Dre Baldwin on Discipline, Leadership, AI & Business Success | The Mindset Every Entrepreneur Needs

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Thank you for having me on, Allen. How you doing?

I'm doing great today. So tell us a little bit about yourself.

Sure. I come from Philadelphia, PA, now based in South Florida. I always played sports growing up. Got to basketball around age 14, which is pretty late if you want to go somewhere in the sport like college or pro. Sat the bench in high school the one year that I played, walked on to play college ball, hustled my way into playing college ball at the Division III level, which is the third tier of sports. That's not where the pros come from. Hustled my way into playing pro ball, built a nearly decade-long career playing basketball, mostly internationally, mostly in Europe. At the same time, Allen started publishing videos to this new website called YouTube. This was 2005 when I first started, and this was before YouTube was YouTube. But I started to build an audience through that, just showing people how to practice basketball. A few years into that, about 5 years in, the players started asking me questions about mindset. I started talking about mindset. People who didn't play sports heard those videos and they started reaching out and saying, hey, that way you just— you describe mindset and the way you break it down Andre is useful for people off the court. It's useful for people who don't play sports. So that's what I knew, how I knew what my transition would be from sports to the next thing, because a lot of people don't realize this: athlete careers are very short, and we usually do something else after we stop playing. So I stopped playing in 2015, and for the last 10+ years, I've been working with entrepreneurs, business owners, team leaders, not just on the mindset pieces. But as I worked with more entrepreneurs, I learned they also needed the strategies, the systems, and the execution layer. And that's really where I've been focusing, uh, since then.

So tell us a little bit about the mindset.

Sure. So the 4 pillars that I started with, even with the athletes and kept it as I moved away from just athletes, were discipline of showing up every day to do the work, confidence to put yourself out there boldly and authentically, the mental toughness to keep going, keep showing up even when the success expected to achieve is yet to occur, and the personal initiative to go and make things happen instead of waiting for things to happen.

Yeah, you definitely, you know, persistence is super important when you, you know, if you're a business owner and whatever you're doing, you know, I tell that to my kids, you know, you want something, you got to, you know, you've got to make it happen. And, you know, that's the only one. That's the only way to do it. And you have to have that, that mindset. My dad told me, he goes, when you get a job, you treat the job like it's your business. You know, treat it the way you want to be, you know, like you would want people to treat your business. And that's how you're going to be, you know, successful in business, because you want to, you know, that's what you, that's what you need to do. It's important to have, have a mindset. And like you said, don't give up, because if you give up, then that's it, you know, then you're defeated. Nobody wants to be defeated.

That's right, I agree.

You going out there and selling yourself Yeah, and you know, you have, you know, and I tell, you know, all the time when we were before we got into the podcast, I was talking about sales. And, you know, especially in sales, you know, you have to have, you know, every business involves sales. So either you're doing the sales or somebody else is doing the sales. And in the beginning, you're usually doing the sales as the owner. And you have to, you know, you have to have that mindset, you know, to go, go, go every day.

That's right, because if nobody is selling or marketing, then no business can be getting done. So that is the most important aspect of the business, is the marketing, which builds the relationships and starts the conversations, and the sales, which closes it and brings in the money. So that's the biggest part of any business for everybody.

Yeah, so when, you know, we're also talking about like accountability, so talk about that a little bit. You know, like, I'm sure when you're an athlete You know, not everybody's, you know, Michael Jordan or, you know, the— of basketball. And, you know, he's famous for— and other people are famous in basketball for being very intentional about what they're doing and holding the teammates accountable. So it's the same thing, you know, when you're owning a company or leading, you know, a team leader, you have to hold everybody accountable. Talk about that a little bit.

Sure. So that accountability, I mean, people just think of an accountant that we were just talking about selling. The accountant's job is to do what? Is count all the money. All right. Make sure the money that was supposed to come in did come in. And the money that went out is the right amount that went out. And if there's a dollar missing, the accountant goes and finds out where that dollar is and why there's a discrepancy. So accountability is all about making sure that whatever is supposed to be executed actually gets executed and then offering, uh, correction and enforcement for any discrepancies, any non-compliance. And we were talking about that as well. Any non-compliance to whatever the system is. So accountability is, yes, a boss or a leader or owner making sure that everyone on the team is doing their job. But even before that, upstream from that, is the boss, owner, or leader has to make sure that they are holding themselves accountable. Because if they're not accountable, then they're not credible when telling someone else on the team to be accountable. So you got to hold yourself accountable first, and then you can hold everybody else accountable. Just like Michael Jordan in that documentary he put out a few years ago about him and the Chicago Bulls. He said, I never asked my teammates to do anything that I wasn't doing. So because he was holding himself accountable, he had the credibility to tell the same thing to his teammates and they listened.

Yeah, but same thing when, you know, I take that, I want somebody to do something, they got to see me that I'm doing it.

That's right.

So that they're going to follow suit. And it's important, you know, some things, you know, when you brought up accounting, One of the things I see a lot of business owners struggle with is collecting money. And it's like easy to go make the sale and then you don't ask for the money, you know, and you don't get paid.

And it's a bad thing to struggle at when you run the business.

Yeah. Well, you know, sometimes I help people with that. Like they'll come to me and they'll be like, well, what do you, you know, what's going to make your payment system? How's that going to help us? I said, well, how much money are you owed right now? And if somebody tells me they're owed a lot of— you know, I've helped people that are owed over $100,000 before, and I'm like, well, what's the situation of why you're owed over, you know, $100,000? What's stopping you? It's what's stopping you is we were just talking about they didn't have a system on how to enroll people so they could get paid on time and not have all these— and not start chasing after money, because that can destroy a business.

Oh yes, it will destroy your business. And I have some coaching clients who are literal accountants, so they tell me about this stuff and how big companies get really behind in, uh, collecting that— those accounts receivables, not receiving the money that they're supposed to receive. And nobody seems to have any sense of urgency about, hey, are we gonna go collect this money that we are actually owed? That is literally what makes the business run and how you pay your team. So, uh, that money collection issue needs to be handled, uh, up front, and it needs to be somebody's full-time job.

Yeah, I always tell businesses, I'm like, you know, you have to have, you have to have a plan of, you know, people will say to you, oh, I want to get, uh, 30 days. Okay, you can have 30 days. We'll take your credit card and your bank will give you the, the float. You know, don't be, don't be the bank for your companies. Don't be the bank for your customers, because I've seen that tank a lot of businesses, you know, because then all of a sudden, you know, the business starts— they can't pay their bills, or the owner's got to start putting in money to the business, or you're borrowing money. And it's a lot cheaper to, to take credit cards, even though people don't like the expense of it.

Yes, I agree. And as long as you pay the credit card back before the, you know, the statement rolls over, then doesn't cost you anything, right?

So, you know, but I'm saying, a lot of times customers want 30 days to pay So, you know, you have to think about that. Do you need to give them the 30 days? Because 30 days could turn into 45 or 60. Or should you just let them put it on plastic? Because if you take— give somebody 30 days and then they put it on a credit card after 30 days, that's costing you double the money.

Yeah, exactly. And it's costing you time, which you can't recover. So I suggest to business owners that I work with, you collect your money up front and let them deal with how they got that money and whoever they had to pay back. But don't be the person that is owed money.

Yeah, that's a good— that's good advice. Don't be the person that owes money, right? So you told me you wrote several books. So what's your favorite book that you wrote?

My favorite one is always the last one I wrote, but I would say my most, my most popular one is this book called The Third Day, and it's right behind my left elbow over here if you're watching. And Third Day is all about how you show up and give your best effort when you least feel like it. And it's my most popular one because that book is really about what most people call discipline, because we know that motivation is not enough to drive a professional career. It can get you excited and put fuel in your tank every now and then, but motivation is inconsistent. You can't rely on motivation to build a professional career or professional business, but you can rely on discipline because discipline shows up consistently every day. But a lot of people get it wrong, Allen, where discipline comes from. A lot of people think that discipline is a personality trait, such as, I am a disciplined person, or I'm not a disciplined person, but that's actually not true. Discipline is available to everyone at anytime as long as you're following a structure. And when you follow a structure, the structure already tells you what to do. As long as you follow it, then your behavior is disciplined. So behavior is disciplined. Behavior is also confident is another thing. That's not a personality trait. They are byproducts of carrying yourself and executing in a certain way. So when you follow structure, the behavior is disciplined, and that disciplined behavior is what people call, oh, that guy must be disciplined. And discipline also produces confidence. That's the thing most people really want is confidence, not discipline. So the third day is kind of like the doorway to the thing that everybody really wants, which is a higher level of self-esteem.

Yeah, definitely. One thing I learned when I was a chef and before I got into the payments industry, I was young, 30 years old, and I was sitting in a meeting and I wasn't saying— I would just— they would just come, oh, so Chef, what's going on in the kitchen? I didn't say much. And my boss one day said, well, we're gonna have to send you to Dale Carnegie. And one of the things I learned at Dale Carnegie is whatever your job is or whatever your, you know, job function is, you have to view yourself as the expert. And it's super important to know that, that you are the expert and feel confident in that you're the expert in your field. So somebody comes and asks me about payments, or sometimes people will ask other people a question in payments and they'll be like, oh, talk to this guy, he's the— he's— he knows a lot. He's an authority on this subject. And I think a lot of people, that gives you, if you can have that mindset, that can give you a lot of confidence as long as you, you know, you exude that, right?

Yes. And as long as you are actually good. Now, if you're telling yourself that you're an expert, you need to actually be the expert and know your stuff. So I'm assuming you can have that mindset because it is backed by something real. It's not you just telling yourself that. And no sprinkling pixie dust. But if someone was to ask you a question that you actually could answer it, and someone brought you a challenge, you could actually address it. That's what really makes you the expert. And because you know that to be true, then you naturally carry yourself as the expert and people believe it.

Because I tell people, there's my— when I was going to culinary school, one of the chefs said sometimes people will try to baffle you with bullshit or dazzle you with brilliance. So you can't always bullshit people because sometimes you're trying to bullshit a bullshitter. And that doesn't work. Right.

Yes. Right. So, you know who you got to know who you're talking to. And also again, if what you're saying is real, then you don't have to worry about that.

Yeah, exactly. Like, you know, you know what you're talking about. Don't over, you know, I always tell people, you know, the worst, you know, is there a bad question to ask? Yeah. The one that you didn't ask, you know. And I don't know the answer. You know, there's nothing wrong with saying, well, I don't know the answer. Like I tell sales reps all the time, oh, you don't know the answer to the question? Don't tell the person you're going to get back to them in a few days. They want to know the answer right now. That's when you pick up the phone and you call me and you say, hey, Allen, I need help. I'm talking to this customer and they're asking a question. I'm not sure about the answer, you know? So know where you can get the answers from is super, super important.

Yes, knowing your products, knowing your services inside out. Every time somebody asks you a question that you can't answer, now that goes into your mental Rolodex. Next time somebody asks you that question, now you have the answer.

Yeah, it's, it's important, you know, you have to, you have to learn your craft and, and, and own it, you know. That's what's the most important thing. So what kind of lessons did you learn from, uh, basketball besides that you wrote all these books, which I'm impressed by because working on my first book right now. So great. So, so tell me, like, what did you learn? You know, I, in my book, I talk about like things I learned as a chef that took me into business. As a lot of people think, a chef is just, oh, you're just creating and cooking and doing all this stuff and make the plate look pretty. But in actuality, if you're the chef of a hotel and you're running 2 or 3 restaurants plus a banquet, you're running a multimillion dollar monthly operation that's doing $2-3 million in sales, and you're purchasing food, beverage products, running payroll and things like that. So it's a very large business. And, you know, I took that, you know, into, into, into this business, you know, that whole— all that knowledge and all of that. You learn how to work hard when you work in the kitchen. Or restaurant. So what did, what did you bring from basketball over to business?

And several things. So number one, when you play a team sport, you deal with all different types of people. You deal with all different types of team teammates and team members, some good, bad, and ugly. So you have to learn how to deal with different types of people and personalities. Also, where you are in the totem pole of a team, because sometimes you may be the best player, you're the leader, so that's— there's a certain responsibility you carry there. Sometimes you're what they call in sports a role player, You're not the star, but you play an important role and you have to fulfill your role to help the rest of the team. And sometimes you might be at the end of the bench. You are not— you don't really have a serious role. You're on the team, but you're kind of on the fringes. And one day that call may come in where you need to step up and play a role, maybe even step up and be the star. And you need to be prepared and stay ready just in case that call comes in. So that's one thing, just as a team member. Another thing is when you play team sports, you deal with all different types of leaders. So you have the coaches and the trainers. And again, you see the good, the bad, and the ugly. You learn that leaders sometimes make mistakes in communication because when you play a sport, anybody who watches sports knows you see coaches yell at players in games or you hear about it. When you're a leader, you find out though, or even when you're a member of a team, because I saw this as a player, there are some players who you can yell at in front of the whole team. They'll take it and they'll play better. There are other players who, if you yell at them in front of the whole team, you would mentally lose them and you'll get nothing out of them for the next 2 weeks. Because you just embarrass them and they can't take it that way. You— that's the kind of player you have to take to the side and pull aside and talk to them. You don't call them out in front of everybody. And there are other players who you don't call out at all. You give the message to the person next to them and they get it indirectly. But your job as the leader is you have to learn how to, as we say, read the room and know who you're talking to, know how people are receiving your message, not just you giving the message, because a lot of people think that communication is just about what you say— is not about just what you say, that's only half of communication— is what you put out to other people, but it's also how you say it, and it's also how other people receive it. Then the other half of communication is you receiving back from others their communication, not necessarily what they say, but also their nonverbal cues, the things that they don't say, their body language when you're talking to them. You have to notice all of these things and calibrate your communications to dealing with them. So all of those things, just those are the things that I learned from sports just on the people side. Now on the mindset side, Allen, the things that we talked about, athletes have to show up every day to practice, to training, to games. And believe it or not, those who are sports fans, if you haven't played, there are days athletes don't feel like going to work the same way that chefs have days you don't feel like going to work. Business owners have days they don't feel like going to work. Your favorite band or singer, sometimes they have a show and they don't really feel like doing the show. They don't feel like rehearsing. Everybody has those days they don't feel like going to work. That's what the third day is about. How do you show up on those days? Because that's what separates the pros from the amateurs. Then you had the mind— the mindset piece of the confidence. In sports, you're in a performance business, and every time you do your job, there's a whole bunch of people watching you. Unlike most jobs, people may get the result of your work, but they may not see you doing it. In sports, Every time you play, every time you're at work, people see you doing it. So you can't really hide. You can't really lie about what you're doing. And a bunch of people who you don't know are going to have opinions about how you do your job, even though they've never done the job. So that's a unique position to be in. The third piece is that mental toughness piece, which is you're going to lose games publicly in sports. When you lose, you lose in front of the whole world. Everybody saw you lose. You get dunked on or something, you get knocked out in boxing, the whole world saw you get knocked out. So how do you show up the next time knowing that they know what happened to you the last time when you didn't do so well? And can you bounce back even not only from the losses, but also from the successes? Because sometimes when people succeed, they get, they get casual, they get compliant, not compliant, but complacent. They kick their feet up and they take their foot off the gas. Can you keep going even though you got success the last time? And that initiative piece was specific to me. Not every athlete necessarily needs it, but I did because I wasn't a highly recruited athlete. I wasn't a sought-after athlete. I had to go in sell myself to even get my chance to play professionally. And I, from using that skill in basketball, I realized this skill can help me everywhere because I saw even other athletes who were at my level, meaning they were good enough to play pro, but it was so many of us that not all of us was going to get a chance. I saw that most people, even when they have the opportunity or potential to do something, they don't ever make it happen simply because they don't have the the— what do we want to call it— that go-getter energy to go and create opportunities out of nothing, which is literally what I had to do. And I said, you know what, a lot of people don't do this even outside of sports. And even to this day, in a lot of work I'm in now, I see people who have talent, potential, skills, useful stuff that somebody would benefit from if they would go sell it, if they would go find a prospect. But they don't do it. They don't do the work to get themselves seen, heard, and known. So those are all things that I learned In my experience in sports, I could— we could talk an hour just on that alone, but I'll stop here and see what you want to say.

No, I get, I get all that. It's like my son, he was, you know, he works in retail now. He's a general manager at a clothing store. And when he was first starting out, you know, he's like, oh, I should be the manager. I'm like, why should you be the manager? And he goes, because I'm working hard, I'm working hard. And I'm like, no, you have to learn the manager's job. And he's like, well, then the manager's sitting around doing nothing. And I said, well, You know, if you're, you know, if they don't have a training program for you and they're not going to help you be the manager, go work somewhere else. And that's what he did. He went to a different store and then they, you know, saw his potential and he became a general manager. And, you know, that, that's just what you have to do. You have to put in the work to get to the, to the job that you want. And I see that with a lot of young people. They just think like, oh, I graduated college. Now give me $150 grand. What do you mean, give you $150 grand? What have you done? What are you going to do? What are you going to do for me? Is there some special, special sauce? Like, you know how to, you know, some special thing you're going to do? You're going to come in, I should just pay you, and we don't know if you can make a sale or not make a sale. You know, that's, that's how that is. And, you know, you have to do, you have to do what you want to do. Same thing with my daughter. She went to college. She went in as a chemistry major, calls me up one day, says, Dad, I changed my mind. I want to be a meteorologist. So she went down and talked to the school. She goes, they don't have meteorology. I said, there's a meteorologist at the University of Florida somewhere. And, uh, and that— she met the meteorologist and she was on her way. And now she's the chief meteorologist at a TV station in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. And she's a big Caitlin Clark fan. So I learned all about Caitlin Clark all the time from my daughter. Caitlin 'Kaitlyn Clark, Kaitlyn Clark, Kaitlyn Clark,' because it was on every time I would watch her on the news. That's what they were talking about. And I had to go see Kaitlyn. I got to see Kaitlyn Clark play college.

Okay.

Yeah, it was like the most unreal experience that I— it was like literally I thought I was going to see Dwyane Wade and Shaq in the playoffs.

So that's how big she was.

Yeah. So, you know, everything in life is all about, you know, pushing yourself forward. You know, pushing yourself forward and doing, doing things that are so you can better yourself. And you have to, you have to be a student, you know, like I'm a student of payments. Okay. I'm a student about sales. I'm a student about whatever's going on. Like everybody's talking about AI. I want to learn about AI. So to learn, to learn what it is, what's going on with it and things like that. And that's what's important is learning. How all learning about what is going on around you in the world.

Yes, very true. And just taking that initiative to go find somebody who might have the information that you want or have the experience that you're going to need in order to make yourself better and then making yourself valuable in the marketplace. That's how you are able to command at some point, maybe at first negotiate, maybe at first accept, then you get to negotiating, then you get to commanding what you want because you've actually built the value, you have proven value. And there's a cost to losing you. And that matters as well. People have to understand that in business, that if there's a cost to not having you around, then your value goes up. But if you're easily replaceable, then you're replaceable. Your value goes down. It's just how it is.

Yeah. And I like your thing, the, you know, your analogy about the third day. It's just like, you know, I remember when I was a chef, guys would go out and get hammered the next day. Listen, you got to show up to work. You got to shake it off. And you gotta, you know, you gotta do what you gotta do. And it's just like anything else in life, you know, you get up in the morning and one day you might be tired and things have to get done and you just gotta get it done. That's what I say. My dad used to say, pull up your bootstraps and get to work.

Yes, same concept. And a lot of people have lost that these days, I think, because technology makes things seem so instant and so easily accessible without much effort. But all that does is level the playing field for everyone to do certain things. But the thing that still is going to separate people is, one, can you create actual value? Number two, is there a cost to you not being around? And number three, when you are around, do you actually make the needle move? Do you make money move? Can you make results move? Can you make some tangible positive effect happen in a company, in an industry, in a space? If you can do that, then again, people will start calling you. People will start saying your name without you even being in the room. But you have to build that up and do the work.

So what technologies do you see, like, today that are important for people to learn in order to be successful in business today? Because definitely business is changing. The way people search the internet is changing. The way people find things online is changing. What, what technologies, you know, or, you know, do you see that are important for people to learn today?

Well, of course, artificial intelligence is the, the wave, the thing that everybody needs to start learning how to use right now. And artificial intelligence basically takes the same stuff that humans would do and it compresses time. It makes it easier to get the same things done, but a whole lot faster, a lot more efficiently, and usually a lot more effectively because the computers don't go on break, computers don't get headaches, computers don't have bad days, don't go on vacation. So for learning that AI technology and then asking yourself, how can this apply in my business? What can I do in my business that will make my business, business more efficient? Or how can I better serve my clients and customers with this use of technology? What am I doing now that takes 30 minutes? What can I make happen instantly? Or what usually takes a month, can I make it happen in 2 or 3 days with the advent of this new technology? So Everybody just needs to learn the technology or connect with someone who understands the technology. And this is where I think there's a great opportunity for younger people. Let's say somebody who's under the age of 30 and they've grown up on computers, they can go to people who are over the age of, let's say, 50, who never really got into computers, but they have a business and there are some inefficiencies in their business that could be solved by artificial intelligence. All right, that is an opportunity. Same way that social media was the same opportunity 10 years ago. Is the opportunity now with technology. So anyone who understands that technology, go find people who are technology inept or technology ignorant and go help them out with your knowledge. You'll make their business more efficient. That helps them make more money and they'll pay you for it. So it's an easy business deal for them because they see where you're helping them make money and they're giving you a percentage of that.

Yeah, it's definitely probably one of the biggest opportunities out there is, uh, definitely with AI and learning how to use AI is definitely big. I'm continuing to learn how to use it. I use it myself and I learn about it either by self-learning or from talking to other people. So if people want to get more information about you and your books, uh, where should they go, Dre?

Well, they can get a free copy of this book, The Third Day, that we talked about. Can I tell them where to get it? Yes, yes, just go to thirddaybook.com. If you're watching on video, spelled out the thirddaybook.com. The book is free. We just ask that you cover the shipping and we will ship you a physical copy of this book, The Decision That Separates the Pros from the Amateurs. Other than that, you can find me on any social media platforms. Just look up my name, Dre Baldwin, and our homepage is workonyourgame.com.

All right, great. I want to thank you for joining us on the B2B Vault podcast today. And thank you, thank you for everybody for listening. And I hope everybody enjoyed the episode. We will put Dre's information in the show notes so you can find his website, his social media links, and the link to the free book. And thank you for joining us today, Dre.

Thank you for having me on, Allen. I appreciate you sharing your platform.

Thank you.