The G.E.M. Series EP 30: How to Work on Your Game With Dre Baldwin
Blake: [00:00:00] Welcome to the G.E.M Series, powered by Rocket level. On this podcast, we empower entrepreneurs to succeed by 
Dre Baldwin: setting big goals, executing like a pro, and having a fearless 
Blake: mindset. The G.E.M Series is all about 
Dre Baldwin: investing in yourself. We're here to share the path to getting what you want out of 
Blake: life 
Dre Baldwin: by sharing the stories of entrepreneurs who have done this themselves, providing thorough research from our team on what 
Blake: careers and habits are yielding the best.
Dre Baldwin: And discussing the mindset it takes to overcome the obstacles that all future entrepreneurs will face. 
Blake: Investing in yourself starts with putting in the work every single day, and this 
Dre Baldwin: podcast is here to help you do exactly 
Blake: that. My name is Blake Chapman. I'm the Vice president of the Ambassador 
Dre Baldwin: Program here at Rocket Level, and I am thrilled to be your host for the Gem Series.
Blake: Hello and welcome to today's GEM series. I am. Absolutely thrilled to welcome today's guest, Dr. Dre, all day. Baldwin. Just to give you guys just a [00:01:00] tiny bit of background, Dre is the c e o and founder of Work on Your Game. He has appeared in four different TED Talks, altered 33 books, and had a nine-year professional basketball career where he played all across the world.
I am super pumped to have him on. Dre, welcome to the show. How are you? 
Dre Baldwin: I'm doing amazing, Blake. I'm excited to be here. Looking forward to this conversation. 
Blake: Hey, so am I. I've been I've been super excited about it. And for anybody that doesn't know a ton about you, Dre could you just give just a little, a little bit of your 
Dre Baldwin: background?
Yeah, yeah. A two-minute version. Come from the city of Philadelphia, pa now live in Miami, Florida. Always played sports growing up. Played, you know, all the backyard driveway sports. Eventually settled on basketball around the age of 14, which is pretty late for an athlete who's trying to. Go somewhere in the sport, let alone, I mean, college, let alone pro.
But that was the situation. I only played one year of high school basketball. I sat on the events that one year I scored two points per game. I like to tell people that if that was hockey or soccer, I'd be in a hall of fame. But in basketball, yeah, it's not much. So getting outta high [00:02:00] school, I still wanted to keep playing, but wasn't, I didn't have anybody recruiting me to come to play in college.
So I did go to college, but I walked on, which means for those who don't know, you just literally walk in the G.E.M and you have to try to prove yourself as a nobody who's, nobody who nobody has ever heard of. I was able to do that successfully, but I was playing at the division three level the third tier of college sports.
So when you watched the College Football championship, that's Done? March Madness, that's division one. I was down a division. And they don't usually produce pro athletes. So getting outta college, I played in college but I didn't know set the world on fire. And anyway, it wouldn't have mattered cause I was playing division three against guys who weren't trying to be pros.
So when I, got outta college, my first job outta college was working at Foot Locker as an assistant manager. I worked at Valley Total Fitness. Selling a G.E.M membership, so this was not a basketball career. Then a year removed from graduation, I went to an event called Exposure Camp, and they're basically, it was like a job fair.
I played pro basketball. At that point started playing pro ball. That was 2005. Now, the footage from that event. [00:03:00] I, that footage was on this thing called a VHS tape. Blake, do you remember those vhs? Oh, I remember 'em. . Yeah, so, I took that v h s tape and I put that footage on his brand new website called YouTube.
And YouTube was a site that said, you can put as much footage up as you want for free. So I just put that video up just for myself. But basketball players started finding me. So those players started leaving comments and just asking me, how often do you practice? Can you make videos about this? And. and that kind of started this parallel career.
So I'm playing pro basketball overseas. My first job was in common Lithuania. At the same time, I have this audience on YouTube, which wasn't, there was no business there, but I had an audience of people watching me on the internet. So I had these two careers going at the same time. Fast forward through this, and I'm sure we'll fill in these gaps in this conversation, but about halfway through my career was about 2009.
I found myself unemployed and that's when I started focusing a little bit more on what we now call building a brand. That was someone, products, writing books, et cetera. I stopped playing pro ball in 2015 and ever since then, I've been, you know, running this company works on your game. So I'm [00:04:00] sure we'll fill in the gaps in the past 20 years.
Man, I got 
Blake: shorts. A lot of questions for you, Dre. I'll try not to blurt 'em all out at once here. I mean, I, so I'm, I'm always curious, so going way back to when you were 14 and you decided on, so. Yeah. Where, what was kind of going on in your life that made you go, you know what I'm, I mean, was it like a, a pretty conscious decision to go, I'm gonna go all in on basketball or what, what was happening around that time?
Dre Baldwin: Well, I was conscious in, I mean, the amount of a 14-year-old that I'm gonna go make it as a basketball player. Sure. But there was no, I didn't have any tangible proof that it was gonna work. It was just me deciding I'd always play sports and I'm an athlete, so I've always been athletic. So I played no two-hand touch football in the backyard.
Never really played on a football team. My family couldn't afford football equipment. Played a little bit of baseball kickball, you know, we would run foot races. streets and all that stuff. Yeah. And basketball is just a sport that I ended up stumbling upon simply because of where I come from, and the neighborhood I come from, anybody can play basketball.
Cause you don't need equipment, you just need one ball. And you [00:05:00] know you have 50 people. Absolutely. You got a game. Yeah. So that's how I kind of got into it. Everybody played and you know, everybody gave it a shot. Every young man gave it a shot. in my neighborhood, but I just happened to stick with it and I could feel myself getting better, even though I didn't have any tangible proof that I was gonna do anything with it.
I was just dumb enough to keep trying and that's how it ended up working. That's, 
Blake: I, I mean I love that, that relentless mindset, you know, cause mm-hmm. , it's, it's kind of wild. If you are relentless enough, I mean, you can go pretty far. There's a lot that comes with that.
Right. I, I love seeing people that keep driving and pushing forward, no matter what I mean. Yeah. Take me a little bit further, I guess, like into college. Where, what were you thinking about in terms of what you wanted for yourself? What was kind of your, what was your goal at that point in 
Dre Baldwin: time? Do you think?
Good question. So by the time I got to college now, I'm seriously thinking, like, now I'm thinking about what am I gonna do when I get outta school? Yeah. Cause I mean that the purpose of going to college is to get prepared for quote-unquote real life, right? So mm-hmm. , the [00:06:00] adults around me growing up, including my, you know, the teachers that I had in schools, they all had no.
Jobs they had employment. But the thing about the adults that I saw growing up, especially in my neighborhood, was that they were always at work. They talked about work as a necessary evil. They didn't talk about it. I get to go to work, it was, I have to go to work and they were always there. They seem to dread Sunday nights.
Right? Cuz Monday's coming up, Dave, you gotta go to work. Yep. And then, on top of the fact that they were always at work. They didn't have any extra money, at least the adults that I saw growing up. So I'm like, okay, I don't wanna do that. But the whole thing about going to school was to get ready for that. So I'm really, I'm urgently looking for any other opportunity.
So. I saw. I got came across network marketing when I was in college about halfway through. And at one of those hotel meetings, even though I didn't stay in network marketing, I'm glad that I did go to the meetings because they introduced me to personal development. And one of the books they introduced me to was Rich Dad, poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki.
Mm-hmm. . [00:07:00] So when I read that, right, so when I read that book, he was talking about principles of enterprise. That kind of flew in the face of what I had been told by my teachers and the adults around me growing up, and I said, whatever he's talking about, I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna do basketball first and I'm gonna do that.
So that was my mindset I'm gonna play basketball. Then I'm looking for ways that I can kind of do whatever he's talking about in that book, even though I couldn't understand all of it. So, sure. When I got out of college and I started playing basketball figuring I'm gonna do that. But we know that sports end, you know, your sports career ends usually at the time that many people are hitting their stride in other professions, your career's over, right?
So you're starting, a brand new thing. So that is what I had in mind. . So tell me again what your question was. I forgot what you even asked me. Yeah, 
Blake: yeah. No, I that, no, that, that definitely, that answers it. I was just kind of wondering what, the end goal was now. And that answers it.
It's found, find something that beats out this kind of like broken narratives. We all have about, about working, you [00:08:00] know, I mean, growing up everybody's like Work sucks, you know, like you just, you go to college and then you kind of don't have that much money and you scrimp by and you, you, you, you just do what you gotta do until maybe you can retire.
Hopefully, so it sounds like you were looking for maybe an alternative if, I think that would maybe be fair to say. 
Dre Baldwin: Right. So let me, let me add to that. So yeah, it was, it was playing basketball, and then, so in college, I knew I wanted to go play pro basketball and I happened to have a teammate who knew a little bit about playing professional basketball overseas.
Mm-hmm. . And he's the one who told me, Hey, you gotta go to a, an exposure camp was basically like a job fair or a casting call for athletes. So I knew about that and then I just kept what I heard from Kiosaki in the back of mine. because I knew at some point sports is gonna be over. I'm gonna do something else.
What else can I do? Yeah. So that's, that's the kind of mindset I had in that, those early years, about 2005 through maybe 2009, a lot of 
Blake: people don't know a ton about Rich Dad, poor dad either. What was like, what was your big epiphany that [00:09:00] you, that you got from, from that at that time you think? 
Dre Baldwin: man. Are, are you gonna limit me to just one
So, 
Blake: Hey, no 
Dre Baldwin: limit here, Yeah, so, the first one, Blake, was that he said rich people don't work for money. And I'd always thought that to make money, you had to go to work. I mean, that's what had, that was the equation that had always been communicated to me. Yeah. I would ask my parents for money.
They'd say, well, do you have a job,? Right. Because that, that, that's what they were saying. Like, you don't have any, you don't have a job, you don't have any money. So when he said that, I said, wait a minute. This is, goes against everything I've been taught for the last 21 years, which is that rich people don't work for money.
And just that he's talked about how rich people acquire assets and like the assets work for them instead of them working for the assets. So I said, whatever this guy's talking about, he's onto something. Absolutely. And I, again, I didn't quite know what to do with that information, but when I read it, I said, I'm going in.
Whatever he's doing, I'm doing that. And that's the mindset that I, I was in. So again, I already knew I was gonna do basketball. But after basketball, I [00:10:00] was gonna figure out how can I take what he's talking about and apply it to my life? 
Blake: And you started putting stuff on YouTube in like 2005. That's pretty early.
What, what kind of, what drew you to that, you 
Dre Baldwin: know, like, yeah. Well, well the first thing was just a simple, it was just a simple necessity. I had this footage on a VHS tape, so, you know, if you give a VHS tape in the sun or drop it or gets in the water, Footage is gone. So when I saw, I'm a, I've always been a big computer geek.
Mm-hmm. , I've always used the internet a lot. So when I it saw, I was on the internet and I saw this new website that said you could put as much footage up here for free as you want. I just got that v h s tape. I got the data transferred onto a data cd and I put that on YouTube. And that wasn't for, I wasn't trying to build a brand.
I wasn't, I wish I could say I was that visionary Blake, but I was not , I was just putting the footage up there just for me. Just to have that footage. Yeah. Somewhere that couldn't get. Yeah. That's the only reason I put it up there. And then people just started finding it. Random people just started finding my footage and they weren't looking for Dre [00:11:00] Baldwin.
They were looking for basketball, and I happened to be doing basketball, and I looked like, I guess when they saw the video, I looked like I knew what I was doing. Yeah. So they just figured, all right, this guy knows more than me, so how about, let me ask him, he can help me. So they were basically going to the internet to crowdsource knowledge, whereas, you know, in our era, We had to figure it out on our own.
Either you know somebody personally who can help you or you're by yourself. Mm-hmm. . Whereas this, this next generation people who are, let's say 10 years younger than me, they could go to the internet and get information from people who they never even met and never would meet. So they had an advantage over my generation.
So when I saw them asking the questions, that immediately told me, and this was an inflection point here, Blake, alright, these people just wanna learn how to play basketball. I know how to, and I can teach them how to play, so why don't I just make more videos? So I just took me. Mind, this is the time before we had video cameras on phones, so you had to have a phone and a camera.
So I took my little hundred dollars camera with me to the G.E.M every day. Yeah, I didn't even have a tripod, as I would just put the camera on the bench next to the basketball court [00:12:00] and just press record. I wasn't even stopping the video or anything. I just let it record the whole workout and then I would just take all the footage and I would just pick little parts that look good and I would put 'em on YouTube.
That's all I did for the first man, three to five years. . I would just randomly take little clips that I thought looked impressive or would be useful for players and I would put that on YouTube whenever I got around to it. Cuz again, there was no money to be made from putting videos on YouTube in 2007.
Right. You're just putting the videos up. Mm-hmm. for what? Totally. Nobody knew what was coming that we have now. Well, 
Blake: I think that looking, you know, even if you aren't looking ahead, it's interesting that whenever I look at those videos, I. So much consistency across the board. And this is something that I noticed across like a lot of top performers and top athletes and entrepreneurs, that anything they do, there's a certain, there's, there's like a level of consistency because that's what it takes to do something correctly.
And I mean, even before we hopped on this call, I was scrolling through. I'm like, I'm like, Dre just uploaded a video [00:13:00] seven hours ago. Like, that's what, or that's what it said on there. I'm like, man, you stay, you stay pretty, pretty nonstop on that. And it seems like it's. It's been going great. I mean, I saw the one video had like 1.1 million, so I guess I'm kind of reflecting on all this work that you've been doing.
But something that I, I wanted to kind of ask about a little bit was whenever you're, you know, whenever you're putting these up, did you start noticing demand and then going to that demand? Is that kind of how that worked? Or, or what was, how did you start developing you, you know, your brand, and what you knew was what the people wanted?
Dre Baldwin: So, with the basketball stuff I was just, I just started putting out whatever I had that I thought would be useful for the players because there was so much. Yeah, I mean, by that point I'm playing at the pro level, so I pretty much anything you could do on a basketball court, I knew how to do it.
So it was just a matter of, or how do I get all this stuff recorded and just start putting this stuff out? So from oh five to about, yeah, about 10 years, I. [00:14:00] coming up with, I was just writing down every idea I had and then just putting them out on video. So I knew, I already knew what the players needed.
Mm-hmm. , and they would kind of ask for stuff at certain times, but most of the time I already had done it. So it was just coming up with different ways of explaining the same stuff over and over again. Yeah. And that's what I was doing with the, with the basketball players. It wasn't so much What they were asking for cuz I was already ahead of them.
Mm-hmm. , I was already 10 steps. You already knew Cause, Yeah, I knew what they needed, but then they knew what they needed. Yeah. So it was just coming up with different ways of giving it to them for the basketball stuff. Now, as far as the stuff post-basketball my audience is stronger when it comes to like, audio and written materials.
This is based on what I'm selling these days. Cause I'm not, I'm not talking to the same audience, so it's a little bit different. But in basketball, all it's just giving them everything that they needed on that specific. That's, 
Blake: that's awesome, man. And I, I was also, whenever you were, were first kind of talking about everything that you've done and your quick bio.
I was thinking about it. And how much were you spending a fair [00:15:00] amount of time in these, in like all over the world then at that season of life? Like, were you hanging out in a different country for like a month or two at a time during that season? 
Dre Baldwin: Yeah. It, it'll be more time than that. So the dang pro basketball season is like the same length as the NBA season, so it starts, and football ends in the spring.
How does, 
Blake: how, how does that kind of shape your worldview? , like what was that doing to your brain at that time? , being it 
Dre Baldwin: places, it was a great experience, but because you get to see different parts of the world that I. otherwise would not have seen, you know, I had never even been on a vacation anywhere, not even in the United States before I start playing pro ball overseas.
Yeah. So I'm in different countries in Europe, I'm in Mexico, I'm even traveling the United States and see places that are based on basketball that otherwise would not have seen. So it just makes you, a well-traveled person. I mean, you've seen different types of, you've seen different parts of the world.
You see different things, you have different experiences. So it kind of just opens your mind up. I mean, I don't. , how else to say it? Cause I can't compare it [00:16:00] to anything else is That's what I know totally. You know. But when I think of someone who hasn't been to a lot of places, I can see how they may not be as kind of as worldly or as open-minded cuz, they haven't seen these places.
Yeah. 
Blake: Did you learn anything else about human nature while you're going out and about seeing, and meeting all these new people out there? 
Dre Baldwin: Well, one thing that I've, I've always said is that Americans are very, we are very arrogant about our culture and how Americans we look at the rest of the world as outsiders, right?
And when we meet people who don't speak fluent English, we might think they're not as smart or as intelligent ent just cause they don't speak English fluently. But in other countries they don't, they don't do that to us. They don't have that as the reverse. So that's one thing that always stood out. Man, 
Blake: I I, that's gotta be a wild time getting to explore and you're like, oh my gosh, I'm going bouncing from country to country.
I wanna skip ahead a little bit to you. You, you talked about 2009 as kind of this big [00:17:00] shift in your life, so That's right. Tell me, tell me a little bit more, about that time, that time in your life, and, what you're kind of thinking about and how that went. 
Dre Baldwin: So I found myself unemployed from basketball.
I was a free agent, so I'm waiting for the phone to ring, waiting for my agent to call me and say, Hey, hey, we have an opportunity for you. I played in a few places, but I wanted my career to keep going. I'm in my mid to eight twenties at this point, and I just asked myself a very important question, which was, how do I combine basketball with making money with having.
Now, that's that third point that made it different than playing pro ball. Cause pro basketball, even though it's, it's a job that few and 1% of people ever have, you're still a contract employee, which means somebody has to approve of you having the job for you to have the job. So I wanted to know how can I get some control over my life to where I was calling the shot instead of somebody else calling.[00:18:00] 
And now I told you already about reading Kiosaki back in the early two thousand. Now, at this point, I had recently read kind of like the Rich Dad Poor Dad for the Digital person, which was Tim Ferris's four Hour Work Week. Mm. Now after I read it because his book was similar principles, but it was for the digital world, his stuff was all based on using the internet.
So I took what I had read from Kiosaki and some of the stuff from Tim and I combined that and I started making my products. I started creating my programs. So the first program I created was a four-hour and 99 cents. Created two of 'em, $4 and 99. , one for dribbling the basketball and one for shooting, a shooting program, and a dribbling program.
$4 99 cents each on one page. Websites. Very, very primitive. H T M L websites. And I just made a video on YouTube about two minutes long, announcing that I had these products and I told people what website to go to to buy them. And I remember waking up the next morning and I had an email to say, congratulations, you made a sale of $4 [00:19:00] and 99 cents.
So when I made that first sale, Yeah, I said, this is what I need to be doing. This is what I'm gonna be doing for the rest of my life. Because I knew that, again, as a professional athlete, those abilities eventually go away. And there's a new wave of athletes who come in to take your spot. Sports are a young person's game, so I knew that if I could take an idea from my head, turn it into a tangible thing, put a price tag on it, and offer it to the world, someone would gimme money.
what we now know is intellectual property. I said I can do this forever. I won't be able to jump 40 inches in the air forever, but I will be able to do this forever. Mm-hmm. use my brain forever. So that's how I knew what I was gonna be doing next. So the thing for me that made it different from many athletes, especially when they're transitioning from sports to.
the rest of my life is that I started doing this in 2009. I didn't stop playing ball till 2015. Cause eventually the phone did ring again. Yeah. But I didn't stop playing ball till 2015. So I had this five, [00:20:00] six-year period where I'm creating products, I'm writing books, I'm building my brand, I'm figuring out my framework, I'm figuring out, I'm figured out that there were people who didn't play basketball who were connecting with my message when I started talking about mindset stuff.
So all of that stuff already had momentum and I already had a lot of these pieces. Somewhat in place. By the time I stopped playing basketball, I wasn't starting at zero, like the day after I stopped playing. I already had a lot of momentum going by that point, and I had an audience. 
Blake: That's incredible. And honestly, that's just It's very, yeah, that's, that's a genius way to do it because I always think about that if you can see that there's an end in sight, it's almost like you can see a clip and then you can see that there's another jump here and you gotta make it to the other side.
You don't wanna walk and then get to the clip and then realize you have to jump one way or another. You wanna get a running start and just makes it that much easier to get to the other side. I know, I, I think that's, that's incredible that you started doing that. How did you start, like, like [00:21:00] you just wrote a book, you know what I mean?
Like sometimes people have a, I'm trying to figure out a better way to put it, but how did you start getting to a place where you're like, you know what, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna write, write a book. Like, was that kind of, was it as simple as that and then he went for it? Or did you have to find a mentor, or what was that?
Dre Baldwin: No, it kind of was as simple as you said. So I've always been a writer. I was a writer more, I was a writer before I was. An athlete as far as a basketball player, my mom's an educator, so she had my sister read and write from a pretty young age. So I was blogging actually before I got on YouTube.
It's just, oh, the videos on YouTube kind of took off. More people knew me from YouTube than from blogging. Yeah, so that's how people came to know me about the basketball videos. But I've always been a writer. I've always been a big writer. So around, my first book came out in 2000, either 10 or 11. And at that time, that's when self-publishing was starting to become ubiquitous.
Mm-hmm. when you could publish your book. So when I found out about that, I said, oh, I don't have to wait for a publishing company [00:22:00] to want me, for me to put a book out. I could just write it and put it out. I said, all right, I'm gonna do that. So I just started writing. So my first book was just me telling my story, just.
basically from when I first started playing basketball up through my college years, because at this time my main audience was just basketball players, ages 13 and 24, who just wanted to learn how to get better at basketball. So I was just telling my story in that book. Now, all these books I've written, that's the only ones where I'm just telling the story.
Every other one is more like Informational self-help business-type thing, but that's the only one that is just a storybook. So that one I just wrote it. I barely even edited it or proofread it or anything. I remember when I went back to do the audio version of that book, it's called Buy A Game about five years later, and I'm reading it to do the audio and I'm like, this writing is terrible.
But the thing is, wait, nobody ever complained about that book. They never complained about the typos or the grammatical errors or anything because the audience was so dialed in. It was such a dialed-in audience at that time that it didn't even matter that the writing wasn't that great, or at least not to my standards by that point.
So that's how I [00:23:00] first started writing. And then as I learned more about self-publishing, I just went and started writing books about mindset, because that's what players were asking me about that. Yes, they wanted to learn how to dribble and shoot and all that, but I already had the programs for that.
Then players just started asking, well, no, why'd. How do you come to the G.E.M every day to work out? How do you get the mindset to do that? Yeah. Or how do you get the confidence to show up and perform in a game the way that you do in practice, there's no pressure in practice, but there's pressure in the game.
How do you get that? I started talking about confidence. The first one, we're gonna be talking about discipline. The second one talks about confidence. Then when players will just ask, well, look, you got cut from your high school team. three times you walked on to play in college, how'd you keep the vision alive?
You could even become a pro athlete. I started talking about mental toughness or then they would ask, well, how'd you get started getting known on the internet? Cuz now being known on the internet was like, a career aspiration for people, right? This is starting to become a thing people wanted to do. So they would start asking me how I get known on the internet.
Cuz, cuz these YouTube videos kind of had me known. So I started talking about the personal initiative or I would get a lot of players asking [00:24:00] how to do. A contract to play overseas. Cause there are a lot of ball players who wanna play overseas. But because it's overseas and most people have never left the country, they have no idea what to do, where to begin, who to talk to, you know?
So I started talking about taking initiative. In other words, being a salesperson, being a go-getter. How do you go and create opportunities for yourself? So those four principles, discipline, confidence, mental toughness, personal, and initiative became the foundation of work on your game. And when I started talking about those things, People who didn't play ball started finding my material and they will reach out and say, Dre, I'm following you.
Not because I'm not trying to learn how to do the the Kobe move. I don't wanna play in the NBA. But the way you break down mindset, the way you explain the mental game, the way you're talking about it, you make it easy to understand and you make it simple to apply. And people just tell me, I just wanna let you know what, some people don't play ball who are listening to your messages.
So that told. . Okay. This is, I, I saw this as an opportunity, Blake, because [00:25:00] I understood that when I stopped going to the basketball court every. . I was no longer gonna be cool to the basketball players like that next wave of players coming up, you're cool to them cuz you're on the court every day like they are.
But if I'm not on the court every day like you see what I'm wearing right now, you ask some 15-year-old ball player about me, he doesn't know who I am. Mm-hmm. cause I'm not doing that anymore. But I said, okay, I can now let me start figuring out how can I connect to these people who don't play basketball because that's gonna be my audience when I get out of this.
Cuz I knew I could foresee that when I stopped playing basketball. You're not that person to them anymore. Like you ask some 16-year-old kid about Michael Jordan, they're like, who? I mean, they know the sneakers, but they don't know Michael Jordan. Right. Yeah. Because he's not doing it every day anymore.
And the same way that 20 years from now, you ask some 15-year-old kid about LeBron, they are gonna know who he is, but he's not the cool guy. Do you know what I'm saying? 
Blake: Yeah. 100%. I, you know, yeah. I'm getting a sense of just, just total fearlessness out of this, you know? It's awesome, man. I. The fact that you're [00:26:00] like, cuz I think about the way people operate sometimes and a lot of times when they see those challenges, they could very easily be like, I guess I gotta go get a day job.
Like, why did you, right? Why do you think you didn't even consider that as an option? You're just like, I'm just gonna look around the corner and plan and get it done. 
Dre Baldwin: You know, great question. That's a great question. Well, first of all, several reasons, a number. , as I already told you, like growing up, all the adults around me had day jobs, none, none of them seemed excited about their day jobs.
So that kind of emotionally scarred me, I guess I, we can say from a day job. I did not wanna have one cuz nobody, nobody seemed excited about their day job. It was like, yeah, it's a necessary evil that when you become a grownup, this is just what you have to do. You just gotta go to work and you know, not like your job.
Complain about your bosses and your coworkers after work. and then you still don't have any money even though you're at work all the time. So that was number one. number two when I went to school. Now I went to college. I have a college degree. I remember sitting in my classes, I have a business degree [00:27:00] and I remember sitting in my classes the last two years because at my, the last two years of college, you're kind of focused on your degree classes, your degree track.
Totally. So it was like all the same students in almost all my classes, the same people. And I remember looking around the classroom and I'm like, these people are all. They all were kind of on the same, in the same mindset. And I was kind of different. I was like, I'm, I don't want to do the same thing that these people are all doing.
Cuz they were all on their way to getting a job, having a good career, and you know, working at some company for the next 40 years and then retiring with a gold watch and I'm like, I don't wanna do that. Like, whatever these people are doing, I don't wanna do it. Yeah. And I was the kind of student in college, I guess you called it.
I was like the c. I mean, I was smart enough to get A's, but I didn't give enough effort to get an A, I didn't give enough effort to get a C. Yeah, I was a C student, which, and I knew that based on my effort in college because that's what, that's what the school system is in America. The school system is set up so that you learn to comply and you know, follow the rules.
And the better you do at [00:28:00] that, the better job you're going to get. And then you go to your job, you do the same thing, you comply, follow the rules, you do that well. You get promoted and you move up, and you worked there for 40 years, but I knew I wasn't that type of person, so I said I don't. getting the same race that my classmates are getting in because they're gonna beat me because I'm not, I don't wanna run this race.
Mm-hmm. . So I knew I was gonna do something different and I was just trying to figure out what it was. So, again, the first thing was basketball. And then when I went to that network marketing meeting based off a, a bulletin board posting, you know, with the little phone number you rip off and call the phone number.
Yeah. That's how I, that's how I got introduced to that. But I'm so glad that I did because when I went to that, these people were name-dropping. Brian Tracy, Napoleon Hill, Jim Rome, Tony Robbins. I said, who are these people? And I started g looking up those books and reading them, and I read Thinking Grow Rich.
I read Rich, that Poor while I was in college. And when I read those books I said, okay, there's a whole class of people out here. Who is doing something different than what everybody else is doing? So whatever they're doing, I'm gonna do that. That's what I, that's [00:29:00] the mindset that I had coming out of college.
Again, c student, I knew I didn't want to go into the normal process. Cause I would've been a very below, I would've been a below-average person in that world based on my, based on my mindset. And then once the internet came around Blake and I saw YouTube where you could. YouTube's first slogan was Broadcast yourself.
I don't know if people remember that. Back in the day, you say broadcast yourself so you can put yourself out there. And then blogging came out. So I was, when I saw blogging, I said, oh, so I can take whatever I'm thinking. I can write it. Publish and the whole world, it could just go out to the whole world for them to see it and then know all the social media apps started coming.
Facebook came and then Twitter came and then you know, later on, Instagram and all that stuff. And I said, well, I could just put myself out to the world and share whatever I'm thinking with the world and I have a direct line of communication to them. I said I'm gonna go for this now, mind you. Right now, mind you, there's no money to be made from this until maybe around 2009 ish.
That's [00:30:00] when they, things started to be monetizable and things like that. But at that point, I'm playing ball. I know basketball's ending, so that's why I'm looking around. I'm looking for the next opportunity. So I read Kiasaki. and then when I read Tim Ferris, I said, okay, there's something here. After I read Tim Ferris, because in Tim Ferris's book, he, again, he's talking about similar principles because a lot of people don't know Tim's background, how he got to write a four hour work week cuz he was running his own business, but he was running himself into the ground because he was working like 70 hour weeks or he was about to be exhausted.
He was like, it has to be an easier way to do this. So he started to utilize it. , all these digital tools that we had, and that's how he came up with those principles. So when I was reading his stuff and I said, all right, he did all this through the internet, and he kind of created this business entity to where he can make money just using tools that are on the internet.
And everything he was talking about was available to anybody. Mm-hmm. . So when I read that, I said, okay, I don't know exactly what I'm gonna do, but I remember telling somebody [00:31:00] even the because at this point I had a little buzz from all these YouTube videos. There's no money being made on YouTube, but I had fans.
And I had this blog, and I could see that people liked the way that I was communicating. They liked the way that I wrote. They liked the way that I spoke and the way I explained things. I said, whatever this is that I have on the internet is gonna be bigger than even what I'm doing in basketball.
I knew that. Over 10 years ago, I knew this was gonna be bigger and I knew it will last longer also. So that's, that was the mentality that I had. So I was just looking for how do I make this work. And the good thing is I had basketball going, so that kind of gave me some space to where I could have some time to figure it out.
And at the same time, I told you I'm a computer geek, so I couldn't, if it's figuring out a bull, I'm gonna figure it out. So I was able to figure it out and that's, you know, how we got here. You. 
Blake: I always wonder about whenever you're on that journey too. I mean, was everybody kind of like, yeah, do your like, I'm like pumped and they got it Because sometimes I know it [00:32:00] can be kind of, it can be isolating whenever you're trying to figure out your own thing.
Mm-hmm. and only you understand that vision and that moment before you start bringing in the right key players with you. I mean, was everybody, or what was your experience like whenever you were kind of telling everybody, Hey, this is my plan, you. 
Dre Baldwin: I wasn't telling anybody. So, I didn't tell anybody. That was my plan.
Nice. I didn't, no, I wasn't telling anybody that. You know, I'm, I'm playing ball, so if you ask anybody, what does Dre do? Or he plays basketball. Yeah. And then there was the, once the YouTube started to pick up some momentum, now it was around that 2009 through 2011 ish. During that period. . Yeah. People stopped cuz it, before that it was, if you were putting content on the internet as, and you were spending a lot of time on that, you were like a loser living in your mom's basement who needed to get a real job.
Yep. Right. But then around that time, from oh nine to about 11, that's when people who had an audience on the internet were starting to be looked at as cool. We [00:33:00] were looked at as pioneers because. . Everybody's starting to do it now. Google buys YouTube, so now they're starting to monetize it and they're like, oh, wait a minute, people could actually make money doing this.
So now everybody's looking at it. Everybody started watching. and then around 12 moving forward, then everybody started doing it. Everybody started creating content. Everybody became a creator. So at that time, people would see me and say, oh, congratulations on all your success, even though it wasn't enough, even that much, much money to be made through putting content out.
But because you had a name, you were somebody. Right? Absolutely. I was making, I was making more money from selling products than I was from. Looked that on YouTube, but people didn't know about the products I was selling. They knew about the YouTube, right? So a lot of times people don't even, they're looking at the wrong thing.
and they're impressed by the thing. That's not even the thing you should be impressed by. But they don't understand what they, they don't know what they don't know. Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah. So that's, it's a lot of pieces that go into it. People who don't know the game that they just watching. Yeah.
Blake: So is that kind of when they, whenever you started being looked at as like a [00:34:00] pioneer on the internet, was that around the time when they asked you to do a TED Talk? What was that? 
Dre Baldwin: What was that kind of. Oh no, no, that that's not where it came from. But I'll tell you where that came from. . So I didn't do my first TED Talk till 2015.
Now people were calling me like, pioneer, and you built the brand and is impressive what you're doing on the internet. That was like 2010. Now the TED Talk came about, this was around 2014, going into. I was, I think it was, I think it was Tim Ferris podcast again, what I'm promoting this guy on your show here,
But he had a, he had a guy named Derek Severs on his show. You familiar with Derek Silvers? I have heard, 
Blake: yeah. I have his his, his book. I'm pretty sure I have his book. 
Dre Baldwin: See? Yeah, he got a, he has a few books. Yeah. So so Derek was on Tim's podcast and you know, Tim's interviews are like three hours, so they're talking and at the end of that interview, Derek was, , well cuz he was talking about how he does speaking gigs and things like that.
And from the audience that I had on the [00:35:00] internet, a lot of the players and just people who are watching me said, Dre, we really like the way that they just liked the way that I was articulate and the way that I could express myself. And you know, being an athlete, I can say this, non-athletes should not say this, but a lot of athletes can't.
talk. They can't speak, they don't know how to express them. They can't really put their words together. But when they heard me talking, they said, Dre, you really can express yourself. Well, you, you sound like a, you sound like a philosopher. You sound like a college professor. Right. So I figured maybe I can go into professional speaking.
Mm-hmm. , but I didn't know anything about it. I didn't even know it was a, A thing. I didn't know people would pay you money to stand on the stage for an hour and just talk. But when I found out about it, I said, maybe I'll do that. So I hear Derek Sivers, he's being interviewed, and he says he does speak in gigs and he gets paid for them.
And then at the end of his interview he said, if anybody wants to reach out to me and ask a question, he said, I read every email I get, I get thousands of emails, but I actually read them all. So I emailed. and he actually wrote me back and he said, well, look, if you wanna get into professional, and I gave him a little bit of background on myself.
Mm-hmm. , he said, well, if you [00:36:00] wanna get into speaking, he said, the best way you can start is maybe try to give a TED Talk. Go to the TED website and look up your local area and see if there's a talk in your area, and then you can apply. And I said, all right, I'll give it a shot. And he said, all right, cool.
And I went and looked up TED Talks in my area. I live in South Florida and. I just applied. And the thing about a lot of people think that getting to Ted Talk is about you being famous or known or anything like that. No. The the key point to landing a TED Talk is there's an application page. It's one page.
They're gonna ask you what's the big idea. What is it about? Why are you qualified to speak about it? And you know, just tell, give us a little bit about it. That page is what determines whether you get booked or you don't. So I, you have to sell yourself on a one page written application. That's how you get it or don't get it.
Damn, so dang, I know how to sell myself. Yeah. That's something that I've always been good at. I know how to sell myself. That's how I got on playing ball, and that's how I got on the internet and that's how I got on the TED stage and all four of my Ted Talk. None of them was somebody calling me [00:37:00] and saying, Hey Dre, we want you to come speak on our stage zero.
All four of them was me going to them and selling myself, and that's how I got on the stage. That's incredible. 
Blake: And that's so cool. I didn't know about the TED Talk process either, like so 
Dre Baldwin: Yeah, a lot of people don't know that. No, that's, 
Blake: that's really cool. It's interesting to think about, you know, how many times in life you just gotta go do it if you want it.
That's right. You know, , it's kind of funny. But a lot of people, a lot of people don't. I've been, while we've been talking, I've been kind of reflecting on your, your four kind of tenets or your, that created the foundation of everything you've been talking about. Confidence, you know mental toughness.
I, I wanna hear a little bit about like, how did you discover these? Because was this just something where you were like, you just, you just knew it? Or like, were there life experiences that happened that led you through to figure out each of these individually? , how did they how'd 
Dre Baldwin: you form those?
Good question. So, and they go in order. So the first one is discipline [00:38:00] and where the discipline comes from. This one, all the other three, I would say I had to develop them over time, but the discipline one, I have to give credit to my upbringing. I give credit to my parents. My parents are not athletes. No, I'm six feet, four inches tall.
My dad's like, Eight. My mom's five seven, so they're not athletes. All right? And definitely not basketball players, but they were all about, you know respect, respecting authority, do your chores, do your homework, et cetera, et cetera. No, no video games on school days. You know, you can't play, you gonna go outside on the weekends, that kind of stuff.
So that at home, home training. I got that from my parents. And then when I got to the basketball court, I just took that discipline that I learned at home. Cause that's the only thing that I knew. Yeah, I took that with me to basketball, so nobody taught me how to play ball. I just kept going to the court every day and just trying stuff until things started working.
So that's where the discipline part comes from. The confidence part. You know, as a kid, as a super young kid, I wasn't always very confident. The many times I didn't have confidence. Do you [00:39:00] remember? back in the nineties used to be a TV show called Family Matters. Of course. And there was a, yeah. And the main character was Steve Urkel.
Mm-hmm. Glasses. So I used to wear, yes. So I wear contact lenses, but I used to wear glasses. All right. I used to wear the bifocals. So now n nowaday nerds are cool, right? But back then nerves were not cool. Right? Nerves got laughed at right back in the nineties. So I used to wear those glasses and I didn't have that confidence back then.
So, because I know what it feels like to not have any confidence, and I know what it feels like to be fully. I can help anybody with confidence cuz I've seen the entire range. So the confidence really came in for me, first of all, as I started to get more success as an athlete and then also just as I, you know, just grew into myself and mm-hmm.
my speaking skills started to become more obvious. And of course, being an athlete on a college campus, you know, everybody knows who you are. You, especially on the basketball team, there's only 12 of us. Mm-hmm. . So that, that confidence started to build along with my ability to communicate. . Then the mental toughness was just understanding that things are not always gonna work out.
Even when you [00:40:00] have, you know, the best laid plans of mice and men, you know, often go awry. Mm-hmm. . Right? Things don't always go the way you think they're gonna go. And this was, again, I only played one year high school ball. Nobody would've suggested to me to try to play in college. Then playing in college at the D three level, no one would've.
tried to play pro, and then I actually ended up making it happen. So again, I was kind of at the bottom where anybody would've said, okay, nobody would've bet money on me becoming a pro athlete unless they're like a, in a a sophisticated investor who understands betting at the bottom right , but betting on the valley.
So you might win, but nobody would've bet on that. And then the fact that I was able to make it happen, . Now, I had the credibility to say to somebody, look, all right, this is where I was at. All right, so I can tell you about what it means to be at the bottom of something looking up, and then to keep working on it and go ahead and make it happen.
So this is the things, those things, the discipline part, the confidence and mental toughness. All of those really came from when I was making a basketball material [00:41:00] because the ball players. I mean, you might think that the, the most introspective questions would come from some sophisticated adult who's in the middle of their career, but actually it was coming from these 13 to 24 year olds because when they saw my, they saw what I was doing on the court, they could see this guy clearly, we can play, he's playing at the pro level.
But then when they found out my background, One year high school walked on at a D three college. They know what D three college means. Like a lot of adults don't know what that means. They know what it means. They know what it means to play one year. They know what it means to sit on the bench. So when they saw me as this successful guy in basketball, but then they found out the background, they said, wait a minute, how'd you do that?
Because many of them could relate to me because a bunch of them were sitting on the bench in high school. A bunch of them were getting cut from their team. A bunch of them were. out of high school, not even enrolled in college, but wondering if they could still have a shot at making a pro. So they saw me and they said, all right, this guy.
I can relate to him. Like you could be a fan of LeBron and Steph Curry, but you can't relate to LeBron and Steph Curry. No. Cause you weren't that, right? Yeah. But you can [00:42:00] relate to me. So they would ask me stuff like, man what drives you to keep coming to the G.E.M every day to work out, even though there were times when you didn't even know what you're working out for.
right? And they would say, well, how do you get the confidence to show up and perform at that? Think about that. High school sports tryouts are like one day. All right, so you practice all year for that one day. If you have a bad day that one day, it doesn't matter what you did all year to get ready for it, you gotta wait a whole other year to do it again.
So how do you get that confidence to perform right there in that moment? Because they knew about the exposure camp. Exposure camp is like a job fair for athletes. For the listeners who don't know, you pay money to go to this event. You get basically about two or three days. and there's a bunch of people watching who can make or break your career.
And if you play well during that two or three days, you can take off. You play terribly. Nobody cares what you did to get ready for it. So it is like a casting call. But Pete, so again, what they knew about that, they knew that that's what I did to get on. Dang. So they would ask about confidence. Then, and also [00:43:00] just the way that I was, I would communicate and then the mental toughness.
I mean, the whole story. All right. How'd you, because players would say to me, well, I just got cut from my high school team today, Dre. I would get comments on YouTube. I just got cut from my team today. All right. Can you tell me something? Why should, should I keep going? Should I quit? I would get parents, a lot of parents, a lot of mothers reaching out to me, Hey, d.
My son watches your videos on YouTube all the time. I see, I see it. See you over his shoulder. And I'm looking at him on a computer. He's got cut from his team today and he's feeling terrible. I don't know what to say to him. This is a mother, she doesn't know anything about sports. She doesn't know what to say.
And I would get these messages from them all the time. And then I would go make a video kind of to speak to all of those players. Cause every. Now more players get cut than make the team right. So, yeah, yeah, yeah. So then when they got cut, the first thing they would do, they can't go to their mom, their mom doesn't know anything about basketball.
What is she gonna say? Right. They would go to YouTube, right? Yeah. They would go to YouTube and they would watch me and I would give them the message that they needed to hear. [00:44:00] And even to this day wait, I've had young men, several young men come to me and say, Dre, look, I grew up without my father. I didn't have any brothers.
You were like the closest thing to a father figure. I. Oh my God. Watching you on YouTube. Like the things that you were saying and you taught me things cuz I would make these videos called The Weekly Motivation every Monday. And that was the mindset piece. Those, I actually should have talked about this earlier.
Those videos kind of became the foundation of what I have now because that was, . I was talking to the athletes, but it wasn't a, it wasn't a sports topic, it was a mindset topic. So that's where the discipline confidence, mental toughness initiative, I was talking about those things every Monday and like a little selfie video.
So when I made those people who didn't play balls started finding me and they would say, look, I know you're talking to athletes, but what you're saying is for anybody, that's how I knew what I was gonna do next from the weekly motivations. So those players, They were the ones really who helped lay the foundation for work on your game because they would ask me the questions That led to me [00:45:00] saying what I was saying that led to, you know, what we have now.
That became the foundation of it. So, and then the initiative part was just go do something. So getting on YouTube, When nobody told me to get on YouTube, putting my money down to go to that exposure camp, that was, I went to that exposure camp in 2005. That was my last $250 in cash. Right. I didn't have a bank account or a credit card.
I paid them in cash. Can you imagine giving somebody $250 in cash today? And some people don't even take cash. Right. ? Yeah. $250 in cash at the door. Right in Orlando. We drove from Philly to Orlando. 15 hours. Damn. Just to play in that exposure camp. And I had two days to either make or break. Alright. Then it was just even trying to play pro basketball.
You came from a D three college you didn't kill it at the D three, but you're gonna try to play pro basketball. Why? Right? Who even has that idea? Who does that? Right. So all these times where I took initiative, and this is why I became an entrepreneur, because again, when I read Kiasaki and I read Tim Ferris, I said, all right, these guys are talking about the way that I think [00:46:00] I.
Naturally thought like that, and what they were saying said, okay. It validated the way that I was thinking, okay, there are people out here who think like this. It's just not. . It's not the majority of people. It's not these people. I was in college in class with, it's not them, it's not my professors. It's these people over here in these books over here.
So this is why I'm, I'm so thankful that my mother, you know, as an educator, had me reading because she gave me that, that reading bug. And because I'm such a big reader, I'm a big writer, right? So all these pieces come together and it's, 
Blake: you know, when you, when you look at that, I, it's so cool to see that improvement is always.
Residual, you know, it's mm-hmm. , it, it's, it's just that little tiny percent day by day that's almost invisible. And I, it seems, sounds like you gave a lot of hope to a lot of people out there. I mean, that's gotta give you mm-hmm. , that's gotta give you so much, so much drive to keep, keep doing more. I mean, at what point when you were looking at all of this and reaching people all over the [00:47:00] place, did you ever have that kind of moment where you.
Man, I think I've, I think I've really got something here like that moment where you got to just relax for maybe two seconds, maybe not two seconds even, but just look at it and go, man, I think I've, I've, I'm getting the traction that I, I want out of this. 
Dre Baldwin: Yeah, that was probably around oh nine. That was 2009.
So that's when again, my audience slowly built on YouTube cuz I wasn't doing it. I was doing it sporadically whenever I felt like making a video. Cuz again, there was no, I wasn't getting anything from it except, yeah, no thanks from commentators. But then when Google purchased YouTube and they started sending me little emails, Hey, well monetize your video.
You'll make some money off this. I said, all right, I'm gonna put a video out every day. If I can make money on every video, why not make a video every day? So that's when , I started putting 'em out every day. And then I actually saw, I remember I got the first like the deposit, the ad cente deposit from YouTube for a hundred dollars, because the threshold is a hundred dollars, right?
Yeah. So you gotta make at least a hundred dollars to get the money. and they sent me a hundred dollars. I said, [00:48:00] oh, okay. If I can keep doing this, all right, maybe I can make a thousand. Like, let's see. And I just kept doing it. And yeah, at that point that's when I said, okay, let's, let's just keep going with this.
But I knew I didn't wanna just do that because YouTube is still getting damn near half the money. So how can I make somewhere I got control over it. Totally. Yeah. 
Blake: And finding that new audience do, do you see a lot of overlap with. , you know, motivated and, and what helped out, I guess all of the, all the athletes is, it's similar to what's helping out a lot of the entrepreneurs 
Dre Baldwin: now.
Ooh, that's a good question. Now, the mindset piece, yes, they do need it. The difference is nowadays with, with entrepreneurs, just with adults, period, is that they're, you gotta peel back a little bit more to kind of get to what they really need. A 13 to 24 year old, you could kind of, they'll tell you right there off top on the surface what it is.
Yeah. But with a lot of adults, you kind of, we got all these years. Of stuff in us that you gotta kind of peel through to get, to get [00:49:00] to what they really need. And often people think they need one thing and they actually need another thing. And yeah, so it's a little bit different with, it is a little bit different with adults and that you gotta kind of get through, you gotta get through their shells.
Whereas a teenager doesn't have as hard of the show. They still have one, but not, not nearly as built up as an. . Okay. 
Blake: Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. And do you see, across your, across your clients, what's the most common of your, you know, tenants that they're, they need the most help in? Is there a most common one or is it just all 
Dre Baldwin: over the place?
It's mental toughness. Mental toughness. There's always, always mental toughness. Yes. It's dealing with the inevitable setbacks. Now, the one thing I will say with grownups is that the setback. have much more impact than with a kid. The kid doesn't make the high school team, and to them that's their whole world.
But is it really a big deal? Not really, but adults we're talking about, you know, business deals. You're talking about losing the contract, you're talking about a [00:50:00] job offer. Talking about making a decision. Do I take this job, not take this job getting a divorce, you know, all these kind of things with adults is much more.
much more gravity to these situations and how do I deal with them? That's a big thing with adults. And also if we're talking about as an entrepreneur, you're selling things, mindset is harder to sell because it's not tangible. Right. So, sure. When I am, I. Also help people with business stuff, right? But you gotta find your, you gotta find your niche.
You gotta find your zone, you know? Or do you want to help people with things that can help them make money? Now that might be a person who hasn't made that much money yet. Now can they afford to pay you? Right? So now it is like these, you gotta find that. You gotta find that sweet spot of who are the type of people you wanna help and how do you wanna help them, and do they want your help Also, all of those things.
You gotta find that spot, that zone. I was 
Blake: gonna ask about that. Yeah. People get pretty. Sounds like people get pretty real with you in these conversations. Like you get to, you get to [00:51:00] actually know, you get to really know a lot of these people. I mean, do you ever come across people that aren't very coachable and, and if somebody's not very coachable, do you, do you, do you tend to challenge what's kind of your process?
Do you have any advice for somebody that's kind of in that, cuz I don't know, it seems like some people maybe either lack self-awareness to know. Dang. Or, or they have, they're dealing with their ego or Yeah. How do you handle some of that when you 
Dre Baldwin: come across it? Yeah. Well, somebody's not coachable. They never become a client.
So Cool. They had coachable. That's how I would us to even get that far. Yeah. Yeah. If they're not coachable, then we're not even gonna get to the point that I can coach them because they're not even gonna be open to the conversation. Mm-hmm. , hands down, 
Blake: Drake. Thank you so much for hopping on this podcast, man.
I, I have loved getting to learn about your story. And I usually like to ask just a couple of common questions at the end to kind of wrap up here. So I, I would wanna know what is one of, do you have any myths that you would dispel around, like coaching and [00:52:00] mindset that you think are some commonly held beliefs that, that you would say, maybe that's something you, you shouldn't, you shouldn't take as a truth 
Dre Baldwin: necessarily.
Yeah, I got about 20, but I'm not gonna give 'em all to you . So we'll talk after. Yeah. One thing I'll tell you about coaching is that the, the best coaches had the best players. And this came from John Wooden, legendary coach of U C a. And he won like 10 championships. And someone once said to him, coach, how did you become so good?
How'd you become such an amazing coach? And he said, well, easy. He had the best players and he was kind of being tongue in cheek, but he was also being serious. and what that has to do with for all the listeners here who are actual, you know, coaches, not sports coaches, but coaches, Your coaching business is reflective of the type of clients that you decide to take on.
Now, you take on Bumby clients, you're gonna have a bumby coaching practice cuz they're not gonna do anything. They're not going to implement what you tell them and you are gonna look bad because you took on a bad client. You're the best coaches are the people who take on the best clients. And the thing is, a lot of [00:53:00] coaches probably don't wanna admit this out loud, but the best coaches have clients who are going to do the work and gonna be successful.
All right. They just happened to, they just happened to use you as a conduit for their success, but you didn't make them successful. Like my best clients are not people who I made successes. You can't make anybody be a success. It's people are gonna be successful anyways. Like Phil Jackson didn't make Michael Jordan a success.
Michael Jordan would've been the guy no matter who was coaching. Yep. Right, because Michael Jordan's, Michael Jordan Kobe Bryant's, Kobe Bryant. So the best coaches have the best players. So all you coaches out there that this may be a bruise to your ego, but it's, it's not you that makes those clients so great.
It's, they're good clients already. You just get the, you just get to help them get to where they want to get to. So that's one that I would give you, and I'll give you one more on the mindset side, is there's no such thing as too much confidence. and a lot of people think that having too much confidence may be a problem.
I will hear this from athletes all the time, and even even non-athlete people. Well, Dre yeah, I wanna be confident, but not [00:54:00] too confident because then people might think I'm arrogant or cocky or I might turn people off. Listen. How, how many times have you gotten in trouble in life from being too confident?
I usually ask that question. Nobody can answer. People just laugh, right? , I ask the audience that question. People just laugh in spite of themselves because they can't even think of a time that's ever happened. But you could tell me plenty of times where you didn't have enough confidence and you blew an opportunity, or you just didn't do something where you saw a chance to do it.
But people are so worried about being too confident. It's like a person who's never lifted weight before saying, well, hey, I do wanna work out, but I want to get too bulky. Like, wait a minute. Let's, let's, first of all, let's make sure you know how to get to the G.E.M like too. Never worry about you having too many muscles.
Yeah, , let's, we'll worry about you having too many muscles after you actually come to the G.E.M a few times. Yeah. So too much confidence is not a problem. And if people could just try having too much confidence, see what it does for you, you might think differently. 
Blake: I love that that is that's some, those are some great myths to dispel.
And for anybody that, cuz you, you've mentioned it a few [00:55:00] times, there are not that many people that have that mindset. There's the majority thinks in that kind of similar mindset where they're like, yep, I'm gonna go and get my job. You know, the necessary evil that you kind of talked. . What about, so for people that want to do life the way that you do, do you have any kind of advice for them if they're, if they're, you know, on that journey right now?
Dre Baldwin: Yeah. The great thing for people today, I mean, 2023, is that the tools are obvious and available and open and they're kind of getting pushed on you nowadays. Whereas 10 years ago, you had to be looking for these things. You had to really take initiative. Nowadays, you just gotta like look around and they're gonna get thrown in your face.
So I would say first of all, you gotta get a real world educat. Not in American educational system education, but a real world education. Meaning you need to invest in yourself and learn from people who are actually out here playing the entrepreneurial game. So that means read their books, listen to their podcast, listen to the interviews of [00:56:00] people who are interviewing people who are out there in the game, and you're gonna pick up those jewels.
Get their courses, go to their conferences, invest in the conferences. I would definitely suggest to someone who's trying to get into an entrepreneurial game, you should be going to two or three conferences every year in. and physically, and it's not even about the people speaking from the stage. It is about meeting the other people in the room cuz you're gonna be in a room full of people who are all out there hustling, playing the game.
And those are the people who you need to be around because there are so many people. We are a small percentage of people. We are the entrepreneurs who are actually in the game. We are not the major. and you are gonna go back home and you're gonna be around a bunch of people who are not in that majority.
You gotta make sure you stay connected to the people who are in there and get that circle. You gotta have that association cuz we all know the law of association become the average of the people you spend the most time with. So you gotta be connecting with those people who are actually in the game and playing it actively so that your mind can stay in the right space even though you're facing setbacks, even though things are not working, and even though you're surrounded by other [00:57:00] people who are not in that game.
So that's the most important. 
Blake: Dre, I am pumped up man. I am pumped up. I, I so appreciate your time today and where can people find out more about you? Tell me, is there any kind of, any kind of thing people should be checking 
Dre Baldwin: out right now? All right, perfect. So I have an event actually coming up February 3rd and fourth here in Miami.
It is called Work On Your Game Live. So that's my live in-person event. Two full days. We're gonna be going over the, everything we talked about here, mindset, strategy, systems, execution. Two full days in Miami, Florida. You can get your ticket at work on your game dot. Live l i v e work on your game dot lives, or you get your tickets to that event, two full days.
I'll be teaching both days. We'll give you coffee, donuts, and all of that. It's gonna be in a beautiful location down here in South Florida's 80 degrees today. Amazing. No better place to be. All right. 
Blake: Y you, you, you heard it here, you gotta go check it out. That sounds amazing. Thanks again. Thank you everybody for tuning in and please remember to subscribe and check out our Instagram at [00:58:00] gem Series podcast.
Drake, thank you again. This has been the G.E.M series.
Thank you for joining us on this episode of The G.E.M Series, the podcast for anybody dedicated to investing in themselves. If you'd like to see the resources mentioned in this episode, learn more about what we are up to at rocket level or come over and join our team, just click on the links below. Until next time, this is Blake Chapman and remember to be awesome and do awesome things.