Mental Game: The 4 Pillars Of Sales Success with Dre Baldwin

Hey. Hey. Andy Neary here. Before we dive into today's podcast episode, think back to how you came upon this podcast. Maybe it was through a post, a share, or one of your own peers shared this podcast with you. I don't take any ads. I don't take any sponsorships. The only way this podcast grows is through word of mouth. So if you would be so kind to share this with a peer, with a teammate, with a friend, a family member, I would be forever grateful to you. This is how we impact more business professionals, and this is how this podcast grows. All right, let's dive into today's episode. Hey, welcome back to Bullpen Sessions. My name is Andy Neri and this is episode 273. Today I am joined by Dre Baldwin. Dre is the CEO and founder of Work on your Game Inc. Dre is a former professional basketball player turned business success and I was honored to have him on. Dre has given four TEDx talks on discipline, confidence, mental toughness and personal initiative. He has authored over 33 or more than 33 books. He has appeared in national campaigns with Nike, Finish Line, Wendy's Gatorade, Buick Wilson Sports, Stash Investments, and Dime Magazine. He has published over 8,000 videos to 142,000 YouTube subscribers and his content on YouTube has been viewed more than 100 million times. He also has the podcast work on your game, which has 2, 800 episodes and counting and more than 7 million downloads in just five years. Dre went from the end of his high school basketball team's bench to a nine year professional basketball career in Europe. And I'm excited to bring him to you because you are going to be absolutely blown away by his mindset and that self talk he leveraged that allowed him to go from high school basketball bench player to Division 3 College basketball dropout or or being cut from the team his senior year to playing professional basketball for eight years in Europe. Dre invented his work on your game framework for himself as a roadmap to help in professionals with mindset, strategy, accountability and execution. So if you are a business professional who is looking for more success and you know that the words you speak to yourself could be better and you know that the chatter going on between your ears could be more effective, you're going to absolutely love Dre. So buckle up, tune in. You're going to love this episode. Hey. Hey. Welcome back to Bullpen Sessions. I am excited today as I have Dre Baldwin joining me. Dre, welcome to the podcast.

Oh, I'm excited to be here. Andy, thank you for having me on.

Yeah, man. I have to tell you, just reading your bio and your statistics, I. I'm a little jealous. As somebody who owns a company that has prided itself on its content and its ability to get its content out in front of its audience, knowing that you've got, you know, 22, 000 Instagram followers, 141, 000 YouTube subscribers, some of your YouTube videos of your basketball skills videos have gotten millions of views. I'm a little jealous, man.

So thank you. Maybe I gotta go back to playing basketball because they did better.

Well, today. Today, you're. You're teaching. This is why I wanted to have you on. You're teaching a lot of the lessons you learned growing up playing hoops. You now apply to business, and you're teaching others how to do that. And. And knowing I have an audience of insurance professionals who kind of eat up the mindset game, I think this is going to be an awesome episode. So let's take us back. You grew up in Philly. What was the. The child version of Dre Baldwin like, especially when it came to sports and playing basketball?

Well, starting at home, I just gotta. I had two parents at home, and they were just big about not sports, but go to school, get your education, get a degree, get a good job. Because neither of my parents had. When. By the time my sister and I, who's a year older than me, by the time we were both born, my parents had not finished school. My dad finished high school, and he didn't. He wasn't thinking about college. And my mom was in college, but she dropped out because she had two young kids. And, you know, we were asked. When we found out about what school was. We asked my mom what schools you go to. She went to LaSalle, which is university in Philadelphia. We asked my dad, what school did you go to? He said, I went to the. What college you go to? He said, I went to the school Hard Knocks. Right. So that was his answer. So he wasn't the school guy, but they were big on. We want to make sure both were. Our kids get what we didn't get, which was a college degree, and then that'll set you up for a good career. My sister became a college professor. So she followed the path. No, perfectly. I went a little bit different path, but same thing. But as far as sports goes, my parents were not trying to raise an athlete. If you want to play sports, cool. But if you want to play, you got to go to school, get good grades, you know, do Your chores, do your homework, all of that. I have my first job when I was 15 years of age, so it was. It was not trying to make me an athlete. I just took the. The discipline that I was, that was modeled for me at home and taught to me at home and enforced upon me. And I just applied that to the basketball court. So even though I got around the basketball pretty late, which is age 14, which I'm sure we'll get into after trying out a couple other sports, I just applied that discipline in basketball. And again, I didn't have anything to go off of. Nobody taught me. Nobody took me under their wing. And this was the 90s, 1990s, so we didn't have Instagram or YouTube to use as a frame of reference. So I was just doing stuff on the court by myself and hoping that it worked out. And luckily I was dumb enough to keep trying even when it wasn't working. And then, then luckily enough, it started working out and that's how we ended up here.

Yeah, I. If I read correctly, you're six four.

Yes.

And your parents are both 575859, is that right?

Yes. And biological. We did the test.

You know what it reminds me of? I think it was. Is it Christian Leitner?

Yeah. Lucky genetically, that is.

And back back in the. So, okay, back in the middle late 90s of Philadelphia, if I've got my timeline correct, as a young basketball player, you're probably following and modeling yourself as after someone like what we'll call the original AI before artificial intelligence, Allen Iverson. You know, it was that was that around that time.

I was. It was a little bit before that. So Iverson came in in 96. That was eight. That is when I turned age 14. But I was following so a little bit a couple years before that. So this is like right after Jordan left. So you had I a big New York Knicks fan, even though I'm from Philly. So I liked, like, Patrick Ewing and the Knicks team. I just like the team, not necessarily trying to play like Patrick ewing because he's 7ft, but Reggie Miller was probably the first player that I tried to play like, even though he was killing the Knicks. Right. I like Reggie Miller, but I like the Knicks, so go figure. So that was that era, right before AI became the guy.

I. I kind of laugh when I talk to friends about today's NBA game. I always think back to those Knicks teams of the mid-90s and like, what are these? What. What are those guys thinking about how the game is played today? Because you tried to drive in the lane, you were going to end up on your back.

Right. That's the game that I grew up playing. I actually, I was thinking about that as. I don't know when this is coming out, but we know in the last couple weeks in basketball, you got all these players scoring all these points. I like the era back when it would be the score would be like 90 to 85. I like those kind of rough and tumble games where every basket you had to earn it. And that's the era that I grew up playing in. So I liked that. It's cool to see people score a lot of points now, but I like the era where you kind of. There's a little bit of football and basketball mixed in together.

Yeah, I agree. I like the arrow when you're going down the lane and the only thing you see standing in front of you is Anthony Starks. And it's like, good luck with that one. So, okay, you brought up the name Jordan. And Jordan's story is pretty famous for the fact he didn't make his high school team. And then he went on to have, obviously, the success we all know he has as the goat of the NBA. And you went on to have success playing professional basketball in Europe. And. But it wasn't always the case where you stood out. Take us back to your early days in high school. Your freshman, your sophomore year. What was. What was that, Dre Baldwin like when it came to playing high school basketball? Because I believe I heard you correctly, your high school only had a varsity team, correct?

That's right. So only one team and only one coach. He didn't. Our coach didn't even have an assistant coach. There was no staff. He was like health teacher during the day, basketball coach by night. So everybody tried out for the team, and every boy in school tried out for the basketball team, and only 12 guys made it. So if you didn't make it, that was. There was no jv. There was no other option. So freshman year, sophomore year, junior year, got cut first day, all three years. Did finally make it that senior year and even that year. No, I kind of not. I kind of. I did sit the bench most of that season. If I scored, I would get in, maybe score two points, maybe four. I think the most I ever scored. I scored maybe eight once because we had a game that was off site, like, not at our. Not at a school. It was at, like this gym and during Christmas break and a bunch of my teammates were late arriving to the gym. So I got to start and I scored about eight quick points and then I came out of the game and I didn't get in anymore. But that was my best game as a senior. But overall, yeah, just continuing to work on my game by myself at the park and at the playgrounds and in gym class when I got a chance. And that junior year when I didn't make the team, I played on a local recreational team. And that was the first team in my life where I was actually a really solid contributing member, where I was looked towards to do something. I did pretty good on that team, this recreational team, my junior year of high school. And then my senior year, I just had more confidence. And it helped that I made the roster to be on the team, even though I didn't do anything. And it kind of planted the seed that, okay, if I could at least make the roster, then maybe I could play in college. Because in college you get a clean slate anyway. So that was my mindset, getting out of high school.

You know, this is inspiring, man. I gotta be honest with you, because you think about high school sports today, right? Especially basketball. It's all about playing the AAU circuit, travel ball circuit. That really is the way you have to go these days to get seen, right? To get recruited. And here you're telling your story. In the mid-90s, you didn't even make your team as a junior. You ended up playing recreational basketball and you made the team as a senior, but still really didn't play. Play all that much. How do you go from that to getting a chance to play college basketball at the Division 3 level because you went on to play at Penn State Altoona? How is that even possible?

The simple inductive reasoning, which I couldn't. I wouldn't have called it that then, but I'll call it that now. And what I mean by that is I understood that once I left high school that everything that happened in high school didn't matter anymore once I got to college. Even, you know, when we were in high school, I don't know what they do now, but back in the days. You have kids, Andy.

We do not.

Okay? So back in the days when kids were growing up in high school, they would say, you got to do good in your sophomore and junior years of high school because that's going to determine whether or not you get into a good college. But then once you get into the college, it doesn't matter what you did in high school. You're in. And whatever you do in college is what matters in college. So I figured that applied to basketball too. So I figured when I go to college, wherever I go, nobody cares that I didn't play in high school. All that matters is what I can do once I get on that campus. So that was my mindset, that wherever I go, I'm going to have a clean slate. Most of my high school classmates will not be at the college that I'm going to. So it's not like they can go and tell everybody, hey, that he didn't make the team in high school, so don't put him on the team. It didn't matter. I was a brand new face and whatever I did then was all people would know about me. So that was just the mindset that I had that I could just go there and just be whatever player I was going to be going into college. And I figured wherever I go, I'm just going to walk on. I'm just going to try to make the team. And as you said, you had to do something in high school on the team in order to get recruited. So I was not recruited. And for those who don't know what walking on means, it means you literally walk into the gym or the court or the field or wherever sport you're trying to play and you try to play your way onto the team before anybody even knows that you exist. And that's what I did. I happened to do it at. I started, actually I graduated from Altoona, but I started at the school called Penn State Abington, which at the time was provisionally Division 3. It wasn't even full fledged Division 3. So it was a level below D3, not junior college, but it was a level below D3 as far as sports went. Meaning you can only play two years of sports. So only freshman, sophomore. So the upperclassmen on my team were all sophomores. I was a freshman. So I knew I, I need to have a sense of urgency then Andy, because the clock is ticking. I only got two years to play here. After two years, what if I don't find another school to go to based on basketball? Because I knew I would have to transfer based on basketball. It wasn't going to be because not like you can. You don't get recruited from college to college based on your grades. It doesn't work that way. You do it based on sports. So I had to do something that was going to get me recruited to another school and I didn't know what or how. So I'm thinking about this and playing my freshman year, no. Made the team, became a starter, happened to be in a Very small pond. I was lucky enough to go to a small pond like Abington where I could be. I was probably the most talented player on the campus the second I got on campus, believe it or not, despite the fact that I hadn't played in high school, and that was probably because I was a bit of a late boomer. I didn't start playing basketball till 14. So by age 18, 19, I'm just kind of learning my game. Whereas most young men who've been playing basketball since they were four or five, like my son, he's gonna be playing basketball as soon as he can walk. So he's gonna kind of figure out what his game is by the time he's 14, 15. I was just figuring it out by the time I was 18, 19. So I was very talented player, but I didn't have the game experience. So I played pretty well. Didn't set the world on fire that year. And I got lucky. And getting recruited to my next school, I don't know if that's part of your research or you seem to have done a good amount, but I'm sure we'll get into that as we move forward here. But that's how I got to Penn State Abington my freshman year. I'll stop there and see where you want to take this.

Well, and I want people who are listening in to hear this. We're going to talk about self talk in a little bit and think about how easy it would be for somebody who was in your position on the high school basketball team. You were playing, you were enjoying, but you weren't getting a ton of playing time. Most kids in that position wouldn't even think about playing basketball at the next level. It wouldn't even be a thought. And here you are saying, I know I didn't get to play a whole lot in high school, but I get a chance to go to a college and reinvent myself, basically create a new brand.

And I think I want people to hear that because.

Most people don't have that mental.

Attribute that that self talk would tell them that even though I barely played in high school, I still can play at the next level. Where do you think that comes from, man?

It's an excellent question. First of all, you hit the nail right on the head. That's exactly what I did. And I told myself, nobody's gonna know me at this new place, so I'm a brand new person. I am whoever I show up as. And where did I get that from? I don't know if I can give it to one particular thing. I would probably just have to give credit to my mother. She's an educator, so she always had my sister and I reading books from a very young age. So I've always been into reading. So it probably came from something that I read. I don't know what specifically, but I've always been a big reader. And I just had it in my mind. These things that I'm articulating now, I couldn't have expl. Could not have explained it when I was age 18, but I was thinking them even back then. I had the seeds of this stuff in my head even back then, even whether it was for basketball or no, off the basketball court. So it was just understanding that at this new place, all that matters is can I prove myself good enough to be on the team? And I knew that I had some. Some semblance of talent when it came to basketball. I could even tell that in high school practice. The problem is I just didn't have the confidence. And then when I got in the games, you know, I had the baggage of. I know that everyone in here knows who I've been for the last three years, but when I got to college, I knew nobody knows me. So I'm just whoever again, whoever I present myself as. So I was able to craft a. Just come up with a new identity, I guess you could say, and apply it on the basketball court as well as off the court. So that's what that difference was for me when it came to playing in college.

That's phenomenal, man. I hope everybody heard. Just heard that. Doesn't matter where you are right now, where your skill level is, or where you believe you are positioned in your career. It's what you're saying to yourself and the beliefs you have that are going to ultimately determine where you go. That. That's absolutely phenomenal, Drake, because you ended up. You end up transferring over to Penn State Altoona. I missed the step at the first college there. Is this where your college basketball career started to really take off?

No, I continued to play college basketball. It continued. But what happened there was how I ended up at Penn State Altoona was that summer after my freshman year, I would just come up to the campus at Abington because they didn't have dorms. So this is a commuter campus where you travel back and forth from home every day to go to school. I would just use the gym because that was the first time in my life I had access to an indoor gym every day on the Abington campus. And one day I just Randomly met a guy who happened to be the coach at Penn State Altoona. He saw me on campus. He didn't even see me on a basketball court. He saw me in a cafeteria. But he approached me because he later told me, you looked like the kind of player who I knew I needed for my roster the following season. It's funny because now I tell people, Andy, I could have been the biggest bum on campus. I just looked like I could play basketball. But who? He didn't know if I could play or not because again, he talked to me in the cafeteria. He didn't even watch me play. But he offered me his business card and said, give me a call. And as soon as I saw who he was, he was a. He worked in IT at Mrs. Office and he was a basketball coach. But I said, this guy works at Altoona, I want to go. Because I knew Altoona. I knew that they were a Division 3 college. I knew you could play four years of sports. I had three years of eligibility remaining, but at Edmonton, I can only play one more year. So I was looking for the opportunity. So when he presented that, I said, I'm going. I don't care who he is, he could be the worst coach in the world. I'm going because I need three more years of eligibility. So that's how I ended up at Altoona. And then as far as the rest of my college basketball career, I had three more years left. I played one year for that guy. Our team was not very good that year. And then he gets replaced. So the coach who recruited me got replaced. So anybody who knows anything about college sports. You know how it happens in college sports, when a coach gets replaced, they tend to want to bring in their own people. Not the same way that in a corporation they replace the CEO, he brings in some of his own people or she bringing their own people. And it doesn't mean that you're not good, it's just that they want their people in there. So the new coach comes in, he starts cleaning house, and halfway through my junior year, I was one of the house cleaning items. I ended up off the basketball team my junior year of college. So my last year and a half of college, I wasn't even on the basketball team. I was completely healthy, completely academically eligible and one of the best players on campus. The guys who were on the team who were the best players are my friends, still best friends of mine to this day. One of them was my roommate, team mvp, was my roommate in college. Even though I wasn't on the Beat, I wasn't on the team. He was. The good news is, Andy, I played intramurals my senior year, and I won the championship. So I averaged about 35, 40 points a game. One intramural championship my senior year of college. But the whole thing was, once I ended up off the team, my mindset was, I know I'm better than some of my teammates. Again, people who I'm cool with, friends of mine to this day. But I said objectively, I'm better than these guys. But I can't prove it, because the only way you can prove it, you got to prove it on the court. And this is the same way that I talk to people about their situations these days. I was talking to myself. I said, okay, Dre, you think you're the best player on this campus. However, to prove you the best player on the campus, first of all, you need to be on the team. Second of all, you got to prove it on the court. You're not doing either one. So how can you prove this for posterity? Say, how can you prove you're better than these guys? And I figured, well, okay, we got high school, you got college. There's only one level after that, and that's probes. So I said, okay, now I got to make it to the pros, because that's the only way that I could prove that this college coach made a mistake, and that also to make sure that none of my teammates from college 20 years from now, and it's literally 20 years since I graduated college, they can't never say, hey, Dre, I outperformed you in basketball. They can't say that because I went to a higher level than them. So that was my drive. That was kind of the gas in the tank. And this was in. I graduated college in 2004. So I stopped playing. My last college game is in.03, didn't play all 2003, and then graduated in 2004. I didn't start playing pro basketball until late summer of 2005. So this was a over two and a half year process between my last college game and my first professional game. But that was the drive and the kind of the gas and the tank for that to happen.

So we're gonna. We're gonna get to that little frame of time right there that I want to hone in on. But I. Again, I'm gonna pause because I want people to hear this. So you didn't make your basketball team your junior year of high school, and instead of saying, it's over. No one's giving me a shot. You went and played inter, you met and played rec league basketball.

Yes.

Which allowed you to come back as a senior, make the team, and now you took it to the next level to play college basketball, but you didn't even play your senior season on your college basketball team. You were playing inner murals. Right. Yet still had the mindset that, okay, what's the next step? What do I need to do to go play pro ball? So between the time your intramural career at that point was done at Penn State Altoona and when you actually started playing pro basketball over in Europe, take us through that journey, man. How the heck did you get to that point, man?

It's an excellent question. So again, I remember walking out the gym that day because I got actually got kicked out in the middle of a practice. So I remember walking out of the gym and thinking to myself, okay, this might be over. Because I saw what this coach had done to my other ex teammates who are now off the team. I said, this might be done and I'm only a junior, so what am I going to do? Because I had the rest of my junior year and then my whole senior year coming up and I didn't really have the cachet to transfer anywhere. And this is before no nil and all that stuff where athletes are getting paid. So this is back in the day. What am I going to do here? And I said, well, there's only one level left. And I said, here's what I can do. And between the time that I walked out of the gym, got in my car and drove to my off campus apartment, I was already reconstructing in my mind, what's the path now? Because I see that this path, this bridge might be burned. So what's the what am I going to do now? I was already kind of re envisioning how I was going to do this because I've always been the type person who typed that visualize my future, my future plans, my future success. Again, back then I could not have languaged it, but that's what I was doing. So I said, all right, I'm on campus, I do have access to a gym. I'm a student, I can still use the gym, I can use the weightlifting facilities. And now that I don't have the basketball team commitments, now in my off time, I can just go practice and work on my game by myself and I can just make myself better. And then when I get out of school, I'll still figure out how to go play our pro ball overseas because here's what I understood being I played at the Division 3 level, Andy. I had had teammates and guys who had recently graduated right before me who had played at my school and did pretty good. They had put up pretty good stats. These are. I'm talking like, all conference, no all star teams and things like that. And they didn't get a sniff at the pros, none. And I reasoned that the reason they weren't getting a look from pro scouts is because they were playing at the Division 3 level in a conference that doesn't really produce pro basketball players. So there may be some D3 guys who went pro, but they weren't coming from the place we were playing at. So I figured, all right, it doesn't matter what stat you put up at this school because it's not going to help you get to the pros anyway. So the fact that I'm not going to be on the team, yes, I would rather be on the team, but the fact that I'm not doesn't really matter, because all that's going to matter is what I can prove once I get to the next level. So it's almost like deja vu all over again, as they say. So now getting out of college, I'm thinking, okay, now how do I set myself up for a pro opportunity? Because now when I go to the pro opportunity, they don't care about what I did the previous level either, because my previous level is insignificant because nobody pro comes out of that level. So they don't care. I had teammates who averaged 30 points a game at my school who never got a chance to play pro basketball because people didn't care, because who are you scoring 30 points on? All right, that's really what they're looking at. So that was my mindset, and that's what I just used. I used that last year and a half. I just worked on my game by myself, lifted weights. No. Played intramurals, played pickup basketball and all of that. And then I just set my sights on after I graduated, weighted. Okay, now how do I get that pro opportunity?

That's awesome. Again, the key, key lesson I just heard there is. It's almost as if your mind has said, what's the natural next step? Not even thinking, like, serious, you think you can play pro basketball? You're like, yeah, what's the next. What's the natural next step I got to take to do that? And that's what I absolutely love about your story, because you ended up playing basketball over in Europe, man, in nine different countries. I've got Lithuania or eight countries Lithuania, Germany, Montenegro, Slovakia German hi, it's Andy Neary and thank you for listening to the Bullpen Sessions podcast. Did you know the ideas shared on this show are things we actually specialize in helping you implement? If you're an insurance professional and you want to turn your credibility into consistent client acquisition, visit completegameconsulting.com and schedule a free strategy call. Again, that's completegameconsulting.com to request your free strategy call. All right, let's jump back into today. Today's podcast episode. Your mindset. I'm a sports junkie, former athlete myself. What what was the European game like professionally compared to playing ball in the States?

Oh, great question. Much more team oriented, much more, more structured and systematic. Whereas the American game, as far as basketball goes, much more about the individual. It's about the individual scoring all the points and getting all the glory. Whereas the European game is much less one on one. It's not as, not nearly as much one on one stuff there. You try to go one on one there, everybody's looking at you like you're crazy. Even if you score, they're looking at you like, no, we don't do that here. You move the ball, you move without the ball. You pass, you play defense. It's about the team overall. It's not about the individual person. So that's the biggest difference and is why somebody could be a star playing in America. But you go over there and they can't adjust because it's a completely different game.

Yeah, it's, it's interesting when I look at the NBA now you and I were talking offline about just how the statistics are almost gay. A video game like. But I do find it interesting that there's three guys this year who are nearly averaging a triple double and all three of them are Eastern Europeans.

So who's that?

Jokic and Sabona Sada with Sacramento.

Oh, Sabonus.

I wonder if it has something to do with the way they play the game over there, that they are good shooters, good passers, good rebounders?

I would think so, yes. Because the players in America, they are also those things. They can all. A lot of, a lot of American players can shoot pass and rebound. But we emphasize so much the individual and the one on one stuff, not necessarily the passing. Also the athleticism. The athletes in America are where it's better athletes. They're better athletes in America than there are in Europe. And Europe is easier to get a jump shot off because the defenders aren't as quick, as long or as tall in America, they're very quick. So people think in NBA players aren't, aren't as good shooters. No. The defense is just better. And over there, the team game just matters so much. And you have to be able to adjust. So it's a, it's also a challenge coming from Europe to try to play if you're a European, trying to come over here because a lot of Europeans have come over here and not done well because they don't have the ability to adjust to the athletes in America and also to do they have the ability to go one on one if you need to. So Luca, he can go one on one if he needs to joke, it's as well they can go one on one if they need to. But if you don't have that ability, you may not last. And if you're over there as a superstar and you come over here and you're like the eighth guy, a lot of people emotionally can't deal with that. Right. So it's not for everybody.

Well said. I know, I know one guy who would you. Because based on your history, you don't care where you are on the bench, you're going to find a way to get to the next level. So let's transition. You know, it's, it's, it's amazing enough that you went on to have success playing professional basketball when every sign told you you didn't have the skill to do it, but now you've gone on to have an equally, if not more successful business career. You know, today you're the CEO of work on your game. And, you know, like I said, the statistics around your business to me are pretty impressive. You've published over 8,000 videos. You've delivered over 2,600 episodes of your podcast. Is that correct?

Yes. Should be 2800 now.

I think that is absolutely phenomenal. Again, as somebody who uses content to grow his business, I'm a little jealous for being honest with you. And that is the work on your game podcast. But I want to talk about some of the sports lessons you apply today in how you teach mindset in your business.

Sure.

And there's a couple things I want to go to. In one of your talks I was listening to, you had talked about the best advice you had ever been given when you were in eighth grade from another eighth grader.

Yes.

Talk to us about that, because I thought that was very impressive that you intuitively understood that as being great advice at age 14. But how this is such an important business Lesson for those people who are tuning in.

Yeah, so I took that from. I actually opened a lot of my keynotes with that exact story. So this was my high school. Not high school, middle school classmate Brandon. He was the best player in our middle school in eighth grade. And we were about to go to different high schools because eighth grade, then the ninth grade. And I knew he was going to probably play from day one at whatever high school he went to because he was that good. Like I said, he's kind of guy who's been playing basketball since he was three years old, where I had just started playing that year. So he was a lot better than me. But we were friends. Excuse me. And I asked him, hey, give me some advice. What can I do to get better? So that was the first thing, was that I was. I knew I wasn't that good. I was smart enough to ask someone who was good for some advice. And he said, first of all, stop playing scared. And secondly, you got to buy a game. He said, get some skills. That's what it meant, get some skills. You don't have any skills, so you can't dribble. No, you just. All you do is stand over in the corner and try to shoot threes. And if you're not making that, then you're useless. You're useless on the court. You play no defense. You can't dribble, you can't pass. You don't do anything. Get some skills. And he was saying this as a friend. He was giving me advice, but I was willing to ask for it. And he was 100 correct. And what I find. And I've talked to a lot of young people. Like when I was making basketball videos for 10 years straight, all I did was put out basketball content online. And. And I would talk to a lot of young people and I would offer them advice in a similar vein to what Brandon offered me. And they would get mad at me. They would get mad at me and say, I'm being a hater or I'm being negative or I'm not believing in them. Or someone else would come underneath my comment and they would try to tell them something to make them feel good. I'm like, yeah, that makes you feel good, but it's going to help you play good. They telling you something. They're telling you just believe in yourself and you'll make it. No, you need to learn how to dribble with your left hand and make a layup. That's why you didn't make the team. Not because you don't believe in yourself, you can't play. And I accepted that. And I think one of the reasons I accepted that because again, I. I had two parents at home. I had parents who taught me discipline. I was taught to respect authority. And respecting authority doesn't necessarily mean somebody older than your authority, just means someone who knows something that you don't know, who sees something that you can't see. And when my middle school classmate told me, you play like you're scared and you don't have any skills, the first thing I asked myself is, is it true? And this is what I tell people. When someone offers you a criticism, the first question you ask yourself is not, how does it make you feel? Not are they a hater? First question is, is it true? Your worst enemy could say something about you that's negative, but is it true? If it's true, then you had to accept it. And I accepted it. And that was the, the very. That was the genesis of this whole work on your game thing, where it came from. So I didn't take it when he said it and, you know, put it up on my wall and say, this advice is going to change my life. But what I did was accept it that he was probably telling the truth and he was right. And I could see it. I could see everything that he could see. And I just continued to work on my game and I continued to practice. And when I wrote my first book, I actually called it Buy a Game. And I. That guy Brandon, I'm still friends with him to this day, and I remember telling him about the book when it came out, and he said, yeah, I'll go buy a copy. And I told him, man, I gotta thank you now. At 30ish years old, 30, 40 years old, I told him I got to thank you because that advice that you gave me, I accepted it and I took it with me over the next 20 years, and that's really what became the foundation of who I became. I don't even remember what your question was here.

And you answered the question. And I forgot to mention, you not only you've also written 33, you've authored 33 books, which is, which is pretty damn impressive, man. And the message that you just shared, though, that I think is important is the advice you got from Brandon. And it's so such important advice for insurance professionals. Stop playing scared. There's so many who are just not confident in their ability to sell. And number two, if you don't, if you're not getting the results you want right now, go Buy a game, go work on your skills. Go get the coaching or training you need. Quit making excuses. Quit blaming your external factors. Go buy a game, Go get the skills you need to be successful. I absolutely love that. You know, you also talk about, you know, I love this, being a former athlete. I did play pro baseball for a couple years. And I remember when my pro career came to an end, you said there's three reason athletes stop playing their sport, especially at the professional level. Number one, they can't physically do it anymore.

Right.

Two, they lack opportunity, which means no one wants to sign them.

Right.

But three is what I want you to talk about. And you call that the third day?

Yes.

Describe the third day.

Well, the third day, I'll tell you where it came from was when I was still making those basketball videos on YouTube. The players would always ask me, dre, how do you always have a gym to yourself? Do you own a gym? Is the gym attached to your house? Do you rent it out so nobody else can use it? And I explained to them it was none of that. It was just the fact that this is a gym, that everyone knows where it is, everyone has access to it. It was a city owned facility. So we're not talking no, 200amonth equinox. It was like $10 a month to use the gym. And the reason people don't come in here is because they just are not consistent. They don't have the consistency to keep showing up. And the third day is all about showing up every single day and doing the work, even when you don't feel like doing the work. That's what the. The whole concept of the third day is. And the reason that an athlete walks away from the sport, besides physical injury or lack of playing opportunity, is that they're tired of doing all the stuff that you don't see on tv. So when you watch baseball on tv, you see the games. Those are fun. You watch football. I don't know when this is coming out, but we're around super bowl season. The games are fun. It's what. What are the players doing Monday through Saturday, though, that you don't see? Excluding the Monday and Thursday night games. That's the hard part. All right, the basketball games you see on tv, the games are fun. No athlete stops playing because they get tired of the games. Never, ever, ever have you seen an athlete say, I'm tired of playing in the games, where everyone shows up and pays for a ticket and cheers for me, and I make money playing the game for a living. No athlete ever Says, I got tired of that. You will never find not one. The reason athletes stop playing is because they're tired of all the stuff they had to do in between the games. And that's the third day. That's the practices, that's the training, that's the drills, that's the ice baths. That's the physical recovery. That's the sports massages, which don't feel as good as they sound. All right, Those. All of those things. Those are the things that cause people to walk away. And the more you can deal with the third day, and the better you condition yourself to handle the third day. That's really when you are a true pro at what you're doing. And when you no longer want to deal with the third day, it's time for you to walk away, because what happens is you'll start cheating the game. And it was. I remember I was watching the first episode of when LeBron had a TV show. I don't know if he still has it, but the first episode, he had Jon Stewart on there, and Jon Stewart had the Daily Show. I don't know what he's doing now, but Jon Stewart was talking about. Because someone asked him, john, why'd you stop doing the Daily Show? Because it's a very popular show. He said, well, now I found myself coming to the studio a little bit later and leaving a little bit earlier. And LeBron interrupted him and said, oh, you know what you just described, John? You started cheating the game. And when you started cheating the game, you knew it was time to walk away. And John completely agreed. And that's exactly what the third day is about. That when you get to that point that you don't no longer want to do the grunt work, the stuff that doesn't come on tv, the unsexy stuff, like Kobe Bryant said in that letter that he wrote that last year before he retired. He said, my mind can do this forever, but I can't put my body through it anymore. What he was explaining was, I no longer want to deal with the third day, which means this is my last year, and it's over. And that's the same thing for every athlete. The same thing for any professional in any job. Are you willing to do the stuff that doesn't, quote, unquote, come on tv? That's the stuff that really makes you a pro. It's not the. If it was just the fancy stuff, everybody be a pro, because everybody likes that. That's the fun part. But are you going to do the not fun part?

Yeah, I Remember, somebody asked me one time, why do you think professional athletes are usually. Usually have a lot of success? College and pro athletes have a lot of success in insurance? Because there's a lot of former college pro athletes in the insurance business. You know, my. My answer was, it's because they're willing to put in the work when no one's watching. And that's that third day you describe. And the analogy being that if you went out and hired a trainer today, the first day, you feel good. It's your first workout, you're feeling good. After the first day, though, you feel a little sore. But day two, you're still good. You show up again with the trainer, you're ready to kick butt. But it's day three when you get up. And I think the analogy you gave is when you call the trainer and said, hey, you can charge me. I'm not showing up. I'm too sore. I don't feel like doing this. And that's what separates everybody else, is everybody wants that glory, whether it's in sports or business, the glory of hitting the game, winning basket, or selling the million dollar account. Very few people are willing to put in the work that it takes to get there. And that's the work when no one's watching you. Being in the gy when it's empty, I. I feel the same way, Dre. When I'm traveling for business, it amazes me how often I go into a hotel gym that's empty, right? It's like, why is this gym always empty?