, who taught you how to put it?

How often do you practice? No. Can you make a video about dribbling? Can you make a video about Duncan and what I realized the light bulb went off in my mind. I’m filling the void here because they weren’t looking for me. These were just as basketball players who had no help looking for someone to show them how to play.

And this guy looks like he knows how to play. They didn’t care who I was. They didn’t care. My background was, he just looks like he has what we need. Can you help us out? So I started making more videos. I brought my cheap a hundred dollar camera everyday. I was just prop it up on the bench next to the court.

Now just let it run while I practice. And that’s how I got started. So over the years, they can see answer your question. I just kept putting out in this concert is answering the questions that people were asking. And then around 2008, 2009 period, when players started asking me more about the mental side of the game, and then YouTube, what was purchased by Google, they start running the ads on it, and I found myself out of debt, but at the same time, so this confluence of events told me, it gave me the insight to ask myself what can I do when I can get some control?

Because I had, when you’re a professional athlete, it may look bright and shiny when you’re in an LTV, but you have no control. The team decides whether you have a job or not, and it, nobody wants to give you a job. You are an unemployed professional athlete. So I was an unemployed, professional athlete. I said, all right, if I extend my life for next five years and he keep going like this, do I have any control over my destiny?

The answer was no. So at this time I just read Tim Ferriss’s four hour work week and I’ve been reading his book. And he had, and this is what he said. This is a little experiment gave, I think it was might’ve been on as well. He said, go to this free blogging platform or free posting by a firm called weekly.

We sold out, you can make a freeway age, one page website, and you say, here’s the product that I want to sell. And I’ll say I was going to make a dribbling product. Here’s how you dribble basketball. And the product is going to be $4 99 cents. I’m going to see this, this, and this, this all one gauge $4 and 99 cents sort of around click this button.

If you want to buy it. And then when people click on that button, the next page will say the product is under construction. But if you’re interested just putting your email address and we’ll email you when it’s ready. And since it, I need to do this on Google and you can purchase this $5 worth of ads.

Now this is that when he get to spend $5 on Google ads to get results. So I did this and he said, you started to get emails. That means you have a market of people who are willing to buy this product. That’s when you should go make it. I did this. I followed exactly what Tim said. I did it. I started getting email addresses.

I went and made that product. I called it hoop handbook. That’s how I got started in entrepreneurship. I remember I sold my first product. Now these are a member of the Blackberry, the Blackberry phone. I

J: used to carry one around

Carol: click, click, click, click, click. Oh yeah. The thumb is the thumbs we’re worn out constantly. Anyway.

Dre: Exactly. It’s been a little clicking the buttons. So when you got an email back then, but the Blackberry was a little red light. There was start blinking someone to red. I remember the red light started blinking.

It was maybe 10 o’clock at night. The night that I put that product out, I made a little YouTube video and said, Hey. Introducing who Pam book, but who Pam book.com. I had two products dribbling and shooting $4 99 cents. Each the right started blinking. I saw email, you sold a product. I was like, okay, I can do this for the rest of my life.

All right. This is what I need to be doing. When I’m done playing basketball, my knees don’t work anymore. I can do this forever. So I then had to get on my computer. This is how primitive I was. I had to send an email with an attachment of my PDF program to the buyer, because I didn’t know what automatic delivery was at that time.

But a week later I signed up for this site called Ejunkie and that let me do that. So then I started making more of these programs and just promoting it through YouTube, just telling YouTube my audience, Hey, I made a new program, made a new one. I made a new one. That’s how I started to build my, the entrepreneurship side of things.

And then when it came to the mindset thing, I’ve been making these who pay book programs, but then every Monday. And to answer the question about the, when, how I built work on your game. When I started talking about this mindset stuff, every Monday, I would make this video called the weekly motivation. And this is where I would start talking about discipline competence, mental toughness, personal initiative.

This is my mindset and how I approach basketball and life. And this is where I started to hear from people who didn’t play sports. And they would say, Dre, look, I don’t play basketball. I’m not trying to learn how to dunk. But I subscribed to you on YouTube just to watch that video every Monday, I ignore all the other videos you put out because I’ll put out a video every day.

I know everything else you put out, but I watched that video on Monday because what you’re talking about, that stuff about survive. I just want you to know that. So while I’m making these who, Pam books, one day, somebody left a comment on a YouTube video and said, Dre, you keep making all these handbooks, but you talk about motivation every Monday.

Once you make a mental handbook. I said, okay. And that was one of my books, the mental handbook, just answering the questions that my audience was asking. And I actually made that product who handbook came from. A YouTube comment. So this is back in the days when you could have civil discourse in the YouTube comments.

I don’t know how it is, but I can’t do that too much these days, but back then it worked,

J: there is so much good stuff in here. And so just some of the things that stand out to me, number one, I mean, and this is something that. Is just, you do better than again, 99.9% of people out there, but it’s so important.

It’s just this consistency. So anybody that goes and looks at your YouTube channel looks at your podcast, realizes first thing they realize is there is a ton of content and because you’ve been doing it for 15 years and all these people that go out, they make three videos, five videos, even 50 videos, and then give up.

They don’t realize that. Every video you make, you’re getting closer. Every piece of content you put out there, you’re getting closer. At some point you wrote your first book and you probably, I don’t know. I, I remember writing my first book. I didn’t want to write that second one. And then after I was the second one was a little easier to write the third.

And after the third, it was a little easier to write the fourth. It takes a while to get that momentum, but if you’re consistent and you don’t negatively, if you don’t talk yourself out of. Keep going, eventually it just works. And then the next thing is just the fact that you put out the content, you put out the contact, you are open to feedback, you’re open to conversations, and that created an opportunity.

Somebody said to you, Hey, why not the mental toughness? Why not the mindset, motivation courses? And. That you opened yourself up for that and it appeared and you said it earlier, it’s not all this woo woo stuff that, that, that, you know what I’m talking about. Um, but it’s just the reality of when you have an open mind to opportunities, those opportunities are going to fight

Dre: that’s right.

And it was just like you said, listening and going off the feedback that I was getting from my audiences, I tell people, the only thing that I do for a living is answer questions. Everything that I’m doing is just answering the question that was asked of me. Or I try to read into the minds of my audience.

They present a challenge, which is really a question, but they don’t know what the question is. I figure out the question, I answer it for them.

J: So I have a question. So you do lots of different things, obviously. So you write books, you create, you have a YouTube channel, you have a podcast, you do Ted talks, you do consulting a lot of people out there.

They struggle with trying to do too many things and trying to figure out the balance. Do I spend 80% of my time doing this a hundred percent of my time doing this 5% of my time, doing 20 different things. How do you decide. How much time to focus on something versus versus doing a lot of different things.

Where do those decisions come from? Well,

Dre: the first thing is when I wasn’t quite sure what is going to be the thing that works, I will try multiple things at the same time and see what’s working. And I would just look, let me try five different hustles here, and let’s see what’s one of these is producing.

And then that’s the one that I’m going to pay attention to. And if this one stops working, let me find out why maybe I need to change completely. Maybe I need to do something different. So even with the Huipin book stuff, that stuff was hot when I was playing basketball and I was a basketball player and I’m in the gym every day, but I’m not that guy anymore.

So I don’t really talk about basketball programs anymore. Now is more on the mental game side of things and really solidifying the brand that I’ve created. So I can carve out a space for that. So it’s just looking at different things, seeing what’s working and being willing to try different things in.

Leveraging the skill that I developed in one area into the next area. So when it comes to kind of reinventing myself from the basketball player to this person who can walk into a room of people who know nothing and don’t care about basketball, but I can still be respected in that room. I still took, I borrowed some of the skills that I got from sports and I can still apply them over there.

Now I might have to start from the bottom of the totem pole because I haven’t been in the game. Like all these other people have. But there’s tools that I got from sports that can work over here. I is my job to extract the usefulness from that and bring it over here with me. Now I can still use this.

It’ll get me a little bit of attention, no basketball player, but now I’ve got to earn that. Now. It’s like, okay, this has got to have any substance. Now I’ve got to prove that and I have to do the work. And that’s the legwork, the discipline that you had to put into actually earn that spot. Yeah.

J: So it’s basically like, uh, the basketball analogy stay on the balls of your toes.

Don’t commit to anything because you know, you don’t know which direction you’re going to have to go. And so I like that. So yeah. Keep, keep your options open.

Carol: And I would like to dig even a little bit more about something you just touched on Dre, this whole concept of reinventing yourself when you are in one space, and then you realize there’s opportunity in another space in taking the skills you have from space.

One to transition over to the other. Can you give us some tactical tactical action tips, some pro tips on just the ways that you might. We might look at connecting with people in the new arena, things we might be able to bring to the table to reinvent ourselves and make that transition easier and more successful.

Dre: Sure. Do you want me to use myself as an example, or you have an example of a certain type of person,

Carol: your personal examples would be phenomenal.

Dre: Okay, great. So coming from the sports world and I wanted to get into the, I guess we’ll call this the thought leadership world or slash entrepreneurship. Number one thing.

I had a mentor. A mentor who looked at myself when I first was getting out of sports and trying to get into, I didn’t know what I was getting into. I didn’t know. There was a such thing as getting paid to give a speech. I didn’t even know that existed, but when she was looking at my stuff, she said, the first thing I noticed about you driving when you called me was that you said you put out a video every day.

And I said, okay, this guy’s discipline. All right. So that means, number one, if I tell him something he’s probably going to do it. And number two, she was explaining it to me. Like these companies out here who hire speakers, They want their employees to do that. They want their employees to show up every day and put their workout.

And then the other thing was I was looking for ways to get myself out there. I was looking to take initiative and I, somebody told me, Hey, once you look up Ted talks, you know, you can give a Ted talk or you do it had to do as a guy. If they choose you, you get to give the talk. I got chosen to give a Ted talk and they asked me, what do you wanna speak about?

So I said, I’ll talk about confidence because players always ask me about confidence. So I gave my speech talking about confidence from a sports perspective. And when I gave that speech, people who knew me said, Dre, this is what you need to be talking about. You need to be talking about this mental game coming from sports into the business world, because people in the business world need confidence.

The same way the athletes need it. And people need mental toughness and people need to have that initiative to just get started, go do something because they already have the information, but they become. What I’d like to call professional information gatherers. They become pigs PID, right? They just gathering information, but they never actually put it into action.

So to answer your question here, Carol is taking the skills that I had in the sports world. I knew I showed up every day, then it was the competence, the mental self as personal initiative. And I tried to figure out how can I explain this to somebody who doesn’t play sports? And make it work for them. So I had to create a framework for that, and I was using a framework before I even knew what they were called frameworks, but just the way that I can explain it.

Okay. So explain this, let me give you something tangible for the third day. I give you a tangible example for confidence. And let me give you a tangible example of mental toughness. Let me give you one. And I think people understand examples better than they understand these though. These, uh, Airy principles.

So I always try to draw, even if I need to use an analogy, but something that people can tangibly understand so we can put some flesh to it. It makes it a lot easier for people to pick it up and to be able to use it. So that’s just a skill that I’ve always had, even if I wasn’t in this industry that I’m in right now.

And another thing is the last point I’ll give you here, is that coming out of the sports world? There’s no job in the world, easier than being an athlete. Being a professional athlete is probably the easiest job you can have. Now. That is not to say, cause sometimes athletes hear me say that and they get offended.

Like, no, my job is hard because we got to work out and we got to earn it. Yes, you’re right. But we work two to four hours a day. Pretty much all our expenses are pretty much paid for when you’re playing overseas, you don’t have to pay for anything. Your food is paid for. You’re traveling the world.

Everybody knows you. You’re a celebrity and you play a kids’ game for a living is the easiest job you ever going to have? I work 10 times harder now than I did as an athlete. And I tell people that if you’re coming out of the sports world, you have to be humble enough to understand that your you’re an entry level employee.

Now, when you step into the thought leadership world, you step into the entrepreneurship world. You are a nobody. Yes, you played sports, but you played ed. Past tense. So nobody cares about a former athlete, former athletes, nobody, you used to play sports. What are you doing now? So I always had that mentality, like, how am I going to be, how can I walk into a room and be somebody when I don’t play basketball anymore.

And I always had that in my mind. And one of the reasons was kind of like a blessing in disguise coming out of a D three school. It wasn’t guaranteed. I was going to have a nine-year professional athlete career. I might have a zero year career. I would need to figure that out in 2005, I luckily enough and combined with my abilities and performance was able to make that stretch.

But I knew all right, when I get done playing, who am I going to be? And it’s something that I heard, uh, Kobe Bryant say, he said it after he played now, Kobe was one of the greatest of all time. Write me half a billion dollars playing sports. He said, when he finished playing. If 10 years from now, 20 years from now, the greatest thing I did was play for the Lakers.

I’m a failure because I’m still living. So if I live from 40 to 60 and the only thing, the best thing I ever did was what I did from 20 to 40. Then what the hell was I doing for the last 20 years? So I, when I heard him say, he said it, I mean maybe a year ago before he passed, but that’s something that I always had in the back of my mind.

Like, how do I make myself somebody, I never want to be a, used to be God. I didn’t want to be a has-been in anything. So I was always looking for ways that I can continue to be valuable and put value out into the world. No matter what I was doing.

J: I love that. I think it probably goes for everybody, not just professional athletes, but anytime you switch.

Gears from something you’ve been doing for a long time, that you’re really good at to something new, you basically are going from something that has gotten easy for you to something that’s difficult. I mean, Carol and I were in the corporate world for a long time and we weren’t professional athletes, but let me tell you something.

After 20 years in the corporate world, we were pretty good at what we did. And so every day it wasn’t a struggle. We’d go in. We do our job that we had spent 20 years perfecting. And then the day we got out of that, Doing something that seemed much easier was actually really tough because we just weren’t good at it.

And so I think everybody not just professional athletes, anybody that switches from something that you’ve done for a long time, that you’re really good at to something brand new, it’s always scary and it’s always difficult. And, and, and I absolutely love the last thing you said, which was just. If you’ve made your Mark between 20 and 40 and you just kind of coast on that until you’re 60 or 80.

Um, you’re leaving a lot on the table, not just money wise, but also mindset wise also, uh, happiness wise, uh, satisfaction wise, like just gotta keep pushing. So love that. Love that. Love that. Thank you. I want to switch gears a little bit. So you have given four Ted talks. Maybe this is just my personal, um, I don’t know if my, if our audience cares about this, I’m guessing they do, but I’m asking this question for me.

Cause I I’ve always thought about giving a Ted talk

Carol: and audience and everybody like that’s, that’s the Holy grail of all of this. Not what, like one Ted talk is a big deal. Four is off the charts. Amazing. Talk to us about how that process works. Talk to us about the experience. Talk to us about how we would even begin to go about making that happen for ourselves to elevate our brand.

Dre: Sure. It’s actually a pretty simple process. Not easy but simple process. Uh, the first step in the process is just identifying the talk that you want to. Yeah. So there are Ted talks all over the place. This year, they kind of got destroyed because of COVID they’re usually in person. So hopefully in 2021, they get back on the horse.

Hopefully everybody gets back on a horse in 2021, far as events go. So identify an event that you want to speak at. You can set a Google alert to look up, let you know when there’s a call for speakers with Ted, it’s all, something like that. You want a TEDx website. Finding an event. It doesn’t even have to be vocal because you can, we got planes out here.

You can get on a plane and go there. So then the next thing is you have to put in an application. This is the biggest part of the whole situation is the application because Ted X events, depending on how popular it is in a certain locale, like I did one, I did two in Miami. I did one in Vegas. These are big places.

So people are, everybody’s applying to speak at these things because a lot of people believe they have something that they want to share. So the key here is someone yourself through that application. That’s really the whole game is you got to sell yourself through the application. So the questions that they’ll ask, they always many of them, as, as I got a common questions, what is the big idea?

What’s the big idea that you want to share? And I believe that one sentence, cause it’s like that in three buckets, that one sentence right there is the make or break as far as I’m concerned. What is the big idea that you want to share? Because if they’re looking through 200 applications and they’re picking 15 speakers, they’re not reading.

I don’t think they’re reading every detail of every one of them. They’re looking for the ones that catch their eye filtering out, and then they read the rest. So what’s the big idea. Explain the big idea. What are the takeaways? Who are you? What gives you the authority to speak on it? And maybe nowadays, a lot of times they’re asking, do you have any examples of you speaking to a camera or to an audience that shows that.

No, you actually know what you’re doing when you get on the stage in front of people. So that application, I think is the crux of the whole thing is if you pass that part, then you get to the downhill action, which is preparing your talk and actually giving it as long as you don’t have no stage price.

Then the next step is the one you’re chosen usually, and I’ve done four events. So it runs the gamut from how they do it. For example, my most popular talk. And you can take this for what it’s worth. They did so much preparation. I mean, I knew that speech by heart, by the day of the event, I knew the speech by heart a month before the event, because they had us do so many rehearsals.

I met with them three or four times in person. Cause it was in Miami. They had me have this. They said, we’re going to do a rehearsal where you need to know the entire speech word for word a month before the event. And they were really detailed on it. And they had a whole committee of nine people. They went through the whole suite, they said, write it down, let us read it.

We’re going to give you feedback. Change this part. We don’t like this part need to flush this part out. We did all of this rehearsal and it was very, the production was top notch. I mean, this was top notch production, and that became my most popular talk. So again, you can take that for what it’s worth.

Then I did other events where I got booked. And I didn’t even meet the people to the day of the event. And it was like, Hey, we’ll see you there. The day before I remember the one I did in Vegas, it’s called too much. Confidence is not your problem. The day before we did a soundcheck and each person got to go through their talk, I didn’t even know my talk yet.

And I was like the day of the event. I mean, I’m pacing around, outside the venue right before I go on. And I might are, I hope I do not mess this up, but I’m a performer, but I got up there and I said, it perfectly the way that I needed to say it, but they didn’t do any preparation. They didn’t have a committee.

It was one person chose me. It was one other person there. It was well produced. The production was great. It looked great, but they didn’t do anything to prep me and make sure that I had it. Right. And the another event that I did, it was similar to that. And then the fourth one, it was a little bit more production, a little bit more work, but not really.

So it really depends on what kind of event that you choose. The more professionally run events are usually the ones that have been going on for years and years and years. And the easiest way to tell that if anybody’s trying to figure it out is go look at their events that are on YouTube. So if you’re looking at TEDx Villanova, go look up their previous events and look at the video will be the quality of the video was instead of quality of the audio.

If it’s really sharp and really well produced. They probably have a very professional team. Was music going to be really on point as far as who they choose and why, but then you’re going to have an amazing video, like kind of video you put on the homepage of your website. But if it’s an event that may be brand new is their first time doing it.

The video might not be too great. The audio might get messed up. They’re not really going to. Be real go through with a fine tooth comb, everything you’re going to say and make sure that you have it right. So it really depends. It can really run the gamut when it comes to, uh, Ted talks. It’s kind of like people asking, you know, how much money do you make as an entrepreneur?

Well, it depends, right? Everybody’s different because of what, you know,

J: That’s really interesting. So I always knew that the, the, the TEDx were run by different people, but you always assume that there’s some master set of guidelines that they all follow, but I guess that’s not the case. So let me ask you a question.

If

Dre: you were up for the red carpet red circle, they all got that.

J: So, so let me ask for somebody that’s new to this that somebody’s going to do there. They want to apply and do their first Ted talk. Would you recommend they focus on one of these well-produced highly organized, memorize your speech word for word type events, or would you say they should go look for the ones that are less well-produced where you may not get as much support, but you may have more likelihood of being chosen.

What would you do if you were starting over?

Dre: I was starting right now. I would abide to everyone that I saw and whoever picks me, I’m doing it. That’s what I did when I first got started and have a, have some type of framework in place for what you want to talk about, because the easier you can make it for them to understand the higher, the chance that they’re going to choose you.

J: Love it love it. That’s fantastic. Okay. Well, we are about an hour into this episode, so I think it’s about time. We jump into the final segment that we call for more. And that is where we ask you the same four questions that we ask all of our guests. And then the more part of the four more where you tell us how our listeners can connect with you and find out more about you and what you’re doing.

Okay. So I will ask the first question. So. Dre, what was your very first or your very worst job? And what lessons did you take from it that you’re still putting into practice today?

Dre: My very first job was working at pizza hut. I was maybe 14 or 15 years old, and my original job was working at the cash register where I would just take the phone in orders and cash people out when they were paying.

But what I noticed, what I took away from it was I noticed that. The waiters and waitresses, when they would work, they would get tips and they would get money. They could put in their pocket and take home that day. And I said, I want that. So I started agitating with the bosses, the managers, Hey, I want to be a waiter.

I want to be a waiter. And they finally let me wait tables. I remember the first table I waited. It was these two older ladies and they complimented me. They say, you’re very attentive. And this is back in the nineties when the T normal fit was 10%. So they got me like a dollar and 80 cents, and that was my first ever tip.

So what I learned from that is if you want something, you got to ask for it and you got, gotta be willing to keep asking. Cause you probably won’t get a yes for some reason. That’s

Carol: excellent. And talk about something that has come full circle and you still use today. That’s fantastic. Okay. Question number two, you clearly work with lots of business people in all different kinds of industries, all over the place.

And so Dre, would you share with us, what is the best piece of advice that you have for entrepreneurs or business owners or just people in general that you haven’t yet mentioned today?

Dre: Best piece of advice is figure out what audience you want to own. What is going to be your target audience, your niche, audience, and own that audience do not find, do not face a shiny object syndrome, which is really hard to do these days with social media.

Every time you open it, you see somebody else doing something, it looks like you should be doing it. If they’re good at it, they make you think you should be doing it. Don’t taste that shiny object focused on your target. Audience. And I was just reading a book about in and out burger, and they talked about that, how they stayed focused, family owned while all, every other restaurant was franchise and getting corporate funding and exploding their company, they stayed focused on just being them.

And they’re still super popular all these years later. So stay focused.

J: Yeah, and I was funny. I was just reading an article this morning about over the weekend. The first in and out burger opened in Colorado, 14 hour 14, not 14 minutes, 14 hour long lines. People are waiting in line for 14 hours to get in and out burger.

How crazy is that? That says you’re doing something right. Okay. Question number three, I’m going to switch this one up a little bit. Normally this is what is your favorite book out there? And I want to, I still want to know what your favorite book, what book that, that you’ve read, that we should all be reading, but since you’ve written 27 bucks, I also, I’m going to ask you to partner here.

One, what is the best book out there that you recommend? We’d be reading that you didn’t write, but then also for any of our listeners who are thinking, Oh, okay. I gotta pick up one of these 27 to get started. What’s the. Best book you’ve written or the most applicable book you’ve written maybe to our audience, for them to get started.

Uh, they want to pick up one of your books

Dre: today. Great. So on your first question, I’m going to cheat a little bit. I’m going to give you one this mindset, and one is more tangible business. The mindset one would be my favorite book of all time. It is the 48 laws of power by Robert Greene came across this book and maybe the year 2000 solid in the bookstore back when we used to buy our books in bookstores for Amazon took over.

And I remember just reading through those chapters and the tap that it caught. My attention was chapter 28. Interaction with boldness and I, that chapter just spoke to me. So I’m a huge Robert grief and he’s my favorite author. That one, when it comes to mentality and when it comes to dealing with other people, 48 laws of power for everybody, the other one, when it comes to the business audience, the entrepreneurs, I would have to go with.

Good to great by Jim Collins, amazing book. Even though the book was studying corporations who are publicly traded. That’s what the book was about. And I’m not in a corporation and my company is not publicly traded, but I read that book and I said, these principles apply to anyone, any human being, the hedgehog concepts and the things where they talked about Walgreens and how they focus on their, like their main thing.

I was like, this is incredible. Nobody. I never heard anybody talk about it like that before or since. So those are my two books. And as far as for me, the book that I would recommend to everybody, are we on video? Is this people,

J: a lot of people will, but not everybody. So you have to say it too, but you can hold it up if you want.

Dre: Yes, I got it right here. It was my book called, believe it or not work on your game. Use the pro athlete mindset to dominate your game of business sports and high. So all four of those principles are in there. We talk about being a go getter. We talk about reinventing yourself. Basically I take the entire ethos of what I’ve done, and of course my story is in it, but this is not a memoir.

This is a business book. That is all the things that I learned from the sports world to entrepreneurship. Just making it happen when you had to build it up from zero and how those mental tools applied tangibly to become real things in life. So it’s work on your game. You can get that. It’s obviously available on Amazon.

You can also get it at work on your game. book.com, where we give you $1,300 in immediate digital bonuses or your purchase.

J: Awesome.

Carol: Awesome. Thank you. Okay. My fourth question of the four more, which is a fun one that I always have a nice time with is what is something along the way, Dre, that you have splurged on in your work life, your personal life, whatever.

However, whenever, wherever that was totally an entirely worth it.

Dre: Something else splurged on that was totally and entirely worth it. Hmm. That’s an interesting

Carol: question. A thing. It can be an experience. It can be education. It can just be some big fat expenditure. That is not something you’re going to be doing on a daily basis.

That is maybe a little bit out of your comfort zone and you wouldn’t trade it for the world.

Dre: Hmm. Maybe a bit out of my comfort zone. I wouldn’t trade it for real. That’s an interesting question. I don’t know about that. I got to think about that one and go a bit. The most, the best thing that I have spores on, I would say would be, um, when I was playing professional basketball, it’s the first thing that comes to mind is the many events that I invested in myself to go to.

So these were the exposure camps that the one that I told you about with the VHS tape, that was only the first one I went to. I went to about 15 of those over the course of my career. So you go to those events when you’re looking for your next opportunity and you just want to get seen. And I went to events in Europe.

I went to events all over the United States and each one of those events just taught me a little bit more about selling yourself and marketing and promoting yourself and getting yourself known and just how, just how industries work and how things work when you have power. And when you don’t. And that taught me a lot about what I talk about here, work on your game, especially to my audience and letting them know what is it.

Sometimes you just don’t have the leverage. You don’t have the power and you got to take what you can get. And sometimes when you do have leverage, then you have the power to kind of call your own shots. You don’t have it. Then sometimes you got to play the game, you know, and that’s it. Don’t get mad at the game.

Don’t hate the game. Don’t hate the players. Play the game, work on your game, then play the game. Love it.

J: Okay. So that was the four part of the four more. Now for the more part of the four more, can you tell our listeners where they can find out more about you, where they can find out more about your books, about anything else that you’re working on, where they can connect with you?

Anything you want to tell our listeners,

Dre: man, I’m everywhere on the internet. The only place I’m not on is Tik TOK. I’m on every other social media platform. LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube. My website is called Dre all day.com. I do have a book that people can get for free. They just cover the shipping.

And I tell you all about that.

J: Absolutely.

Dre: All right. That one is called the mirror of motivation. I’m holding up here, but if you’re listening, you can get this book. It’s subtitle is the self guide to self-discipline. So the first work on your game principle discipline, this is the book that you start with is people used to ask me Dre, you’ve written 27 books.

What’s one diary first, and I didn’t have an answer. So you start with this one. The reason why you start with this book as a, for me to explain it, you can get [email protected]. The reason you start with this book is because everyone listens to this right now you have goals and most people are willing to do the work.

If you listen to this whole conversation, you’re willing to do the work. You may just not know what what’s the right work is the challenge that many people come across that they don’t even know they have is that they never ask themselves the key third question. And the question is, who do I need to be?

What kind of energy do I need to have? When I walk into white, how do I want to show up every single day? What is my emotional and spiritual posture going to be? I don’t want people to feel when they come across me. When you answer the question who I need to be. Then the doing automatically comes with it.

Cause if you’re, if you say my being is, I’m a person who’s in great shape, then the doing of not eating that extra cupcake and going to the gym every day automatically comes with it. Someone that being is right there doing it, comes with it and the results come after this book gives you the frameworks for you to answer the question who you need to be.

I’m not going to tell you, you’re going to tell yourself that’s why it’s called the mirror of motivation. You can get that. Just cover a small shipping towers by going to mirror of motivation.com. Other than that, Just Google me and putting the name of your favorite platform. I’m there, I’m active every single day.

All of

J: them. I love it. Who do I need to be at your even dropping, uh, uh, words of wisdom in new, in your, in your final, final words? I love it. I

Dre: can’t help it

J: though. That’s awesome. We appreciate it. Dre, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us, sharing your, your.

Carol: Everything my God, there were so many things.

J: Oh, the word framework I was that’s that word framework. Thank you for sharing your framework with all of us and congratulations on all your success. And I highly recommend everybody out there. Like Dre said he is all over the internet. Go find his book, spine, his talks, find his content, find his YouTube videos, find everything.

Jay, thank you so much for joining us. And we look forward to talking

Dre: with you soon. Thank you, Jay and Kara. I really appreciate you to having me on, hopefully you gave some about some value to your audience to do

Carol: so much. Thanks a million. I’ll see you soon. Thank

Dre: you. I

Carol: absolutely loved all of the information and ideas that Dre brought to us today.

Right? A few that really. Stood out where this whole concept of the super you, right? We hear a lot about that whole fake it till you make it. And you know what? It doesn’t need to be that way. I think we’re each inherently born with and our life experiences. Give us this information in this. This notion of who we are in our greatest potential.

And it’s all about giving yourself permission to just go ahead and be that person. And I also wanted to call out as he was sitting there talking about the whole principle of the third day, in terms of discipline, you saw my face, right? I’m just sitting there laughing because I could so massively identify with the whole working out situation.

Right? Number day, number one. Go let’s make this happen. I’m a rockstar. I’m going to do it day. Number two, not as much by day three. Oh my gosh. Are you even kidding me? So I love, love, love, and I’m absolutely going to keep in mind that whole principle of the third day to just keep pushing through and realize that that day is coming when it’s not going to be an easy decision.

But knowing that the right. Thing to do is to continue being consistent, continue maintaining that momentum. So, so many great things packed in there.

J: Yeah. And I love it took, it took an hour into the episode before he got to it or before he touched on it, because I guess we didn’t ask the question the right way.

Um, but for anybody out there, that’s looking to build a brand and build an audience. I loved his tip about. Figure out who your audience will be. First. I think too many of us like just start creating content and say, okay, we’ll see who starts listening. And then I’ll kind of tailor to those people, but don’t do that.

Figure out who your audience is going to be before you start creating that content so that you can start tailoring your content and whatever you’re, you’re putting out there to those people that you’ve already defined as your audience. So. Love that as well. Alrighty. Well, I think we’re ready to wrap this up.

Carol: Let’s wrap it up. Alrighty.

J: Everybody have a wonderful rest of your week. Have an amazing weekend and we will see you or talk to you or listen to you or you’ll listen to us, whatever it is next week on the BiggerPockets business podcast. She’s Carol I’m Jay.

Carol: Now go give yourself permission to be that bold, authentic best version of you today.

J: Nice.

Carol: Thank you. It wasn’t mine. That was his deal for sure, everybody. Thank you so much for tuning in. We appreciate you more than, you know, and we can’t wait for next week.

J: Have a great one. .