Michael Jordan's Trainer REVEALS The Secret Formula For SUCCESS! | Tim Grover & Lewis Howes
In this interview segment, Tim Grover, the renowned trainer of Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, discusses the profound emotional rewards of winning and how success extends beyond personal achievement to positively affect family, friends, and the broader community. He emphasizes that when individuals act on his teachings—reading his book, listening to his advice—they experience life‑changing transformations, which in turn fuels a cycle of service and gratitude. Grover shares his personal definition of greatness as a life lived with no regrets, having done everything possible, even if not perfectly. The conversation also provides listeners with concrete ways to engage further: visiting timgrover.com, following his Instagram, and purchasing his book to deepen the insights shared. Throughout, the tone remains conversational and enthusiastic, underscoring the motivational and practical nature of Grover’s philosophy on success, impact, and personal legacy.
Chapters
Winning requires you to be different and different scares people. So after each championship, every single athlete, high performance athlete that I've worked with, even in business, would come up to me and say, I think you gotta have a dream.
The school of greatness. Really?
Yeah.
Please welcome Lewis Howard. You have been training and working with the greatest athletes and leaders of our generation. Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, Dwyane Wade, and many others that rave about you and your mindset. More than just you as a trainer, but the way you think and the way you show up, the habits, the just the rituals, the routines, everything you bring to the table. And I want to ask you, my first question is what do most people misunderstand about success in general? You're around the most successful people. You train them. What do people misunderstand about success?
I think the thing that people misunderstand about success is, is they're looking for the easiest way to get there. You know, and it's funny. How many people books have you read or I won't say promoted, but had on your show. And everybody goes, five easy steps, ten steps to greatness, eight steps to this. And those steps for success, they're infinite. They are infinite. You cannot count them. It doesn't matter how long you've been doing it. Those steps are constantly shifting. You don't know if they're there. Sometimes you have to trust that the next step is going to be there when you can't even see it. And sometimes when you step on that step, you go right into quicksand. But you got to be able to pull yourself back out of it again. So everybody's looking for these steps and there are, are no steps. Those steps never, never end. And you just can't climb steps. Sometimes you gotta crawl those steps and you finally get to the top and everything shifts and you're at the bottom again.
Crazy. What does that mean? Sometimes you're at the top and then you're at the bottom again.
Well, you may get to the top and you're like, I'm here. And then you look back down and you look up again. You're actually on the first step. You're on the first step again. And where you thought was the top is not even the top. It's the beginning. It's literally the beginning of where you're supposed to be. And that's when most people just quit. I just like. It just drives me crazy because everybody's like, here, look at. I always. People that I do the interview with, I always like to use them as an example because People can relate to that. All right, You've been climbing steps for how long? To get to here, to get.
I mean, since starting this, it's been over eight years. But the journey before then, it was, you know, decades to build myself, to prepare myself for this. And now I feel like I'm just getting started.
Right, exactly. So you have just. Right, exactly. So all the steps that you climbed just to get started. Yeah, just to get started. And people don't want to talk about those steps. They don't want to talk about those steps and how difficult those steps are and how many steps that you stumbled on and how many steps you. You didn't even see and how many steps that people placed in front of you and they pulled away. People that you were very close to, people that you knew, people that you thought that were like, hey, these people actually have my back. Except, yeah, they did have your back, but they were actually pushing you down the steps or stabbing you.
Yes.
No. And it's funny, when you talk about those things, when people talk about it, they seem surprised. But you should know that in that path, all those things are going to be there. They're going to be there.
Right. It's the obstacles. You know, Ryan Holiday says the obstacle is the way. Do you think that anyone can become a winner? Your book is about winning the unforgiving race to greatness. Do you think anyone can become a winner?
Winning is in all of us. That's what I always say. Listen. And we have wins in every single moment, and those are the steps that get us a little closer to what we want. We have a step every minute. You have an opportunity to win. You really do. But with everything that went on in the world in this past year, people forgot how to win. People don't even know what a win looks like anymore.
What does it look like?
Yeah, people don't even know, like. And so many times a win just comes by because there's a constant change. There's a constant shift. And now with the paradigm of way everything is being handled now, you have to look at things completely different. Everybody's waiting for normal. A win doesn't look like what it used to look like anymore.
All right, what does it look like now?
What does it look like now? For each individual, it's different. For each individual, it's different. For a lot of individuals, it's just like getting out of that routine that you were stuck in for so long and did the pandemic allow you to, hey, you know what? Yeah, I was in a routine, but the routine wasn't getting me anywhere. I was in a routine of comfort. And the pandemic put a lot of people in a routine that was very uncomfortable, that they weren't used to. They weren't used. But it was a necessity. It was needed. You know, people always wish for this time during this thing that happened. I want to spend more time with my family.
And now they have it.
Now you have it. Okay. Schools aren't doing a good job with educating my kids. Now you're homeschooling. I'd love to work from the house.
Now you're doing it.
Now you're doing it. Now you have all these things going on that you wished you had as you thought were wins. And for some people, they were, and for others, you're just like, no, these were not. These are not wins. I do a lot of zoom stuff at home, and I got a cat, and I got a very lively dog. And you'll see the cat run right across the screen. I don't have little kids in the house anymore, but trying to work and have them in the background asking for school help or, you know, they're on their bandwidth, trying to study in their school stuff. And winning became a distraction. It became a distraction, and people were trying to balance all these different things and forgot, hey, this is what my win is. You need to recognize what that win is now. And during the pandemic, it's not getting back to normal. It's getting beyond normal. Figuring out what your next win is, how to place it, and how to continue to move forward on that win. Yeah, because it's easy to talk about the setbacks because so many people can relate to that. That gave us a nice little comfort thing. Everybody can use the pandemic as an excuse. And then you have other people that thrive during that time. They're like, I got to find out a new way to win. I got to find out, like, a real, real new way to win. And you had some people that really, really won big during that time.
Absolutely. They stepped up.
They stepped up. Yes, they stepped up. They saw the steps, and I was like, okay, are these steps stable? Are they unstable? It doesn't matter. I gotta climb them, right? I gotta climb them, right?
You've. You've probably been asked this question million times, so I'm not going to ask it, which is. I'm not going to ask you to answer it, which is, who is the best basketball player you ever trained? I'm assuming you've been asked that many times.
I have.
What I Will ask you is, who is the hardest for you personally, to train? Who is the hardest for you to show up for? Mentally, physically? What was the most. The biggest challenge for you? For whatever reason, Maybe because they were more demanding or they were, you know, needed different skills that you didn't have. Whatever it is, who was the hardest for you to train?
Well, you know, it's funny, all my top guys, I didn't have any problems with those. They always showed up. I knew what was expected. Now, Kobe was extremely demanding on knowing everything.
Like, why are we doing this?
Exactly. Why?
Tell me the science behind it.
Yes.
Otherwise, I don't want to do it.
Exactly. You know, you had him on your show, and, you know, he's like, every question you ask him, there's got to be a purpose behind them. Otherwise, you get that mamba glare.
What are we doing here?
What are we doing here? What are we doing here? And so he wanted to know why we did every exercise, why we worked out at this time. What was the rep count? Why am I eating this? Why am I resting this long? He wanted to know every single detail. Why am I giving this particular day off? He needed. He needed to know all of it. Why did we do. Why did I change the sequence of this stuff? So he was very demanding in that way, which I really enjoyed because it made me sharper in my skills. Because Michael, in his career, he was just like, I hired you. If I have to question you, that means I don't trust you. Right?
I trust you. Just do what I'll do whatever you tell me to do.
Yeah. I hired you to do a job. I have to focus in on this. You go out, you do your job. Results were tremendous. But Kobe wanted to know every single detail along the way. Everything, like, why am I changing his diet? What's going on here? Everything. If he didn't shoot well in a game, hey, we changed that exercise up. Did that have anything to do with what was going on? And you couldn't BS him? And a lot of times I wouldn't know the answer, and I would say, give me 24 hours. Then I would call somebody who had a better expertise in that. And that was a level of respect that he had because I didn't come across as a know it all. I don't know it. I'm gonna ask somebody who's. Who's better at it than I am.
Yeah. Who was so. He was the most demanding.
He was. Oh, you. You know, he was relentless. He was, Louis, you being out here, his 3am workouts their crazy, crazy, you know, having to keep the state. Having to keep the Staples center open later because he wasn't happy the way he performed at that game. And I would not leave till he would leave.
Really?
Yeah. So we would be. We would be in the arena sometimes two, three o' clock in the morning. Shut up. Yeah, we. And you know, one security. One security person there because they can't leave him alone.
Oh, my gosh. All right.
All the lights are turned off, but. Except on the court. And we just keep going. We just keep going. We just keep going. The hardest thing with him was getting him to stop.
Yeah. Okay. Take a break. Rest.
Yes.
Take the day off.
Yeah. That was the most challenge. You said, what was the most challenging thing? That was the most challenging thing with him because over all the years that he had his success, it was about, go, go, go. And then when I came on, I was the complete icicle. I got to get you to stop.
Otherwise you're gonna hurt yourself.
Yes. That was a very, very difficult concept for him to understand. And I said, not only physically, mentally, I need you to stop. I need you to stop mentally for a little bit. You gotta give this break. You gotta give this game a little bit of break up in here. I'm not going to tell you how to do that, but you have to. You have to find that way where for 20 minutes we can just. I just need you to shut it off.
Yeah. And when you were training with a Kobe or a Michael Jordan, was it five days a week? Was it in the off season? Mostly? Was it during season? How would it typically work year round, year round, full time, year round? Were you training other people at the same time or was it just this is it?
So with Michael during the season, it was. It was just him? It was just him. Well, we had what was called the Breakfast Club. The Breakfast Club was during the season, I would. I would train Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen and Ron Harper. They would come on, they would show up at Michael's house. I would get together, I would train them. They would get together. If they worked out intensely enough, their reward was breakfast. And Michael was the judge of. Michael was the judge of that, really. He was a judge.
You don't eat unless you think.
You don't eat unless you train hard. You don't. Yeah, you don't get breakfast unless you. Unless you're in here. And they all had to be there at the same time. We would finish the workouts at different times because each one had different needs that had to be Addressed separately. But once they were done, they sat, they all had breakfast together, they all got in their individual cars and they drove to the arena. Some would leave a little bit earlier because they needed treatment or other.
So they were training hard. The day of a game, the day of the.
Of the game, they trained. And that was something.
What if they're sore? What if you're like, oh, I can't lift my arms. I can't run.
See? So it was funny. And I talk about this in this book, winning. Because when I. I have a master's degree in exercise science, My bachelor's is in kinesiology. So I spend a lot of time in school, and they taught me what to think. Here's the book. This is how the body works. This is what you need to do. Then when I started working with these individuals, I said, okay, between travel days and game days, if we were to work out, if we did not work out on those days, we would literally work out maybe once a week because you're practicing, practicing. You got to travel. You know, you got. Back then, there were almost three to four games a week. You know, now the schedule's a little bit more diverse, but back then, it was, you know, you would play minimum of three games a week. So I was like, if we don't work out on game days, we're never going to make any progress. You will actually be more sore once a week working out. And there were no books to tell me of any of this. There was no. Nothing. I couldn't go back then. Remember, no Internet, right?
No cell phones.
No Google cell phone, no Google, no YouTube. Yes. It was the Dewey decimal system for the young people that don't know what that is. Is when you go to a library where they have books and you got to check out a book. You couldn't find this information in there. So to me, I started to develop the skill of how to think. You know what? This makes sense to me. So I'd say, hey, Michael, we. Michael, we got to do this. We have to work out on game day. Yes. It's going to be detrimental early, right?
First month, first eight weeks, it's gonna. You're gonna be pain. In pain.
Yeah, right. I said, I'm not gonna tell you. You're not. But I said, if we started early enough and get you. We started in the preseason, your body will acclimate. Then when the season rolls around, you'll be. You'll be fine. I said, it will pay off dividends in the long.
How many years had he been Playing in the NBA before you told him we're gonna be training on game day.
I started with him right away. I started. I started with him in 89. I think he came into the league. I can't remember the exact year he came into the league, but I started training with him in 1989.
And how did the story go again? Didn't you call, like, every player on the team or something?
So again, back then, it wasn't easy to pick up a phone. So what I did was, unless you had a landline at home. And I wrote a letter. I wrote letters. There's 15 players on an NBA team. I wrote 14 letters to the Chicago Bulls. I wrote a letter to every single player except Michael Jordan. Because I was like, he's not going to do it. He's not going to do it. I'm like, I've never worked with a pro athlete. All right? I've never worked with a pro athlete. No one's gonna. He's not gonna. The best of the best is not gonna come in and say, hey, I'm gonna hire this. I'm gonna hire this kid. But he saw a letter in somebody else's locker and pulled the letter out, read it, and gave it to the athletic trainer and the team physician at that time and said, hey, find out what this kid's about. Really? Yeah.
How old were you then?
I was 20. 25, maybe. 25, 26.
You're the same age as Michael, right?
Yeah, yeah. Michael's born in. I'm a 62. I'm a 64. He's a 60. He was born in 62. I was born in 64.
Gotcha. So he's a. He's a couple years older than you.
Older, yeah.
And so he saw a letter in someone else's locker and said, oh, why didn't I get this letter?
Yeah. Competitive.
Wow.
Why. Why isn't this guy reaching out? You know, I don't know if that was the case, but everybody knows about Michael's competitor competitiveness. And he was just like, why. Why didn't he re. Why didn't he reach out to me? So he gave it to the team athletic trainer and the team doctor got together. They gave me call. I didn't know who they were interviewing. Yeah, I had no idea. They said, listen, we have a client that's. That's interested. We have somebody that's interested. So. Okay. So for Lily, for three months. For three months, they drilled me. They brought me in to see my. My. To ask me questions, to take tests, to you know, see if I knew what I was talking about. To go through a rehab process, to go through a workout, all these. And that just went on for three, literally four days a week for three months. Every single. Every single day. Every single day. And then one day they finally said, hey, listen, we want you to meet the client. So, okay, no problem. Didn't tell me who it was. Said be at the. Gave me an address and said, be at this house at 1:30. And back then, it was still a nice house, but it wasn't a gated house. You could just walk up and ring the doorbell. So I get there, I ring the doorbell.
You didn't know who it was?
Not a clue. Not a clue. So I ring the doorbell. No answer. I ring the doorbell again. No answer. I ring the doorbell a third time. Michael Jordan opens up the door. All right. Luckily, I'm not a starstruck person. I'm not a starstruck person. So he goes, I said, I'm here. He goes, yeah, I know. And then I look down at my shoes. I'm wearing Converse. Oh, no. And I'm like, do I go in this house with Converse? So now winning is literally talking to me back then because I'm like, this is the only opportunity I'm going to get. Do I go into this house with Converse or do I take them off? So I took them off. I got holes in my socks. Both of them. Not just one, both of them. So what do I do? I turn my socks around so the dirty parts on the top, but the holes are on the bottom.
Wow.
So I walk into the house. We go downstairs, we talk for about 40, 45 minutes. I said, tell me your philosophy. Tell me what's going on. I go through the whole process, the whole program, everything. And he goes, this doesn't sound right. I said, this doesn't get any righter. I said, trust me on this. He goes, I'll give you 30 days. And 30 days turned into 15 years. Wow.
That's crazy.
It's unbelievable story. Then when I walked out of the house, I grabbed my shoes and he looked down and said, never again.
That's amazing. Did he give you a pair of.
No, I had to go out and buy them. I couldn't. I couldn't. You can't go into potentially a new client in the first. Give me some gear. Yeah. And ask them for. And ask him for something. So I went. I left there, went out, had to equip the downstairs basement as quickly as possible. Had to get a new pair of shoes. And we literally started the next day.
15 years was it. Was it like five days a week for 15 years? Were there some months off?
So we would go year round. We would. He would stop. Usually. They usually played until the end of June because that's. That's what was a schedule back then after the championship. And then he would take off through Labor Day. So he had to take care of his endorsements, his different. Different deals, spend time with the family, take his trips. So Michael was extremely smart during that time. And this is the concepts of why. A lot of reasons why he was able to win over and over again. So he would say, listen, I have all these obligations. He would tell his people, you have me from July 1st until Labor Day. Every endorsement deal, every obligation I have, every family trip, every oversee, whatever I'm going to do has to be done in those time, because once Labor Day starts, I start training again. I start to train to get ready for the next season. And once that happened, there was like, that was it. There was no more. I got a Nike commercial here. I got to do a Gatorade thing over here. I got to do a Hanes thing here. I mean, no, it was workout golf, workout golf, workout golf. And that was that. We literally went. We'd go anywhere from five to six days a week almost. Sometimes two to three times a day. Not always working out. You know, people always love these stories. Oh, I work out six hours a day. Yeah. You might work out six hours a day, but that includes your recovery time. Yes.
Warming up.
Yeah. And you're easy to talk. Yes. You're easy to talk to about that because you've been at. You've been. You've played at the highest level. Yeah. People always animated about, oh, my God, Kobe works out for eight hours a day.
No game film. That's preparing the stretching.
Yes. It's everything.
That's ice, tubs, whatever.
Yeah, yeah. That brings you towards that.
Of course.
Yeah.
That's exciting. So for those two months, then, you weren't really training him during that time?
I wasn't training him during that time. I would train other athletes that he allowed me. For the first three years. For the first three years. He didn't. He didn't. And this was a great. This was his standard answer. And he would tell everybody. He goes, I don't pay Grover to train me not to train you, not to train anyone.
That's crazy.
Yeah. So I don't pay him to train me. I pay him not to train anybody else. So then he would allow me after about three, four years. He would allow me to work with other individuals, but he would always say this. He goes, you need to tell every single one of your clients that if I call, and I would always tell everybody. I said, listen, I'm willing to take you on as a client, but this is the one and only stipulation. I said, well, the reason you're here is because you saw the work that I did with him. Let's get that. Let's not mistake that. But I said, if he calls for whatever reason and we're in the middle of a workout, I'm gone. I gotta go.
Wow.
I gotta go. No questions asked. I said, the chances of that happening are slim, but I'm just letting you know.
What were the three greatest lessons that you learned from Michael?
Three greatest lessons I learned from Michael, I would say competing, accountability, and then winning at all levels.
Winning at all levels, what does that mean?
You just don't win in one arena. You win in your sports, you win in business, you win in your personal life. Other people win because you win. It isn't just about you. It's about being able to pull the team and show them what it feels like to win. What kind of feeling that gives. When you win, your family wins. When your family wins, you win. When you win, your friends win, the people that have supported you. Every time Michael played, I always said this. I said, and I said this. In the last dance, he would say, these individuals are giving me something that's way more valuable than the price of a ticket. They're giving me their time, which is non refundable, which is not. You can't exchange it with somebody else. You can't take your ticket and exchange it with another individual. These people are literally giving me their time. Whether they're at the arena, they're sitting in front of the tv, they're watching the news, listening to it on the radio. Back then, whatever it may be, my accountability to myself and those individuals has to be at the highest level. Has to be at the highest level because they're doing something that is. So they're giving me something that's so valuable, I have to be at my best. I have to be at my best.
Is it possible to win at everything if you're going to be the best at one thing?
No.
Because even in the last dance, he was talking about how certain things in his life maybe were out of balance because he was all in on the obsession of winning in basketball.
Louis, we've all been there. We've all been there. And One of the chapters I talk about in winning is, there is no balance. There is no balance. And everybody loves to talk about balance all the time. And the people that have kind of maybe finally created balance, they don't talk about the times where there was no balance.
For years, they weren't in balance, and now they're like, okay, I've got some resources. I've got more time. I've got a. I got a staff.
I got people that help me do things. And I always just said, you know, people ask me all the time, how do you find balance? I say, you don't find balance, you create it. And it's different for each individual out there. What's balanced for you may not be balanced for somebody else. And I'm not here to judge what your balance is and. And so forth. All right? It's different across the board. But the one way to get closer to balance, everyone does a complete opposite. People always ask me this, well, how do I create more balance? Well, I said, well, what are you trying to do? Well, I'm trying to. You know, people are telling me I need to spend more time with my family. I work too much. You know, I need to pay attention to my kids or I pay too much attention to them. I don't pay enough attention to my career and all this other stuff. And I said, well, what do you do? Well, you know, I'm trying to add all these different components. I was like, that's your mistake.
What should they do instead?
Delete.
Delete what?
Your unessentials. There's so many unessentials that you carry wrong around in your head or in your daily life. In your daily life, in your routines or whatever. When you try to balance things, if you add more things, it becomes more difficult to balance. Delete the unessentials, delete the things that are not creating that balance for you. And if you look at it, if you really sit down, you'll be like, yeah, I really don't need to do this. I shouldn't be doing this. I got a little time wasted. I got a little time wasted over here. And that way, it brings you a little bit closer to what you'll create, what balance looks like for you. But like you said earlier, is everything going to be perfect? No. And I give this example when I do it, when I. When I'm speaking to individuals, and again, I talk about it in the book, I'll ask individuals, who wants zero happiness? Nobody raises their hand, all right? I said, who wants zero success? No one raises Their hand. All right? And I go say, who wants a zero life? No one raises their hand. I said, who wants zero love? No one raises their hand. I said, what's the number? On a perfectly balanced scale, it's a zero. It's an absolute zero. So I said, if you're trying to balance all those things all the time, you're going to end up with none of them. You're going to end up with none of them. Now, I never want your scale to be tipped all the way this way. But then you have to decide how much where are things going to be and the time. Listen, if you are one of those individuals, as a person that's dedicated to their craft, want to do this, there are things that are going to have to take a back seat.
Yeah. If you want to be the best at something or great at something.
Yes.
One of the best at something. Something has to take a backseat, and it always is.
But then when you take whatever's in the back seat and you put in the forefront for that moment, make sure you're all in.
All in on that moment. Present, giving, attention. All of it.
All of it. All of it. Be all in. People always tell. And I could tell. Listen, you have very calm demeanor about yourself.
Unless I'm competing on the sports arena, right?
Exactly. All right. But let's go back to your competitive days. How many people would tell you, man, you need to loosen up, you need to unwind?
No, no, I was like, I'm focused, man. I'm in the game.
Exactly. You're like, you're most uncomfortable when you.
Are unwound, when you're relaxed.
Yes.
You're thinking about, how do I do more? How do I create? How do I train harder? What do I need to watch film? Study.
Yes.
You're obsessing over it.
And that was one of Kobe's favorite words when it related to winning. He says you have to be obsessed with whatever your win is. And everybody looks at that word obsessed, as a bad word. As a bad word. But look at this. If you weren't obsessed, would you have the guests that you have? No.
We want to be impacting people the way we are. And that's okay. If that's the life you want, which is not obsession, that's okay. But that doesn't mean you're going to get the results that obsession brings.
And don't judge the people that are obsessed and allow you not to be, because they're doing all the work for you.
They're carrying a lot of weight.
Yeah. Listen, how many people do you know? You just did an interview recently with. Was it Tony?
Tony, Tony Robbins, Russell Brand? Yeah.
All right. Well, if people want to hear what they have to say, you have to be obsessed in order to get that information. For the people that aren't obsessed.
Absolutely. Otherwise they wouldn't bring the information to me.
Right. So they should be thankful that. Man, you know what? We're really, really thankful that Louis is obsessed at doing what he's doing because it brings us joy, it allows us not to be obsessed in that area, and we can be obsessed in some other area. Absolutely.
Yeah. I think it's. Yeah, I think it's important to recognize that obsession over winning and whatever that looks like for you, that can be sports, business, parenthood, anything. Being a good friend, whatever it may be, you know, if you want to be great at something, you can't half asset. You can't be tiptoe in a little bit out, spend a little bit of time on it. You've got to be committed to it if you want to be great at that thing. And that means other things might have to struggle or suffer for moments, or you just need to negotiate with the people in your life. This is what I'm up to. And here's what I can give you. I can give you time here or two months, a year, I can show up for you, or one day a week, whatever it is. And you've got to negotiate with others around you so those relationships don't suffer.
That's a great way. That's an excellent way of putting it. And that's exactly what I talk about. It's like, listen, if you ask somebody who's very important to you in your life and you say, I need two years, stay with me for two years, this is what I have to do. You better deliver in those two years.
Right.
You better deliver in those. There better be some tangible stuff in there that you've won at. And also, the person that waited for you, they get a chance to win also. Because if they're gonna put. Where if you tell them, hey, I need you to wait, this is how I'm gonna be for the next. And after those two years, you better have measurable results. You know, you can't ask for another two years and nothing's. And then you have nothing to show for it. For that period of time, your warranty's over with. It's done. It's done.
And speaking of negotiating, how does someone learn to negotiate with their own mind when they want to? When things get Hard, when they want to quit, when they're in pain, when they're struggling. How do we negotiate with our negative thoughts for our vision so that we don't give in to them?
So you're going to love. You're going to. So again, it's just like you're, like, picking this book apart for me. I absolutely love it. So I have this. I talk about the battlefield that goes on in your mind. There's literally a battlefield that goes on in your mind all the time. And there's bombs that are exploding all the time. Fear, anxiety, I'm not good enough. And a lot of times you're making those bombs explode and. Or somebody else is making those bombs explode. You have to take control of that space. You have to. Too many times, the space between our ears, we don't have control over it. A lot of other people have set shop in it. They're like, they've, like, taken the most expensive real estate in the world, and they, like, literally sitting in it, and they're not paying any rent.
They're making you pay the rent. Yes, they're sitting there and making you.
Pay and you're sitting in there. And those individuals, boy, they know exactly where all the bombs are, and they know which ones to pull, push, and which ones to push and how to get you emotional and how to do the. And how to do those things. And they also do it in a positive way, also. Well, what's considered a positive way? You don't need to work that hard. You're good enough the way you are. You're already successful. Boom. All these different things. Because what they're trying to do is instead of being supportive, they're actually pulling you back, back. Because now you're starting to create distance between you and them, and they don't want that. You got to make sure you control that battlefield that's going on in there. It's your space, it's your mind. You're going to have negative thoughts. You are. But you don't act on all your thoughts. And just saying thinking positive is just not going to get it done. You need to think positive, but you need to act. Act on whatever you're thinking positive of. Just changing your thought is not going to change your action. It may change your perspective, but you still have to continue to push forward.
So when someone has a negative thought, how should they respond? Should they analyze it? Should they replace it with a more positive thought? Should they act on it and say, okay, I'm feeling tired and like, I'm not Enough today. Should they say, okay, when it happens, I. I actually do something to get out of it. I move my body, I call a friend, I work out, what should they do when a negative thought comes?
Also, I always look at it this way. What is causing that negative thought? Is it you, or is it somebody, or is it something that somebody else said triggering you? So just like you have something that triggers that negative thought, you have to have a trigger that gets you out of that negative thought. I have negative thoughts just like everybody else. All my clients did. And then they each had a trigger to get themselves out of it. And I could see it. For me, literally, when I see a negative thought come in, and if I'm walking, I will literally stop. I will literally stop in my tracks, and I'll do like this.
Really? You're like, get out, get out, get out.
That's my trigger. Now, obviously, I can't have my athletes sitting out there doing, but that's what works for me. But the important thing is I come to a complete stop because I don't want that thought to gain traction. I don't want that. So I need to address it at that moment. I need to address it at that moment. Now with my athletes, they. Each. And I can't share the different triggers that they had, but each had one when they were, like, starting to maybe doubt themselves or. It was very difficult.
You could sense it.
You could. You could.
Whether they were saying it or not, you.
You could sense it. You can look.
Body language.
Exactly.
Because doubting.
Yes. Everybody. Everybody has those little things. The way they're looking at something, the way their. Their head is being held, the way they're breathing, you know, in. The way when they go sit down on the bench and, you know, the way they look, you can always see something. Okay. They're not. They're not doing.
How would you. Were they coaching themselves out of that, or were you just supporting them with a mantra or a process for getting out of that? Like, what did MJ or Toby do?
I would give them a bunch of things, and I just said, listen, you got to decide on which one you want to use. You got you. You have to design. And a lot of times, the most successful people that you've had on your show, they're the most coachable.
That's it. They're not resistant to learning. They want to improve.
Yeah. So a lot of times, I'm sure the stories, the episodes that I've watched, you give, a lot of your guests are asking you questions.
Absolutely.
Yeah. You know it's like, wait, wait, who's interviewing? Who's interviewing who over here? And it's a learning process back and forth. So when I, when I would talk before, I would go to the individual and say, hey, I noticed they would all be like, I already know what you're talking about. And we like. So we would have that discussion and noticing and being able to be aware of the mistakes, be aware of the negative thoughts, beware of the negative emotions. That's on you. We're always looking for somebody else to point those things out to us. Well, you need to recognize those things before anybody else us.
Right. I'm a big believer that you can't win consistently and you can't be great consistently if you're constantly doubting yourself and allowing doubt to make decisions for you.
Lucy show, you didn't write this book.
And I'm not, I'm not saying I'm not sure if we'll ever be able to eliminate doubt. Because every new level and every new opportunity, every new adventure we take on, there's going to be a level of I've never done this and you're going to have to step into the courage bones inside of you and say, I've got to leap into courage in this. And there's going to be a little bit of doubt or insecurity. But how do we eliminate it from holding us back? When we have self doubt, how do we remove it so that we can continue to strive for greatness?
So how I look at this thing is we talk about fear and doubt in the book. I said you've talked to, you've talked to the Michael Jordans and Kobe Bryant's of the business world on a regular basis. And every single one of them, I'm sure no matter how many times they've done things over and over and over again, there's always been a little bit of fear. There's always been a little bit, what.
If it doesn't work out? What if we lose? What if this risk fails?
Yes. All right, there's all. But that fear is what allows them to take that next step instead of fear paralyzing them. It's their energy. It's their energy. I always say you can have fear, but you can't have doubt.
All right, so how do we eliminate doubt?
When you have that fear, when you have that fear, know that what you're doing is the right thing. Because if it's not fearful enough, your goals are too small. They're too small. And then never doubt the outcome. Don't Overthink. A lot of times doubting is overthinking. And what is overthinking? It's creating problems that don't exist. You start over analyzing. You start, well, this could go wrong. This goes. Michael always used to say, why should I worry about a shot I've never taken? Ooh. And people are always thinking about the negative things of something, and they've never even done the thing yet. And that creates more self doubt. More self doubt. More self doubt.
So how do we let go of that? Is it just don't worry about the outcome, Just focus on the process? Is it leaning into the fear, knowing that's the thing that we're supposed to go after?
Yes, exactly.
That's the trigger to move forward.
To move forward.
All right, what happens if I fail? What happens if I miss it? What happens if I humiliate myself? Then what?
But you know what? Here's the point. I'd rather have those things than to say I never did it.
And regret. I always say that, too.
I never did it.
Yeah.
All right. I knew I wasn't good enough to be a professional basketball player. I knew that. But I gave everything I had. And I think both of our careers. You had an injury. I had an injury. Even if I didn't have the injury. No, I'm not. Never going to say I just did. It just wasn't going to happen. All right? But I never doubted myself. I never doubted that I was going to win at something. And it wasn't going to start off in the sports arena. Even when everybody told me, you know, you're not going to. This is not going to happen. This is not going to happen. This is not going to happen. People have to understand that winning has no loyalty to you. Exactly what you said, you know, you're going to fare. You're going to fail. How am I going to look? What if people laugh at me? Well, look at the most successful people in the world. All right? When you had. They did a TV piece on Jeff Bezos way back when, and his. Could you imagine people laughing when he first come out and says, you know what? I'm going to start a company and we're going to have everything that you want shipped to you in a week. Man, this dude is crazy.
In a day, in two days.
And then it's like, you know what? That's not good enough. We're gonna do it in two days.
That's crazy.
That's it. That's still not good. People are just laughing. They're doubting it you're doubting yourself and you're like, I'm gonna do it in a day.
Now you get your groceries delivered in two hours from Whole Foods app on Amazon.
What normal person thinks that way? And the people that are a little bit off, a little bit crazy, a little bit like, hey, so what? So what? They have the least amount of doubt. They have the least amount of doubt. You usually have doubt because of what somebody else is going to think of you, how somebody else is going to react. All right? And people call it self doubt, but that self doubt is usually afflicted by somebody. Somebody else you think about. You have the greatest idea. All right? You had. You've been at this for eight years, but previously, other things. Yeah, other things. All right? How many times did you tell somebody, I'm going to go do this and oh, that's a terrible idea.
It's funny, the day I came up with the idea for this show, I was in la. I just moved here from New York City probably six to eight months prior to that, and I was stuck in traffic. You've lived in LA for.
Oh, yes.
And I moved from New York City, loved it. I'm from Ohio, came out here, I'm stuck in traffic for hours every day to go see someone, whatever. And I remember having the idea to do a podcast because I was feeling a little stuck in my life. I was feeling things aren't working, like, I need to learn, I want to grow. And I was always also like, stuck in traffic. And I was like, oh, a lot of people are stuck in traffic. What if I could learn and also give them something while they're stuck in traffic or they're commuting. This is kind of pre podcast day.
Sure.
And I remember I called a friend who had a show, there was only like two people I knew how to podcast. And I said, I've got this idea and I want to call it the School of Greatness because I want to create the school I wish I would have had growing up, where they teach you the things about life, loss, failure, doubt, insecurities, like how to grow. They never taught these things in school. I learned from sports, right? So I was like, I'm gonna call it the School of Greatness.
That's your how to think moment.
Exactly, exactly. And I call one of my friends and he goes, that's the dumbest name I've ever heard. And I go, okay. And every, every time I talk to him now, he goes, I was wrong. That was the greatest name. That was the greatest name. And I just didn't see it. So people that aren't going to see your vision, people didn't see Jeff Bezos vision, people don't see Elon Musk. People don't see Kobe and Jordan's vision, and that's okay. But you've got to be willing to see it in yourself. So how do we. How do we not allow the doubt of others saying, take it easy, you shouldn't do this. You sure you want to work that hard? Why don't you do this over here? How do we not allow other people's doubt to make it our own doubt?
So, you know, we always hear this thing about, when you have fear, you play to win. When you have doubt, you play not to lose. Yes, exactly.
Interesting. So when you have fear, you play to win. When you have doubt, you play not.
To lose, not to lose, you play not to. You play not to lose.
A lot of us, I've been there in the past, you know, I've played not to lose many times. And you always end up never playing your best.
You never end up playing your best. You never.
And you never win.
Right.
Either way, whether you win or lose, you never win if you don't play your best.
Great example. And then, you know, fear is instinctive. Fear is instinctive. Like, okay, like, you're like, okay, I'm going to do. I'm a little fearful here. It's either to protect you or it's to go, all right, Doubt is created by you. Fear is an instinct. Doubt you create.
So others don't create doubt in you initially.
Well, you have to allow them to create doubt.
You have to receive their.
Yes, you have to receive. You have to receive doubt. You have to receive their doubt, and then now it becomes you. All right. Fear is pressure, and pressure is a privilege.
It's great.
It's the greatest thing. You had somebody on here just talking about stress the other day and how. How it keeps you alive, how necessary it is. All right? Doubt, you start to panic. Doubt, you start to panic. Yeah. All right.
So how do we learn how to not let the doubt stay in us? How do we remove it? How do we get out? How do we turn doubt into fear and action towards greatness?
Continue to work like a maniacal individual on what you want.
Is that the only way to get rid of doubt you think, is by working, obsessing over something, improving something so you don't doubt?
Prove it to yourself. We have so many other individuals that are trying to prove it, to prove it to everybody. Everybody else don't worry about proving it to everybody else. Prove it to yourself.
And here's what I'll say around that. I think that's beautifully said, because most of my life, until I was about 30, I was living to prove others wrong.
Yes.
And it was the second most powerful fuel and energy that I think humans have is like, I'm angry, I'm hurt, I'm frustrated. I'm going to go prove these people wrong about me. And it drove me to be obsessed around winning, around achieving, around accomplishing my goals. And I did. I accomplished them. But it left me feeling very unfulfilled, lonely, insecure, doubting myself even more. Why am I not feeling what I want to feel? Why am I not still getting what I want inside? Because I was driven by the wrong things to prove other people doubting me wrong. And you hear that a lot by, like, people say, prove them wrong. But I think it's, prove yourself right.
Prove yourself right.
And like you said, I love that you're saying this because you'll prove others wrong by proving yourself right. So you don't need to go prove them wrong. Just do your best.
You just gave an example.
Yeah.
You're one of your closest friends. Yeah, man. That's a terrible name. That's a terrible name. All right. Prove yourself right.
Yeah. Don't prove him wrong. Say, okay, I'm gonna go do this for me. Whether you like it or not.
Right. And the best validation is when they come back to you.
I was wrong.
I was wrong. That's the best. That's the best validation.
You don't mean to say I told you so. You just say, I told myself so.
That's it.
It's a shift in it.
Right. And that person, what did they try to do? They tried to create self doubt. You. And if you would have, this would have been called School of average. Yes. You know? Yes. Normalcy.
Right.
Right. Whatever. Whatever. Whatever. Whatever it would bet.
Yeah.
Whatever it be.
So when doubt creeps in and we start to believe the doubt, go back into proving yourself right. Go back into obsessing over the craft. Doing it for the right reasons. Not to prove others wrong, not to look good in front of a crowd or whatever, but doing it because you love the art of it, the expression of it, the creation of it, the vision of the thing you want to work on. Not to validate something that's lacking.
Right. It's perfect. You look at when Kobe, his first playoff series.
How old was he? His first one?
It was early in his career. I think he was like 18. Yeah. No, no, I'm talking about before he won the finals. This was on the playoffs. In the playoffs, in a playoff.
I think he had this no shot pre Shaq.
Yeah. He had this horrible game against. I think. I think it might have been the Utah Jazz. I can't. Well, he shot like four or five straight air balls.
I remember that.
Yeah, four or five straight air balls. All right, now, he could have came back next year and said, I got to prove. Everybody that said, man, you're too young. Why'd you take. No. He was just like, you know what? That's on me. I have to own. I have to own that. I have to own that moment. All right? I owned that moment. Now I got to prove to myself I can overcome this, because now everybody else is doubting me, but I can't doubt myself. I can't doubt my. I can't doubt myself. And everybody's had that moment. Everybody told mj, don't go to North Carolina. You'll never play. You'll never play. And one of the stories I share with individuals is Dean Smith, who was a coach at the time. He introduced Michael. He said, michael, I want you to meet. I think I got the name right. I'm pretty sure he thinks, I want you to meet Buzz Peterson. Buzz Peterson was the number one recruited player in the nation to go to North Carolina. To go. Yeah. Like the number one anywhere. He was the number one. Number one player in the nation. And Michael goes to. Dean says, how could he be number one? He ain't never played me. He said, how Dean saw something. He saw that competitive nature in MJ and he wanted to see. Now, if I tell him that, is that kid going to start doubting himself? Because everybody else has already told him, you shouldn't be here. You shouldn't be here. And Michael went out and he said, I don't need to prove to coach. I don't need to prove to Buzz. I need to prove to myself that I belong here.
Did they end up competing? Didn't they do one on one?
Yeah, ended up. Yeah. That didn't turn out well.
For the other guy.
Yeah, for the other guy. Yeah. And Coach Smith made him roommates. Oh, wow.
That's hilarious. Speaking of one on one, how many times did you get to play one on one against MJ or Kobe?
Often. It never turned out well.
Did you ever score a point against either of them?
Yes, I did.
Really? What was that?
And it was the last point I ever scored.
Really?
Yes.
What was that like? Where was the moment.
It was. During it. It was. Well, see, it was. It was kind of like a setup. It was a. It was. It was a setup. So it was. I was playing. Michael and I were kind of messing. Messing around. We had just. He just finished a grueling leg workout.
He's like.
Came a walk. Grueling leg workout.
So you get him when he's at his lowest moment.
Oh, yeah. And he's up there and he's. You know, we go up there to get loosened, loosen up a little bit. And he's just like. He's shooting. He goes, man, I can't even. I can't even feel. I can't even feel my. I can't even feel my legs. I said, I got a great idea to kind of loosen you up a little. But I said, let's play a little one on one. He thinks I'm just. Yeah, he goes. I pass. I just go right around him and I score. And he's. Oh, big mistake. Big mistake. You saw Lily, the lactic acid just flush out of his body in that second. And he goes, all right, motherf er.
That was the last point.
That was last time I touched the ball.
Really? He wouldn't even let you play with anybody anymore. He couldn't get the ball back.
I couldn't get the ball back. I couldn't get the. I would get the ball back after he scored in the basket and I pass it back to him. But when you got the ball and.
He was just swallowed away, it was.
Just like I couldn't get around him. I mean, when you're a professional at something, people don't realize how good those individuals are. I love the people that sit on the sidelines and all this other stuff, and they doubt. They doubt how talented those individuals are. And I always tell them in any sport, I say, listen, you give me who you think are the five worst in the league. Yeah, in the league. I don't care who any of them.
They dominate anyone.
You get your top five, they will literally dominate.
Dominate. There was a show, I think, like 10 years ago by some guy, a basketball player from the Celtics, I think, who was like the bottom five in the NBA who, like, scored five points in eight years. And they would bring out these college, like, superstars and rec. Superstars and freak athletes. They claim to score a point on this guy after he retired. I can't remember the guy's name. Bill something or tall, like, redheaded white guy. And it's just like shooting.
Oh, Scalabrini. Yes, yes, yes.
There was A whole show about this because he's kind of like All Star Joes. Thought they could compete against a retired NBA guy. They couldn't even score a point years after he retired. Yes, it wasn't even good in the NBA, but still, you're number 500 in the world at something. You're going to destroy everyone else.
Exactly.
You're going to destroy them.
Their talent level is so unbelievable. You played.
I played football and team handball. Team handball with the USA team.
Team. For people that don't know what team.
Handball is, most people in America don't know. You know, because you've been in the Olympics, probably you've seen it.
Yeah. It is an unbelievable sport. You talk about competitiveness.
Here's the thing. My first year playing with team handball was 10 years ago. I moved to New York City to join the New York. The New York City team because they were the national champions and there was only. There's only clubs in the usa.
There's.
No one's getting paid. No one really knows what the sport is. All Europeans who have moved here who play the sport once a week. And I made the USA national team nine months after starting to train with the New York City team, made the USA team. And I remember going to Argentina to compete in the Pan Am Championships. And this is. I had a chance to play against the top teams in South America, Brazil and Argentina and Chile and all these teams. And I'm going against Olympians. These are professionals playing in Europe. Olympians. I'm on the USA national team. But I remember the first time I was up against an Olympian. I had zero chance. Like, they just made me look like an idiot. And I'm an elite player for the country on the USA team. But these guys were so talented. They knew every nuance. They just knew what to do at all times that you had no chance. So it doesn't even matter if you're elite at the college level. You can't compete against these NBA guys.
So. And this is how. So I have two. I have two stories that you can relate to on this and how competitive these individuals are and how important winning is to them. Kobe was a big soccer fan. Huge, huge soccer fan. So, you know when we would take the Nike trip to Europe and he would always want to visit all these different teams and. And we were always challenged to stop a goal. So, like, we would. We would. We would be the score, we would be the goal, we would be the good luck. And we were just. And now remember, you're talking about one of the Best to ever play in a sport. Basketball.
Couldn't stop in one, probably ever.
We did this for seven years.
Couldn't get one.
Not one. We didn't even touch.
They're not even trying. They're just tapping it in.
We didn't even touch the ball. No, no, we didn't. We didn't even touch the ball.
I mean, if professional goalkeepers can barely do it, how are you going to do it?
It's like then in Michael's early career.
He loved team handball, by the way.
Who's that?
Oh, Kobe loved team handball. We talked about it before our interview.
Yes.
Because I mentioned to him my time with him was, you know, something I'll always remember. And I only had a. An hour and a half with the guy. You spent years with him. But before we did the interview, I was just like, hey, I really want to acknowledge you. This wasn't on film, but I was like, I want to acknowledge you. For all the Olympians that I know, friends of mine, they all say how amazing you were during the Olympics, how you'd show up and take photos with everyone. You were so generous and kind, and you would show up at the events and watch people and support all these.
So many other events. So many. Yeah. And here's the thing. USA Basketball, they don't stay at the Village. The Village. We were, like, way, way out. And he would, like, say, hey, listen, I want to go see. So we literally had this schedule. This is what we're gonna go see. This is what we want to do. And he. And he was at every single one of those events. Every single one of those events.
It's crazy. And I mentioned I played with the USA handball team. And he goes, no way. He goes, I played handball growing up in Italy. I love team handball. And so we were able to connect on that level. But he was. He was. It's amazing to see what he's been able to create from that. And you spent so much time with him. What was that like when he was. He was doubting himself. What was that like when you would see him doubt himself? He maybe never talk about. But how did he overcome the doubt?
Well, one thing that you have to do when you have the doubt is you got to talk about it. You got to admit. You got to admit it's there.
Speak it.
Speak it. You got to admit it's there. And you have to either got to speak it to yourself or speak it to an individual that's not going to judge you for it. That isn't going to think you're weak. That isn't going to think that, hey, why is this person doubting? So here's a story. Championship number one, two, three. Championship number four. So we had just lost. I would say we. But they had just lost to the Boston Celtics in game six.
What is this, 2008 or something?
2007. Yeah, 2007. 2008. One of the. One of those years. So after the game, he sits down and he has, you know, he has dinner with the coaches so they can go over the thing and they talk about his different. Then. Then afterwards, he'll socialize a little bit with his teammates to go over the game plan. And then after everything is done, he'll send me. Would send me a text, and I. I just sit down and he was sitting there with me. And this is a great.
After they lost.
This is after they lost the playoffs. They didn't lose the playoffs. They lost the game. They lost game six. And they were going into. They were going into. They were going into game seven, all right? And they had a chance to. If they would have won Game 6, they would have won the championship. It would have been over. So he's sitting there, and he looks at me and we start talking. He goes, man, I threw everything at him at the kitchen sink. And I just looked at him. I said, why are you holding on to the sink? Right? I said, why are you holding onto the sink? I said, are you doubting? Did you doubt yourself for the moment? I said, did you save that sink for game seven? I said, if you were to throw in the game in game six, what are you saving it for? And then we literally had a discussion now about that moment of doubt, which was very rare to him, but it was the Lakers Celtic rivalry. Wow. You know, it was going to. It was his first chance to win a championship without Shaq. So, you know, you hear all this stuff, and no matter how many times you've won over and over again, all right, winning has no loyalty. It doesn't recognize. It recognizes you briefly, and then it turns his head and starts looking for the other individual. And remember, this was. It was seven years now where he had won the last championship. Really? Yes. Between championship three. Between championship three, it was seven years.
That's a big drought for Kobe.
Right? And now how many people in that time would really start doubting? Are you ever going to get there? Are you gonna ever get there?
Does he have it anymore? Can he do it? Do they have the tools?
Yes. And every athlete tells you this, oh, I don't pay Attention to media.
Oh, they read everything. They read everything. They watch every interview and they hold on to that.
Yes. Yes, they do. Yes, they do. Every. Single. So, you know, after all those years and, you know, do you start. You're human. You start to think, man, maybe they're right.
Maybe I'm getting older. Maybe.
Yeah. So now, hey, listen, everything that everybody else has been saying, everything that you've been holding inside, let's talk about this now.
So what did he say after the. The sync part?
He just gave me that mamba glare. First of all, you know that mamba law. Because he knew I touched.
You had a button.
Yeah, I touched a button that very few were afraid, that didn't want. That didn't want it. That didn't want to touch. And he didn't get. He didn't make any excuses. He didn't make any excuses. And I just said, look how close we are. I said, look how cool. Look how close we are. I said, we're one victory away. Wow. After seven years. Oh, man. I said, after seven years. I said, did you ever doubt that you'd get here again? He said, absolutely not. I said, while we're here, let's not doubt that you're going to finish the job. Let's finish. Finish. I said, I can't finish a job for you. I cannot finish a job for you. I said, nobody that you met with at this table can finish a job for you. I said, if you doubting that you can't finish the job, then I'll go home tonight. I'll go home tonight. And Michael was the complete opposite. Michael would. In that aspect. It was just like we would. So back then, the series were a little bit different. They changed the format. It was two, three, two. All right. So you play two games at home, three games on the road, and then two, because they wanted to minimize the travel. So Michael would tell you would be going into game six. If you won game six on the road, you were done. You won the championship. So Michael would literally tell all the team and the staff, pack one suit.
Yeah. It's crazy.
Pack for one day. He goes, don't pack for two. Pack for one.
That's crazy.
Yeah.
He talked about it in the last dance, I think, as well. Yeah.
Yeah. Six championships. Never needed a Game seven.
Really?
They never needed a Game seven.
That's crazy.
Yeah. All right.
Or we got no clothes, you know.
Yeah. Otherwise every.
We're naked.
We're gonna go where everybody's gonna say, the hell are these people? What the hell are These people doing.
And then you humiliate yourself because you didn't go all out.
Exactly. And for a moment, we listen. How many times in our lives have you really gone all in on something?
Very few.
And then when you do go, look at the results.
Pretty undeniable. Yeah.
Yeah. Look at the results.
So what do you think? When we have these moments of doubt, you're saying we should speak about it, and that day, Kobe was speaking about it with you.
Speak it to somebody who's not going to judge you, who understands, who's not just going to give you the answer, and it's okay, everything's going to be fine. There's another day, there's another game.
What does that do for us by.
Speaking the self doubt, Acknowledging it.
What does that do?
Well, when you acknowledge it, it's just like anybody. What do they say? What's the first thing Doubt can become an addiction, Just like anything. Just like anything else.
Just like winning.
Yes. So what do people say? The first thing when you become an addict? You got to talk about it. You got to admit it.
Speak the poison out of your body.
Yes.
Like, get it out. Talk about it. It becomes less scary. It doesn't have as much power over you if it's inside.
Get it, get it, get it out. Because what I might think you're doubting may be completely different than something that you're doubting. I may see something and you're like, no, that's. That's not it. Well, okay, let's talk about this a little more. Explain to me. Explain to me what's going on here. What created that doubt? What created that doubt? And we know after seven years, it had finally gotten to the point where it was just like. And no one talked to him because, you know, Kobe wasn't going to talk to anybody about it. He's never going to talk to the media about it. They should talk to somebody, some individual that's like, hey, okay, listen. I understand I'm as obsessed and as crazy as you are because that's why you hired me. That's why you hired me. I understand the winning mentality. I understand what's going on and what's going on in under here. I understand the skeletons. I understand the demons. I get those things. Mine aren't the same as yours, but I have them. We all have them, and very few can admit them. So when you start. Start committing doubt and you start to be able to talk about it, you take something that you've tried to bury in your closet that needs to be addressed. But you're trying to hide it, you're trying to bury it, you're trying to put it away. And winning requires you to show up with all of you. It wants to show up. The good, the bad, the fearful, the doubting. So society, the ups, the downs, it needs to see all of you. Otherwise it's never going to acknowledge you. It's not going to acknowledge you. And you can't win with just one thing. You have to win with all of you. All of it. All of it.
Wow. What was the three greatest lessons that Kobe taught you? We heard Competing, accountability and winning at all levels. For Michael. What about Kobe? The three. Three big lessons he taught you?
Obsession, Extremely high threshold for physical and mental pain, discomfort, and also winning. They all had that in common.
The winning mindset. The winning mindset.
Yes. What he called it the Mamba mentality.
What is the mindset of winning? They both had that. Obviously they both had a lot of things, but what is the mindset of winning? When someone adopts that mentality, what does that do for them? As opposed to the mindset of, well, whatever result I get is fine or it's okay if I have this, and I'm okay with that.
So I look at it. I look at it three ways. So you have individuals that compete. You know, a lot of people that compete.
Yeah.
You know, every. We all know how to compete. Everybody knows how to. How to compete. You don't forget how to compete. We just decide not to anymore. But a lot of people compete just to finish. They compete just to finish.
Compete just for the act of doing it.
Just the act of. Now, I always say, if you finishing that whatever you're competing in allows you to win at something else, allows you to say, hey, listen, I just broke through a barrier.
Yeah. Or if that's a win, like, for me, I'm going to be running in a marathon later this year, and I am not a distance runner. I'm doing it to overcome the challenge of long distance running.
That's your win.
But I'm not going to win the marathon. I'm not trying to.
Right. All right. Your goal but your win is to finish.
Absolutely.
All right. But. So a lot of people's win there is. It's not the finish. It's just. I'm just going to finish without a purpose. Then there's individuals that win, but they only win one time.
Yeah. The hardest thing is doing it over and over. It's. It's easy. It's not easy to win.
Right.
But it's easy to. It's, it's, it's easy to win and then never win again. I mean, it's so hard to do it over and over consistently.
And then there's people that win at winning.
They win at winning.
Yes.
That is an art and a science probably combined.
Yes. Because here's how it goes. You can't come back the same.
Once you win, you can't come back.
Cannot come back the same. You have to come back different. You have to come back better. This is why I always says, listen, winning requires you to be different. And different scares people.
Absolutely.
It scares people. So after each championship, every single athlete, high performance athlete that I've worked with, even in business, would come up to me and say, what's next? Because I need to feel this again. I need to feel this again. Yes. I need to feel this again. So they know they have to come back. Something about them has to be better.
They have to continue to evolve and change.
How many teams do you know in professional sports, sports that they bring the exact same team back? I mean, exact same team that win again? They don't. There's always a little change. There's always a little tweak here. There's a change over here. There's something, there's something that goes on over here. And every athlete who's won multiple titles over and over again or even in different business people, you look at, you just had Tony here, look, he's won.
For decades, four decades, he's been doing this.
Yes.
He's always reinventing, always finding new coaches, always mastering some skill, learning, evolving.
It's just like, you just have to just watch what these individuals do. He's not still using the same format he used 20 years. Like you said, new coaches, new content, new technology, new everything. And it's available to us. But people are like, oh, we did it once and we can do it the exact same way again. You can't, you can't. There's people that win at winning. And this is how, this is extremely important on how they do this. You said, well, how do you know? How do you make sure you just don't go through this? We're all taught to manage time. Everyone tells you how to manage time. You know, make a list. This is what you do in here. Here it is. Have a little timer when it goes on and all this other stuff. And one of the things that I teach all my clients, from business standpoint, from an athletic standpoint, I was like, listen, don't manage time, manage focus. What does that look like manage focus. So what happens is when you try to manage time, the clock is always against you. You're trying to finish off something and time goes by so quickly. When you're in that moment, when you're so focused, when you're so focused, you don't know if you've been at it for 30 minutes or you've been at it for an hour. Yeah.
Or weeks or weeks.
You just go. Time creates distractions. Literally time. If you're, like managing time, you get all these distractions that are going there. What does focus do? It blocks them out. Right. So don't worry about managing time. Manage your focus. Be in that moment when you're in that moment, and then you'll get so much more done during that time. All right. You know, time tells you to stop. All right? Focus tells you keep going. When you focus, what do you do? You just keep going. You just keep going. You just keep going.
That's why I love creating scenarios and environments without the use of my phone. It's like, if you're going to a workout, leave your phone somewhere else where you need to focus. That's why I love having a trainer. I'm doing boxing right now with a great trainer here in la. And when I'm with him for those two hours a week, it's like time is gone because I'm just in the moment. I can't think about anything else in my life. I'm not on my phone because I got boxing gloves on. I'm like, there's pain, there's stress. It's like you've got to use every part of your mind and your body for that hour.
Yes.
And time goes away because I'm just focused.
And then you get individuals that go to a gym and they're on the.
Phone the whole time in between, or.
Here'S the thing, they want to. They're getting on a bicycle or they're getting on a step machine. Whatever they get on, they spend more time playing with the music. All right, what music? I gotta find the right genre and so forth. So what do you do? You're just like, I gotta do this for 20 minutes. I gotta do this. This for 20 minutes, or I gotta do this for 40 minutes. You're not focused. You're in your mind. You're literally managing time. You're thinking how long this is gonna go in. And you go in and you get that. You get that hour, 50 or hour 50 minutes, whatever it is. And it goes by. Yeah, like this. Exactly. Because you are so focused during that.
If you're not focused, you're gonna hurt yourself. You're going to.
And not get the result. And not get the result. Exactly. And that's what people do. People settle for average. When all you're doing out there is managing time, you're just putting average stuff out there. And it goes. All the stuff in the chapters that come in, I have everything listed number one. Because they all tie in. They all tie in together. You know, managing folk, managing focus, set of time. Ties into balance. Wow. It ties into balance. And you know, this is about the unforgiving race. This is. Everybody comes in and they see the work that you're putting out.
Now they don't see eight years, a thousand plus episodes.
And that was your unforgiving race. And a lot of a part of it was unforgiving. You didn't come out the same. You came out different. And when you came out different, that difference scared a lot of people. And I'm sure during that journey, people that were really close to you are no longer.
Yeah. They got to accept you. They got to learn to accept you.
Yes.
Otherwise they're not going to understand you and you're not going to have the time that you want to have with those people. And that's okay, too.
That's okay.
You don't need to kick them out of your life necessarily. But you just may not be spending as much time with them if they're not understanding your mission, your intention, your focus, your own race.
And now you get called selfish. Yeah. And you get called self. That you get called self. It's. Winning requires you to be selfish.
You need to be.
All right. What's wrong with taking care of self? I've never understood that. All right, what's wrong? All right, so you ask an individual to, hey, I meditate. Not me, but I'm just saying. Individual says, I meditate from 3 to 3:30. Oh, that's really healthy for you, that so forth. You're in a business atmosphere or somewhere, you say, hey, listen, no calls, leave me alone. I don't want to talk to anybody for the next 30 minutes. You're selfish. Right? We love to give these words for me time. What's the difference between selfish and me time? You know, what's the difference? There is no difference. But when you're taking something away from another individual that they want your time, they want your energy, they want your focus. Now all of a sudden you're selfish when you say no. All right, you work out every day. I work out every Day. Is that selfish? No. To take care of ourselves. All right. Meditation, self improvement, reading all those things. You do those things alone, listening to podcasts, whatever. That's time to self. Why don't people consider those selfish. Why?
How did you create time for yourself when you were training these top athletes? You know, Michael Jordan, Kobe, and Dwayne are the, you know, three probably most successful. I'm assuming that you've. You've trained the biggest champions.
Yes. Well, I've had, you know, they're fortunate enough. You know, Akeem Olajuwon is also a client of mine. If you're a basketball. Charles Barkley's been a client of mine. Tracy McGrady's been a client of mine. I've had.
Charles needs you back as a trainer.
Yeah. Yeah. So the one thing about Charles is in one of my introduction videos, he always just says, I've lost 30 pounds. And he repeats it over and over again. Because he's lost those same 30 pounds. Yes. Over and over again. But you just.
How did you find me time. When the greatest athletes are so demanding of your time, how were you able to do that while training them?
Well, you may have to cut down your me time, but, you know, there were certain times that I didn't have to travel. Like if. Like, if it was. If they were traveling only for a night and coming back, I didn't take those. I didn't take those trips. So that allowed me to do what I wanted to do. But, you know, there would be times when I never worked for the organization. I always worked directly for the player.
Did you travel with the team?
I did not travel with the team.
They paid you to separate the. Go travel on your own.
The individual, the client. Yeah. So this, you know, so people always talk about. They get so surprised when an athlete invests seven figures. I was like, they need to.
They need to.
And people like, man, that's. I hear this, but. Oh, that. That's so selfish of them. They should be.
How they win. I, you know, I was. I don't know if you know, Novak Djokovic.
I don't know him.
Was close friends with their buddies.
Yes.
I talked about it with Kobe, that I knew him, and he goes, that's my guy. I love Novak. I went to go watch Novak right before the pandemic here at Indian Wells, and I went to go watch a match. Afterwards, we hung out with him. He had a traveling gym, a pod. It was like an RV, a couple RVs that had. It was the coolest thing I'd Ever seen. It had like, float tank and sauna and ice bath and meditation pot. All these things in there, trainers. With him, it was like, this is how I stay successful. I don't do it by just going to bed at night. I gotta stretch at night. I gotta do all the things to wind down, prepare myself for the next match tomorrow. And this is why, by investing. I won't say how much he invested in that, but it was like, he's putting a lot of money on his health, on his mindset, on his trainers, and it's why he's number one.
And, like, not only is he successful, like you say, he's won, he's winning over and over, over again, over again. And that's what it takes to. And people could be like, oh, that's. That's selfish. No, it's not selfish. It's selfish not to. All right, so I always look at it this way, because if you're not.
Obsessed, what are you?
Right?
If you're not going to be obsessed about it, what are you doing?
So here's the thing, all right? People would call, I look at what you do. It would be selfish of you not to do it.
Right. Not to serve the world at the highest level, not to be able to get this information and help people and be selfish.
Exactly. So if you don't take care of.
Self, if I'm not prepared and ready to go to these interviews, not going to get the best information, we're not going to help people.
That's how I look. So when I see a person who's not at the top of their game, or a CEO or a business person that's not functioning well, first thing, like, all right, maybe you need to be a little bit more. Because not only do I need you, there's so many other people that are relying on you to be selfish so you can produce at the highest level.
Yeah. If I'm not selfish, we can't pay the team, we can't bring on more people and employ people. All these things.
Yeah. Why is it such a bad. Why is it such a bad. Why is it such a bad word? Why do people look at. Winning requires you to be selfish in all forms of life. If your goal is to say, I'm going to be the best parent, I'm going to raise these kids, I'm going to do this the way it is. If you want to talk about Tiger woods, if those parents weren't selfish with Tiger's time, what would have the world missed out on? People that didn't Even know golf. Watch golf. Yeah. Yeah. It's selfish for you not to be at your best. It's selfish for you not to share your information. It's selfish for you and not to be the most talented individual that you could possibly be. It's selfish for you not to share that talent with other individuals.
That's true. Side note, did you ever score a point against Kobe?
Yes, I did.
Really?
I did.
What was that? How many times? Few times. Is this when you're scoring, you're just shooting threes and they're not blocking it? Is that essentially. Or did you drive and you make a move and you're so pivoting and shopping?
So Kobe was coming off an ankle injury. Listen, I take. I take my. Listen.
One guy can't walk, another one can't move. Yeah.
Hey, I take my chair. I take it when I listen. I've scored in every NBA arena.
That's cool. You mean you've made it best when nobody's around?
I take the ball. I've scored in every NBA, NBA. In every NBA. I've never scored an NBA game. I've scored in every NBA. I've scored in every. Every NBA arena. So, you know, Kobe, I was like, hey, man, you know, just kind of just, you know, I could see him limping around, and we're out there shooting on the bat, shooting on the court a little bit. He's playing this fake defense, and I kind of just go around him. I'm like, yes. Wow. I got no video to.
Because, listen, no one's filming that yet.
No one's filming that. And black. Then, you know, first with Michael, there was no social media, and then with Colby was extremely, extremely private.
Yeah. Don't fall.
In his early part of his career, then towards the end, he was a little bit more open to sharing his family and, you know, and different things where other than he was extremely, extremely private. How many times when you interviewed, did he tell you to turn the camera off?
Well, he didn't, actually, which was fascinating. I felt like, because I asked him beforehand, his whole team. I don't know. I feel like what I created with Kobe was a magical moment of this, our experience with him. And because beforehand, his whole team was prepping me, we booked it the night before they wanted to do the interview, like a month out. And I was like, if we don't do this tomorrow morning, this isn't happening, because I already know he's going to be busy. So they reached out, and I was like, we need to book this in the morning. First thing or whenever.
Tomorrow.
I'll do it anytime tomorrow. But if we do it a week out, it's not going to work. He's going to, you know, it's going to fall through. So I had my moment, like the chance, just like you. And his ankle was broken, right. And the team was there. This is crazy. I got there, I think around 6:30. The interview was at 8. And I'm the first one there. Turn on the light. The assistant opens the door, lets me in. We turn on the lights, we go find a place where I'm going to go film. We go walk through. I don't know if you ever went to his office, the Colby Inc. Yeah, yeah, we walked through. There's a. There's a big opening first and then there's like these glass windows that go into another room. And I walked down there to look at the other room. Didn't like this setup anywhere. So I walked back. 6:30am Walk back on the last office on the left in the glass windows. I see the lights are off and I see a shadow in the back. And for a second I'm like, oh, that's kobe back there. 6:30am and we walked past it and I talked to the assistant. I goes, that Kobe? She goes, yeah, he's been here for over an hour. Yeah, he was up at four training with his daughter. And he's the first one here.
Yeah.
And I go, this guy just won an Oscar. He's like, no reason to be here at 6:30. And he's not even on his phone or on his computer. He was just like dreaming or visualizing or something was happening. Like he was just looking up at the ceiling like this. And I was like, this guy's a freak. You know, as a machine. And we set up, and we set up close to there, but he couldn't see where we were setting up. But he must have known that people were there. And so I'm there for an hour and a half thinking, is he gonna come out? Is something gonna happen? People are starting to come in now. It's getting closer to eight. The lights turn on in his office, probably 7:50. And someone goes in and has a conversation. But I don't see him until three minutes before eight. Now his team is prepping me. Everyone's there now. And they gave me a list of all these things I cannot ask him. I was like, cool, no problem. And I know I had three minutes until we start because he had a hard out until I think it was Little Wayne. He was like, there as well. Setting up another production to do an interview. It was like back to back all day. I asked him these few questions before the interview just to build a connection with him and tell him, you know, I played handball and the Olympics and this and this. For whatever reason, I said the same thing. I said to you before this interview, is there anything off limits?
And he said, no.
He said, I go, I've got this whole sheet. Your team told me not to ask. Like, I understand. I shouldn't go here, here, and here. Is there anything else off limits? He goes, ask me anything you want and take as long as you want. I was like, wow. So he gave me permission. Now, I didn't disrespect him and ask things, but he was. He was. He was in the zone and so focused in that moment, which I was like, this is. This is cool, you know, to have him, someone at that level, to show he cares that much for someone he'd never met. Now, later, I found out Candace Parker, I had on the show recently, and I said, hey, how did you hear about the show? Just curious, like, how did you hear it? She was a fan of the show. And she said, kobe told me about it. I go, what? And she goes, yeah, I would always bug Kobe and say, what are you reading? What are you listening to? To help, like, improve my mind. And she was like, oh, he mentioned your show, that I should listen to it and watch it. And I was like, what? So we, you know, we were supposed to have another interview that happened. I was telling you this before we got on here, and then the time we were going to schedule it was when I had a big conference. So I was like, well, hopefully in the next few months. That conference was in September, and then in January, I guess, is when he passed, unfortunately. So I was always thinking I'd have many more times to interview him and sit down. But that time never happened. And I know that you spoke to him, I think, a week before you talk about in your book, what was that conversation and that time, like?
So we would go back and forth. You know, we text each other from time to time to say, hey, you good? Yeah, I'm good. You good? You know, no long conversations. What are you doing? He's always chasing the next win. That was business, the movies, the tv, that. That was. That was his thing. And I said, he was busy, I was busy. We tried to get together, and we just like, hey, All Star Game is in Chicago. So he was going to be. I. I live in Chicago. He was going to be he was going to, he was going to come down there for the event and some business and some business stuff and never happened. Yeah. And that. It never happened, and it was crazy. I know there's a lot of people out there that are in this space that tell you you have time. I always used to tell Colby, I said, we don't have time. Every time, every time we would work out, every time we would prepare, every time we would do something, I would just be like, this is urgency. Everything's urgency. We don't have time. Man, I wish I was wrong. Boy, I wish I was wrong, because three days later, that's when it really affected me. I was sleeping, I was in the middle of the night, because you just would just think, this is not real. It's not real. And if you had a chance to meet him, you know, you got a chance to spend time, you got a chance to spend time with him. And you know what? I'll tell you, when they gave you that love list, you know, it was a test with no right answers. That's what it was, a test with no right answers. And you took it to a level that very few people got a chance, very few people got a chance to see. But he had this very innate trust with people right away that he just, he just knew.
Yeah. Like, I felt like he.
Trust.
He was like, right away, it was like he was my best friend is what it felt like.
There's, there's something, there's something at the.
But, but if you lose that trust for a moment, he's like, never speak to you again.
Oh, my, oh, my goodness. I, I, oh, my goodness. You know, just like, hey, just like. It takes, yeah, a second to turn a champion. Takes one moment to turn a win into a loss, a champion into a loser. It's the same. He was the same way. He trusted you until you gave him a reason not to trust you.
Did you ever lose his trust?
Never.
That's good.
Never.
Did he ever doubt you at some point, besides questioning, why are we doing this? Did he ever say, oh, I didn't like the way you treated me here, or said this?
Never. Never. Not one moment. You know, I've had. There are stories out there, and people always ask me about this. So I said, well, there's a reason they're not out there.
Right.
All right. You know, I was blessed and privileged to see parts of their lives and spend time with them that nobody, nobody, nobody's seen behind the scenes. Yes. I mean, even, even behind those scenes, just you and him get A chance to experience things. And very few people would ever get a chance. Chance to experience. And when somebody's that open with you and they're allowing you into a space that very, very few do. Yeah.
Maybe his wife only.
Yeah. And they have enough trust in you to call you up at 3 o' clock in the morning or whatever it is to say, hey, meet me so and so. Just need to sit down and have a conversation. And the one thing I always tell all my clients, everything, business schools, professionals, I don't judge. I don't judge. I need to know. My job is to help you create wins over and over and over again. All right, that's my. I'm not here. I'm not here to judge. All right? And when you get across that point, I've written. This is the second book I've written. And when I wrote the first one, there was no fear or doubt from any of them that there was going to be like a tell all book. I don't do that. I don't do that. There's certain parts of each individual, yourself, myself, that we share with very few people. And there's a reason we share that with very few. Few people. Yeah. And once that trust is broken, it's extreme. I don't think so. It can be. It can't be mended.
It might take years until you can build it again.
It just. It just is. You just. You just can't.
How did that come about? Did. Did Michael give you permission to work with Kobe? Did Kobe court you for years and say, when you're done with Michael, I want to. I want to have you train.
So I've never, you know, obviously Kobe and I had, we had. We knew of each other because we kind of passed back and forth and we'd see each other.
You were training Michael.
Yes. You know, and I would always, you know, every time I approach, I say, listen. You know, through these. I. Kobe, he had an individual he steady. Was working with. And I just told him, I said, listen, if your trainer ever needs anything or just have him. Needs any information, I said, please have him reach out to me or vice versa. So in 2007, Kobe reached out to Michael and said, listen, my knees are inside. Like they are so bad. I don't know if I can play anymore. I don't know if I can play. I don't know if I can play anymore. And he said, listen. He goes, you have any suggestions? You have anything? He goes, listen, this is not my field. He goes, you know, I'm not using Grover anymore, You know, give him a shot. And so Kobe goes, well, how long.
Were you not working with Michael since that point?
It was a while. I mean, Michael was done in the. Michael was done in the early, late 90s. So it was gotcha. Yeah, I mean, I was still working with other athletes, but not. No, I was still working with Dwayne. I had started working with Dwayne during that time. So then he said, hey, reach out to him. And he goes, well, he goes, tell me about Grover. Best endorsement I ever got. So he goes, man, that guy really knows his stuff. But he's the biggest you'll ever meet. Best compliment.
And he was like, perfect. I need that.
Yeah. He goes, that's perfect. And he says, well, what do you mean by that? He goes, he's not going to take your bull. He's not going to treat you like you're this superstar. He's going to hold you accountable when you don't do something right. He's going to call you out on it, you know? And he goes, if you can't handle that. He goes, oh, no, this is perfect for me.
Yeah, he needed that.
Yeah. He goes, this is actually perfect for me because he had, like, you know, just like with the tennis player Djokovic. There's a lot of people around. All right, and what I described earlier, how do you get back to that win? Sometimes you have to delete a lot of the stuff that's going around, because now it's not a cohesive team. Well, everybody. Everybody's looking. Everybody's saying, this is the way it should be done. This is how it do it. This is. And pieces start to fall in place. So I came in, I just said, listen, what's our goal? You know, everybody talks about these different. You know, they want to put their thoughts and they want to put everything on there. I said, said, and everyone makes his list. And I just put win at the top. Yeah, that's what we don't win. That's all we're here for.
Otherwise.
Yeah, that's what we're here for.
Whatever it takes.
I said, if he wins, we all win. I said, if he loses, guess what? We all lose. And we will not be here. We will not be here. So let's. Everybody, let's figure this thing out together. Let's put the pieces in place. You should be talking, because the team wasn't talking to each other. So I came in, and I got everybody starting to talk to each other.
His personal team.
Yeah, it's just like, not the.
Not The Lakers, right?
They're not talking to each other. All right? Everybody's not, you know, I don't know what this person's doing. You don't know what this person's doing. I said, we need to get everybody on the set. After every treatment, every workout, everything that goes on, you should know what this person does. Everybody. Everybody should know. And this was before, you know, we weren't. I wasn't going to require everybody to do a Google, you know, a spreadsheet or a Google Doc, all that. I was like, listen, we need to every single day get together on a phone, get a thing and say, this is what I did. This is what I did. This is what I did. So we know. And when I started to work with him, you know, I looked at what was going on with his knees and I had some ideas, I had some thoughts. I said, okay, this is what you've been planning. These are the surgeries that you've had. I said, this is probably going to take. I said, probably take about eight weeks to alleviate this pain. And I put a real specific program for him to say, this is what we're going to do. I kind of describe it in the book a little bit. And I said, this is what we're going to do. And he started to feel better and started to feel. The knee started to come around. And he was able to play in the Olympics in 2008 during that time and just took off some kind of gave a Ferrari or Lamborghini the necessary tune up it really needed and the genuine parts that were necessary to get him playing again at the highest level. And he believed in me. But the one thing he always said was just like when a reporter asked him later, he goes, hey, I heard you're working out with Michael Jordan's guy, Tim Grover. He goes, what do you think about him? He goes, he ain't done it for me yet. He goes, I don't know. He goes, you want go ask Michael what he did for him? He hasn't done anything for me. Which was the perfect answer. Which was the perfect answer because too many people, when we talked about the three things about winning, the people that compete, the people that win once, and the people that win over and over again. You're only good as your last one win.
True.
You're only as good as your. You're only as good as your last win. That's it. So it was important to me to say, hey, listen, yeah, what I did for Michael doesn't matter. Judge me by what I'm Going to what I do for you. And you and I are kind of similar in this situation here. So when you got your first big interview, whoever that may be, I was like, well, oh, you can't do it again. Now you got your next big interview. Oh, you can't do it again. Now you got your next. Now you got your next one. So people always say, oh, you did it with Michael. Go do it with somebody else. All right, I'll go do it with Kobe. All right, you did it with Kobe. Well, go do it with somebody else. All right, I'll go do it with Dwayne. Go do it with somebody. So it's just kind of like. All right, just to show you that this is not a fluke, and it's not, again, not to prove them right. It's to prove yourself. That. Yes. That you just didn't fall into this. That all the years that you were in this unforgiving race to win, all the stairs that you climbed, all the stairs that you missed, all the people that doubted you, you finally got to say, hey, the way Colby describes winning. Winning is everything. Yeah, winning is everything.
That's true. And what about Dwayne? What was the three big lessons from him? How long were you training Dwayne?
Oh, Dwayne. So the interesting story was there was some crossover between Kobe and Dwayne where I would literally have to get. I was literally flying from Orange county to Miami. To Miami.
Oh, man.
Because I was. During the playoffs, I was taking care of both. So it was.
That's intense.
Yeah, that. That was. I had my. I had more frequent 5 mileage during that. During that time, and all the flight attendants knew. Knew who I was. Dwayne was. Dwayne was a huge, very quiet, huge family person. Like, his kids were, like, super. So, so important to him. Like, they were, like, very, very, very, very, very, very important. The time I went, when I was dealing with him, he was going through an extremely bad divorce, and there was a custody battle that. That was going on. So to be able to. With Colby, I mean, with Dwayne, one of the things that. That I really learned from him was resiliency. Wow. Like, you, like, with resil. Like, how resilient he was with everything that was going on, because he had to.
He had.
Yes.
Try to win, but also deal with a divorce, custody, kids, the emotions of it all, and then focus when it mattered. That's so hard to do.
That is so. That is so hard to. But you know what? The greatest individuals, they don't bring their Personal stuff.
So hard to do.
It's not easy. It's not easy, but they just don't. Because you know why the game gives them that square. It's an outlet. And it's like, hey, you can't touch me. You can't touch me in that space.
At least for those couple hours.
Right.
But then you got to deal with everything else afterwards.
Yes. And that's whatever you have to deal with. It's still going to be there. Most people don't win because they let other distractions take them away from what's really, really important during that time. Those distractions are still going to be there. It doesn't matter. We talk. You know all these. You've talked to all these individuals? I've dealt with numerous of them. They're people. They have the same issues that you and I have. All right? They have relationship problems. All right.
They usually have more issues because they have the media, the attention, the drama.
The gossip that they have to. That they have to. That they have to deal with.
So is it a compartmentalization of distractions? Is it something else? Like, how do the best do it?
Those distractions actually elevate their play. Really? Yeah. They actually. Every single time. So every single athlete I've ever worked with, every little CEO person, their distractions make them even more focused during that time.
It's like the flu game with Jordan.
It's like. Yes.
You become locked in. No matter what is happening.
You look at the numbers with those individuals, when there's a distraction, when they're going through something personal or something, their numbers actually go up. Their productivity actually go. Their productivity actually goes up. And the people, the other ones, their stuff actually goes because now they have to. Their level of focus is even at a higher level. It's a zone in more. Yes.
Yeah.
Yes.
So resiliency is one for Dwayne. What's the other two, would you say? Two lessons?
Fun.
Seems like a fun dude. Really a happy guy.
Yes, a really, really, really, really fun dude. All right. And the other thing was, he had the shortest memory. Wow. Like, if he missed a shot, it's like, ok, yeah, don't hold on. Don't hold on. Don't hold on. It's just like how many contacts do people have in their phone that from individuals you haven't heard, you're not. You haven't heard from in 10, 15 years? You just won't delete the contact. How much stuff do you have?
I've got thousands of contacts.
How many people. How much stuff do you Individuals have in their closet that is never coming back in style. You're never going to fit in it again. They just hold on to it.
They get rid of that stuff.
And people do the same thing. They have one bad game or they have one bad report about them or something says somebody says. It changes their whole mood, it changes their whole ideas, it changes their whole complexity of themselves. Dwayne was just like shortest memory.
Yeah. That's crazy.
And fun has a lot to do with that. And winning is fun, right? Winning is fun. The road to get to that fun to win is not.
It's challenging.
It's challenging.
If you can make it fun, that's a bonus.
Yeah, but you know what?
There's pain, though.
How do you make it fun? You gotta be able to laugh at yourself.
Yeah, exactly.
You laugh at yourself, you know, like, okay, I'm not supposed to be here. You're not supposed to be here. It's just like, you know, it's like, yeah, you're right. I'm not supposed to be here. I'm not supposed to be sitting in LA talking to Lewis Howe. I'm not. All right, this is.
We met at the Grants event.
Yeah. I don't know how many years ago. Yeah. And I don't know how many. Four or five, whatever that was when you were lying down. I think it was on your sister's couch. Would you ever think about.
I mean, I think about it, but I didn't know if it would happen, when it would happen, how it's going to happen. All these things when you had that.
Injury that was like, it's devastating. Is it done? And people say that person's in a dark place. But you know what? That's where a lot of the healing happens is when you're in that place by yourself, when you really get to understand who you are and what it takes. When you had those moments by yourself on that sofa and you sitting around and you just said, yeah, I could sit here all day, all night if I wanted to. But those voices started to talk to you and say, hey, this is more out there. That's when your brain really started to work. That's when the chemistry really started to come in. That's when the dopamine hit, started to come in. Because you're like, this is no longer available to me. But there's so much more out there for me. Absolutely. Yeah.
I've got a couple final questions for you. This has been inspiring, but I want people to get the book Winning the Unforgiving Race to Greatness. A lot of great praise around this from some of the top athletes, coaches in the world. It's going to inspire you a lot more lessons and stories. If you enjoyed this conversation, you're going to get a lot more in here as well about how to win and the unforgiving race to greatness. Love the title. I'm not going to ask you who's the best basketball player, but who is the best athlete who was like, man, they were just freak athlete and anything they wanted to do, they could do it. That you trained, anyone you trained.
And it doesn't have to be I trained.
It doesn't have to be MJ or Kobe. But of all the people you trained, who was like, this person is the greatest athlete athletically, Gifted, talented, not the best basketball player.
Right, Right. Let's see.
I know you probably don't like answering that question. I don't ask that.
Yeah, it's. Let me try to think. You got to think about this one for a little while.
Like their reaction time, their speed, their quickness. They could take on any sport, anything. I know they're all great athletes in lots of sports, but who is like, man, this person just doesn't love to win at everything. But they do win at everything because they're so good as an athlete.
Well, so here's the thing. The athlete that I'm thinking about comes to, comes to my mind from an athletic standpoint. He was literally off the charts. But he didn't win because he was so athletic. Really? Yes.
What do you mean? He didn't win because he was so.
Athletic, because he relied on his athletic ability.
Gosh, you know what's funny? You know what's funny about this? There was a guy when I was, I was in eighth grade. He was going into freshman year, he was a senior. He was the freakiest athlete that I'd ever seen at that time. Now I'm like a 13 year old, you know, skinny white dude who could barely jump and all these things. And he had a 40 something inch vert. He was like just chiseled, jacked, could shoot three. So smooth. Unbelievable. I just never seen a gifted athlete like this.360, dunking easy. Whatever he wanted to do, he could do it, but he wasn't a winner. Like he would buckle under pressure or he didn't believe in himself. And I was like, man, it doesn't matter how much of a great athlete you are if you don't have the ability to believe in yourself, overcome adversity, challenges and obstacles and the flip side of that, if you're not the best athlete but you have the mentality of a winner and you're willing to go harder and overcome adversity and self doubt, you can win.
Yes. Give me somebody with a little less talent and that everything that you. And more of whatever you mentioned, I would take that every single time. They all my greatest, you know, my top individuals. They weren't the greatest athletes out there, but they were great athletes. They were great people. They were great competitors. All right. They were great givers. They were great. Extremely coachable. They were great at winning and they knew how to elevate everybody else around them, which is so important now. They didn't. They all did it in different ways. It's easy to elevate yourself. It's easy to get the most out of yourself. All right. It's so difficult to get the most of everyone else. To get the most out of every everyone else.
So this guy who was.
I can't give his name.
You don't have to say his name. But the guy you were training, he was a better athlete than everyone else.
Unbelievable.
But what was he not able to do? He didn't have. He wasn't coachable or he wasn't able to get the best out of everyone else.
He was more concerned about the brand.
The way he looked or his.
Yes. You know, than his. Than actual. Yes. Than winning and winning. Listen, winning is all consuming. It needs to be like, hey, I'm the only thing that matters right now, otherwise it's going to turn its attention to somebody else. Right.
And I'm the only thing. And the teams the only thing that matters if it's a team sport.
Yeah.
Otherwise you could score 100 points, but you might lose.
Right. And that's around elevating the, Elevating a team. What I've done with each one of my athletes and I continue to do this, you know, you have your team goals, but I said I want. What are your individual goals that are going to help obtain the team goals and what are the individual goals that might be up here that are going to be best for you but not best for the team?
Yeah. You scoring 60 a game is not going to be best for the team.
Right.
But you scoring 35 on average and 40 to 50 a couple times.
Yeah. So I just said, now where are we on this? Where we are on this? Because if you're over here on this, then we're not getting over. We're not getting over here. And I said, if we're more over here where we can. We'll get. We'll get. Because if you give. If you give just enough, you'll get so much more from these, from these, from these individuals here.
That's what we learned from Michael in the Last Dance and talking about that as well.
Yeah.
Okay, a couple final questions. This is a question I ask everyone at the end called the Three Truths. So I'd like you to imagine a hypothetical scenario. It's the last day on earth, many years away from now. You get to live as old as you want to live, but for whatever reason, you've got to take everything you've ever created. This book, this interview, it's all going to go with you to the next place. So no one has access to your words, content, or anything you've ever said hypothetical. But you get to leave behind three lessons, three things you know to be true from all of your experiences in life. This is all we would have to remember you by. Are these three principles, lessons, what I like to call truths. What would you say are those three truths for you?
Control your thoughts, Control your emotions, You'll control the outcome.
It all comes down to being able to manage the bombs in your mind like you talked about, and not reacting emotionally from these scenarios.
You're not your thoughts. Because I've had some thoughts. If I acted on them. Yeah, yeah. All right. Emotions, listen, we all have them, but you don't have to react to every single emotion out there. And is it. I'm not telling you not to be emotional, but is it an emotional that is created by yourself or is it an emotion that somebody else created inside of you? Right. And then, you know, be happy. Live your life. Go out there and do things like you put out all this information. Knowledge is power, but only if you use it from individuals that you hear from. Don't be so excited for the next episode if you haven't absorbed and learned from the episode. Absolutely. Yeah. Everybody's always about, what's next, what's next? What's next?
Well, what's now? Yeah, what's now?
What's what's now?
I'm excited about this book, Winning the Unforgiving Race to Greatness. Tim, before I ask the final question, I want to acknowledge you for the way you've been showing up for the greatest athletes in the world for the last two, three decades and how you've continued to improve and evolve yourself.
Thank you.
How you continue to take the information and distill it in ways that we can receive it and understand for our life so we can improve the quality of our life. And I acknowledge you for constantly overcoming the challenges that you might be facing in your life. We didn't get to talk about a lot of that stuff you personally going through, but for you to create, even when you might be struggling or going through your own stuff, is really inspiring because you're here to serve other people.
So we all are.
Of course.
We all are. And the more people you serve, the better you feel about yourself. The more people. When I said winning is everything, the feeling that it gives when you see yourself win, when you see your family win, when you see your kids win, when you see others win, it's amazing. It's undescribable. It's undescribable. And I know Louis, and you and I are very similar in this. When people come up to you, says, man, your words or your show or whatever, your book, it changed my life. That's a special feeling.
Absolutely.
That's a special feeling. And I always tell individuals, you know what? You changed your life. You took action. You took the time. You listened. We were a small part of it. Thank you. Thank you for. Thank you for acknowledging it. But just to have to be that powerful, to have somebody come up to you and just say that. And when you win, you change other people's lives. You change your life. You change other people's lives. Absolutely.
They can get the book. They can follow you on social media. Tim Grover. Everywhere on social media. Anywhere else we can go to support you besides getting the book online?
Tim grover.com. my Instagram is at Tim Grover.
Perfect.
Awesome.
All right, so make sure to connect with Tim over there and say hi to him. Let him know the part of this episode you enjoyed the most. Lots of more information inside the book, so make sure to get a few copies for your friends as well. Final question for you. What's your definition of greatness?
No regrets. No regrets. I did everything.
There you go.
I may have not done it the best, but I did everything.
I love it, Tim. Thank you, man.
Appreciate it. Thank you, brother. Thank you so much. I think the definition of greatness is.
To inspire the people next to you. I think that's what greatness is or should be. It's not something that lives and dies with one person. It's how can you inspire a person to then in turn inspire another person and then inspires another person. That's how you create something that I think lasts forever.
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