Lessons - How Athletic Mindsets Drive Entrepreneurial Growth | Dre Baldwin - Entrepreneur & Former Pro-Basketball Player

In this lessons episode, learn the essential principles that bridge the world of professional sports and entrepreneurship, including discipline, confidence, and mental resilience. Through real-world examples, gain insight into how high performance habits can transform not only athletic success but also business growth and personal development. It was a good story because it teased up exactly how you got to where you are today and you know, even looking at you now, I just like looking at your bio, I see so many reasons why somebody who has been a high-performance athlete would have so many lessons to teach somebody who is trying to build a business or what, but it's something that you know, sometimes you follow like the football coaches or whatever and you get like the other business tips from them, but I don't see people that actively pivot an entire career and then understand how the lessons they've learned operating at such a high level can be so applicable to an entrepreneur or somebody starting out from the ground up. I think that's what's it's incredible how your story evolved in like all these different inflection points in your story just led to you being able to have the experience and the platform because that's also very important to be able to do this. So as you pivoted from Pro Ball and then you started like down the thought leadership pathway, walk me through some of the things that you realized were applicable for a high performing professional athlete that are also applicable to an entrepreneur because that's what you speak about and that's what you do. Ted talks on that's what you write books about. I think that's also a lot of your content on Instagram what not. A lot of these certain mindset things and not just mindset, but actual application of certain things can be super applicable to entrepreneurs. So what are those things that you discovered? Sure, so really it kind of went back to what the athletes were asking me because really the foundation of it was me just answering questions to the athletes and they would just say, well, you know, why come to the gym every day and practice? Why come to the gym every day and work out and then put these videos out? And honestly, I thought it was a normal thing. I thought this was what every athlete did because I'm figuring out I play basketball, I want to play pro or I'm already playing pro or I need to get ready for my next job opportunity. I just go to the gym every day practice so that my game is sharp. So when that call comes in, I'm ready to go. I thought that's what any athlete would do, but what I realized very quickly was that not every athlete did this because when I showed myself doing it, people were looking at it like they couldn't, they were surprised. And I might isn't this what anybody would do? You have a job, you show up ready for your job or at least ready for the job that you want. You prepare for the job that you want before you even had the job. I thought that was normal behavior, a normal mindset. So that was where the discipline came from showing up every single day to do the work. So that was the number one principle and it's still to this day. That is the foundational point. I think for any professional and anything, because if you look up the dictionary definition of a professional as a person who gets paid to do something as a main occupation, but my definition of a professional as a person who shows up every day and delivers regardless of how they feel. Because some days we're sick, sometimes you're tired, sometimes you don't feel like turning a mic on. You don't feel like writing another page for your book. You don't feel like being in the gym, but you're getting paid for it is your job. You got to show up and do the work. It's just like you think of your favorite, who's your favorite athlete? Well, who's my favorite athlete? Let's take it back like Muhammad Ali, like someone like like Burak, like he, yeah, go for it, go for it, go for it. I'm sure now during the matches that everybody was watching, Muhammad Ali was all keyed up and ready to go as many because boxing is not like your boxing 80 times a year or 160 games a year like baseball. But I'm sure there were days Muhammad Ali did not feel like training. No boxes do road work and they run the miles and they got to hit the bag and they got to do the jump rope. I'm pretty sure, and Scott, did you tell him if you disagreed? There were days Muhammad Ali did not feel like training, but he understood right because of his position and because of the next person he was fighting and because fighting him was like the grand prize of anybody's career, he knew he had to show up and do that training so that he would be ready to deliver every time so that no somebody couldn't make they couldn't make their whole career based off of beating him, you know, so he had to be ready to show up every day or you think of a LeBron James. Does he feel like playing every single time 82 times a year knowing that he's getting the best shot of every player he plays against because every player wants to be able to say, hey, I dumped on LeBron James or I stole the ball from LeBron or I scored on LeBron twice in one game 12 years ago, you know, everybody's trying to get their highlight off of him. So he has to be that mentally on point every single day and that's much more of a mental decision than it is a physical skill and a lot of people don't really understand it until they constantly think about it. So that first principle is discipline. The next one was going to say I was going to say just one thing. No, I just wanted to point out something. The only reason why I picked Muhammad Ali is because I love boxing as a solo sport and I find that and maybe just comment on this if you think there's something to it, like you think there's a certain mental toughness that can be pulled from a solo sport versus a team sport, not to say obviously like at a team level, like mental fortitude and this psychology to show up every day is not important because it obviously is, but like there's no team holding you accountable when you're on your own. I thought that was something that's super impressive when I look at boxers. It's probably some of the most notorious like solo sport you're just showing up on your own with your coach. Absolutely. And it was funny because since I stopped playing ball in 2015, a lot of people always ask me, Joy, do you play pick up? You're playing any leagues or anything? I play zero basketball cold turkey because to me, I'm always on a mentality of I can't be at my best or whatever my best potential is at that moment. I want to play at all because I don't want to be like the old guy with some young guy who isn't half of what I was at his age. No beating me just because I'm not in shape anymore. So I don't play ball at all. But I do have a boxing trainer as a matter of fact, I had a boxing workout this morning and you're 100% correct because in a solo sport, not only do you not have a teammate holding your accountable also in the matches and the games, the performances is just you out there. You can't pass the ball to somebody else like in basketball. If I'm not making my shots that night, I can pass to one of my teammates that he's making all the shots. We can still win the game. But in boxing or tennis, if my serve is off or something's wrong, my ankle and I'm not moving it right way, I can't hide. I can't pass the ball to anybody and still win the game. You're going to take that loss and everybody sees you. So absolutely in a solo sport, it's a completely different approach because you have to kind of have to be your own accountability. Even though no boxers have trainers and no tennis players have whatever swimmers, any solo sport they have trainers and coaches exactly, but in the performance, there's no one to pass it off to during that performance. And when you lose, you can't point at anybody and when you win, all the glory goes to you. So 100% agree. Anyways, you lost, right? I didn't mean to interrupt you. That was interesting because that's that's sort of like the, you know, I always equate sports to start up and like as an entrepreneur, like you don't have a team day one. You're you're 100% sales day one. Yeah. Right. So discipline is the first principle that the working on your games based on the second one is confidence. And this is the one that usually if someone comes to me and they're asking for anything mindset wise, usually they're asking for confidence. If they don't know anything about me, they're using Sandra. I want to be more confident. I want to have more self esteem. I want to believe in myself more. And why is that? If you ask somebody, why did they want more confidence? They'll usually say something like I perform at a higher level. I'll be more consistent. I'll have more and I'll be able better able to sell my product startup conversations with people, no clothes, people on my products and offerings, whatever it is. Everybody wants confidence. What many people don't understand is that discipline creates confidence. That number one, number one, main source of confidence is discipline. Because if you think about it, Scott, the most confident people you know are usually very disciplined individuals and very disciplined people are usually very confident. And why is that is because those disciplined people, because they're showing up and they're doing the work and they know that they are following their principles on a day to day basis, they have earned the right to be confident. So confidence is defined as your your belief in your ability to do something. So where do you get that belief from from actually doing it? Now if you haven't done the thing before, let's say you practiced a lot, let's say as a boxer or a business person, you're trying to sell something, you've done all the practice, you listen to all the tapes you're ready, but you haven't done the actual performance yet. Where do you get that confidence from? Now some people had this concept of faking it until you make it. I actually don't believe in that concept. I don't believe in fake until you make it. I think it's a a misnomer oxymoron. The reason is because the subconscious mind, again, doesn't know the difference between imagination and reality, but the same time it takes everything literally. So when you tell yourself that you're faking it until you make it, it's kind of like the Cinderella, you know, Cinderella, as she puts on that glass slipper, she has on this beautiful ball gown, but at some point their clock starts midnight, as she goes back to wearing the racks. That's what happens to people when they fake it so they make it is that eventually you're going to tell yourself to stop faking it. And all that confidence that you had, you go back from the beautiful ball gowns to the racks. So what I suggest that people do instead is become it because you don't have to fake it. You can just become that person. And I give an example. One of my TED talks I talked about this basketball player. He was in practice in a coach told him that day I want you to pretend to be the best player on the team. And this guy was this player that he was talking to was marginal player, maybe the 10th best player on the 12 person roster. But that day when he's pretending to be the best player on the team, he's doing all kinds of crazy moves. He's making all kinds of miraculous shots that he never does. And all his teammates are looking at him crazy. Like, where is this coming from? We didn't know you had this ability. And what he had done is he has stepped into this principle that I call the super you, which is you still being yourself not faking it, but as you at your highest possible level of confidence. And what you're doing that moment is you borrow that confidence from another person. So to give an example, you take a let's say somebody who's a boxer and they are them whoever they are. Now, before they go into that mess, they're looking for that confidence. I would tell them, listen, I want you to think about somebody like Muhammad Ali or Mike Tyson or Floyd Mayweather or whoever your favorite boxer is. And I don't want you to try to be them in the ring because you don't have their same wiring or skill set. But I want you to look at think about their mentality, think about how they would walk into the ring, think about how they would approach the fight. How would they feel about themselves going into the ring? How would their confidence be? How would they, how would they picture their performance leading up to the game for basketball player? I say picture of Michael Jordan or Kobe or Steph Curry. What is their confidence? How do they feel about themselves? How do you look at themselves in a mirror before the game? Now, I want you to think about yourself the same way they would think about themselves. So you're basically mirroring their mentality, not necessarily their actions. And that way, you can step into a level of confidence that maybe that person has never had before because as humans, we have these things called mirror neurons. It's like you can watch somebody else do something and just by watching them do it, you have a better understanding how to do it, even though you haven't done it before. And that works for confidence. It works for no hammering in a nail. It works for repairing a car. It works for anything. But people have to understand the principles behind it and understanding you're not trying to be somebody else. You're still being yourself. You don't want to be faking it because eventually like I said, faking it is going to end. You don't want to tell your brain and your pretending to be anything. So the second principle is confidence. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.