MBA1108 Must Read: Open by Andre Agassi

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Andre Agassi's autobiography is not a straight up business book. It's not a book you would normally hear on a business podcast, but there are tons of business lessons I've learned in this book that totally surprised me. So much so I had to make it a must read for this podcast. I'm just going to flat out say this is the best autobiography I've read and I've read a lot of autobiographies. Andre Agassia has done an incredible job with this book. So in today's lesson I'm going to share with you the nuggets that really resonated with me how Andre had to change his mindset and stop being his worst enemy to succeed, something we all can relate to when it comes to business. How he found a bigger purpose in his life so he can continue to succeed and give back. How he dealt with his own personal dramas in his personal life that affected his game as a tennis player. We all have our own personal lives. How do we make sure the dramas that our personal lives offer don't infiltrate our business? I'll also share with you some lessons that I've learned about self awareness, how to recognize success and winning in your life and business so you can repeat it, so you can know how to do it again and again and what it truly takes to be great at what you do. Andre Agassi is seen as one of the best tennis players of all time, not just because of his victories in, you know, Grand Slam matches, but because of his brand, his personal brand. He made more money leveraging his brand with endorsements, commercials, products, services than what he actually made in prize money from tennis. I'll share with you some of the lessons he's learned about that and how he shares it in the book. I got so much I want to cover in this lesson, so let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Today's must read is Andre Agassiz's autobiography titled Open. I want to start off by saying I'm not a huge tennis fan. Nothing against tennis, just never kind of followed it. When I was younger. I basically know the rules of tennis and watched a few matches. I'm aware of, you know, the popular, famous tennis players like Andre Agassi and Federer and Serena Williams and Steffi Graf. But that's because I was a SportsCenter junkie growing up. But I picked up this book because I was told by several people I have to read this book. And in fact, when I did a quick search before I read the book, I found out it was on the top 10 autobiography lists of most publications like the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and that's a tough list to be on, to be on the top 10 of all autobiographies. So I was like, okay, there's got to be something to this book. There's something I can learn, there's something I can apply to my life and business. And boy, was I right. Boy, was this book amazing. The book opens up around the present time or when he was writing the book, which is around 2008. It's towards the end of his career as a tennis player. And it gives you, like, a window of what it's like to be a professional Tennis player. And it's not sexy. It's actually painful. And he dreads kind of waking up in the morning. So he kind of starts the book with a bit of a shocker, like how much he doesn't enjoy tennis. And in fact, a common thread in the book is how much he hates tennis. Something that you don't expect to hear from somebody who's so great at it. In fact, the whole book is so shockingly honest. He's so self critical and so self aware, you can't help but fall in love with his book. He's completely vulnerable and puts it all on the table. Now, Andre Agassiz started playing tennis since he was a baby. I'm talking about a newborn baby. His father actually taped a table tennis racket or paddle to his hand when he was in the crib. So those dangling balls from the, you know, those crib mobiles would move around. He would swing and hit it with a racket before he can even grip a racket. He was playing tennis. Now, I know that sounds like child abuse and there's going to be some things in this book about his father that you're going to cringe at. His father was fanatical about tennis. He wanted John Dre to be number one, to be the tennis player of his era. Now, whether you like him or hate him in the book, his upbringing, the way he trained Andre from a young age really prepared him to be great. I'm not saying the way his father trained him or got him started from a young age was a good thing. I'm just saying that he did give him the skills that he needed to be successful. The way he did it, not so great. In fact, you kind of feel bad for Andre because it seems like he has no other choice but to play tennis. He doesn't know how to do anything else. In fact, he never graduated from high school because he became a professional tennis player before he finished school. But what I love about Andre, what I learned from this and I can apply to myself as an entrepreneur, is that he recognizes his upbringing, his baggage, what his father did to him, and he doesn't hold it against him. He doesn't hate his father for it. He doesn't feel resentful. He doesn't blame him. He plays a sport he hates for a living, but he doesn't let his past make him feel sorry for himself. This is so incredibly powerful. So many of us as entrepreneurs, we say, oh, I wasn't given the right things, the right tools, the right, the right settings, the right Opportunities. My parents weren't successful, and I had, you know, no head start. And we tell ourselves these stories and we make all these excuses to not succeed and not to be happy. Andre is basically a victim of child abuse. Okay? His father made him play tennis. Incredible amount of hours every day. His whole life was tennis. School was secondary. Everything else was secondary. He basically had no friends. He has a couple of friends throughout his childhood, and his best friend is really his brother, and that's because they share a room together. So he has so much material to be resentful. Yet he isn't, because he recognizes the fact that his father did what he thought was best. He tried his best. And even though his father is pretty emotionless, he's mature enough to understand where he's coming from. He's an immigrant that moved to America with minimal tools to use. But he knows tennis, so he's going to give that to his son. How many of us give our parents or our environment or our upbringing the benefit of the doubt instead of just poking holes at it? We're all guilty at kind of saying, hey, we didn't get what we were supposed to get in order to be the most successful we could be. Some of us today are in debt because we had to pay for college and are not able to start a business, or we think we can't start a business because of it. We might say, well, if my parents were successful, they could have paid for my college. I would have been debt free. I would be in a different situation. Yes, there's a million excuses you can come up with, but what I learned in this book is excuses don't make a master. If you want to be successful, you have to move forward and be successful in spite of those excuses. Now, another takeaway, huge takeaway I got from this book is how much our mentality can really influence our outcomes. When Andre Axie is playing tennis, he starts to realize that he's a perfectionist. That if he doesn't hit every shot that perfectly, he gets frustrated and he starts to spiral out of control. He starts to really get angry, and basically he loses matches because of it. He loses championships because of it, because he psychs himself out of it, because everything is not perfect. He's disappointed, he beats himself up. It's not until he gets a new coach, which you'll read about, named Brad, and Brad thinks he's crazy. Why do you have to be a perfectionist? Doesn't have to be perfect. He says everything doesn't have to be perfect. Every shot doesn't have to be perfect, just get the job done. He's like, dirty it up a little bit. As long as you get the ball over the net, you've done your job. It doesn't have to be perfect. And when you're not striving for perfection constantly and you just get the job done, you're able to progress. You're able to not put yourself in this destructive pattern in your head that, oh, you're constantly disappointed. If perfection is your goal, every single time you try something, you're going to be disappointed a lot. You're not going to be able to have any momentum. But if just getting it done is your goal and maybe the next time you can get it done a little bit better, you're not going to have this self doubting, self loathing mentality that's going to destroy you. And this is very, very common with entrepreneurs. We think that everything's got to be perfect, that product's got to be perfect. When I launch it, the website's going to look amazing at that perfect price point. And if it's not perfect, then I can't do it, I can't release it, I can't make it happen. And we lose. That's how we lose. Instead of just getting it done. Minimal, viable. One of my entrepreneur buddies, Mario Brown, has a great saying. He says it all the time in his public speeches. He says, massive imperfect action. Take massive imperfect action, meaning just take action a lot, take action frequently. It doesn't have to be perfect. Perfection is the enemy of any productive person. You're trying to get things done, you're trying to move your business forward. Perfection will slow you down. Instead of trying to make it perfect every single time you do something, just try to get better and eventually your perception of perfection will get there. Third thing I learned from this book is how important preparation is. He prepared for his matches not only physically, but mentally as well as his health, taking care of his body, his diet. He spent a lot of money on getting the right coaches and the right trainers to get where he is today. How many of us are investing in ourselves to get to the place we want to be? Our are we investing in the proper coaching or proper mentorship? Are we investing ourselves by reading the right books and taking the right courses, doing the right things, going to the right conferences? Are we getting better every day? You're going to get what you put into yourself. Success doesn't happen. You have to prepare for success. Success happens to successful people. So become a successful person by getting better, by improving. There are so many things you can do right now to become a better entrepreneur. Simple things like even eating right and exercising and sleeping right. These things will allow your body to perform at a better level, your brain to move at a better level. Listen to an audiobook, 20 minutes a day to improve Podcast. Take a public speaking course. Improve your communication skills. What are you doing? Andre wanted to be the number one tennis player. He wanted to be the best he could ever be. And he understood if he doesn't put in the work, if he doesn't pay his dues, it's just not going to happen. He doesn't deserve to win. He says if you don't prepare, you don't deserve to win. And that's a great quote he has.

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Andre Axi is very open in this book about every aspect of his life. Not just tennis, but his personal life. His marriage and divorce with Brooke Shields, his personal relationship with his father, his personal relationship with his mother, his relationship with his friends. And you can call his entourage, the people that work with him. His relationship with Gil, who's his personal trainer and really a father figure to him, the father figure that he needs. But one of the things you learn in this book is that life is going to give you challenges. You're going to have dramas outside of your profession. You have your business you got to run or businesses. You're an entrepreneur. That's your profession. There's so many challenges within that world. But there's other challenges you got to deal with outside that world. Your personal life, your relationships, your friendships. Those things don't stop. Those things still exist and you have to take care of them or they're going to affect your performance as an Entrepreneur. And that's something he learned as a professional tennis player. He can't focus on the match. He can't do well unless his life's in order. In fact, when he had dramas in his life, he would skip big time tennis matches because he knows he has no chance of winning if his state of mind is not in it. In the book, he talks about how he copes with his personal dramas, how he gets through them so he can focus on on winning in his profession. Now, even though he says over and over in his book he hates tennis, he's still a very competitive person. He loves to win and he hates losing. And I think as entrepreneurs, we feel the same way. We hate losing, we hate failing, and we love to win. But one of the things he really points out in the book is that I have to have the losses so I can know how to win so I can get those wins. And the same goes for you when it comes to failure. You're going to fail in business. Period. You're going to fail. It's going to happen. Failure is a rite of passage as an entrepreneur. Just accept it. Learn from the failure. Learn from your mistakes and move forward and keep trying. And don't repeat those mistakes. And if you do repeat them, realize there's something beyond those mistakes that are making you do that. There's something within you, a habit, a trait that you need to change. Andre learned that with his rivalry with Pete Sampras. He kept losing to Pete Sampras in the final match in Grand Slams. And it took him a whole bunch of failures to learn how to get over the hump and finally beat him. And he realized he had to fail. He had to lose in order to be him. Accepting that and understanding that allows me to get up again and try again. The same thing goes for you as an entrepreneur. Guys, I can't recommend this book highly enough. Pick it up today. I picked it up on Audible as an audiobook. It's a great audiobook. Great. Good narrator. It's a long book. It's about 20 hours long, but definitely worth it. Opened by Andre Agassi. Thank you so much for listening to the $100 NBA show. That was my must read of that book. You should really check it out. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Success leaves clues. Tony Robbins said that and I really love that quote because I love reading the stories of successful people. It doesn't matter if they're musicians, if they're artists, if they're athletes, if they are doctors, lawyers, chefs, it doesn't matter. There are patterns that we have to follow in order to be successful. The what and the hows may be different, but the patterns and the habits will be the same. So don't underestimate reading and learning about somebody else's success. It can really influence you and your chances of becoming successful. Alright, thank you so much for listening. I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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