Dre Baldwin: Unpacking the Differences Between Motivation, Inspiration, and Discipline

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Hey everyone, welcome back to Make It Happen Mondays, where we talk about sales, business, entrepreneurship, personal growth, mental health, and everything in between with guests who I truly respect and I think make a positive impact on the world around us. Now, today's conversation is with Dre Baldwin. Dre is the CEO and founder of Work On Your Game, Inc. He's given four TED Talks and has authored 33 books. He's got a nine-year professional basketball career that we dug into during the conversation and he's got a bunch of really cool frameworks on mindset, strategy, systems, and execution. And we always start with the origin story here, which was a really interesting one where he's coming from because he was never taught basketball.

He picked it up on his own and went all in and learned about the discipline from his parents. And when we got into it, you know, we started talking about favorite basketball players, obviously, because I played ball growing up. I was not a professional player, obviously. But Michael Jordan, no question about it. We talked about how the reason that Jordan was as great as he was, was not necessarily because of his physical abilities. It was because of his mindset. Same thing with Kobe, right? So with that as a launching point, we talked about the difference between motivation and inspiration and discipline and how there's distinct differences for each one of them and where they each play. I also asked him about his mentality on goal setting because he talks about this, you know, as far as talking out loud about what you want to do and really aspiring to certain things.

But there's a plus and a minus when it comes to goal setting. Same thing with affirmations, right? We talk about affirmations and making sure that you do positive affirmations. But how does that conflict with fake it till you make it mentality, which both him and I agree is not a great mentality to have. And we just unpacked a lot of different things about where motivation comes from, how to be disciplined. And then he also obviously walked through his work on your game framework, which is about mindset, strategy, system, and accountability. So this is one of those episodes where hopefully for those of you out there who are listening, you're also doing, and this one gets you to do something, right?

And I'll finish with, you know, Gary Vaynerchuk. He always says his biggest fear is that people consume his content and don't do anything about it. He'd much rather have people just go do and not even listen to him. And that, quite frankly, is mine as well. But my hope is, is that these podcasts that you're listening to will give you that mindset, that motivation to go out there and do. So I hope you enjoy the conversation as much as I did. Let's make it happen. Dre Baldwin, welcome to the Make It Happen Monday podcast, my friend. How are you doing today? I am doing great, John. I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, I'm looking forward to this conversation. I was doing some prep.

You got 33 books? Is that what I, 33? Virtually, yes. How in the world, first of all, how in the world do you get time to write 33 books, man? That's a great question. I'd just say, open up Google Docs and start writing. So I've always been a big writer. I think I have a gift for coming up with ideas for content and then the discipline to actually do it. So I think all three put together. Yeah, that discipline. We're going to get into that. But are you one of those ones who like get the, like talk to text, right? Where you just roll it around and you just start talking to it so that it transcribes it for you and then you come back to it later? Or do you just literally sit down and write whenever it hits?

Great question. So I would say, John, probably out of 33 books, I would say the first 22-ish, I typed. Okay. And I type on, of course, I was typing on the computer at first, you know, around 2009, 2010. And then I started writing on my phone. I can write on my phone very fast. So I can type on my phone. You sit there with your thumbs and you fire away on your phone writing books? Yes, I do. I write all my articles on my phone, almost all of them on my phone as well. So I type out of them on my and then probably around the last eight to 10, I would say about maybe 50% to 60% of those books, I started to use the talk to type. Because the thing is, John, when you do that, you know, we don't talk how we write.

Right. So if you just talk normal, like we transcribe this conversation until I turn it into a book, there'd be a lot of editing you had to do. Oh, yeah. So you got to learn how to talk in a way that is formatted for a book. So once I learned how to do that, then I could do it a lot better. And it depends on what kind of book you're writing as well. Like information type books, I can do it. Yeah, of course. That was the one thing for me. When I transcribed my training, right? I figured, because I'd done my training so often, I figured I'd just go in studio and let it roll. Right. And I was sorely mistaken, right? I was like, well, you got to redo the whole thing. Redo the whole thing. And what was cool about it was that by sitting down and writing it out, it actually made me a better trainer because I had to logically think through how to convey that information in a way that was structured in a way that people could actually digest it better, right?

Because in live, you can kind of go off the hook and you can go around and come back to it, whatever. But on a book or on a video, like there's just that single stream. So you got to make sure that you're paying attention to it. Right. And it's like, same thing when you delegate, you know, when you first hire staff and you start delegating, you realize that your instructions aren't as clear as you thought they were, right? So you learn how to really, really lay things out and you put your SOPs and all that. You learn that you have to be very precise. Hey, I want to take a quick minute to share with you what I'm working on these days with my new JV Sales membership. It includes live monthly training delivered by me on my two signature courses, Filling the Funnel and Driving to Close.

It also includes monthly workshops that I'll be running on specific skills and different tech like ChatGPT and how to leverage it in the sales process. And it gives you access to my entire online catalog with every course and every tip I've ever done. You get all of this for $420 a year as an individual or $5,000 for teams. And as an exclusive offer to my podcast listeners, if you go to www.jbarrows.com and click on the individual or team membership and use code podcast, you'll get 20% off. Let's make this happen together. Absolutely. All right, man. Well, look, before we get into the rest of this, let's back up a little bit. Give the audience a little bit of background on where you're coming from because I like your history.

And if you don't mind going way, way back because you and I, I played ball in high school. I never played professionally, but benched for a little while, got my ass in gear. And so if you could kind of walk back early, I always love hearing people's origin stories. Like not just your work story, but your origins, where you're coming from, like parents, all that stuff. Like give the audience a little flavor of where you're coming from. Sure. Where are you from geographically? Where'd you grow up? I grew up in Boston. Okay, perfect. So I'm from the city of Philadelphia, now based in Miami. But growing up, I had both parents at home. My parents were in their early 20s when they had my sister a year before me and then me.

It was just two of us. And my mother worked at the earliest I remember my mother. She was a college student when she had her kids. And when my sister and I were very young, she sometimes would take us with her to school, to night school, have us sit on the bench outside of the classroom while she went to class. And she realized that wasn't sustainable. So she dropped out of college to raise her kids. And I remember the earliest job I remember my mom having was two things. She worked at Denny's as a waitress and she would take us with her when she went to clean people's homes for money. And she would budget buying clothes for her kids. And my father was, he's always been a musician like as a side gig.

He's retired from his full-time gig now. He does music, like music gigs like at cabarets and stuff like that. But he worked as a machinist basically in a factory for about 30-ish years. He worked as a security guard. You know, so these are, you know, basically lower middle class people. But raised both of their kids and they wanted both of us to go to college because neither of them had done that. My mom dropped out of college. She didn't finish college until I was in college. Right? So how much time that took. And they were not, they're not athletes. I'm six feet, four inches tall. But my sister, my mom, my dad are all under six feet. So they're all around five, seven, five, eight, all three of them.

So I got lucky genetically and was always into sports, played no backyard sports, driveway sports, kickball, no backyard basketball courts, stuff like that, touch football. And team sports, I did a little bit of football. I never really played. My family couldn't afford the equipment, so I never got all the pads and stuff for football. Played baseball for a minute, but wasn't really that talented at baseball. My ceiling, I probably would have been a bench player in high school, so I didn't go far in baseball. Picked up basketball around age 14, John, which is pretty late if you're trying to go to college, let alone the pros. But that's my situation. Only played one year high school ball, walked on to play college ball at the D3 level.

So as far as my family goes, they were not pushing me to be an athlete in the least. My parents are, my mom's not a sports person. My dad's into sports as a fan, but he wasn't a player. And he didn't teach me how to play basketball because he wasn't a basketball player. They were, my parents were big on discipline. Just be respectful of the adults around you, you know, have manners, go to school every day, do your homework. You know, can't go outside on school days, can't play video games except on the weekends. So that discipline is, you know, a lot of people ask me, well, you only play one year high school, you walk on in college. How do you develop the game in basketball? Because mind you, I grew up in the 90s.

There was no YouTube. There's no Instagram. So it's not like I'm watching some guy on the internet learning how to practice. I basically taught myself and people ask how I did that. Well, it was just, I took discipline that was modeled and enforced upon me at home and I applied that to basketball. And that's how I got good at it. And then I saw that it worked in basketball. Eventually I applied at the business. So coming out of college, nobody was checking for me. I worked a couple regular jobs my first year out of school. This is 2004 to give everybody a frame of reference. Worked at Foot Locker as an assistant manager. Worked at Bally Total Fitness selling gym memberships. Bally is out of business now, but not because of me.

I sold a lot of memberships. And in summer of 2005, one year removed from graduation, I went to this event called an exposure camp. Are you familiar with those, John? So an exposure camp in the athletic world is like a job fair in the business world. Okay. So, but this is not a free event. You pay to go. This is a pay to play. So instead of bringing your resume and you're putting on a suit and shaking hands, you actually bring your sneakers and shorts and you play. So this is 200 guys who all think they're good enough to play pro ball all coming to the same place and we're all playing with and against each other trying to prove that we're good enough to play pro. And the audience, this is a destination event in the sports world because the audiences, agents, coaches, managers, scouts from all over the world, they come to these events to try to find their next player.

So this is a big deal for us because this is our chance. And mind you, you got to think, a player in his early 20s going to an exposure camp, what is he otherwise doing? So any of you hear these stories about athletes who was two weeks ago, he was bagging groceries. Now he's playing in the NFL, right? Or he was empty in the FedEx truck. Now he's playing for the New York Yankees. It's like that. These are the kind of guys, that's what they're doing at home. But now we're trying to get on to this basketball thing. So we're literally trying to win the lottery here. But we have a little bit, we can tilt the odds in our favor based on our performance. I played well at this event. There was a $250 in cash payment.

I had to go to the event. I had no bank account, no credit card. So I had to call these guys and negotiate with them. Can I pay you in cash at the door? So they got me, they wouldn't have taken anybody's money. I later found out, but they let me pay at the door. I had to negotiate with my boss at Valley Total Fitness to get the weekend off because I need it off Friday, Saturday, Sunday for this event. And if you ever worked in retail, you know, nobody gets the weekend off, right? So I negotiated to get the weekend off, played well at the event, got a good scouting report, went back home, started cold calling basketball agents. That's how I got my first agent. my agent got me my first job playing overseas.

That takes us to summer of 05. So I don't know if I should keep going here, but that's... Yeah, keep going, man. I love it. Yeah, yeah. All right. So that's the summer of 05. My first job was in Countess, Lithuania. And this footage from this exposure camp I went to because you got a scouting report written by a third party. So this was important for me because I needed someone other than me to say that I was good. Yeah. And then you got the footage from the games you played because you played two games on Saturday, two games on Sunday. Now, the footage from this game, John, was on this thing called a VHS tape. You remember those? Yeah, man. I'm 47, so I'm right there with you, right? Yeah, right.

So I was on a VHS tape. Now, I know that a VHS tape, if I left it in the sun, it got hot, or you just lose it, the footage is gone. But I needed this footage. This is the most important footage that I owned because it was the best footage of me playing that I had recorded. I played well in other places, but I didn't have it on tape. So this is back when for the millennials listening to this, nowadays, everything we do is on camera, right? But back then, you could play 10 games and none of it's on camera. So I remember calling my college coaches after I graduated, like, hey, can I get the footage from this game, this game? You know, the games I knew I played good. And he's like, well, I don't have it.

There was one tape. There was one tape and one of your teammates got it, so it was gone. So I needed this footage. So I wanted it for safekeeping. So I took it to an audio visual store and got it transferred to that CD. And I uploaded the CD footage to this new website that I had heard about because I've always been an internet geek, kind of. It was a new website that came out that said you can put as much video up here as you want for free. It was called youtube.com. And I put my video up there, just a little highlight video, two-minute highlight video, just for safekeeping because, mind you, nobody cares about YouTube at this time. And I'm going and playing ball. About six months later, I go to this YouTube site just to make sure the video is still there, make sure the website still exists.

And there were comments on the video, John. And the people commenting didn't know me. They weren't looking for me, but they saw this guy looks like he can play. He's on the internet. So they would just ask, who taught you how to play? How often do you practice? Now, where do you play at now? Can you make more videos about how to jump, how to dribble, how to do the crossover move? And I said, okay, well, I can do that. And I just said it in my head. Now, mind you, at this time, all I had was a little cheap $100 camera. This was before we had video cameras on the phones. And I didn't even have a tripod, John. So I'm going to the gym every day working out because this is what athletes do, or at least this is what I thought all athletes did.

And I would just take my little camera. I will put it on the bench next to the basketball court, like the little bleachers for you to sit down. I would just put it on the bench, aim it towards the basket, and I would just film the whole workout. There was no rhyme or reason to it. And then I would just take little clips from it and put it on YouTube sporadically. And this is how it started to build an audience from 2005 to 2009. Mind you, I'm bouncing around playing in different countries at this time, back and forth from the USA to wherever I was going. In 2009, my phone was not ringing. In other words, I was a free agent without a job opportunity. So those of you who don't know the sports world, you think of an actor or an actress in between jobs, in between castings.

They're working at Starbucks, right? They're waiting tables. That's kind of how the athlete life is as well. Not glamorous. Yeah. Right. But people don't know that. They don't realize that. And my phone was not ringing. My A's is not calling. And I said to myself, okay, I'm getting into my mid to late 20s at this point, John. And I'm like, well, how am I going to get some control over my life and over my career? And at this time, luckily, I harkened back to something I read about 10 years earlier. It was, I got introduced to what I didn't know at the time, but was network marketing. I went to a couple of hotel meetings and got introduced to a book called Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki.

And in that book, he was explaining the concepts of entrepreneurship that had never been taught to me. And mind you, I have a four-year business degree that was never taught to me in college, the things that he was saying in that book. So I kept that in mind and I always said to myself when I read Kiyosaki, I know I'm going to play ball after college, but after that, whatever he's talking about, I'm doing that. I just kept it in the back of my head. I'm playing ball, no job. I remember Kiyosaki. I also, at this point, had just finished reading. It was kind of like the new age, rich dad, poor dad made for the digital mindset. It was called four-hour work week by Tim Ferriss. Similar principles, but it was for people using the internet.

First person I ever heard talk about outsourcing and delegating. You can hire somebody in India to work for you. I'd never heard anybody talk about that. And I just read his book, Remember Kiyosaki, and I was reading Tim's blog at the time because he did a lot of blogging. And he would talk about, hey, here's how you can test out a product idea. I followed his simple steps. I created this program because I had all these basketball guys watching me on YouTube at this point. My videos are coming out maybe once a month, sporadically. Again, it didn't matter. There was no money to be made posting content to the internet at this time. And I went and followed Tim's little four-step process to test out a product idea.

And I put out a $4.99 training program for basketball players. It was actually two of them. One for dribbling, one for shooting. $4.99. And the products did not actually exist. It was actually a dummy website that said, here's the product. Here's the price. If you want it, click the button. And if they click the button that said the product's under construction, put in your email address if you want to know when we make it. So I did that. This is all Tim's instruction. I did that and I was getting email addresses. People were submitting emails. So people want this product. He said, that's enough to know it's a viable thing. Go make it. I went and made the product. Same day. Put it out on YouTube.

I just made a video announcement to my YouTube followers. Hey, I got this new product. It's called HoopHandbook.com. Go to the website. You can buy the program. And that night, I remember I had the BlackBerry phone. Did you have the BlackBerry back then? Yeah, I did, yeah. Yeah, so I had the BlackBerry and a little red light would blink when you got an email. And the light was blinking and it said, congratulations, you made a sale. $4.99. And when I made that sale, John, I said to myself, this right here, I can do it for the rest of my life. Because I know basketball, I was still playing it this time. My phone eventually did ring again and I knew I couldn't play that forever. But what I had just done, I didn't know the phrase at the time, but intellectual property.

I'd taken an idea out of my head, turned it into a real thing and exchanged it for money. I said, I could do that forever. My ability to jump 40 inches in the air will not last, but my ability to translate knowledge into a thing and turn it into money, I could do this for the rest of my life. And I have complete control. I'm going straight to the consumer and no gatekeeper. So this is beautiful. And again, this is 2009. So this is right when social media was starting to be a thing. Content was starting to be a thing. Influencers, we weren't using that word yet, were starting to be a thing. And I already had a little bit of momentum because I had all these basketball players following me. And so that's where I started.

Officially, I became an entrepreneur at that point. And what happened a little bit after that, about 2010, the ballplayers who were watching me on YouTube started asking me questions about my background because they're like, this guy, we don't, never heard of him, never seen him on TV. He obviously can play. But he's putting these videos out on a, at this point, it was pretty consistent. My 2009 Google bought YouTube. They said, we'll let you monetize your videos. So again, those of you under the age of 30, there was a time you could watch YouTube all day and not see a single advertisement that there was a time. But now Google buys YouTube and now there's ads on everything, right? And now they're saying, you can make more, the more people watch your videos, the more money you make.

This is before algorithm shifts and all that. Just more views, more money. That was the simple equation. And I started putting videos out every day, every single day. I put out a video every single day since then, even to this day. And what happened at that time, the players just started asking about my approach. Like, what keeps you coming to the gym every day to work out? Or how do you get the confidence to perform in a game the same way you would in practice? Because in a game, in sport, because people don't understand in sports, every time you go to work, everybody's watching. Whereas in other businesses, people aren't really, you don't have an audience. So that performance anxiety, a lot of athletes would ask me about that.

Or man, you got cut from your high school team three years in a row, which is a true story. You sat on a bench the one year you did play. You walked on that at D3 college, which does not produce pro athletes. So again, people who don't know sports world, Division I is the guys on TV. Division III is down in the basement. Most Division III players don't even think they're going pro, let alone do they do it. So Dre, how did you keep going? So, and then they would ask, how did you get started? How did you get started? Because by this point, 2010, now, kind of being known on the internet is starting to be a career aspiration. Right? When we were young, what did people want to be? Wanted to be police officers, firefighters, and no president of the United States, athlete.

Now, my niece and nephew, they want to be YouTubers. Right? That's the thing. Right. It's like, I don't even want to be means, but that's what they want to be because that's what they think. Right. So people want to get known on the internet. So now people are asking me, Dre, how can I get known on the internet? How can I build an audience on the internet? Or ballplayers would ask, how can I play overseas? Because there's not a lot of clear information on how to do it. So based on these four questions, showing up every day, I started talking discipline, performance anxiety. I started talking confidence. How do you keep going despite setbacks? I talked mental toughness. How do you get started on anything that you want to do?

You have the idea, but how do you begin? I started talking personal initiative. So what I did was, because at this point, John, even everything I've told you up to this point, every video I had on YouTube was about basketball for basketball players. That's all I was talking about. This is how you dribble. This is how you shoot. I'm literally on the court doing the drills. This is not talking. I'm on the court showing them. I didn't have anyone who didn't play ball watching me. So I started doing these videos every Monday. Well, I floated the idea. I call it the weekly motivation. Weekly motivation was just going to be me talking about a mindset point to go along with the athletic stuff every Monday.

And I said to my audience when I put the first video out, look, I'm going to do this every Monday. And if you all like this, you want more of it, let me know. If y'all don't like it, it's cool. I'll just stick to showing you how to do the Kobe Bryant move. But if you want a mindset piece, let me know. And every Monday, I'll do a talking video where I just talk to you about something mental based. And audience said, yeah, we want that, Dre. Please do that. Do that. So I did the weekly motivation every Monday, John, for 400 Mondays in a row. And those videos laid the foundation for where we are today. Because what happened is, first of all, the ballplayers appreciated it because even though they wanted the skills and the drills and how to dribble, many of them understood that the mental piece was the real key for them getting from where they were to where they needed to get to.

Many of them had the tools physically, but they didn't have the mindset to make it work when it needed to work. So they understood that. The second part was, excuse me, a lot of people who did not play ball, because I'm just putting these videos on YouTube, a lot of people who didn't play ball started discovering me now because of these weekly motivation videos. Because those videos, if basketball is not on your radar, you still might look up discipline or confidence. And my name was coming up in the search. And I would get messages from people who say, Dre, I don't even play ball. My son watches your videos, but I heard him listening to you talk and I like what you said. And that's how I realized that these mindset things that I'm talking about can be my segue from the basketball world to everybody else.

And again, I knew basketball didn't last forever. And I also understood being that I was in it that as soon as I stopped putting basketball videos out every day, the basketball players are not going to know me because I'm not in their world every day. You got to be in front of people. And again, this is when the internet is becoming, everybody's becoming a publisher. So if you're not out there, you're forgotten. So I said, okay, when I get done, because I always saw myself, John is going further in the basketball world. I never wanted to limit myself to just basketball because I knew I didn't want to be a coach or a trainer or an analyst after I was done playing. I wanted to move on to other things.

You remember Robert Kiyosaki, Tim Ferriss. So I always had this in my mind. So I said, all right, perfect. So when I get done with basketball, I'll just take this mindset stuff and I'll just drop the basketball and just focus on that. It was exactly what I did. So I kept playing until 2015. And in 2015, by the time I stopped playing, self-publishing had become a thing. So I'd already written maybe four or five books at this point. I had some courses out there and I wanted to get into speaking. So I started doing no TED Talks and pitching myself for professional speaking, which was a lot of work, but I built some traction for myself. And that's really what I did from 2015 to about 2020 was the books, coaching, books, coaching, courses, and speaking.

2020 COVID happened. There was no speaking for a little bit. I started focusing on my coaching program and more in-house stuff. That's what really I've been focusing on for the last three plus years. And that brings us to today. So I hope that's it in a nutshell, my story. Yeah, I love it. I mean, I love the evolution and also the foresight of being able to say, look, I know, you know, because you see so many athletes, like that's all their world, right? And then they, like how many athletes are broke, right? Like five years after they play pro ball or whatever it might be because they didn't think about it from a business standpoint or what they were going to do later or anything like that.

Talent only lasts so long or physical ability only lasts so long, right? Right. So let me ask a couple quick questions. I want to backtrack a little bit and get into a couple of things here. But first and foremost, so discipline, right? I got to guess on who your favorite ball players are, but who did you look up to and which ones did you try to emulate or did you from a discipline and a drive standpoint? Hmm. From a discipline and drive standpoint, I don't think I was even thinking about it that way. I just like players just because they could play. I would just try to see if I could play like them, so. Whose game did you like the most then? Well, if I had to pick one, of course, it'd be Jordan.

All right, cool. Of course, Michael Jordan. By the way, that's a Jordan ball right there. Oh, yes. Okay. He was my number one growing up. So even though I grew up here in Boston, like Bird, McHale, Parrish, that whole thing, Jordan got me hooked as soon as I saw him. I was like, all right, when COVID hit, what was the show that came out? Last Dance. What's that? Last Dance. Yeah, Last Dance. I love that because I had all these millennials talking to me about LeBron, LeBron, LeBron. I'm like, no, and I would always tell them Jordan and I would tell them why and it was because, and this is what I'm getting to, is because of his drive, because of his passion. Like, I think if you put his drive and passion into LeBron's body, you'd have 15 championships, right?

Yeah, he was fast Jordan. Yes. Yeah, exactly. But, you know, him and Kobe, right? Like, I look at Kobe and Jordan and I look at both of those as people who are so dedicated to their craft and so disciplined with what they did that it was hard to beat them just for that alone. Yes, they had talent, obviously, but that talent, there's plenty of people in the NBA who have probably more talent than they did, but I don't think you could compare anybody's drive to Kobe and Jordan's. I agree. And Kobe was the closest thing to emulating what Mike did. He didn't quite have all Mike's tools, but he came the closest. So, yeah, Kobe was another one because he came around by the time I was in my mid-teens.

Kobe, Allen Iverson, I grew up in Philadelphia, so, of course, him, Penny Hardaway at that time was great. He was Reggie Miller for a while, right? Because the first thing I was good at in basketball was shooting a three-point shot, so Reggie Miller was the guy at that time with the three-point shot. So, Tracy McGrady came a couple years later, Steve Francis a little bit after that. Steve Francis, he went to Maryland, so I went to U-Maryland. Right. Yeah, he was crazy in college because I was assistant sports marketing director at Maryland. Okay. Watching Steve Francis do his thing, I was like, whoa, all right, that dude's an NBA guarantee. He was here for a year and then he bounced. Right. Yeah, Steve Francis was great.

One of my favorites. So, because he had all the playground tools so he could cross you over, he could dunk. Those are the two things you wanted to do on the playground. So, he had those tools. I like Vince Carter. Vince Carter was nice. Oh, yeah, I forgot about Vince. Yeah, Vince Carter too because he could dunk. The last dunker I've ever seen in my life. His reverse 360 dunk is still the greatest dunk I think I've ever seen in my entire life. Yeah, the first dunk of that dunk contest was legendary. Stupid. Quick break here to mention the HubSpot Podcast Network and promote some of the other fantastic podcasts that are on this network including The Sales Evangelist hosted by Donald Kelly. Now, Donald interviews some of the world's best sales experts, successful sellers, sales leaders, and entrepreneurs who share their strategies to succeed in sales right now.

Some of the folks he's interviewed include Jeffrey Gittermer, Jill Conrath, Guy Kawasaki, and myself. We actually had a really cool conversation recently about the direction where sales is headed, some of the interesting things that are happening with AI, and we got super tactical but it also got really philosophical as well. So go listen to Sales Evangelist wherever you get your podcasts. Let's make it happen. Let me ask you though because this is, I mean, it translates now, you know, discipline and work ethic. I think one of these things that I'm starting to get nervous about, right, about this newer generation, right, everybody always shits on the generation after them and oh, you know, back in my day type of stuff, but I'm seeing, like, I don't know what it is and I don't know how to address it, but the work ethic component of what it takes to be successful these days, I feel is starting to lack and I mean that across the board, NBA, I see it in business across the board, like, I'll pick on my, like my, you know, my team here, like Jason Tatum.

like I think Jason Tatum has the skills to be one of the best players like if he, if he sticks with it, but I fear about his, I was actually just having this conversation with my daughter because Tatum was on the radio and we're driving her to school and one of the things that bothered me last year about Tatum when he, when they lost was, and no offense, like I love kids and I'm a big family man, right, but when he was on the court at game seven, his, his kid was running around the court giving high fives to everybody, he's picking them up, he's laughing and joking and I look at it and I'm like, game seven of the, the Eastern Conference champ, like you should be so locked in that you shouldn't even know who your kid is in my opinion, right, as far as like that, that focus and that drive.

Are you seeing, like with what you do and who you talk to, are you getting the same vibe or is this just me being an old man looking back and saying, oh man, I worked hard but has this always been an issue? Like help me understand from your perspective what you see and what people bring you in to talk to their teams about everything else? Well, I would say it's both. So yes, you're being an old man but also it's true. So it's both things because if you say that to somebody who's 25, then they're going to give you that criticism while you're just old. That's the reason you're saying it. And that's, I think it's not the generation after us. I'm 41, so I think we're about the same generation. It's not the guys in their 30s, it's the generation after that.

So it's like two generations back, like 20s and under. That gender, how old is your daughter? She's 13. She just turned 13. Okay, so it's two generations back. Those guys, the mindset is just different. And I heard Bill Simmons, I'm sure you're familiar with him. He was talking about that when they made the trade the other day. Just saying like Tatum should be one of the top five players in the league at this point or at least coming into this season coming up. And we'll see if he actually ascends to that. But as far as the mindset, I would say yes because, and one of the reasons is, let's look at it logically, look how much money the players get paid now before they have even accomplished at the level.

Like Michael Jordan's biggest salary was 33 million his last year after he did all of that stuff for them and he kind of had to fight to get to 33. Right, and the year before that was 30. He had to fight for that. He made most of his money away from his salary. He's still the highest paid athlete of all time which he should be, rightfully, but it wasn't from his salary. So, what happened is people like him actually ushered in this era of people getting rewarded before they had the accomplishment which is going to take the edge off for most human beings and that's just what it is. It takes the edge off people because they're getting rewarded and they haven't accomplished anything and guaranteed contracts in basketball.

So, that's logically part of it. As far as the other side of it, as far as people just not having that edge and that same lock-in, it's also that, I mean, the world has just become more fruitful of a place. When you're an entertainer and you're known, think about how much stuff gets thrown at the feet of, let's just say, a well-known entertainer or a well-known athlete at the highest levels in America, at least, these days. I mean, how much edge can you maintain when you have all of that already given to you and you haven't done anything and it's guaranteed? Yeah. So, it's really hard to find somebody who's going to have that mindset. It's very difficult. Even the children of the players who did that, they don't have that same mindset because they grew up already having all the stuff.

Right? So, it's a completely different world. And that's what worries me a little bit is that mindset, that mentality, that work ethic is just not there. Like, they want the outcome. And also, we've gotten into this Instagram world where everybody sees the output, right? Like, sees the success, but they don't see the journey of what it takes to get that success and the grind it took to get there. And so, talk to me a little bit about motivation versus inspiration. You did a post about motivation. Yeah. And this is what I'm trying to understand is like, how do you motivate somebody? Like, I think there's a distinction between motivation and inspiration, right? but I'd love to get your take on this because I think a lot of people look, falsely look for motivation slash inspiration and they don't really know what they're looking for or why and really when it comes down to it, it's an internal thing that they need to find and tap into.

So, how do you look at inspiration versus motivation? Well, look at motivation something that comes from the outside and inspiration comes from the inside. Now, motivation can, somebody can motivate you and it can trigger an inspiration inside of you, I guess, if you want to look at it that way but overall, I actually prefer discipline over both of those because some days you're not going to feel motivated. Some days, you just don't feel like working out. Some days, I got a, you have a 13-year-old, I have a 13-month-old so you remember those days, right? You ain't getting much sleep. Yeah, right. So, he's waking up in the middle of the night right now, he has a little cold so he's waking up, he's making noise, he's jumping around the bed, he's doing all kinds of stuff.

You don't sleep so do you feel like going to work that day, the next day after not getting that sleep? No, but you still had to do your job so the professional shows up and delivers even if they don't feel like it and the motivation is not even needed so that's something that I talk about in one of my books called The Third Day, the whole principle is about motivations for amateurs. Motivation is something that maybe you could go deliver to your daughter's classroom because they're kids but at the pro level, excuse me, we're not here to motivate you. You got paid, you got a contract, right? Is your paycheck clear? Okay, do your job. I don't care how you feel. That's the game and that goes back to what I told you at the beginning here of my parents.

They went to work every day and I'm sure there were days they didn't feel like working. I'm sure there were times they were tired or they didn't love their jobs. They never talked about loving their jobs. They talked about I have to go to work then I get to go to work but they went to work every day and again, they weren't athletes but when I went to the basketball court I took the discipline that was modeled for me and I applied it to what I did so I never looked at it like I need to be motivated or I need to be happy to do my job. It's just I'm going to do my job because this is what I'm supposed to do. I think that's because I always tell people be careful about looking for motivation and inspiration from other people because it only is fleeting.

I'll talk about what his name Tony Robbins, right? So Tony, he sits there he's screaming your name they got all those hot coals that he used to walk across until he burned too many people's feet and stopped that but you're standing across those hot coals and you're looking at it like man, I would never do this this is crazy you're out of your mind but then you got Tony's big head in your face screaming you can do it you can do it you get a thousand people screaming your name and you get inspired to do it so you're like alright cool and you get motivated and you run across those coals and you're like oh my god Tony's a genius I did it the question is is if those coals are sitting there next week and Tony isn't there yelling at you and you don't got a thousand people telling you you can do it you can do it can you still run across those coals most people can't most people that's why they keep going back to the seminars they keep reading the books they keep and they don't do right?

they get motivated and inspired whatever you want to call it but they don't actually do and it's like Gary Vaynerchuk he always says his biggest fear is that people are consuming all his content and not doing anything with it he's like I'd rather you not follow a single thing I say not follow me in any way shape or form and just go execute right? right so can I add something to that? please I 100% agree that and Gary if that's his fear then he should be afraid because that's absolutely what's happening I don't even have to know him and Tony is 100% the same thing with Tony is that people keep going because they are getting off on getting the information and saying that they consumed it but they're not doing anything outside of it and I just came from a conference I was at a conference all last week and the people who I met at the conference I'm not talking to speakers I'm talking to attendees attendees I would always ask them alright now that you've been here for a week what's the number one thing you need to do now that the conference is over and you know what's funny John is that the answer that almost everyone gave me was to do something that they did not learn in the week of the conference it's something that they already knew about before they came to the conference but they hadn't done it yet they're like oh well I need to finish writing my book this conference wasn't even about writing books so why did you write the book already?

right why didn't you do this? I gotta launch my course I gotta figure out no one's gonna be the face of what I do I gotta figure out my ad process nothing in the conference had anything to do with any of that the thing is people just they just are continuously consuming the information and it feels good to say that you did that but people are very very slow to execute and it's funny because when you were just talking about there's something you said a second ago I can't remember it but people look at my stuff and they say oh you wrote 33 books so you did these TED talks you put out all this content how do you produce so much honestly John almost every day I have a thought that floats in my head that I'm not moving fast enough that I'm not getting enough done that I'm like alright what is on this list I need to get all of this done today and I know I'm not gonna get all of it done today but I'm mad when I don't get it all done today it's the standards that we set for ourselves so going back to somebody like Tony he talks about that in one of his books Unleash the Power Within is when you want to raise your level in life you gotta change your standards then the two standards that I say that most people have that are slowing them down their defaults are doing things slow and later instead of doing things fast and now and that's what keeps a lot of people from actually going and achieving out there these days so how do you feel about goal setting then right because I think you said something there that I always worry about too because I've always thought about goal setting great cool you know smart goal setting and everything else and one of the things I used to say was hey you want to make sure you say these out loud because you want accountability right other people like when you say it out loud but I've kind of changed my opinion on that a little bit because the saying them out loud is actually the part that feels good hey I got this goal to do this right so where does goal setting sit with you as it relates to discipline as it relates to you know you said setting you know standards we set for ourselves like how does that play into this mix so actually I'll look at it from both sides so one I am a goal setter I set goals for the month every month I have goals and I tell my audience there's a new month coming up make sure you have your goals written down where you need to be what you need to do what you want to have so I always tell people do that set your goals for the year and then each day your goals for the day your tasks for the day should be based on achieving those goals that you have set for the month at the same time I don't tell anyone my goals I don't share my goals with anybody because that's something that this guy named Derek Sivers you familiar with him okay so he has a he's an author then he also in the Sivers S-I-V-E-R-S he has a TED talk where he talks about not sharing your goals with other people and he explains what you just said that when you speak about your goals you get a slight amount of satisfaction from the fact that you are verbalizing them because your subconscious mind doesn't understand that you didn't achieve it yet you're just talking about it and that little bit of satisfaction takes a little bit of the edge off that you need a little bit of that discomfort that you need to force you to actually go do something to achieve the goal so this is how then you look at something like social media where you can present yourself one way that you have not actually achieved yet but the satisfaction you get from people co-signing it or clapping for what you've presented when you haven't actually achieved it yet actually takes the edge off for you to actually go and do it so I can look at it from both sides and the biggest challenge the biggest antidote rather to all of that is you gotta have the mental toughness to understand that I haven't achieved the goal yet and something to hold you accountable whether that's other people or some process that you have in your own head so then let's keep going on that thread with the affirmations right so there's something about when you say speaking out loud right like you look yourself in the mirror and you tell yourself like I can do this I got this right like you go play a game you get in that right mentality of you know I can do this I'm not nervous I'm excited right there's a lot of mind games we can play ourselves in sports so how do you feel about affirmations and like positive affirmations for yourself your career and what you're trying to accomplish I use them one of my books called the mental workbook I talk about that and I actually walk people through how to write out your daily statement of affirmation whatever it is as if it is already achieved at the same time you have those goals you have those goals in place that you need to look at and there's that friction that gets created okay I haven't actually achieved these things yet what do I need to do and then the piece that moves you to action is the discipline and the biggest thing that makes all of this work honestly is having other people around to hold you accountable this is why coaching masterminds those type of entities help the highest level performers perform and people who try to do everything on their own they can get kind of lost in the abyss of affirming themselves yet not achieving yet not being as disciplined as they could be yet not moving as fast as they need to be I was talking to someone just yesterday I was doing a live stream this woman was talking about a book that she's writing I said what's the book about and first she said the book's gonna I want to have a book out by March of next year and we're recording this in early October and I said what's the book about she said well I'm telling my story of I've been through this and this and this I said why would it take you six months to finish writing it all you're doing is telling the story you already know what happened there's no research you don't need to go to the library you just write it down so that shouldn't take you but a month at the most and if you use talk to text you can do that in a day honestly I could tell my whole life story in a day if I just record it that's all I did but the thing is people give themselves these they give themselves way too much time to get things done as if their time is unlimited and this is something that I remind people of all the time our time is not unlimited the time will be up at some point and it was I was at a conference and Russell Brunson was showing this clip from Dead Poets Society you ever seen that movie yep I had never even seen the movie but I like the clip where Robin Williams calls the young men he's having to look at the pictures of the other young men who used to be their age like from decades before he said they all had dreams too they all were young they all thought they had time and now they're all dead you know so that's you right now and I said that's a great clip and I don't even know that movie but it was a perfect it encapsulated perfectly what I'm saying here yeah no that's a great movie so then with affirmations with goal setting what's your what's your stance I'll fake it till you make it right because I think a lot of people have that mentality of oh I'm not there yet so I need to act like I'm there and then I'll fill in the blanks and I got my opinions on it but I'm curious about yours okay a couple things so first of all I'm not a fan of fake it till you make it and one of my TED talks on confidence I actually addressed that whole concept of fake it till you make it where it's what you actually are doing is you want to become it and then you need to step into the the energy and then you need to follow it with the action so you're not there's no faking because let's say if you take a basketball player trying to use fake it till you make it well there's no fake making a shot now you can't fake doing a move right you made it or you didn't yeah fake being Steph Curry right right exactly so you can but what you can do is let's say Steph Curry's your favorite player and you don't have confidence excuse me you can step on the court and you can ask yourself well what kind of energy what kind of confidence will Steph Curry have in this game and you can borrow what you perceive to be his confidence apply it to yourself and then you go out and play your game so you can borrow it in that way but you're not pretending to be him because again you can't pretend in a sport because it either happens or it doesn't happen and then you go out there and you perform and you do your thing and there was the other side of your question was oh yeah so I was talking to someone again this event that I was just at he was thinking about joining a mastermind program a friend of mine and he asked me my advice what do you think because he's like no he's kind of frugal with his money so he didn't want to part with the money and this is a significant investment right 25k investment and I said to him you can't keep making decisions based on where you are right now because that's going to keep you in the same spot you have to make your decisions based on the person you plan on becoming and it's not faking it because when you put that credit card number down they're taking that money alright that's not faking that's really happening so this is becoming it this is stepping into it so making decisions means and I always tell people a real decision is followed by action decision not just words it's followed by an action so now you are stepping into that position there's no faking it and you are becoming it and as you step into the energy of being it then you will be doing it and as you keep doing it then you'll be having it so now you are basically building the bridge between today's you and future you by following the right process being doing than having I like it yeah I kind of I used to kind of blindly say fake it till you make it right because somebody said that to me when I was a kid and I was like alright cool yeah I gotta do that and then I realized no this does not work right like I can't be that thing so I want to own it and I'll be open with it about how where I am with it but where I want to go I think that's the key right it's like knowing to your point what you want to become and then trying to get that mindset to become there but not faking it until you make it because I think this world is I think the one thing that's obvious to me right now is that the the fakeness of this world that we're all in right now is it's obvious you know what I mean like you can tell when people are faking it and when you can tell somebody's faking it you lose credibility and then you actually get more weight on you to get to where you want to be because people aren't giving you the support that you need to be able to get there because they know you're faking it so I look at it and say look it's not worth it like just open it up and say I'm trying my best to get to that point and I got to figure out along the way so I like it cool man well let's I mean I think you mapped it out but let's finish up with the work your game framework I think you named the four things in there but back up for me a little bit because that's the book right like is that the book or is that your program or both is well I have a book called Working Your Game and my program is called Working Your Game University yes all right cool so walk me just through the framework so people get a little bit of insight on that about what they could expect if they jump into that sure so the university framework is based on four pillars mindset, strategy, systems and accountability so mindset piece we've been talking about a lot here and mindset is the foundation of everything that we do at Working Your Game and I have always been a firm believer in mindset the foundation of all success the foundation of all failure I don't care what business what sport what industry you're in mindset is the foundation of every action that you're taking so you want to change anything in your life first we need to change the way you're thinking about it then we can change the behavior around that thing the second piece is a strategy strategy is simply a plan of action what are we going to do how are we going to do it and many people operate just blindly without a strategy they don't know what they're doing or they think they have a strategy but they have a faulty strategy because they're consulting a unqualified person an unqualified person for their strategy which is usually themselves and I often tell people you got to know when to fire yourself from the job if I want to learn if I want to learn how to play tennis for example I've never played I shouldn't be my own coach I need to immediately fire myself from that job and hire somebody better than me so we all have to be disciplined enough to know when we need to be fired from a job and to put somebody else in that role same thing when you hire staff I have people who have an executive assistant who handles the CRM and does all that stuff I tell her hey let's see if we can reach out to these people see if we can do a deal with them they handle all that stuff I don't want to be doing it it's not that I can't do it it's just I don't want to do it so I fire myself and I hire somebody else to handle that job so that's the strategy piece is you have to have a clear strategy that actually makes sense doesn't mean it's going to be perfect but you probably get a better strategy from someone who's been there than you would get from yourself third part is the system system is simply the mechanism that makes your strategy work over and over again so where you can do the same things the same way every time so the system you think of Subway McDonald's Starbucks Amazon they you get the same experience every single time that you do business with them because they have great systems in place doesn't matter who's working there the workers are nearly interchangeable at those places because the system is so tight that the system is doing all the work the humans just follow the system and it's the same thing that any of us can do in our own you have a small business with two employees you can put a system in your life you can systematize you can systematize your workouts your eating your diet your finances all of that all those things so the system is just the mechanism that makes the same things work by clockwork and then the fourth piece is the accountability that's just making sure that both the humans and the strategy are doing what they're supposed to do so the humans just means okay you're supposed to get up at six o'clock and go to the gym and work out for 30 minutes or did you do it no you slept till 6 15 no you only worked out for 20 minutes you went to the gym but you were sitting on a bench playing on your phone all right so you got to be held accountable for that also we got to make sure that the system I mean the strategy is being held accountable as well because if I'm doing everything the strategy says but I'm not getting the result then that means we need to fix the strategy because no plan is perfect so we need to make adjustments along the way when things are not working the right way unfortunately for a lot of people they wait too long working with a faulty strategy before they do anything about it so a lot of time gets used up again and people are very frivolous with time these days John as if they have unlimited amounts where I would suggest you'll be frivolous be frivolous with money use the money to buy access to people who can help you save time but a lot of people don't think like that so those are the four pieces mindset strategy systems accountability love it yeah and I mean you just outlined four hour work week too as far as that time piece right that's what struck me about the Tim Ferriss thing was it was like you know know your hourly rate right like figure out how much money you want to make back into what your hourly rate is and then if you can find somebody that can do it cheaper than you outsource it no matter what it is right so but the problem with that is that you have to then take that time and apply it to something that makes that money right so I think a lot of people are outsourced and they're like all right cool I don't have to do that anymore but it's like now what are you doing with that time to execute so you can go so right you know what's funny is I once sent out a text to my text community I got a couple thousand people in there and I asked them how much is an hour of your time worth and you know people are giving you all these crazy astronomical numbers but then when it comes time for them to invest in a way to buy more time all of a sudden nobody has any money right so is your time really worth it you're saying one thing but you're doing another thing and then also what you said there do you have the discipline to actually now take that time that you purchased and put it towards actually making the money that you say your hour is worth so that's the that's the friction that you got to create and then you basically got to put yourself in a position where you have no choice but to do that work to make it make sense but a lot of people don't have that discipline they'll just take it and just like I said outsource it and then realize now they're even in a worse place because now they're paying money and they're not making any more money so now you're actually more stressed out so it's a loop right I mean I think the first first time I realized that was when I was like out of college right and I was I was doing my dry cleaning and I'm sitting there like I would you know I would iron all my shirts because I thought I was saving money and you know and I suck at ironing right and I would inevitably ruin a shirt once a month or something like that so I'm sitting there and I did the math I'm like wait a minute I spend two to three hours a week ironing shirts and I'll probably ruin one of them every once in a while or for a dollar fifty I could have somebody do it professionally and make sure that this was always tight and perfect I'm like right I think that makes a little more sense because a lot of my friends like they didn't have money so they're all dry clean you can't you know that's for you know that's when you make cash I'm like no no no no no that is something I know I am not good at somebody else is way better and I'm going to use that time those three hours to go figure out a way to make more money so I can afford to do those things awesome man well look I think we're coming up on time here so I really enjoyed the conversation where can we send people for you as far as where you want to point I know you got a lot of stuff going on with your email list and your text list and all that and you got all your books so what's a place where people can find out more info about you well I'm active on all social media platforms my Instagram is probably most active where I use the story function so my Instagram is just my name at Dre Baldwin I'll share the text line is that okay yeah yeah please yeah so I send out a text message every Monday called the Monday motivation guaranteed to have you focused sharp and on point to start your week just text me at 305-384-6894 and every Monday when that message goes out you'll get it you also we also send out a daily motivation for two dollars a month so if you want to get daily motivations it's two bucks you get that every day same number same process and as far as our program that you were just asking me about that's at work on your game university dot com that's the only place I do any coaching work with anybody directly is work on your game university dot com love it awesome man well I really appreciate the conversation and I hope there's got a few people to think about their motivation inspiration discipline and everything else I appreciate the conversation and thanks coming on board man absolutely thank you for sharing your platform I appreciate the opportunity absolutely all right everybody look hope you enjoyed the conversation like I said get up your ass and do something because that's what it all takes at the end of the day everybody says John what's the secret to success my answer is always the same it's always work your ass off so needless to say but as I always say at the end of all these podcasts go out there make somebody smile today because no matter how bad your day went or you think it's going you make somebody smile you know you had a good day and the world needs a lot more of that right now so thank you all very much and I'll see you on the other side and share some of your favorite episodes with your network also check out my new website jbarrows.com where you'll find even more ways to engage there's a ton of free content and you can also get trained from me directly as an individual or for your team look I'm out there selling every day just like you are and I'm doing my best to stay on top of all the latest trends in sales and technology so if you're looking to level up and you give a shit about this profession of sales let's connect and make it happen together