“Dre All Day Baldwin: Bench to Brand—Master Discipline & Rejection”

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Welcome to the CJ Moneyway Show podcast, the podcast show where we unlock potential one dream at a time. Today we have another guest whose journey is truly worth hearing. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the Moneyway experience.

What's up, my good people? Welcome to the CJ Moneyway Show in association with Believe Network, the podcast that brings you stories behind the success. And don't forget to look out for the new animated series, G Outta State's Capital, created by your boy CJ Moneyway Johnson. Today, Lakers fans, hoop heads, entrepreneurs, and everyday winners, this is your playbook. Today's guest walked on at a D3 college, hustled into a 9-year pro career overseas, and built a global empire based on mindset, discipline, and daily execution. With 35 books, 4 TEDx talks, and over 1 million people impacted, he's proved that you just don't need perfect circumstances, just the right mental game. Dre Baldwin, aka Dre All Day. Welcome to the show, bro, man. How you doing, man?

CJ Moneyway Johnson, I appreciate you having me on. I'm doing great. How about yourself?

Oh man, I'm doing good, man. I'm doing good, man. Thanks for coming on, man. Man, like I said, man, your resume, man, is impeccable, bro.

So thank you.

Let me ask you, man, from the bench to the big leagues, man, give us a little backdrop about your walk-on story, man, to a D3 school, man.

Sure. So I didn't start playing basketball until I was about 14, so I played a bunch of other sports but came around basketball right maybe end of 8th grade, starting 9th grade. So Didn't make the high school team until I was a senior. Only played one year. That one year I sat the bench, scored like 2 points per game as a senior in high school. So I tell people all the time, CJ, if you score 2 points a game in hockey or soccer, you make the Hall of Fame. Yeah, score 2 points per game basketball, you're nothing. So nobody was checking for me to play college ball, but I knew I was gonna go to college, so I just figured whatever school I go to, I'll just try to get on the team. I'll just go and they'll find out when's tryouts. I'll find out where the ball players play and see if I can impress somebody and maybe get my name circulating at least before tryouts happen. So I went to a school called Penn State Abington. So I graduated from Penn State University, but Penn State has a bunch of campuses in the state of Pennsylvania. And I went to Abington, which is right outside of Philly. And they only have one gym. Abington is a pretty small campus. So I just went there and just found out when people come to play pickup ball because the ballplayers, I know they're going to show up and play pickup. So I was going there and play pickup and see, and I didn't know anybody. So let me just see if somebody I catch somebody's eyes with my ability to play. Eventually, the guys from the basketball team came in there to play pickup. And of course, they're asking, hey, anybody here we need to know about? And people will point at me like, this guy, he can play a little bit. And so I was already kind of known by the coaching staff before the tryouts happened. And I knew I was going to be on the team because Abington is a pretty small, as they say, a small pond. So it wasn't going to be hard for me to make the team there. And luckily, I ended up in the right place where I could work on my game. I could grow, get better. And that's where I started out. And then I ended up playing at Penn State Altoona for my final 3 years. And that school was a, at the time, a full-fledged D3 because Abington is a full-fledged D3 now. But at the time it was provisional D3, which meant you could only play 2 years of sports. Now you can play 4, but back then it was only 2. So while I was at Abington my freshman year, I'm thinking, okay, I got to figure out where to go after my sophomore year. Luckily, I got recruited to go to Altoona after my freshman year. So that's where I finished up.

Mm, that was cool. So let me ask you, Dre, man, what position did you play?

I'm 6'4", so I played guard. But at that level, I mean, you could pretty much play whatever's needed. I mean, a center on the other team might only be like 6'5". So I would play mostly— I was playing guard and wing in college.

So let me ask you, man, you know, being a ball player myself, didn't make it to the level that you did, but you know, you say you scored 2 points in high school. So some of us are defensive players, you know, shut down defense, some of offense, man. So what was your biggest attribute? Was it on the defensive end or the offensive end?

It was both actually for me. So I was always priding myself on being an all-around player. So when I first started playing, my thing was just stand around the perimeter and shoot jump shots because I didn't really know how to dribble and I didn't really have the skill to drive to the basket or anything like that. But as I developed my best professional skill was my athletic ability. So 6'4", I got a long wingspan, I could jump high, at least when I was playing. And I also developed my outside shot at the same time. And defensively, I always took pride in actually playing defense. I played with a lot of guys who didn't really care. If you had 30 and they had 30, they were happy. But I didn't like nobody scoring 30 on me. So I played both. I was an all-around player.

Yeah, I played defense. I was a defensive player, but I had a quick first step too, you know what I'm saying? I didn't have a jump shot, but I felt nobody stopped me from going to the hole either, you know what I'm saying, or whatnot. And like I say, I was Magic, so I could pass, 'cause I emulated Magic back in the day, 'cause I was the tallest in my age group coming up, you know what I'm saying, or whatever. And so they want to put me at center. I wasn't no center. I'm running the fast break, bro. We outta here, you know? 'Cause coming up, you know, in high school and things of that nature, junior high school, that puts you in position according to your height, not your skills. Exactly. So sometimes it'll mess you up, you know. Like Big Dog, I'll give you a prime example. I played with Big Dog. Matter of fact, Glenn Robinson III, that's my little cousin. And when we played at Roosevelt, when Glenn played at Roosevelt, he played center. He was the center. My auntie used to, uh, she was a custodian at this high school. This was his freshman year. He was prop 48. And we up there playing and he starts shooting these jumpers. I'm like, man, where did he get this jump shot from? But he had had it the whole time though. But because of the position that he played in high school, you know what I'm saying, once he got to the next level, his real skill set showed off, man. So yeah, sometimes these coaches, man, they can mess us up. And one thing they don't do nowadays, Dre, man, they don't teach defense like they used to, man. Defense is a secondary thing. But my son play and I watch these practices and it's terrible. So Let me ask you, Dre, man.

It is, but we might as well. When it comes to Robinson, uh, Kobe, when he was in high school, he played center, but he had the all-around skills. Yeah, because Kobe went to high school right outside of Philly, so yeah, he was the tallest guy. He's like 6'6", 6'7". He was the tallest guy, so he'd be in the middle, but you could see he had other skills. If he ever— anytime he dribbled, you could see he could do other stuff. It's just he had to do what the team needed.

So yeah, yeah, I didn't know he played center though. I've seen some of his high school highlights looked like the one he did on my man when he was a rookie when they played at Las Vegas. Uh, yeah, where he dunked on my man. Yeah, that was nasty, man. So let me ask you, Dre, man, building resilience through rejection, man, tell me, how was that like?

Well, it was not something that I went and looked up and got from anybody. It was just a matter of if it didn't work, let's say playing ball, trying out for the high school team, 9th, 10th, 11th grade, and not working. What else is there to do? I mean, there's nothing else to do. So I came up in the era— I'm a little bit younger than you probably, but we still didn't have the internet at that time. We had internet, but not this, not social media. So it was no YouTube, no Instagram, nothing like that. So now I can go on the internet and look up and see some motivational video to tell me how to think after I didn't make the team. So it was a matter of, okay, I didn't make the team, let me just figure out how to get better, and maybe I'll try it again next year. Because I just felt myself I could feel myself getting better. And at the same time, you got, of course, the kids around you, they're like, well, you tried out for the team, you didn't make it, you might as well give up. It's not gonna be basketball. But I didn't see myself doing anything else. So it's not like I had all these options. This is why I'm thankful that I came up in the era that I came up in. Because had I come up in this era, dealing with the same thing, I might have said, okay, well, I didn't make it on the basketball team, maybe I'll go be a TikToker, or a YouTuber. Instead of doubling down on being an athlete. But yeah, the way I grew up, it was you go to school every day. And when I turned 15, I had started working little part-time jobs, and my parents made me. And other than that, it was playing ball. So you basically had 3 things to do. So I wasn't gonna be some superstar student. I knew that wasn't gonna be the thing. I was good enough. And I didn't see anything work-wise that I really wanted to do. I said sports was like the best outlet for me or the best path for me. I didn't know what I didn't know about the odds of somebody making it. I mean, you always have people say is a one in a million chance, etc., etc. But I was just like, okay, this is the best thing I got going for me. So I might as well keep trying.

Mm, man, you know, like you say, this era, that era, because there's one thing about the era that we grew up in too, we was outside all the time. I mean, I know we was, you know, on the basketball court, hanging out, you know, doing something, man. But with the internet and things, this guy got a 14-year-old, that's my youngest boy. So I know how that is, man. They do not go outside for nothing. And the motto, and then And this is what I want to get into, man, too, because this is what I've been trying to tell my son for years, man. If you want to get better at what you doing, or if you think that you want to go somewhere in this basketball or whatever, because he run track too. I think he more have more success in track if he put his mind to it than maybe basketball, but he pretty good. But one thing about it, Drake, he don't want to put in the work, man. You know what I'm saying? You have to put in the work. In order to take it to the next level. So with that being said, let me ask you, man, the science of self-discipline, man, building work on your game while playing, man. Tell us, how was that, man? You know, saying the mindset when you start thinking about this work on your game concept.

Well, I got to take it back to my parents. First of all, I mean, my parents come from a two-parent household and my parents went to work every single day. My mom's in the education space. My dad basically worked manual labor. During the day and then he was a musician. Music was his passion. So he would go do music at night. And my dad probably slept 4 or 5 hours a night for about 30 years, because he would do his day job, he would do his music thing at night. Every time I got up in the morning to go to school, I'm getting up by 6 o'clock, he was already gone.

Right?

And sometimes I would go to bed, he wasn't home yet. But every day he was doing it. And my mom was more like the disciplinarian, you know, do your homework, you know, do good in school, etc. And enforcing all the rules with kids. And that was the seed that was planted in me for discipline. And I'm 6'4". My parents are— neither one of them is even 6 feet tall. My mom's like 5'7". My dad's like 5'8". So it's not like they were teaching me basketball. They weren't trying to make an athlete. They were just like, make sure you go to school, graduate high school, and go to college. Because at that point, neither of them had gone to or graduated from college. So that was the biggest thing for them. That's where I got the discipline piece from. As far as work on your game, once I started to get better in basketball, because I didn't start till 14. So by the time I was about 18, my freshman year of college, that's when I started feeling I was good at basketball. I could go somewhere and play against whoever and not embarrass myself. And that's when I'm in college, make the basketball team. And I just, for the first time also, because again, like you said, we would go outside and play basketball. I come from Philly. And in Philly, you played outside on the playground. And if you want to practice, you had to go during off-peak hours when nobody else was at the playground. So I was at the playground at, like, we're recording this right now, it's 11 o'clock. I'll be out there at 11 o'clock in the summer when it's hot as ever. Because nobody else would be outside because it's too hot for everybody else. That's when I developed my game. So my freshman year of college, CJ, the first time I had access to an indoor gym consistently. So now I will go to that gym at the Abington campus and just practice because nobody else would be in there. So it was one gym on the whole campus. And even the guys on the basketball team, if it wasn't a team-mandated thing, you didn't see those guys. And this was always the case. And even through my pro career, believe it or not, this was always the case, is that unless the coach was telling us to do it, you didn't see anybody on the team doing it. So what you just said, if you are serious, you got to put in the work. Even players who were on the team, they weren't doing it. In high school, I didn't see this. In college, I didn't see it. In the pros, even, you didn't see it. You never saw guys outside of what the team required putting in extra work. And I noticed this even when I was 14, 15 years of age, because I would go to the park. There's only one park. Everybody in the neighborhood comes to the same playground.

Yeah.

So we would all go play pickup at like 6 o'clock at night, because that's when the sun goes down, right? That's when everybody comes outside. But if you drove by the park or walked by the park at 12 in the afternoon, it's empty. The sun is hitting it, but it's empty. So I'm like, alright, that's my time to practice. I'll just come, I'll deal with the heat. And what I noticed is that all the other players in the neighborhood who were better than me, I never saw any of them practicing. They were just better because they've been playing since they were 6. I just started playing when I was 14. That's the only reason they were better than me. So I figured, okay, I can't do the same thing that they're doing because then my theory was we're both improving at the same rate. So I got to do something extra so I can kind of catch up because they're already ahead of me. I got to catch up. So as I kept doing that catch-up time, that's where I started to develop my game. And again, mind you, CJ, this is no Instagram. I'm not looking at my phone and somebody does a drill and say, do this. I was just doing stuff, just randomly doing stuff, just hoping I could figure it out. And I started to figure it out. So by the time I was about 18, 19, I came up with a little routine and Here's how I work on my dribble. Here's how I can work on my athleticism. I'm reading basketball magazines and just taking any little nugget. And that's where I started to develop my skill set. And by 2005, when I started playing pro, I'll jump ahead. We'll come back to it, I'm sure. Playing pro in 2005. And at this point, YouTube comes out. So I start putting videos on YouTube just showing myself practicing. And I noticed people were responding to it. So I just started recording every workout that I did and putting them out, not as a brand building strategy, but just because people were asking.. And players would just start asking about my background, like, where are you from? Where'd you play? Etc. So I told them I play overseas, or I'm trying to play overseas, or I'm in between jobs overseas. I played college, I played D3 at this school. What'd you do in high school? Oh, well, I didn't even make the team, so I was a senior. So when I start answering these questions, a lot of the players were seeing themselves in me, because most basketball players ain't Kobe or no LeBron. Most basketball players are like me, barely making the team, hoping to make the team. And even when you do make the team, nobody remembers you. All right, so when they saw me, they said, okay, so this guy barely made the team, walked on in college, and he's still playing pro. He's still showing up to the gym every day. I need whatever he's got, whatever's in his head. I need that. Yeah, they started asking about it. And that's when I started talking about discipline and confidence and mental toughness and personal initiative. And when I started talking about those things, people really started responding very strongly to that. They responded to the drills too, but the drills I could tell somebody can dribble or not by giving you the ball. Let me see what you do. I can't tell what's going on in your head. I can't tell if you're disciplined, confident, mentally tough. I don't know if I just watch you one time. I don't know anything about you. So when I started talking about the mindset piece, I didn't think it was a big deal because I thought everybody thinks like this because again, you can't read somebody's mindset. I can read if you can jump or shoot. So when I started talking about the mindset, the response to it told me, oh, this is not normal. But most people don't think this way. So that's when I started talking about it more. And that became the foundation of Work On Your Game.

Man, I like that. I like that. And I take back too, man, like you say, you had them out. We had a court right across the street from my house, and that was a school, and everybody used to go over there after school, whatever. We had different places, but that was the main spot. At one point, we didn't have no rims on the court, you know what I'm saying? Something like with Kyrie Irving, where they had no, uh, backboard, you know. He ain't had no backboard. They said that's how he learned how to do all them little flip shots and everything goes. The backboard or whatever. And we didn't have no rims. There was no rims on the court. But Dre, man, I used to get out there even in the wintertime. I would go shovel the snow on the court and shovel it off and just make me a path and just dribble up and down the court, uh, shooting imaginary layups, you know what I'm saying? Because that's just what I wanted to do. Because like I told you, I was the tallest kid, so they always wanted to put me at center. Right. In my mind, I was a point guard. I didn't care what nobody said. Exactly. I was a point guard. And if I wanted to be that, yeah, if I wanted to be that, I had to practice on my game, practice my dribbling skills and all that, man. So yeah, today's day, uh, today's— and what you said with the mindset as well, I like that. And I like how you able to use your mindset and implement it and put it into other people. Because that's the hardest thing to do. Like, like you say, you can play ball, but I can't give you the heart. I can give you, you know, saying pointers, and I can teach you drills, I can teach you this and that, but I can't give you the heart to go out there and do it, you know what I'm saying? You have to want to go out there and do it on your own, man. And I don't like pushing my little son doing stuff because you can push somebody to the point where they can, you know, saying stop liking what they doing because you ragging on it too much, 'cause my father did that with me with baseball. That's how I feel like I could play baseball, but it was the one sport that I grew up not playing organized, you know what I'm saying? Because that was the main thing that he wanted me to do. Baseball this, baseball that. And so I wind up not really liking it, but can play, man. Was a shortstop, center fielder, and can hit that thing out the park. Don't get it twisted, y'all. My man Dre Baldwin, AKA Dre All Day, in the building. Y'all giving us this mindset tip, letting us know how it goes down in Philly, how he made it through rejection, how he made it through different types of mindset, and how he changed his mind. Now he helping brothers and sisters out there get their mind right. Hey, so Dre, man, let me ask you, man, real quick. Your routine, man, waking up at 3 AM without an alarm, man, tell us about it. Walk us through that, man. When you get into that mindset, because that's early.

Oh, 3:45 to be exact. Where that came from was I was actually reading Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, which I got introduced to when I was in college. And then I read another of his books, one of my favorites, which is called The Law of Success. And The Law of Success is actually— Think and Grow Rich is kind of inside of that book. So The Law of Success is his big book. It was actually a course, but he made it into books so they can sell it. And one of the things that he talked about is the subconscious mind. And he gave this experiment in the book. He said, you can get your subconscious mind to basically do whatever you tell it to do, but you have to tell it, you got to give it instructions. So he said, All you need to do is next time you go to sleep, tell yourself over and over again, consciously before you go to sleep, what time you want to wake up tomorrow. Just tell yourself what time you want to wake up. And at that time tomorrow, you're going to wake up like somebody was shaking you. And I did it. And it worked. The very next morning, I woke up at the time that I told myself I was gonna wake up. No alarm clock, no nothing. And I'm like, yo, that's crazy. So I've been doing that ever since. Now I got a young child now, he sleeps in the bed with us. So These days I cheat and use the alarm, but I still wake up at 3:45. So that's where that started.

Oh yeah, how long you been doing that? How long has the 3:45 routine been going on, man?

So I'll tell you where the waking up early started. So waking up early started in 2006. I was working at this gym called Philadelphia Sports Clubs in downtown Philly. This is after I played overseas at a couple places, and I came home and the phone wasn't ringing. So I went and got a regular job. So I'm working at a gym.. And at the gym, I had to be there at 8 o'clock every morning. So this gym had multiple locations in Philly. And I'm an athlete, I'm still— I'm gonna go play overseas again. I know I'm gonna play overseas again, but I got this job for now. Good thing is I got a job at a gym so I can use the gym for free and work out. The thing is, the location I worked at didn't have a basketball court. They had the weights and all that, but no basketball. A different location had basketball. Now since I'm an employee, I could use the other one.. But the other one is like 40 minutes to the north and my job is like 20 minutes to the south from where I live. Yeah, so I'm like, alright, how am I gonna do this? Because I need to use that court for free. I mean, why not? So what I did was I just reverse engineered the whole thing. If I got to be at work at 8 o'clock, that means I got to leave that facility at like 7 because it's gonna take me an hour to drive to work. So to leave at 7, I got to be showering by like 6:45 because I had to bring my work clothes with me and shower at the gym. So leave by 6:45. And I want to get at least an hour or some workout in, the gym opens at 5:30. So I got to be there at 5:30. Now mind you, the gym is 40 minutes away from my apartment. So for me to get there at 5:30, I gotta leave the house at like 4:50. Me to leave the house at 4:50, I gotta get up at like 4 o'clock. So I'm waking up at 4 in the morning. That's how I figured it out. So I started waking up at 4 in the morning every day. And doing that, I did this for about maybe a month or two. And eventually I just went and paid for a different gym that was real close to my apartment. I might as well just spend money to save me some time. But that's how it started.. And you know what I liked about it, CJ, was that I realized that if I get up and it took me back to when I was a teenager, if I just go to these off-peak times, I can get access to the facility and there's no people around, nobody bothering me. Because you know basketball, you go to a gym at the basketball court, everybody's over there. Yeah, you can't really, you can't really get your practice in because everybody's in the way and they're playing pickup and somebody wants to play with you. And I just want to practice. I understood the value of just isolated individual practice time to make myself better. And I always had this rule when I played CJ, I called the 10-to-1 rule, that for every 1 hour I spent playing, I spent 10 hours practicing. And I maintained that the entire time that I played. I put a lot of time in working on my game, and the games would just show off the stuff I was working on. So that's where the 4 in the morning thing started. And then later on, as I kept playing pro, I kept waking up early. In offseasons, I wake up early, go to a gym first, whatever time the gym opens. Gym open at 6, I'm there at 6. It opens at 5, I'm there at 5. If it's a 24-hour gym, I get there like 4:30 and just get my workout in because I knew nobody else would be in there and I would be uninterrupted. And I still got the whole rest of the day to do whatever I want to do. I already got my workout in. So I've always kept up that routine even to this day. I mean, I don't need to be up at any time, but I still get up early because it's that— it's kind of like this mental edge that you get knowing that you put the work in before everybody else even got out of bed. You already put that work in and you already started your day. So It's something that I've always stuck with. Early to bed, early to rise.

I like that, man. You know, and I go back to what you said earlier too, as far as how it all started with the discipline. You said you came from a two-parent household. I did too. And me and my mother just talked about this not too long ago. Because even now, like, I will go to work, I will leave the house like an hour, hour and a half early so that I could be— I've always been on time at work. I don't be late. You don't understand. I give myself enough time. And like you, I've been working since I was 16 years old. So I knew, you know, it's like you say, and my mother said, she said, you and your brother got y'all work ethic from seeing me and your daddy, you know, going to work every day, getting up, going to work. And so that do matter. Sometimes we don't think that, you know, saying that is part of life, but we are soaking things in, seeing how those, you know, our loved ones, our mothers and our fathers are operating. And it filters down in us because this is what they're teaching us, you know what I'm saying? Whether it's in words or by action, and we picking up on it, and it takes us a long way. Even when we get older and grown, man, you still have that work ethic. And I think that's what a lot of young adults and a lot of young teenagers missing right now. Even with people that they don't have work ethics, you know what I'm saying? They want the money, but they don't have the work ethics. They want the money, but they don't want to work. Work on your game, y'all. So let me ask, your brand is built on, as what we were just talking about, discipline. How does that show up in your day-to-day, man?

Well, it's in everything. Discipline is the biggest thing for me. And when people ask me, CJ, Dre, what's the number one trait or number one thing that has helped you become what you became in whatever we're talking on the court, off the court, anything, answer is discipline, easily. And reason why discipline is the answer is for several reasons. Number one, discipline is what separates the pros from the amateurs. Because when you're a professional at what you do, there's going to be days that you don't feel like doing it. There'll be days you don't feel like going to work. You don't feel like dealing with your customers or your coworkers or whatever you're responsible for. There will be days you don't feel like doing it, guaranteed. I don't care how glamorous your job looks from the outside looking in. And you still have to show up and do your job because that's what makes you a pro, because a pro means you're getting paid. And if you're getting paid, you can't not show up. You don't feel like it, like you won't have a job anymore. You got to do the job every day. Whereas when you're an amateur, if you don't feel like it, you cannot show up and nobody's going to do anything because because nobody's paying you, so they can't demand anything of you. But when you're getting paid, you got to show up. So that's number one. Number two is what I call the using the law of contrast, or what I explain to people, the opportunity is always in the opposites. So as we talked about earlier, but when I was working on my game as a teenager, I noticed that the court was empty and available for anybody to use in the middle of the day because it was too hot. But at 6 o'clock, everybody was out there. The same thing when I was in college, everybody showed up to the practices that the coach said practice, but off-peak times, I didn't see anybody on the basketball team. When the season ended, I never saw those guys again in the gym. I might see them on campus. I never saw them in the gym again because none of them came to the gym to work out. They never worked on their games. They played on the team. But when the team stuff was done, I never saw those guys. It was maybe one or two guys in my whole time in college that would go to the gym like I did. And those people became my friends because we were on the same page and we never talked about it. Same thing at the pro level. So the reason I bring that up is because with discipline, Everybody in the world knows what discipline is. If you ever see people doing those street interviews where they stop people just asking questions about different stuff. So with those street interviews, if you were to do that and stop 100 people and ask them, hey, sir, hey, ma'am, is there any aspect of your life in which you want or need more discipline? Everybody would say yes. Because everybody knows what discipline is.

Yeah.

But at the same time, they're not doing it. So everybody would say, yeah, there's something I need to be more disciplined at, but nobody's doing it. So how I explain that is that discipline is like what I call the open secret. So everybody knows what it is, yet very few people have it. So that's the opportunity right there, because see, there's only so long you can keep a secret. See, if I had some secret formula that nobody knew about, eventually somebody's gonna find it out and it's no longer a superpower because everybody knows it. But discipline is something that everybody knows about, yet people still don't have it. For one reason, people don't want to do what it takes to be disciplined because it's hard. It's not easy. Not all the time. And also, a lot of people just don't know how to go about getting it. So that's why discipline has always been the number one thing for me. And again, it's simple things, simple habits, exercise over time consistently, like Jim Rohn used to say. And once you build the, the muscle of being disciplined, it becomes easier. So wake up early every morning is easy when you do it all the time. Putting everything on your calendar, scheduling every task you need to do instead of thinking you're going to remember to do it, it's easy when you do it all the time. So once you get the discipline going, it's like any habit, the subconscious mind takes it over, it becomes part of your normal mode of operation. You don't have to think about doing it. Now when you're first starting, it's very difficult. So it's kind of— it's breaking the inertia. You got to get yourself moving, like rolling the ball up the hill. Once you get the ball up the hill, now it goes downhill, it's easy to let the ball roll downhill, just let it roll. But you got to get it up there. That's it.

Yeah. And I get it, you know, saying it is discipline, even with, you know, what I'm doing or whatnot. What you said about the calendar, man, because you gotta start learning how to put everything down, you know, because if you don't, you can miss something. And I have, you know, and don't get me wrong, I ain't perfect. I have people hit me up like, CJ, where the link at, uh, for the recording? I mean, like, right before I'm sitting up there, like, I go, I'm like, I didn't have them down, you know what I'm saying? So I don't have nothing. So I gotta call them, uh, text them back like, hey, can we reschedule this and that? It happens, man. It happens, man. But it's like anything else. The more you train yourself and practice, the more you practice, you get better at what you're trying to do in life, man. So I like that mindset approach. So let me ask you, Dre, man, you've written 35 books. How do you stay consistent doing that, man?

Well, I've always been a reader and a writer. As my mom, I mentioned, she was an educator, so she was big on reading and writing. So she, she, her focus is early education. So I was reading books before I even started school. And that's where I got the love for reading. And then the reading just led into writing. And how do I keep that up is one thing is that I've always had this ability and always work on my ability to put my thoughts into words. So that's either through speaking or through writing, because communication will take you around the world if you're good at it. It doesn't matter what you're doing for a living, but you need the ability to communicate. You're working in corporate, you got to communicate. You play sports, you got to communicate. You got a podcast, you got to communicate. Because if people don't know what you're thinking, they can't get a feel for you or know what you're about or decide they want to go along with what you have. So the writing aspect became a thing around— so when I was in college, I remember this is when the internet that we know today just started to have its seeds. So you remember sites like Yahoo! Geocities or Netscape or BlackPlanet.com. Remember BlackPlanet back in the day?

So that must be the Philly thing, man.

Remember Black Planet? Yeah, it's like called Black Planet. It was like a— it was like social media, it's like MySpace.

That's the first one I remember is MySpace. And I didn't think about— I didn't get on Facebook until like 2008 or something like that. I was oblivious to a lot of this stuff.

I knew about it, but the thing is, when Facebook first started, CJ, you couldn't get on unless you had a college email address. 'cause when it came out, I wasn't in college anymore. So I had to wait until they opened it up. They opened it up right around that time, like '07, '08. But the thing is, that's when I first started to see, so it's like 2003, maybe, these platforms online where you could put your own stuff on the site, like whatever you wanted to say, whatever you wanted to do. So the first thing was blogging. That was the first place where people could just express themselves. Even if nobody knew you, you could just put a blog out and say what you want. So the first thing I did online was actually blogging. The YouTube came after blogging. My blog didn't take off or anything. I took off more off YouTube. But I like the idea of being able to put my thoughts in writing and put it out. So that's where the writing started. And I didn't write my first book till 2010. But once I saw that I could put my thoughts into words and put it out and people would actually read it, and that there was value in this mindset piece, that's when I realized, okay, so taking this knowledge or these experiences that I have, and being able to put them in context and explain it to somebody else in words is actually valuable. People value this because they don't think the way I think, they don't know what I know. So that's what got me more into the writing side of things. And then I learned that there's a whole phrase for this called intellectual property, which is taking things that you know about in your head, putting them on paper, quote unquote, in some way, You could do it in writing, you could do it on video. This is how people make video courses, coaching, consulting, speaking, all of that stuff is intellectual property. Because all you're selling, you're not selling a physical product, what you're selling is what you know, you're selling your knowledge. So when I realized that there was an industry for that, and I realized that I knew some things and had a way of explaining things that people value, I said, this is the lane that I need to be in. It's not playing basketball. I'mma play ball. I played till 2015. But CJ, I remember telling myself when I first started selling my own knowledge as a product. I said this I could do forever. I can't play ball forever. I'm not gonna be able to jump 40 inches in the air forever. That's gonna end. But I could take knowledge out of my head, package it up and sell it. I can do that when I'm 80. And that's the thing that I want to focus on.

Hmm. So you said writing books is like playing golf? You be out there like Arnold Palmer, Tiger. I don't know if Tiger gonna make it to 80, man. Tiger be breaking down a lot. Yeah, I got some books on the horizon, man. I think I gotta come to the man who got 35 of them Man, I may need your help on some of this, Dre, man. Anytime. So what's your advice, man, for someone who says, I don't have time?

Well, they're right. Actually, nobody has time. Nobody has time. And what I mean by that is everybody is what I call on the clock, CJ, on the clock, because everybody agrees. One thing every human can agree on is that eventually everybody dies. Eventually everybody runs out of time.. And the thing is, for the most part, we don't know when we're running out of time. So we know we're on the clock, but we don't know how much clock is left. And each one of us has a different amount of clock. So that's the reason why knowing this, we shouldn't say, I'll do nothing because I don't know how much time I have, or because I have a limited amount of time. Instead, you need to go the opposite way and say, I need to do everything because I don't have that much time left. That's just a flip of the script of the exact same situation, two sides to the same coin. So this is the reason why you have a sense of urgency. This is the reason why we need to be quick in our thinking, quick in our decisions, and quick in our action, because we don't know how much time we have left. And what I've read— I haven't had this experience myself, but I've read anybody who's dealt with a, like, a life-threatening situation, let's say you got in a car crash and the other driver died, but you didn't, or somebody gets a, like, a terminal illness, or they deal with something that they're supposed to die, but they don't die., or you take somebody like my favorite rapper, 50 Cent, and they get shot 9 times, comes back, you know, you— Tupac, you remember. And these people deal with these life-threatening situations that they could have died, but they don't die, that they all of a sudden had this different energy in life. They have a different way of going through life because they understand, they have viscerally felt that this could have been over. Now every minute that I have is like extra. Whereas the rest of us who haven't gone through things like that, we tend to sleepwalk through life, as if we have more time. So if we waste today, that's okay, because we'll be here tomorrow. We waste this year, it's all right, we got next year. And people tend to think that until you ain't got next year, until you don't have it tomorrow. And it's only when it's too late that we realize it. And this is, you know, people get to in whatever they consider an advanced age, and then all of a sudden they want to be urgent. But we need to be urgent now, when whatever age you are, because nobody's guaranteed to make it to whatever year it is. And I'm sure you probably see this or hear this in people who are generations younger than you. I hear people saying to me, so somebody will be 25 and they'll be looking at me like, well, I got time because I'm not your age yet. And I'm like, you might not make it to my age. Who guarantees you will make it?

Nobody guarantees you another 20 years. Yeah, hope you make it to my age, you know what I'm saying?

Right, you should be hoping that you make it here. Just because I made it doesn't mean you're gonna make it. So you need to actually use your time and do something with it. So anybody who thinks that they don't have time, you're right, you don't have time. And that's the exact reason why all the stuff that you need to get done that you're saying time is your reason to not do it, no, time is a reason to do it.

Mm, I like that, man. And you said 50 years, Tupac, man, you brought my man up, September 13th, 1996. They say, what was you at when the news came? I know exactly where I was at. Tupac, greatest of all time. But Yeah, man, you know what I'm saying? Running out of time, bro. Tomorrow ain't promised to no man, you know what I'm saying? Like, I remember my pastor in Detroit, he told me, he said, son, whatever you didn't get today, he say, as long as God wake you up tomorrow, whatever you didn't get yesterday, you can get it today. He say, but if you don't wake up tomorrow, whatever you was looking for yesterday not gonna come today either, man. So, hey, so we gotta be, you know what I'm saying, conscious that time is of the essence, man. Make the best of it. Live your life right and be like my man, All Day Dre, because this is the question I want to ask you right here, Dre. I think this is very impressive, especially for a young Black male to be on this stage, man. What was the impact of your first TEDx Talk and why do you think it connected?

Well, my first TEDx Talk was called "The Third Day," and it was actually about discipline, so what you asked me about. And the impact of it was getting on that stage and again, taking that idea, turning it into something tangible that people could feel. And people really got the message, the people in the audience. And then, I mean, you speak to a live audience and the video comes out like months later. But when that came out, it told me like there is real value in my ability to take this thought in my head and turn it into something tangible that other people can now understand. So that just told me, okay, now we need to go full speed ahead with this. Let's do more of this. Because I had already decided— my first thought was in 2015. So I'd already decided in 2010 that after basketball, and that was the year that I stopped playing, that this is where I'm going to go. I'm going to go this intellectual property, selling my knowledge, selling my information route. And I didn't quite know exactly what that meant. I know a lot better now. But that was the impact of it, just understanding that there's something of substance here, man.

I would say because if that was your first one, you went to do 3 more, man, total of 4 or whatnot, man. So hey, I commend you on what you was doing, brother, and what you continue to doing, man. So let me ask you, man, you never run paid ads. How have you reached over a million people with zero spent?

Man, it's a great question. I have run some paid ads, but I don't run them as heavily as a lot of people that I know and probably, you know, So for me, the biggest thing was 3 ways to get yourself known on the internet. There is content, which is like what we're doing right now. There is ads, which is you pay money to get attention. And then the third one is collaboration, which is also what we're doing right now. And content and collaboration been my top 2. So content means just putting your material out there and let people find you. You become findable because you're available to be seen. And that one takes the longest to turn over. But if you create a lot of it, then it eventually starts working for you. So I've been creating content since 2005. So I have all this content working in my favor. No, Google knows my name because I got so much material out there with my name on it. Collaboration is something that I started really doing probably about 10 years ago, around that same time, 2015. And once I understood the value of it, right, there are people out there who already have an audience. So for example, CJ, you have an audience of people who listen to you who have never heard of me. But because they're listening to this conversation, some of them are going to say, okay, I'm gonna keep listening to CJ. I'm also start listening to Dre. So some of those people now are going to join my audience as well. And the good thing about it, and the reason it's collaboration, not competition, is because one of your listeners starts listening to me as well, they don't have to stop listening to you. Alright, so we both benefit. So you get, hey, I had this guest on my show, and your audience appreciates it. And what I get is that some people in your audience may say, okay, let me go check out what Dre's doing, because I like what he was saying. I like the way he presented himself in this conversation. So that's the collaboration. So over on our side, and we talked about this, I think, before we started recording, but we do a lot of reach out for collaboration. We're reaching out to people all the time. Hey, how can we work together? Maybe we could do a— this guy I'm talking to, we may do a book together. Can Andre be a speaker at your event? I'm always looking for ways to collaborate with other people because not only do they have an audience already, and I'm offering them something that they need, because I'm bringing them— they need a guest, they need a speaker, they need whatever. But also you come in as a warm in the marketing world, they call it the warm lead. So if somebody already has an audience of people, and they introduce me to their audience, their audience is going to listen to me because I came in standing next to the person that you know already. Whereas if I run an ad, yes, you'll see my ad, but you have no idea who I am. You don't know if you should trust me or not, because you just heard of me when you saw the ad. But if I come in standing next to somebody that you do know, you're more likely to listen just because I know that guy and you know that guy. So it's like a mutual connection. So that's why we like collaboration. And I would tell everybody out there, even if you do run ads and make content, that everybody needs to jump into the collaboration space because that's the best place to move forward in business these days. If you really think about it, everything's a collaboration. So right now, CJ, we're on StreamYard. You're collaborating with StreamYard. All right, they got the software, you got the content. Yeah, you get on Instagram, you're collaborating with Instagram and TikTok and YouTube. They have the platform, we provide the content, they get something, we get something, then they bring all the people. Now you get fans who find you because you're on YouTube. So your collaboration with YouTube gets you seen by more people. If I collaborate with TikTok by making a post, now a bunch of people on TikTok see my post and they say, okay, I never heard of Dre Baldwin, but I like him now because I saw his post. So we're all— we're collaborating all day, every day. People don't think about it that way. But the world that we're living in right now is all about the collaboration. So anybody who wants to move forward in business, you want to look for who out there has something that you want, and you have something that they want. And then if you can make that communication happen and make that work, that's probably the fastest way to move forward. And at the same time, you're not playing the gambling game of running ads, because just because you run ads doesn't mean you're gonna make money on those ads. You might lose money. Collaborate.

Lose money. As you was talking, lose money, get your account, your Facebook account I don't even do it. I don't even, I don't even run ads, you know what I'm saying? Google Ads, Facebook Ads. I think I still got $85 on my Facebook one because every time I run one, Dre, man, they'd be like, oh, we're going to shut your— we're going to lock your account because of whatever you did. I'd be like, man, I don't even know what y'all talking about. All I said was God was good, God is great.

They can send me some DMs with, you know, whatever, whatever, baby.

We ain't gonna talk about that. But, uh, let me ask you, Dre, man, I only got a couple more questions for you, man. Um, why athletes and entrepreneurs need mindset frameworks?

Mindset's the foundation of everything. It's the foundation of all success, is the foundation of all failure, because, uh, the way things work in life is being, then doing, then having. So the way that we are being, which is the way we think, our energy, the way we see ourselves when you look in the mirror, the aura that you carry yourself with, that determines what you do. And it determines not only what you do, but how you do it. And what you do and how you do it determines what you get, i.e., your outcomes, your results, your position in life. And usually, excuse me, people think about this backwards. They think about what do I want, and then what do I need to do, and they never even consider who they're being. So to make any changes in your life, the first thing you want to ask yourself is you ask yourself in the opposite direction. Number one, what do I want as the outcome? What's the goal? Anytime I'm working with someone, first thing I want to know is what's the goal? Where are we trying to get here? Once we're clear on that, then the next thing is, okay, let's figure out what needs to happen, what needs to be done in order for that goal to be achieved. And these are things that usually outside of the realm of what they're already doing, because if they were already doing it, they'd already have the outcome. Then the third thing is, okay, in order for us to do these things here that you're not doing already, how does your mindset need to change so that you can do these things? Because if it was just a matter of me just telling you what to do and you doing it, then we wouldn't need to talk. You can go on Google, they can— Google tell you what to do. But when it comes to the mindset piece, it's how does your mindset need to shift to go from doing this to doing this? Because often the biggest changes— sometimes you may have to make a wholesale change in your activities. All right, you've been doing these things, but we got to shift the game to doing these things. And that's not so easy for a lot of people to do because change is not easy for folks, especially when you get an ingrained habit of doing certain things a certain way. So the mindset shift precedes the change in actions. But a lot of people try to change their actions without changing their mindset, CJ. That's the reason why it doesn't work. And people will say, well, I'm doing all the stuff, but I'm not getting the outcome. Well, the answer, the answer to that is a question, which is, did you change your mindset before you start doing different things? If you do different stuff with the same mindset, you're gonna get the same result you were getting before. The mindset shift must happen first. And a lot of people don't value the shift of a mindset the way they value the shift of an action, because an action can be measured. So I can see— alright, so let's say somebody's sending out 5 emails a day, trying to get a job. And they say, I'm gonna send out 10 emails a day, I'm gonna send out 50 emails a day, but you never change your mentality while you're sending out 10 emails, 50 emails at the same— of the 5 that weren't working, you're still getting the same no result, just with more effort. What we need to do is change the mentality and change your approach in the emails that you send. You can send one email and get more results than you got from 50. If you just change the mentality, you change the approach. So we have to change the energy first, and energy is everything. I mean, it's one of the laws of the universe. Energy is everything. Anything without energy is dead. So we get the energy right first, then you take the actions, then you get the results. That's why mindset matters.

Man, y'all better listen to my man Dre, man. 35 books, 4 TEDx talks, over a million people touched. Hey, my man doing things out here, man. Y'all better get some of these nuggets he out here dropping. So Dre, man, let me ask you one more question, man. But then after that, I do have a quickfire round, man, that I've been playing on the CJ Moneyway Show. It's been a fan favorite, man, and guests like it as well. But you know, you're a confident brother. I don't think you gonna get too intimidated by these questions, man. But, uh, I'm gonna ask you anyway, man. So, but let me ask you this, man, before I get the Can you talk about the third day concept and how we push through that, man?

Sure.

Third day is any situation in life where the newness has worn off, the new car smell is gone, and the thing that you signed up for, you realize that it's not going to be one big party. So the example I give people is, let's say you haven't gone to the gym in 6 months, so you decide to start going again. First day, you feel great, you're all excited, but the workout's hard because you haven't worked out in a while, and the trainer may push you a little bit extra. You drag yourself home and you're excited. Hey, I'm gonna do this. Second day, still excited, maybe a little bit less, but still excited. Still pretty much new. You got one half of your body sore from yesterday, so you work out the other half of your body, drag yourself home, and you're still doing this. And by the third day, you realize that this is not going to be all fun and games. That fast, third day, because your body's all beat up. Now you don't feel like hearing the trainer's mouth, and you're questioning whether or not you should even did this. You're questioning your decisions. And that happens with anything. It happens with having kids, it happens in relationships, it happens in business, it happens with jobs, it happens with going to the gym, it happens with writing a book, anything. Eventually people, they have that, the welcome party where we're all excited at the beginning. Eventually the welcome party's over and you're like, all right, now this is some actual work here. We gotta do some work to make this thing work. And that's when you figure out, are you serious about this or are you not? That's the third day. And the third day is what separates the pros from the amateurs because the pros figure out a way to make it work and keep going, whereas the amateurs, they quit or they kind of half-ass it and they don't really show up and they get forgotten about. So the third day has to be dealt with by everybody. And I tell people, you think of your favorite athlete, you think of Magic Johnson. You said there were games Magic Johnson didn't feel like playing. I'm sure there were times he was tired and he didn't get a lot of sleep the previous night. Up, or his kids were keeping him up, or he was arguing with his wife at home. He had all kinds of stuff going on. But 82 times a year, he had to show up and do his job as a pro. And the nights that he didn't feel like playing, I guarantee you, you couldn't look at the game film and tell that was a night he didn't feel like playing because his performance was consistent, even if he didn't feel like it. That's what makes you a pro, is that you show up even when you don't feel like it. And as a matter of fact, it's the days that you don't feel like doing the work that truly make you the pro.

Up.

Because on the days that everybody feels good, well, it's easy to work when you feel good. It's what you do when you don't feel good. That's what makes you a pro. That's what the third day is about.

Well, I'm a pro then, because I come on this thing even when I don't feel like it sometimes, man. Working a double, right, at my 9 to 5, and then coming on and have to do podcast shows, man. You got to push through because this is something that you desire to do, man. So that third day concept, I like it, man. Gotta keep it moving. I gotta keep it moving like my man Dre, man. I want, you know, Dre, man, I'm gonna be honest with you, man, before we got here. I'm gonna be honest with you. I was gonna put on my shirt and tie, man, in my suit, because I didn't want, I didn't want you to, uh, outside me today. I've been watching some of your, uh, video. I like Dre, be clean all the time. I'm putting on my shirt today, let Dre know I can get, uh, cleaned up too. I got another interview after this and I ain't want to be in suit and tie with him, but I like your style, bro. I like your style. So let's jump into this real quick, man. 5 questions, man. Give me the first thing to come to your mind and we gonna take it from there. FedEx stage or Game 7 overseas, which one is the most pressure?

No, Game 7 overseas because you can't control your opponent.

Mm, how much you score in that game?

I don't think I ever played in a game 7 overseas, but my best game overseas, I think the most I ever scored any game was 39.

Ooh, that boy was putting in work. He was feeling it. Feeling it. Hey, Beyoncé say he was feeling himself. Hey, so favorite workout to get focused?

Running, I would say is my favorite workout to get focused these days. I mean, it would have been basketball back in the day. These days I say running.

I just talked to a guy yesterday, my man Thomas, He said that he ran 141 miles in like a 5-week period. I said, man, I can't hang out with you, man.

About 30 miles a week. Yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can't hang out with you, bro. Hey, book of yours every entrepreneur, including myself, should read first.

No, The Third Day. You just asked about it. So I got a book right here. It's called The Third Day. So We get people a copy of this book for free, just cover the shipping, just go to thirddaybook.com.

I'm going to get mine. I'm going to get mine there. Thirdday.com.

Okay. Thirddaybook.com. Thirddaybook. Gotcha.

Thirddaybook.com. One thing people misunderstand about confidence.

That confidence is not something that you fake. Confidence is sourced from discipline. And since a lot of people don't have discipline, it's the reason why a lot of people fail at getting confidence because they don't know where it comes from. Then they don't have the thing that it provides it. So you step your discipline up, which comes from setting up your structure. Step up your structure, that produces discipline. Your discipline, that produces confidence. And most people don't understand that formula. That's why most people can't be as confident as they want to be.

Mm, I like that. You're not as confident as you should be because your discipline ain't where it needs to be. Hey, get your game right. So let me ask you, man, daily habit you never skip?

Mm, there's a lot of them. So just my morning routine. So the 2 liters of water before I have left the house, first thing I do is work out, 2 liters of water, morning meditation, affirmations, yoga every single morning, and a workout. So those 4 things guaranteed to happen every day.

Mm, Clay, man, where can we find you on social media, man? Where can we find your books? Where can we find your programs, man? And leave us with a quick nugget real quick, man.

Well, you can find me on all the social medias. So I don't know which ones people use the most, but I'm on all of them. So just look up my name, Dre Baldwin. I'm pretty easy to find, public profiles everywhere. As I already told everybody, you get a free copy of this book, Third Day, at thirddaybook.com. Book's free, just cover the shipping, thirddaybook.com. We'll make sure you have the links and stuff when we're done. As far as websites, I mean, if you just go to that one, I got too many websites, but I'm pretty easy to find anywhere you look online for pretty much everything. And the last nugget I would give to everybody on here is that everyone has a game. Game. Whether you're an auto mechanic, you're a librarian, you're a maintenance man, you're an athlete, podcaster, rapper, singer, dancer, everybody has a game. Your job is to first of all understand what game you're truly in. Then you work on your skills so that you can best perform in that game. And then you got to go out and perform and produce results. This business is all about performance and results. If you perform and produce results, you can get any rewards you want. So that's likes, happiness, friends, family, money, whatever it is you're looking for, You get rewards because you produce results. You get results because you perform. So that's what the game is about.

Mm, man. Y'all hear from my man Dre. Get out there, man, and work on your game, man. Hey, Dre, you living proof that it's not where you start, it's what you decide to do every single day. From D3 walk-on to a brand builder, you've laid out the blueprint on how to work on your game from the inside out. To everyone listening, go follow @DrayAllDay, subscribe to the Work On Your Game Masterclass, and check out his 35+ books if you're serious about becoming mentally elite in life, business, or on the court. Until next time, stay locked in. This is your boy CJ Moneyway with my man All Day Dray Johnson. Till next time, we outta here. Peace.

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