Think Big, Act Bigger: The Power of Mindset and Systems | Dre Baldwin | 612

And welcome, welcome, welcome. This is Peter Winick. I'm the founder and CEO at Thought Leadership Leverage, and you're joining us on the podcast today, which is Leveraging Thought Leadership. Today, my guest is Dre Baldwin, and Dre is the CEO and founder of Work On Your Game. He's given 4 TEDx talks on discipline, confidence, mental toughness, and personal initiative. He's authored 35 books. That's interesting. He's been in national campaigns with the likes of Nike, Wendy's, Gatorade, Buick. Published over 8,000 videos to 142,000 subscribers. He's got a masterclass and he invented the Work On Your Game framework as a roadmap in reverse. Welcome aboard, Dre. How are you, man?

Well, thank you for having me on, Peter. Hopefully I can live up to that intro. I'm doing great.

Yeah, there we go. If not, I'll introduce you to yourself again. So, so I want to start maybe in a bit of a weird place, but I love that sort of at the tail end of your bio and some of the look, the stuff I was looking at before I got on today talks about the framework, right? So lots of authors and thought leaders, you know, they, they, they put stuff out there and in the absence of a framework, it makes it really hard, if not impossible, for people to replicate outcomes or, or a process or a system. So tell me, you know, in your world, like the importance of a framework.

Man, it's everything because for me, I create a ton of material. I create a lot of content, whether even back in the days as an athlete and nowadays in the thought leadership and business world, the frameworks basically kind of keep me contained. They're kind of like the guardrails within which I can share whatever it is that I'm sharing. So being that I have that framework, I can take anything that happens basically and bring it back to that framework. So I can take anything—

Let's stay there for a second because a lot of folks that I've talked to, the scariest thing in the world for a creator, whether that's a thought leader or an artist or whatever, is the literal blank page or the blank canvas. 'Cause you look at that and you, you know, we're, we've all got a million ideas bouncing around in our head. And today I'm gonna write about, I don't know, the Olympics, and tomorrow I'm gonna write about this great meal I had. And it's all, and it's all over the place. But the beauty, and this is a little counterintuitive, is the more constraints you have, and that's what a framework does, the easier it is to look at that page and say, ah, even if I did have a great meal back, you know, last night, How can I, you know, in your world, through the framework of the mental toughness it takes to put a beautiful meal out in a high-pressure restaurant or something like that?

Exactly right. So it's how does this fit within what you're about? And that brings us to an even higher level of what are your principles? You know, what are your founding, what are your founding principles? What are you standing on as far as what you're about? So even though Work On Your Game, when I first came out, Peter, it was based around these mindset principles, discipline, confidence, mental toughness, personal initiative. I'm sure we'll talk about that. It expanded into other things because that's not the only thing that I think about. That's not the only thing that I do, but I have gone and actually codified, all right, these are the things that we are actually about. And those things are part of it, but that's not the whole thing. But because I know what I'm about and I know what principles I'm standing on, right? Anything that occurs, anything, any news item that comes up that catches my ear, I can bring it back to my framework.

Well, and I would imagine every now and then if there's something that you can't, then you won't. If it's so far out there, then you might not include that in something you put out.

Technically, but I have found so— I've created so much material that I could take anything, bring it back somehow, some way.

I wanna go back to something that you said, 'cause I think it's really important, is that this whole, the mindsets, and I'll tell you how I think about that and tell me if you agree, disagree, whatever. I think that when you look at the training and development universe in corporate America and larger globally today, You have a lot of unhappy people. You have the people being forced to go through training from their company. You have the people at the company that allocated resources towards this. You have the people at the company that brought in those outside vendors and have some reputational risk. And, and there's disappointment because we don't get the outcomes that are promised, right? If every organization that took their sales team through a negotiation program got the outcomes they'd like, their profits would be 3x what they are, and they'd never lose a client, and they'd be really profitable, whatever. And my belief, one guy's opinion, is I think too many programs think about a toolset, you know, a skillset actually, and then apply a toolset. So negotiations as an example, hey, put out 3 options, don't put the first solution out, whatever. Those are tools that you can use against a set of skills. But if you're not, if you don't have the courage to address the mindset, it's not gonna stick. Right? So agree, disagree?

I agree. And this is something that I talk to my audiences about all the time is that the foundation of any type of change, whether positive, negative, whatever, is the mentality. The way that you're thinking about the situation. When you change your thoughts and your mindset around the situation, now you are empowered to change your actions. When you change your actions, now you're empowered to change your outcomes. So it has to be done in that order. So if people go straight into the activity without changing the mentality, they could be doing all the quote unquote right things and still not be getting the outcome. And that leads to frustration. And we saw a whole bunch of money spent, a whole bunch of resources invested, but not getting the outcome that they want because they didn't follow the right order of operations. It's kind of like, you know, algebra class, you know, back at school, you follow the wrong order of operations, you get the wrong answer.

And is it that people are afraid to sort of open up the Pandora's box of mindset, or it's just not done, or it's easy to just skip that step because, oh my God, that's the hard work? Or why is it that we don't spend enough time on the mindset? Because like you said, if I just go, right to activity, right? Go do 100 pushups or something. Maybe I do it, maybe I don't, but it's not changing my mindset to say I'm gonna go from being someone unfit to fit, right?

Yeah. It's a lack of awareness. And the reason that people go straight to the actions is because we can see and measure and watch somebody doing actions. You can't see, measure, or count mindset. And this is the reason why many people discount the value of mindset because you can't see it. I can look at someone and tell they go to the gym because I can see their muscles, but you can't tell what, where someone's at mentally. 'cause you can't measure it from the outside.

I love that, right? Because you could see, and we, and you see it all the time, some dope at the gym who's his first or her first day there lifting more than they should lift and trying to look all tough and all that. But what you can't see is someone's mindset, right? So I think because we're so conditioned to get that external reinforcement, you know, you can't go, you know, I can't look at you now and say, Dre, it looks like you've got a really good mindset today versus, you know, you look professional, you, you know, you look well dressed, you look articulate, whatever, right? Like there's other things I can scrap away from your external appearance, which might be irrelevant, right? Like anybody can buy a nice suit, I would imagine.

Right.

I want to segue a little bit to the business and the business model. So you've written 35 books, you've produced more than most people I've talked to. I mean, you're kind of a machine in that way. Talk to me about the business model. Who are you creating stuff for? Who pays you to do what actually?

Well, my material is based on just whatever I see as a need from the people who I'm serving. People in my audience. So when I noticed that there's something— let me back up. The fact that the internet came out when it came out, you know, I start— I got out of college in 2004 and I started playing pro basketball 2005, and that's right around the time that we started to get these things. Facebook came out around that time. Yeah. And Twitter came, then Instagram, and all these things came out around that same time. I was playing ball and I was looking, I was looking, what am I gonna do? I knew I was gonna be something after basketball cuz athletes have a very short shelf life. So the internet coming around when it did, and me being a little bit of a closet computer geek at the same time being an athlete, which is an interesting, you know, juxtaposition. I saw that there was an opportunity on the internet and all of these tools started to become more and more available as I was growing through my 20s. So that's why I jumped on it. And the great thing about the internet is that you don't have to go through a gatekeeper to put yourself out there. So instead of getting a book publisher, you can be a blogger or a self-published author. Instead of being on the radio, you can have a podcast. Instead of being on TV, you can have YouTube. So all of these things allowed me to reach this audience of people without me having to go through anyone. And I know that I can show up consistently and do the work. That was how I got into athletics. So the combination of both of those, and again, my, my instincts for being on a computer and the internet all kind of came together in this great, uh, confluence and internet. Oh, it just kind of made sense. That's how it happened. Yeah.

I love that. And I love that what you said about, you know, it's easy to create because I'm creating from what I'm seeing and hearing and how I serve my clients because I think that when you look at that on a continuum, on the one end of the spectrum, sometimes I work with some academics and they're working in isolation from the reality, right? So they come up with a hypothesis and then they test the hypothesis and then they validate it. And all those are great things. I'm not, I'm not poo-pooing academia, but then they have to first put that thing out there that they might have spent months, days, years, whatever on and say, Is this a problem that actually needs to be fixed or just an intellectual activity versus if you're out there every day speaking, coaching, advising, consulting, and people are telling you the same thing, hey, I'm worried about X, or how do I manage in a room, whatever the stuff is, you're, things are bubbling up from real people that matter the most, the people that you're serving. What's keeping them up at night? And I think that's, that's a problem a lot of thought leaders have when I say to them, okay, who do you serve and what are the 3 things that keep them up at night? And let's put that as the centerpiece. To build from there. 'Cause at the end of the day, you and I could sit around all afternoon and spitball and come up with what we think is great ideas. Doesn't matter what we think. We're not creating stuff to serve us, right? If you're enjoying this episode of Leveraging Thought Leadership, please make sure to subscribe. If you'd like to help spread the word about our podcast, please leave a 5-star review at ratethispodcast.com. /ltl and share it with your friends. We're available on Apple Podcasts and on all major listening apps, as well as at thoughtleadershipleverage.com/podcast. Like as an example, what are the top, and, and the top 3 things today might be different than they were 6 months ago.

Yeah, actually they've always been the same things, but people don't always realize it. See, the, the challenge is people don't always realize they think their problem is A, but it's actually B. So the 3 biggest challenges of people who I serve has always been, what I'm talking to athletes or entrepreneurs, is mindset, strategies, and systems. Those 3 things. Mindset is the way that you're thinking about a situation and the way you're approaching it. Strategy is what exactly are you doing and how you're going about it. And the system is how do we do it consistently? So those are the 3 things that people actually need, even though they may use different languages. So some people may come to me and say, I do have a mindset challenge. The thing with a mindset challenge is very hard to quantify. And people often will not do anything about a mindset challenge. They don't see it as worthy of an investment because you can't count mindset. Yeah. And then the strategy is, I don't know what to do, or I don't know how to do it. And people tend to discount that because if you go on the internet, you can find how-to about anything, right? Anything you wanna do, there's someone on YouTube with a video telling you how to do it for free. So why haven't you figured it out? So again, people have to have that self-conversation. Okay, this stuff obviously is not enough. I need something more than just this. And then the system is how do I do this consistently? So the challenge many people will come to me with is I just need to be more consistent of what I'm doing. And when I look into what they're doing, I find out that they don't have a system, they don't have a process, they don't have a framework. So then I can help them install that and put those things into place. So the challenge— go ahead.

Let me ask you about that system piece though, because I think that sometimes the people that need the systems the most resist because they have this fear of dot, dot, dot. The fear might be, ooh, too many systems and processes and structure and meetings and all that stuff. That's gonna look like the job I left to be an entrepreneur and have my freedom and control. 'Cause I don't wanna do that. Yeah. And, and I think like, I tend to be a, a big picture guy, a strategy guy, whatever. And I have the utmost respect for systems because my business wouldn't run without it. But, you know, ask me to, you know, do like a 38-page spreadsheet and I'm, and I'm gonna go volunteer to get a root canal today. Now, once we have whatever that system and process is in place with the business, I'm all in. But, but there's a, you know what I'm just saying there? There's, there's a bit of a resistance or like, oh God, I don't want another meeting on Tuesday. You know, what are we gonna do with that?

Yeah. So the great thing about systems is that once you put it together, you don't have to do it again. Uh, you do it as one time, you do the work, you do it one time, get it done properly, and now all you had to do is follow the system. You basically become an employee of your own system. Sounds like what you described for your business. You work for the system. Yeah. And a lot of people don't like that. They don't like working for a system, but we're talking about it a different way. That you put a system in place in your business and you follow your own system. Now the system is the most valuable asset in your business, which makes your business much more valuable because there's no failure point of you. So if you get sick or you go on vacation or you break your arm, the business can still run because the system is the most valuable tool, not you.

Right. Let me flip that on you. So you're a guy that's written 35 books. I'm gonna guess, and oops, we, hopefully the answer's where we want to go here. Do you have a system that you use or that you've developed or deployed or, you know, for writing books?

Oh, absolutely. So when it comes to writing books, uh, uh, not all my books are written out the same way, but I do have a system for it because I do so much writing, period. And because I do so much recording and creating content and using the tools that we have available these days, I can actually, I can update my systems because now I can take audio that I recorded, I can get that transcribed, and that can basically cut down, cut into my time of writing. 'Cause my first few books, let's say my first 10 or 15 books, I literally wrote all of them by hand. Not by hand, but typing.

Yeah.

And now I can talk them. Now you can talk a book and you can get it transcribed and then you can edit it. And I could literally write a book in one day if I wanted to, if I blocked off the time, because we have the tools that allow you to do that.

And so stay there a minute though, because I think, I think that's a, you opened up a couple things there. There are a lot of people that would like to write a book, but don't fancy themselves a writer, right? Like, I am not a good writer. On my best day, I'm a mediocre writer, and I don't have a lot of best days. I prefer talking, which is why I do a lot of podcasting, right? Like, this is fun for me. It's more natural. It's more organic. It's kind of my space, whatever. But I love the, what you said about the tools, 'cause when people say, oh, write a book, then someone that doesn't fancy themselves a writer's like, ah, but then, you know, grammar and sentence and structure and all that. I love the fact, you know, what you're saying is, you know, you, you know, if, if you're creating video, audio, whatever, or you're in meetings all day, get that transcribed. You're probably 70% of the way there. Right. Which a lot of people don't think about that.

Yeah. I would say even more than 70%, I'd say about 85, 90%, because the biggest challenge of writing a book is the actual writing, actual sitting there opening Google Docs and Microsoft Word and actually writing words. Yeah. Now, after you have that done, now all you have left is the editing, the design. I mean, I'm not saying all, like, it's nothing but the marketing and the ad funnels and the sales process, whatever you're going to do. But these days, again, as technology advances and is advancing very quickly, that when it comes to editing, when it comes to the copy editing, when it comes to the COVID design, when it comes to the formatting, all right, there are going to be, I would say before the year 2030, Peter, you can tell me what you think, that you'll be able to take your written document off of Google Docs and plug it into one application and the entire book, everything, the editing, the copy, the design, the formatting, the contents, The COVID everything will be done for you by some software that doesn't even involve a human. Oh, I would say even before that, I mean, we're seeing that right now in journalism.

Yeah, I would think with, you know, even in journalism now, we're seeing things with chat and all that where you have, you know, articles, we'll go back to sports, right? Like how many times do you need to write that the Yankees scored, you know, 7 and the Red Sox scored 3 last night? I can never hear enough of that particular score combination. That's another thing as a Yankee fan, but like. You know, when you read those things, you can go back 5, 10, 15 years and read those things. They're kind of boring, right? So we've taught ChatGPT how to write that unless something extraordinary happened in the game. And you might want to have a human in and pop in and someone broke a record or there, you know, there was something happened unusual. Most baseball games, as an example, are fairly routine, fairly boring. There's a score that, you know, whatever, whatever. So I think we'll probably see what you're talking about in, I'd be surprised if it's 18 months. It might even be happening now. We don't know.

Yeah, it probably is. We just don't know about the software. Yeah. So that's absolutely happening. And the thing, the biggest challenge for people is just having the ideas and the material and something worth saying. That's always gonna be the challenge, which AI, at least as of now, can't quite do the way that a human being does. So having something worth saying and then having people who wanna hear it, those are the actual two things.

So stay there a minute because I, I think that's really, really important in that, you know, you, you mentioned earlier You know, listen, anybody could be a broadcaster. Anybody could, you know, do a podcast. Any, and just because you can doesn't mean you should. And I think the problem right now is I have access to more things in my phone than I could ever possibly consume. Right? So I like to read a book or two a week. I'm constantly listening to pod— like there's a lot of things I do, but I need that filtering system because my most valuable asset is time. If I lose some money, I'll make money again. But I can't take back an hour that I, that I wasted, you know, trying to read a book that was crap or listen to a podcast that's boring or whatever. So whether it's recommendations or I, I guess my, my rambling question is like, it's more just because you can, it's the bar is even higher to get high quality out there and break through the noise.

Yes, it is. And for me, I tell, I've been telling my audience this since before we were here, let's say 10 years ago. That you gotta choose your sources. You gotta choose who your mentors are gonna be. So let's say you want to learn about writing books. Shit, you need to pick like no more than 5 people who are talking about writing books, and those are your 5. Those are the people you listen to. Don't take in outside resources. If it's gonna be entrepreneurship, pick your 5, 3 to 5 people, and that's it. And those are where you're getting your information. Now you wanna choose people who seem like they know what they're talking about. They have enough depth that you can keep consuming their material and you're not gonna run out of it. And know they're accessible. So you can listen to them, you can find them on social media, you can go to their events, you can sign up for their course, whatever it is that they have. So pick your mentors, pick who your experts are gonna be. And as a thought reader myself, I know I have people who come in and outta my audiences in different seasons for them depending on what they need. And that's completely fine, but I'm still gonna be here. When you leave, I'll be here.

When you come back, I'll say, well, the other, the, the one thing I like about what you said is because it's all out there, we can go back and I think one thing I would add to, to what you said, Dre, so, so let's say you're gonna start a podcast and you say these are the 5 podcasts I like and have parallels to me, right? If you like podcasts on cooking, but you go in business, don't count those, right? How do they connect the format? Whatever, whatever. It's not just listening to or looking at whatever the most recent 6 months. What I like to do is go back to the beginning and say, you know, how did Tim Ferriss start? Like, 4-hour, like what were the first couple of episodes like that? And then maybe check in for someone that's got some, some longevity every couple of months and say, ooh, look, it evolved. They did a pivot. Maybe they're going more short form. Maybe like, what did they evolve to? Because just what they're doing, you know, what they're doing today is usually represents iterations that they've learned over time. And I think you could learn from those iterations as well if you go back in time a bit.

Yes. And this is why it matters to choose your mentors. 'Cause if you go back to the beginning of Tim Ferriss, that's a big time investment. That's a lot of material. It takes a lot of time. So you can't listen to everybody going back to the beginning because it's too much content. So you got to pick who you're going to listen to. And then, yeah, you can see the, the evolution. And generally, Peter, I would say at the same time, I don't think most people are that diligent. I think most people are generally lazy and this is going to pick up right wherever that person happens to be right now. They won't even go back to yesterday's episode.

The combination of lazy and technology, right? You can go out and buy a fancy microphone for $100 today and call myself a podcaster, right? And I've been talking my whole life, so geez, how hard could this be? That's a bad idea. And that's why a lot of stuff that you listen to is crap. That's why 98% of podcasts out there haven't published something in 90 days, right? There's a lot of data there. A lot of people dabble and it's okay to dabble and experiment, but if you're gonna be in the game, be in the game. So anyway, I appreciate your time and, uh, I learned a lot today. Hope the audience did as well. And I, uh, appreciate all you've done. Thank you, Dre.

Excellent. Well, thank you for sharing your platform, Peter. Thanks for having me on.

To learn more about Thought Leadership Leverage, please visit our website at thoughtleadershipleverage.com. To reach me directly, feel free to email me at peter@thoughtleadershipleverage.com. And please subscribe to Leveraging Thought Leadership on iTunes or your favorite podcast app to get your weekly episode automatically.