80. Dre Baldwin︱Unlocking Success through Communication, Content Creation, and Marketing

Unlock the secrets to maximizing your potential with our special guest, Dre Baldwin, a former Professional Basketball player turned entrepreneur, coach, and speaker. How do skills like communication, energy, and salesmanship multiply your success? Dre takes us through his unique journey from the basketball court to the boardroom, highlighting why mastering the art of selling matters more than just doing. Learn his top strategies for content creation, busting myths about video length, and standing out in a saturated market.

Ever struggled with balancing new projects while maintaining quality? We tackle this head-on, discussing how to overcome perfectionism and streamline your content creation process. Whether you're podcasting or posting on social media, Dre and I share actionable tips to focus on quality content over technical perfection. Plus, we explore the differences in podcast production approaches and how to create engaging material that resonates with your audience despite minor imperfections.

From effective communication to savvy marketing strategies, this episode is packed with insights on transforming your intellectual property into various valuable formats. Discover how to turn a single idea into keynote speeches, mastermind groups, and more, all while keeping your audience engaged. We also dive into the critical role of physical fitness in professional success and the rising trend of the coaching industry. 

✂️ Discover the secret to beating perfectionism and making content creation easier
🎧 Why quality content keeps listeners hooked, no matter how long it is
📈 Unlock the marketing strategies that will skyrocket your audience reach
🤝 The powerful role of audience relationships in marketing success
🚀 How confidence and smart marketing can make you stand out in any crowded market

📚Claim Dre’s offer to get your free book The Third Day: https://www.thirddaybook.com/

Connect with Dre:
https://www.workonyourgameuniversity.com/
http://Twitter.com/DreAllDay
http://Instagram.com/DreBaldwin
http://YouTube.c

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Chapters

• 0:00 Maximizing Skills for Success
• 5:03 Perfectionism in Podcasting and Content Creation
• 11:55 Creating Content Strategy and Efficiency
• 18:51 Effective Communication and Content Packaging
• 31:15 Marketing and Content Strategy for Success
• 42:50 Mastering the Art of Interviewing
• 54:16 Building Success Through Marketing Strategies
• 1:00:27 Engaging in Disagreement on Social Media
• 1:05:36 Nurturing Business Acumen and Entreprenuership
• 1:13:25 The Rise of Coaching Industry
• 1:21:37 Cracking the Code to Success
• 1:25:06 Mastering the Art of Marketing
• 1:31:54 Mastering Force Multipliers in Business
• 1:39:12 Importance of Physical Fitness for Success

Transcript

Dre: 0:00

Force multipliers are skills and abilities and outcomes that, when they happen, they make everything else that you have better. They basically multiply all your abilities. So we talked earlier about communication, conversational skills, conversational skills, are a force multiplier because if you get better at communicating, it makes everything else you do better. There's no downside to getting better at communicating. Building relationships is a force multiplier. If you know more people who are about something and they like you, it only makes everything else you do better. There's no downside to it. And just having energy, confidence those are force multipliers.

Dre: 0:35

Your ability to sell is a force multiplier. What I would tell people is think about that doing the thing versus selling the thing. And it's really important, especially as you get into the professional world where money is being exchanged, that your ability to sell the thing is more important than your ability to do the thing, because we've all seen people who might not even be that good at doing, but they're good at selling, so they get opportunity. So learning how to sell your stuff and sell yourself is a force multiplier skill that can help you move forward a lot faster than just getting better at doing it.

Klara: 1:06

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Grand Slam Journey podcast, where we discuss the Grand Slam journey of our lives sports, life after sports, and growing our skills and leadership in whatever we decide to put our minds into For me personally, areas of business and technology, and for my guest today, dre Baldwin entrepreneurship, coaching and speaking. Dre Baldwin had spent nine years as a professional basketball player. He's the author of 31 books. He had pioneered athlete workout videos in 2006 when YouTube started. He's also a four-time TEDx speaker.

Klara: 1:47

I had to take a little bit of break from podcasting because I had started a new role, and new beginnings typically require much more time, effort and focus, and I'm restarting where I finished. This conversation is a continuation of my previous episode. Dre and I dive deeper into perfectionism, the art of content creation, and we discuss the secret sauce behind podcast fame. We debunk some myths, such as shorter videos are always better, arguing that gripping content tramps length every time. We discuss behind the scenes of editing, interview styles and the magic of strategic marketing. Dre shares some more insights from Division III basketball player to professional baller to becoming a thriving entrepreneur. We talk about the importance of confidence, seizing opportunities and standing out in a crowded field. I hope you enjoy the lesson. If you do, please consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, spotify or any other podcasting platform.

Klara: 2:54

This conversation is also available in video on the Grand Slam Journey YouTube channel. This is your host, klara Yegoshova. Thank you for tuning in and now I bring you Dre Baldwin. Hello Dre, welcome to the Grand Slam Journey podcast for our conversation number two, and happy July 5th. How was your 4th of July?

Dre: 3:15

Hey, clara, thank you for having me on again Excited for this conversation. 4th of July was great. I was in South Florida, so it was hot and humid and sunny as usual. Sometimes it rains, but it didn't rain yesterday and same thing today, so I like it.

Klara: 3:29

I guess steady forecast for the summer doesn't vary that much. We get it for about nine months, not just the summer, that's true, and the winter in Florida, I think, is the best time in Florida. I always enjoy traveling there. December, january, I think, is the most time in Florida. I always enjoy traveling there. December, january I think it's the most popular months for people to come in warm up from the winter.

Dre: 3:51

Yeah, I mean, it's a little bit cooler, but still sunny, still warm. That's why I'm here.

Klara: 3:56

Nice, and so we're building up on our previous conversation. Thank you for cleaning time. I had a lot of fun talking to you about your nine-year basketball professional career, being author of 31 books and pioneer of athlete workouts. You started in 2006 on YouTube, so we talked just about that as well. As four-time TEDx speaker, I'm curious where this conversation takes us. We could build on collapsing time frame, which is something we have ended with during last conversation. I keep pondering about and overcoming perfectionism. It's still something I personally struggle with, and I think a lot of people do, but let's see where it goes and, before we dive in, anything else you want to add to the intro, dre, that we haven't mentioned in the previous conversation, or I didn't mention now.

Dre: 4:47

No, it sounds good. Hopefully I can live up to it. Hopefully I did the first time around.

Klara: 4:51

I'm sure. Yeah, it will be fun. It was for me, so hopefully it translates to the listeners. So curious collapsing timeframes is something we ended up with during our last conversation ended up with during our last conversation. I've been personally thinking about it quite a bit and it relates a lot to my podcast, as now I started a new job which requires much more time and effort, especially at the beginning, and one of the things personally I'm going to share that I haven't gotten over is editing, which I became better at. But I have this focus I realized of perfectionism, where I have to listen to every single conversation and kind of go through before I launch it. And I know you produce a lot of content, so I'm even curious, if you had this at the beginning, how you overcame it and how do you approach it now with even your huge amount of content creation.

Dre: 5:43

Good question. So a couple of things. We have different types of content. So my show is a solo show. Like I'm looking at my, I'm going to record something today. So I know when I'm recording that there's not that much that needs to be edited because I'm the one who did all the talking.

Dre: 6:00

But you don't have control over what I do on your show, so you don't have control over if I sneeze or I say something and say, hey, I want to go back over that, or I don't like the answer I gave, or something that you want to edit out. You don't control the other person and every time you bring another person into any system, you add another variable which leads to more work. This is just acid complexity of any system when you add people. So for your show it's a little bit different. Ideally, of course, you will just be able to record it all the way through and just put it out as it is, and hopefully, if your guests are polished and you as well, then you don't have to do too much editing. So a couple of things you could do is you could just say, hey, I'm just going to put it out as it is and we'll just put it out as it goes. Hopefully there's no. If there's a big like screw up somewhere, then you can go and edit that out. You can just take a mark like hey, 24 minutes, we got to fix that. But other than that you can just put it out like that.

Dre: 6:52

Other thing you can do is have somebody else do it. You don't have to do the editing yourself, like I personally. Even if I had an interview show let's say I was doing interviews every day and I wanted to put it out every day I would not do the editing myself, because editing is just not in my zone of genius. I would focus on doing what I do best, which would be the conversation, and then I would hand that task off to something or someone else. I'm sure the next couple of years there'll probably be some artificial intelligence software that can edit conversations for us just as well as a human does. I don't think it's quite there yet, but I think it's coming. So that's what I would do if I was in your situation, doing your type of show, and overall, even if I did interview a person like a long form interview, for the most part I'm just going to put it out as it happened. I don't want to have to make too many edits to a conversation because that again is a veryconsuming task.

Klara: 7:46

And you touched base on something I've been pondering about. We talked a little bit about the differences of men and women even during our last conversation, and my view and observation is that, on average, men are actually much better in this more spontaneous conversation and launching things, as is, I find, more women, even podcasters and the podcasters I listen to have a tendency to more over edit and sound way too polished, which I've been struggling with myself from the beginning. I've gotten better. I'm a work in progress, like everybody else is a work in progress, but what's your view on it? Are you seeing it as well in your profession or when you're coaching businesses on growth and some of the differences between the on average perfectionism for men versus women?

Dre: 8:43

Interesting question. I have found it actually a pretty even split between both when it comes to the perfectionism, if you want to call it that, or just making sure that it looks or feels a certain way. I see with. I find that with podcasters, for example, I do a good amount of media appearances that both men and women will have their, their.

Dre: 9:07

Many of them will have their whole process of they want to have a conversation before we record and then, when it's recording, they have this whole thing and they tell me all the ways that they like to do it and how they start and stop, and I'm going to do the intro beforehand and I'm men do it just as much as women do it, but I don't find that it's predominantly women doing one thing and predominantly men doing another thing.

Dre: 9:28

I think, specifically because of the podcasting space, which is getting bigger and bigger and there are more people consuming podcasts, more people are just putting more thought into how they're doing it, how they're setting it up, what it's sounding like if they're doing video, what it looks like, making sure it gets to the right audience, et cetera.

Dre: 9:47

I think people are just putting more, I guess to say, thoughts and more resources into trying to make the best show that they can possibly make, although, despite all of that, I think the bottom line for any type of content out there is, as has always been, the quality of the content is the king. So you can have the best production in the world and come up with this system and process that you got from some conference that you went to. If your content sucks and it doesn't matter, and the quality of the content is always going to be the main thing, and that's something that I'm known from the very beginning. When I first started putting out content, I didn't have anyone editing on my behalf and I knew that my recording and editing skills were very average.

Dre: 10:27

They were less than average, but I still had a significant audience, significant size audience, because of the quality of what I was doing and who I was giving it to. They wanted it and I was giving them exactly what they needed. So my stuff didn't have to be perfectly polished and it wasn't but I knew what I was talking about. When I started talking or started demonstrating, like on basketball, for example, I really knew my stuff and when people saw that that was all they needed, how did you uncover?

Klara: 10:52

because right now when I look at podcasters, they always coach. Well, you got to find your audience or really any influencers. You're going to find your topics that you're expert in and you sort of end up serving that message to that audience too, so they know what they listen to, what to go for guidance to you for. Did you have that clarity from the beginning when you started your YouTube channel, or was it a little bit of serendipity, maybe luck, that you said you know, I'm doing this, I'm going to record it? As you mentioned in the previous conversation, the YouTube was just starting, so maybe there wasn't as much competition back as you caught it quite early on and it seemed like you were able to hit a success from the beginning, or how much refinement you had to do to the message at the beginning.

Dre: 11:40

Combination of both. So when I first got on YouTube, clara, of course YouTube was pretty new, so it wasn't that many people publishing and also weren't that many people watching at first, because not many people were going to the Internet to get material. That was a newer thing. But I was putting material out because I only had one angle. So it's not like I was thinking OK, here are 27 different things I can do, let's find the one that works.

Dre: 12:03

It was I'm playing basketball every day. I go to the gym every day. I put a video up there. Really, as I think we talked about this in the first conversation, it was just a video that I had. I just put it on YouTube just so it could be online, not because I thought a bunch of people would come watch it, because nobody knew who I was anyway. But once I saw people were watching it, I realized well, I go to the gym every day anyway. Why don't I just take the stuff that I do in the gym and put it on YouTube? I can get a little bit of attention from it. We all have egos, so let me get a little bit of attention. I wasn't thinking business, I wasn't thinking being a brand, I wasn't thinking influencer, we weren't even using those phrases back then so I was just putting the material out and then, once I saw that the players liked it and they were getting a benefit from it, that's why I kept doing it.

Dre: 12:45

And as far as the things that I talk about, once I started doing more like talking videos and talking about mindset and my approach and things that might have some people agree or disagree, more polarizing material. I wasn't doing it because I was looking for an audience. I was just putting out what I was putting out. I wasn't doing it as a. It was not like I was an online persona.

Dre: 13:08

So the stuff that I say online, anybody who looks up my stuff or reads any of my stuff, that's the same thing I would say to you if there were no cameras. Like, I'm not doing it for the internet. This is just the way I am, just the way I talk and the things that I think, whatever I believe or whatever perspective that I had. And I do it the opposite way, clara, from kind of how you were framing it there is that I'm going to put my message out as it is and I want the people who resonate with the message to find me, rather than me putting the messages out, trying to find the people who agree with it. I'm going to put it out and the people who agree, they come over to my world. So that's my approach, and still is my approach to this day.

Klara: 13:42

And you produce a big amount of content. Some of the videos that I've been following you for a while it's even you take every single minute of the day and try to see how you can add some effectiveness and efficiency. I know it seems like you're driving, maybe from the office to home and you're in a car and just talking out loud, so you can take that time to get your mind out to people as you're driving, with some ideas. Is that totally spontaneous or how much do you plan on which days you record what or how does that message sound? Obviously, you've been doing it for several years, so I'm sure you get practice and you get much better from, let's say, day one when you started to now. But what does that process look like for you currently?

Dre: 14:29

When I first started putting material out, say for basketball, I would just go to the gym and just try to think of something. And then when I got the idea probably around so I first started about 2005, about 2009, which is when I finally got or I first got monetization on YouTube. That was right. When YouTube first started letting you make ad revenue from videos, I decided I was going to put a video out every day. The challenge was I knew I couldn't just come up with a new idea every time I came to the gym. So I said let me start doing the work ahead of time, let me do my homework and start writing down all my ideas so when I get to the gym I can just look at my list and I can just pick something. That's when I started strategizing for it.

Dre: 15:11

And what I came up with as a basketball player and you probably could, probably you could probably do this in tennis, as you play tennis is I came up with kind of like a content tree. So anytime I came up with an idea, I could plug that idea into my tree of drills. That would produce 30 different drills. So one idea put into my tree would produce 30 pieces of content. So I started doing that in basketball. That's the reason why I was able to make thousands and thousands of videos, because I only had to come up with one idea in order to produce 30 pieces of content.

Dre: 15:43

So that's what I started doing with basketball. So I figured I don't know tennis enough to even give you an example. But let's just say I'm playing basketball and I decide I'm going to do a, I'm going to cross the ball over in front of me and then I'm going to take a step backwards. Now that's the idea Crossover, step back. Now I can do that crossover, step back. Drop to the basket, shoot the ball with your left hand, then I'll do the same thing with my right hand.

Dre: 16:05

Then I'll do that move crossover, step backwards, shoot a jump shot going to the left, then I'll do the same thing. Shoot a jump shot going to the right, then I'll do a crossover. Step back, crossover, shoot a jump shot. Crossover. Shoot a jump shot the other way. Lay up this way, lay up that way. So you how this can build, and I built it out to this 30 different moves. Any idea can plug into each one of these 30 moves.

Dre: 16:27

And that's how we'll come up with the concept. So that's how I was able to make so many there. Then, as far as the mindset talking business material that I do these days, like my solo show, is, I keep a document. I have three Google Docs that I keep open on my desktop, open on my Chrome browser all the time. So I have one which is a list of every topic I've ever done. So I have them all listed out so I know what number is each episode. Then I have a list of content that I want to record but I haven't recorded yet. So I'm always adding to that list because I'm always. Every time I record something, I take something off. So you always want to keep that list full, so you always have new material. And then I have a list of everything that I've already done, so I make sure I don't do the same thing twice, and then I can just go back through those notes and I can use that for other materials. So I have those three documents now, so I plan that stuff out and I always want to have a certain amount planned before the week, so I know I can have the material to report, because I don't want to get to a point where, let's say, after we get done talking, today, let's say I want to start recording and I go to my document and it's empty. I don't have any content. So now I've got to come up with the content before I can start recording. So I want to. I call that doing your homework. So I want to do my homework and have the material ready. So if and when I decide to start recording and say I want to record three episodes today, I got to have at least three episodes in that document ready to go. So that's my process to this day.

Dre: 17:47

Now the other thing that you mentioned is the spontaneous stuff. Let's say I'm in a car driving, I'll just record a video. Those I don't plan. I don't plan those because usually those videos are not that long. It'll be anywhere from five to maybe 15 minutes. So it could be something I just thought of in the moment.

Dre: 18:09

It could be an extension of something that I've talked about in another place, because another thing people have to understand about content is that most of your audience isn't seeing most of the stuff that you publish. So even though I publish a lot of content, most people don't see most of the stuff that I put out so they see some of it and they may see bits and pieces of some of it. And even if they see the same thing, let's say I record one right here at my desk and then I take that same topic and talk about it while I'm driving in the car. Most people will not notice that it's the exact same topic, because people are getting hit with so many messages over the course of a day that they don't even realize that they're getting the same message more than once if you do it in a different way. So someone told me this a marketing guy said this that the same material packaged in a different way has a different value.

Dre: 18:51

So, for example, if and I'm sure we're going to talk about this if you write a book right about, if you wrote a book, clara, what would you write a book about?

Klara: 19:01

It actually would be probably about my podcast. I've been thinking about number one. I really love my guests, I self-select my guests and so I think they share a lot of wisdom from their sport or business and technology, and the book would probably be along the ways of again the athletic mindset and the lessons me and my guests have learned from the athletic journey and how they take them and apply them in the next chapter of their lives.

Dre: 19:31

Yeah, so well, it's perfect what you just said, though. So let's say the athletic mindset and how you can take that and apply it outside of sports, right? Yes, so let's say you wrote a book about that and you called it Grand Slam Journey. Let's say that's what you called it.

Dre: 19:45

Ok, so let's say you wrote a book about that and you called it Grand Slam Journey. Let's say that's what you called it. So the book is. Let's say your book will be priced at 20 bucks or 25 dollars, 30 dollars, whatever that's how much a book is. That's the general expectation we have the cost of a book. Now if you took that same material from that book and you turned it into a keynote speech, you could charge ten thousand dollars to give the speech, even though the content is exactly the same. Or you could take that same material from the book and you can make it into an eight week mastermind and bring a certain type of person into your mastermind group and say, hey, I'm only accepting eight people in this group and charge them $20,000 a piece to come into your program and you're teaching the same material that's already in the book, the point being that it's the exact same material but depending on the way you package it and the way you position it, the value of it is completely different, because it's based on people's expectations of what they want to get.

Dre: 20:40

So the point is, when I record those videos in a car, it's not like I'm just randomly coming up with an idea out of nowhere. I've created 30,000 pieces of content in the last 20 years. So all I do is just think of something that just happens to be fresh on my mind at the moment and I'll record a video about that. And I know that if I made all my content sitting right here at the desk, eventually it would get boring. You go to my Instagram and all you see is me you see all the boxes. Is me sitting here like this is like I don't want to see this, but when you see me sitting here, you see me at the pool, you see me in a car, you see me talking to you. There's a split screen. I'm talking to you. Now. It's like interesting. I can be saying the exact same thing in each one of those videos videos but it's more interesting because you're seeing it from a different perspective.

Dre: 21:31

So that's one of the things about creating content, and even myself I've created a lot of unique pieces of content. But I also will talk about some of the same concepts over and over again, not because I'm running out of ideas or I'm trying to cheat my audience, but because, also, people need to hear things more than once before they get it. How many times have we had to hear something before we actually do something with it? We got to hear things over and over and over again.

Dre: 21:50

Human beings are hardheaded and I tell people you know when you were in kindergarten how many times you say to ABCs like you said it a million times, right, and now we understand words that we can speak, because we had to go over it over and over and over again and then we finally did something with the material. So the real key for people like us, clara, in the information business, is that's really what we're doing. We're taking intellectual property and making material out of it is. We had to come up with new and unique ways to give people the same information. Yeah, somebody might get it this way, but then other people only get it when you say it this way. So we had to find different ways to get the message through.

Klara: 22:31

I agree, Also from athletics. Obviously any athlete would understand it. If you just look at your athletic career, you may have the best coach ever, but if they're communicating in a way that you can't get, you will not improve. So usually the key of creating a great pairing between an athlete and a coach, at least for me, has been the stress and ability to get the message that the coach is coaching you and giving you a guidance in a specific way that you can actually perceive, understand and implement. And I think that's why also people look for maybe now we can translate it to business coach or whatever else books, right, People write in a specific way or talk about things in a specific way, and so we typically cling on to those people who we can resonate with the message or understand the message and the way they communicate in our own way, which to me has been always interesting.

Klara: 23:27

It makes sense, I understand it, but it's still puzzling. It's like how can someone say the same thing in a way that one penetrates to you more and you understand deeply than somebody else saying it in slightly different words and we just don't get or don't resonate with Any thoughts or opinion on that. Dre, Absolutely all saying it in slightly different words and we just don't get or don't resonate with any thoughts or opinion on that train absolutely, and it's exactly.

Dre: 23:50

What you just said is exactly the point. But I don't know how many different coaches you work with as a tennis player, but some coaches you may have had a good vibe with them, and other coaches you were just not feeling them, even though they were both trying to teach you the same tools. They were teaching you the same skills. So it's the same thing in basketball. It's the same thing in business. So I go to conferences sometimes and it's funny because I'll go to conferences as an attendee. I still go and sit in the audience and I'll hear somebody on the stage talking about something that is similar to something that I talk about, and I'll be listening to the talk and I'm like this guy's garbage. My material is way better than this guy. How did he get on the stage? And I'm sitting here in the audience? Or they'll say something that I say all the time and the people in the audience will be like wow, blown away, and I'm like man.

Dre: 24:34

I said that three years ago on my YouTube channel and the people are like as if they never heard it before. So it just depends. People have to hear things a certain way, in a certain place at a certain time. And also, you got to remember people have to be in the right season. Somebody has to be in the right season to hear it. So if I, you could post something and I see it on your Instagram today and it means nothing to me. It goes in one ear and out the other, but then, three years from now, somebody else says the same thing and I'm ready to hear it, and now I get the message. I'm like man, I wish somebody had told me that a long time ago, but I wasn't ready to hear it when you said it. I was ready to hear it when they said it. So some of that is that kind of randomness and is also the packaging you also have to be able to be mindful of the packaging.

Dre: 25:16

So, for example, I go to events often and there'll be somebody who's they're known like a name brand person and I consider myself to be name brand, but there are people whose name is bigger than mine, right, they have more followers and they're more known, they've been on more stages, et cetera. So when they say something, people are more open to hearing what they said because of who they are, not because of what they said.

Dre: 25:39

You can take some nobody person who has no followers and no platform. They can take the exact same stuff that I say and nobody will listen to them, because they're looking at the person like who are you? You're nobody. But then when someone with their name in lights says it, you're listening to everything they say because of who they are. So look at this person they have all these followers and they have this nice suit on and they have that great intro video. They must be smart, so let me listen to everything that they said.

Dre: 26:06

So this is just human nature. It defies logic. I think we're trying to make logic out of this, but you can't. Some of it is logic, but much of it is not.

Klara: 26:15

I agree the emotional attachment. I don't know if you've read the book Thinking Fast and Slow by Panaman. I'm still actually reading through it. I think I'm almost at the end by Panaman. I'm still actually reading through it. I think I'm almost at the end, but it's such a thick book it's almost a textbook.

Klara: 26:28

If there was one book that I would like to print in my brain word by word, it would be this book, because it has so much wisdom about how we think and how we lack strategic thinking as humans overall.

Klara: 26:41

We just can of things statistically. Everything is emotionally driven and most of the time motivating and so aligning that message again, the timing that you mentioned, how it resonates with that person but the mindset of that person at the time, and being able to adjust your message to what you want that person to hear instead of what you're saying. I think it's very relevant in this type of business, but also in business overall. Being a business leader in any organization, that took me quite a bit of time to understand that. I would say, oh, I need to change, and it's like, no, you don't need to change, but I need to adapt the message to how you need that person to see, you perceive you, or that specific program that you're communicating around, that they actually get it in the way you want them to understand it, and there's lots of art in that, and I know that's an art that somebody can really ever master other than continue to practice things there.

Dre: 27:43

Things there is. Number one get the audio book. You can read the book a lot faster than audio. You can listen to it while you're driving, working out stuff like that. And secondly, this is the reason why businesses will. I mean, they have a leader who's very capable and a good speaker, and all that, but they'll still hire some outside speaker to come and give a message, because sometimes people just need to hear the same thing from a different person.

Klara: 28:05

Yeah, I agree, and I've tried the audio book. I actually have a few different opinions. Some books are good with audio, but if I'm trying to understand and memorize really deep, insightful information kind of information especially Daniel Kahneman he has so much things in it that I have to break it down because I feel like if I read too many pages or chapters it blends everything together and I forget it and so I literally have to read like maybe 10 pages and then I let it sit in and think about it and ponder about it and internalize it and then I got gotta break it down in these pieces. That's why I've been reading it for so long. Somehow audiobooks don't always go very deep for me. They're good for some stuff, but if I need like deep digestion of the information, I still prefer reading it. I don't know if you have the same.

Dre: 29:01

I understand where you're coming from. I probably can absorb books better when I'm looking somehow at the page than just hearing it. But because of my schedule and life I've picked up more audio books. I used to think an audio book didn't even count as reading, but now I have to have it count as reading because I get a lot of my books through audio and what I'll do is I'll listen to the book over and over and over again. So I've read many audio books, read many audio books like four or five times.

Klara: 29:31

I'll even listen to the same book back to back. Yeah, I've done that too, I agree. So I've been going kind of back and forth. First, when audiobook started, I was like this is awesome, I'm gonna only order audiobooks. Why would anybody get a paper book? Then I went to the books on your mobile, like kindle or stuff that you can download, and now I'm back to like paper books, actually the books that I really enjoy. I just love having the old paper version and reading through it, and sometimes I'm sorry that this bugs people, but I like highlighting things the deepest learning is when you are physically testing the book.

Klara: 30:04

I believe yeah, something about the physical that you mentioned perception of like holding it in your hands. I don't know, it gives it a deeper context and meaning.

Dre: 30:13

There's some kind of science behind it. Actually I can explain it, but I've heard many people say it.

Klara: 30:17

Yeah, you did touch on a little bit on the famous people, and not that I'm trying to be famous. Actually, maybe the reason why I started my podcast, I literally was struggling with my own thing, trying to find my next ride through and I figured well, why don't I just talk to smarter people than me and interviewing them and see how they took the skills that they've had and what they did with them and how they transition it? Actually, at the beginning, when I started, I was hoping nobody will listen to my podcast. I just didn't want to let anybody know it exists.

Klara: 30:59

But it is interesting to me how, even in the podcasting world let's say Joe Rogan, andrew Huberman, peter Attia they've just become such big personas and I've used to listen to their podcast Joe, I still listen to, probably quite a bit, not so much Andrew and Peter, because I feel like they overplayed, at least for me. How do you look at the people that become famous Joe, peter Attia, huberman versus kind of, let's say, nobody's like me, and how do you compare? Or how do you even see if you compare yourself to kind of somebody who is well known, as you mentioned before, like person was on a stage and you didn't find their content relevant, but people were just listening to them because they had a name. What do you think is the difference of building up to that? They had a name. What do you think is the difference of building up to that scale and growth, to where your message, if you find it valuable resonates with more people?

Dre: 31:51

Great question. The answer is the difference is marketing with an asterisk Marketing with?

Klara: 31:56

an asterisk.

Dre: 31:57

So it becomes marketing and I'll use myself as an example. I have spoken on big stages, but not a ton of big stages. My name is known but it's not that known. So if you had Joe Rogan on your show, everybody would know who Joe Rogan is. If you said you had Dre Baldwin on the show, most of your audience would say who? They don't know me. But I'm in between, I'm like in between, Right. So the difference for me, if I had the, if I got the audience that Joe Rogan has for a week, I think I could maintain a good amount of that audience to stick around and stay with me, because my material and my delivery and what I'm doing I know exactly what I'm doing it's if more people saw me. I'm ready for that exposure. I have everything in place to leverage that exposure, Whereas someone else and you can answer for yourself may not be in position where they're ready to get that exposure because maybe they haven't put all their pieces in place yet.

Dre: 32:57

I feel like I have all my pieces in place. The biggest challenge that we have over here in our space is marketing, and the marketing is how you make the money move. That's how you get the eyeballs in, you get the eyeballs, you got the right material, you make money. So I don't need to do any more work on my topics or my speech or how I deliver or any of that stuff. I already got all that stuff in place. I just need to find ways to draw more eyeballs to what I'm doing, Whereas someone who might not be at that level yet they still need to continue to develop their skills, develop their topics, develop their approach. What's your presentation going to be? How do you want to position yourself in the marketplace? These are all things that need to be figured out.

Dre: 33:38

And there are people who, in our programs, we work with people who are at this level. We also work with people who are at the established level, but people who are just getting it figured out. They got to get these pieces in place first. You don't want a million people to come to your website right now because your website is not ready for those people. People who are ready, they just need more people to come to their site and see what it is that they're doing Now. The other piece to that is you look at someone like Rogan and he's a little bit difficult to compare because he does interviews. It's not like he's just on here talking and many podcast shows or interview shows like this one, my show is just me talking, so all the material has to come from me, so it's not like I'm getting it from guests, but people let's say someone at my level of exposure, my level of notoriety.

Dre: 34:25

You have to do things to get yourself found, because there are people who, let's say, an episode that I put out 10 days ago would really benefit from it, but because they never heard of me, they won't get it, they'll never see it. And that's the urgency that we have to have to make sure that more people know about me so they don't keep missing the stuff that I'm putting out, cause I know my stuff is good. We just got to get it heard by more people. Whereas, excuse me, the known individual, someone like Joe Rogan I consume Rogan stuff that doesn't seem like he's changed that much. It doesn't seem like he's made that much of a change to his approach since he got known. I didn't like when he there was a period, maybe a couple of years ago, when he was apologizing because he had people on his show who disagreed with the COVID stuff, and he was.

Dre: 35:10

he was apologizing. I didn't like that. I didn't like that. But overall he's still maintaining the same thing. He'll still have all different types of people, different backgrounds, on the show and I like the conversations. I don't listen to every episode, but when I see someone who looks interesting I'll listen to that episode. So that's what I think about that. Hopefully I answered your question.

Klara: 35:28

Yeah, that's interesting. I'm writing a few things down because I want to dive into it. Hopefully I won't forget it. You touched on Joe.

Klara: 35:35

The second question I wanted to ask is I like Joe because he has this kind of wide view of conversations. He doesn't get just this narrow minded. And there's something I'm pondering about as you read even podcasting and content and a lot of the coaching that probably say you've got to define your niche and that message and you just serve that message over and over. And number one, I'm thinking well, that's really boring. I can't imagine just serving that message because it seems like you're just repeating the same thing over and over, which now becomes like Huberman and Peter Attia, because after you listen to X amount of those conversations, sure they have more guests, but it just all becomes sort of the same. So I literally quit listening to them. So what is your view? I guess, taking that lens, it seems like you resonate with the wider view as well that Joe Rogan has. What is your perception and view for content creation and do you prefer the wider, truly, or the narrower, or a mix of both? How do you mix that blend together?

Dre: 36:37

It depends on the type of person you are and who you're serving and how you position yourself. So Joe Rogan has positioned himself as a guy who just seems to be genuinely curious. So bring people on his show and he just has conversations with them and just talks to them. It's the kind of conversation you could imagine him having if there weren't any cameras. You notice by the show it's not very highly produced, it's just cuts back and forth between two people talking.

Dre: 37:01

If I started doing and I do plan on doing an interview show sometime in the future, I'll interview people and when I interview people it's going to be the similarity to Rogan is that it's going to be deep dives. I don't like short interviews. I like long conversations where we can really get into the depths with people, and I just want to talk to people about their backgrounds and how they do what they do and ask questions that most people don't ask. And one thing I noticed in listening to interview shows a lot of interview shows because they are so short, everything is on the surface and you never really get into the depths with their guests because there's not enough time, so they're only hitting these high level points. And people like myself, who do a lot of media. We have the same points, we had the same talking points, so I can just get the same talking points on 10 different interviews because they're all 30, 45 minutes long.

Dre: 37:49

So the more in-depth you go, the deeper we can get to where you can ask me some second and third and fourth level questions. That's when you really get to the stuff that you don't hear me say in other places and that's what Rogan is able to do. Tim Ferriss is another one who I like, who's in that direction, and I don't listen to that many interview shows but those. Those are two that I think hit that. The challenge for a lot of people these days I'm talking hosts who have interview based platforms is that and I hear many of them say this I've done a good amount of interviews. Many of them seem to be very wary of having an interview go too long because their audience won't listen to it.

Dre: 38:26

They'll say well, we like to keep this about 30 minutes. We found if we go longer, the audience stops listening and they're not sticking around. I'm like have you seen Joe Rogan? Do you know who he is? Have you seen Tim Ferriss? The guy's been viewed, listened to 70 billion or billion times. Joe Rogan is the biggest podcaster out there. They both talk to people for three hours, but you're trying to have a 30-minute show because you think people won't pay attention. Well, those are the wrong people. I even say that to my own audience, because I have people in my audience who want to have their own podcast. I say to them listen, it's not about the attention span of the audience. A person's attention span is as long as it's short, as it needs to be. Anybody ever sat through a three-hour movie? Of course you have. And have you ever sat through a movie and 30 minutes in? You're like this movie sucks and you leave yes, so what matters is the content.

Dre: 39:11

It's not the length of the content, it's the quality of it. So if you're giving people something that they want, they will sit there all day and listen to it, and if you're giving them something that they don't want, it can be 15 minutes and they won't even make it through the first five. So it's not about the attention span of your audience. It's a myth that people have shorter attention spans overall these days. The general attention span yes, because we have no TikTok and scrolling and feeds. Yes, people are just going through things quicker, but if they find something good, they'll stay there and watch.

Klara: 39:42

I agree with it, but I would say I'm biased because I tend to lean towards longer form and I've gotten that same message too from some of my audience. Well, you should shorten it to 30 and 40 minutes. I was like, how can I get any good context and deeper information? I think even typically I have 60 to 90 minute conversations. Even that seems to be quite short, like in order to really go to depth and have engaging and kind of background, what you mentioned.

Klara: 40:09

It would be easy to go to two and a half three hours which, yeah, joe or Lex Friedman do those but I do find that sometimes it's difficult for me to digest that too and then producing that amount of content. I think again from early on I think the most difficult part is the editing. So if I get rid of the editing I can actually do two to three hour conversation, but then if you have to post process after, that adds the most amount of time. So I think that's why people mostly try to hit the 30, 40 minutes, because the editing process and launching it after is very time consuming and getting it out.

Dre: 40:46

A couple of things on that. I think you're right. That is one of the considerations, because if you have a team editing, and they're editing a three-hour conversation. Well, that's a lot of time.

Dre: 40:57

They can't spend doing something else if they are responsible for other jobs or if you're outsourcing it, you probably have to spend more money, right? If they had the edited three-hour conversation as opposed to a 30-minute conversation. So I think people are making a decision based on that, which I understand. I don't recommend it, but I understand it. I understand why people would do that because, I mean, bills are bills, right, you got to pay people. The thing is. And Friedman, I've heard a couple of his conversations, not a ton, but I liked the couple that I've heard. I can't remember who he had on there. I think it was Kanye West. Did he have Kanye West on the show?

Klara: 41:30

He may have. He has a mix of variety of people as well.

Dre: 41:34

Yeah, he has a variety of people, and here's what I wanted category. But people like Friedman is that they tend to. Because they're so big and because of the size of their platforms, they tend to talk to people who are similar level platform. They might not have a podcast, but they're a known person, so Kanye West or I don't know who else would even.

Klara: 42:00

Jeff Bezos, elon right, he picks quite a bit of tech entrepreneurs too, but we're talking to these people who are so known.

Dre: 42:07

The thing is, these people do interviews all the time. So at some point you're like I heard everything this guy has to say because he's getting interviewed by 30 different people. Like so, elon Musk is interviewed. I don't know if I'm even going to watch it, because I already heard everything he has to say. I've heard all his points. I've heard've heard all his positions. So if he goes on somebody's show, that's cool for the host. Hey, I got to interview him. I must.

Dre: 42:28

If I was the host, I would interview him too, even though I've heard him 30 times already, because putting his name on my show is going to draw a whole bunch of audience. But as a listener I'm like I've heard this guy already. So what I would do? And when I had my interview base show, I'm not going to be going after the whales, I'm not going to be going after just big name people. Let me call Tim Ferriss or Joe Rogan and get them on my show. Not that I don't find them interesting, but I'm going to find people who are interesting but they might not be that known, even people who don't even get interviewed. Because if you find the right person who doesn't really get interviewed that much, but they're interesting and you ask the right questions, because I always believe that Actually, I do not believe this is just true the quality of the conversation is based on the quality of the questions.

Klara: 43:13

So you ask good questions.

Dre: 43:14

You could make a great conversation with anybody and a good interviewer can get a good conversation out of anyone asking the right questions if they've done their homework and they know what they need to ask and they ask good follow-ups because somebody might say something that takes you in a whole different direction in the conversation. So I've interviewed people and made great conversations out of it. I remember I interviewed my sister, for example. She's a college professor. She doesn't do interviews, she's not known, she's not a brand. I interviewed her on my show like seven years ago and people really liked the conversation because of the stuff that we talked about. First of all, she's my sister, so it's interesting on that angle. But then just talking about how she moved up in her career as a professor and talking about she talked about mental health, because she had some issues with mental health, and talking about building her family and how she went through job interviews and we talked about a lot of things.

Dre: 44:00

Because I mean to toot my own horn, I'm a good interviewer, I know how to ask the right questions and I can pull on a thread, so I'll ask somebody a question about this and they say something. I say, well, what's going that direction. Let's talk about that and that is what makes a good interview, and I think Rogan is very good at that, I think Tim Ferriss is very good at that and, again, I don't really watch a whole lot of other interview shows besides those two guys, but I think they're really good at that and that's the key thing. So when I start doing interview shows, I'm going to reach out to people who I find interesting and, honestly, anyone who's achieved anything is interesting. As long as you do the homework, find out who they are, what they're about, what they've done, and you ask the right questions, you can make any conversation interesting.

Klara: 44:43

Yeah, I agree, and I've had some of the most surprising guests that I've found, very serendipitously, that I've shared so much wisdom and inspiration. And I also find there is an interesting bond when you find the people you know well because you know them so good and you can make it really engaging and personal and, to your point, ask those questions that people haven't asked, the second or third order of consequence questions that people don't go deep because you don't know how that person works or operate or don't have that context, and I always get insights from my listeners of how personal that was and that you can see that person in a very different light than if they're just on a show that nobody really nobody else knows about them. So, on that note, dre, you had mentioned you like deep second, third, fourth order consequence questions. I'm curious are there any specific questions you would like to be asked more? When you get on podcasts? That comes to your mind? What are the deep things that you would like to share with the world and audience?

Dre: 45:52

It's a good question. Every once in a while a host will ask me something like that or something that I didn't ask, that I should have asked. I don't have a specific answer because if I gave that answer then I probably use it over and over again. Then it would cease to be the answer because I've already been asked.

Dre: 46:10

So what I like is, even if I'm interviewing somebody, I'm having a conversation with someone and I plan on asking them question one, two, three, and then they say something and answer the question number three. That takes me off the path of what was next. I will just follow that path. So I just like when the host will just, I like when someone will take something that I've said and answer that they weren't expecting, and we just go in that direction and then we can come back to whatever their agenda was.

Dre: 46:39

But this is only possible when the conversation is more at length because a lot of interviews that I do again they're trying to keep it 30 minutes, 40 minutes, 60 minutes and they can't let it go on too many tangents because they'll never get through all their questions. This is not an interrogation. In an interrogation or a job interview, you got to ask your questions, but in a conversation and a lot of people say they want their podcast to be a conversation.

Dre: 47:07

Then have a conversation, because if you're at dinner with somebody you're not, you don't have a list of questions, you just talk to them and whatever they say, you go in that direction. If that's where it goes, it goes. And if you don't get to all your questions, well, we'll get to it next conversation. So that's the way that when I interview people, that's the way that I do it and I have an agenda. But if I don't get to all that, that's fine. But I tell people up front like plan three hours here, because that's how much time we're going to take for this conversation and wherever it goes, it goes.

Klara: 47:35

It seems like you have a very similar approach, that even when I started, I like to prepare and get questions on the list, to prepare and get questions on the list and I think, like in any sport in life, you've got to prepare and plan. But I always say be able to abandon the plan for a higher serendipitous answer or encounter. And so if the conversation goes in a different way, you just follow that path and, surprisingly, if I do that, instead of just follow a script, it becomes way more fun, typically for me, for the guests, for the listeners, instead of just following A to Z. And I actually think it works the same way in business.

Klara: 48:18

If you present I don't know actually, maybe we can get to your speeches and how you prepare for speeches, maybe on the stage by yourself, so there's not that much interaction. But if I'm presenting to C-level executives and I have a pitch and slides and a very refined story, but then one third through, they ask me a question and I want to go a different direction, how do you follow that thread and adjust instead of saying, well, I'll park this and let me tell you my story that they may not be interested in hearing the reminder two thirds of it. But I find many people make that mistake and then they ponder why their business pitch or something had failed because they didn't recognize that moment. They could have taken a very different direction, didn't?

Dre: 49:04

recognize that moment, they could have taken a very different direction. So my answer to that one specific to, let's say, a sales presentation, is that I don't want anybody to ask me a question while I'm giving my presentation, so I will frame it as this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to do this, then this and any questions you have, write them down or hold them to the end.

Dre: 49:20

I'll answer all your questions when I'm done, because I don't want them to throw me off with a question because in a sales presentation specifically, the person who's asking the questions is controlling the conversation. So if I allow the people I'm pitching to to start asking me questions, they take control, they hijack my sales presentation.

Klara: 49:35

So I don't want them to hijack me.

Dre: 49:37

So and I remember I was in network marketing and that happened and it wasn't. It didn't happen to me, but it happened to my partner. So we were both given the presentation. So they would do the first half, I would do the second half, and they didn't frame it properly and they let people in the audience start asking them questions while they were given the presentation and it threw them completely off and they lost the respect of the audience. And then when it was my turn to come up in the second half, I had to kind of reel the audience back in because they lost the frame. So we call that framing and I've talked about that with my audience. Framing is very important in the conversation because whoever controls the frame basically can direct the conversation wherever they want it to go. So for me, in a sales presentation I don't do those kind of presentations like you're describing anyway, but when I have a sales conversation with someone, let's say well call and my goal is to get you into our program.

Dre: 50:25

I have a framework of questions that I'm going to ask. I have no idea how you're going to answer them, but I know after question two, I'm moving to question three. No matter how much time you take answering question two, we will answer. We will get to question three. I just know my frame and which direction I wanted to go. But I'm asking questions. You're doing most of the talking and I'm just moving you along where I want you to go, and you don't even realize that I'm doing it. And that's what a good sales conversation should sound like. Now, if you're in a C-suite, in an office building, in a conference room giving a presentation, that's completely different than what I did, so we can't really compare it in that way. But what I would do, just thinking from the outside, looking in, I haven't been in your shoes. So take this for what it's worth. I would frame it that they can hold their questions to the end, because if you're dealing with C-level people, especially very professional and experienced people, they'll just hijack the whole conversation if you let them.

Klara: 51:20

Well, I think sometimes yes and no I would push back. It depends how you answer and which one you choose to answer, because it's still on you to say whether you want to follow that threat or whether you want to park it. And there are some important things about pulling in the audience early because I think again, a lot of C-level executives are skilled, experienced people, hopefully showing them some thought, leadership and something they haven't thought about. But they always come from it from their perspective and experience, and so getting them inside and you still need to pull them out of their shell Even C-level executives can be shy sometimes. So the more kind of relationship and trust you can establish, that they can ask you questions, whether they're relevant, and then you're still in the position of power to decide do I want to take this question or do I already have it? I haven't gotten to there and you can always say I have an answer and we'll talk about it in five minutes. But if there's something that you're not covering and it's very relevant and you haven't considered, then that might be worth time spending five to six minutes conversation to kind of diverge, go deeper, so you address it and they feel like they're part of that solution because they are part of that solution. Going into, you never know a hundred percent about their business, so it's typically quite insightful.

Klara: 52:43

I think there's a little bit of art of when and how you maneuver it and which one you take versus which one you park, and I do agree you can't allow your guests or audience to fully kind of divert you from that path. If that happened and that's typically not success either I'm trying to think about what are some of the things I noted down here that I wanted to go back. Maybe marketing. You did talk about marketing. I'm curious, even for myself personally, and probably a lot of podcasters or content creators. Even business executives think about marketing and how to get the right message out. Anything specific that worked for you best, trey, that you had to find a hard way of getting your name more known and getting on. You mentioned you've been on some of the big stages not all, but what has worked well that elevated you into that direction.

Dre: 53:39

That's a big question. We could give a whole conversation just on that alone. So, when it comes to marketing, you mean for a specific thing, you mean as an individual, you want to mean as a speaker, as a guest, any direction in particular, whichever direction you prefer because you're a successful athlete, entrepreneur, content creator, author, speaker.

Klara: 54:10

Yeah, you seem like you have multi-dimensional personas, so whichever one you want to choose, go with.

Dre: 54:13

Thank you, that sounds good. So let's talk about it from each angle. So I'll do it quickly. So in basketball, for example, when I wanted to start playing pro now I think you know from my first conversation I played Division III college. You know the sports world in america. You play division three sports. You're probably not gonna go pro, that's not. You don't go pro from d3. So I knew that getting out of my school I was gonna have to market myself in order to get a chance, because my playing performance up to that point would not be sufficient. So I knew I needed to first of all get some footage of myself playing against pro guys, because the guys I played against in college weren't good enough.

Dre: 54:46

So I had to go to an exposure camp. That was my first marketing investment was going to an exposure camp. I played pretty well, I got the footage and then what I did marketing myself. I started cold calling basketball agents. That's how I got my agent.

Dre: 54:58

My agent got me my first contract, so the marketing part was cold calling agents and going to that exposure camp. The key here was I had to play well with that exposure camp. If I hadn't played well, then the footage wouldn't matter and the agents wouldn't talk to me. So that was the key there. Then, when it came to the content, well, one of the things that benefited me was I was pretty early to the game.

Dre: 55:16

There wasn't a lot of competition in putting content out at that time as opposed to today. At the same time, once I realized that there was an opportunity, I had to take the opportunity, because I wasn't the only person who looked at YouTube in 2006, 2007, but I was the one who decided I'm going to take my camera to the gym every day and put this footage on YouTube. I wasn't the only one who knew about it. I just took advantage of the opportunity and I jumped on it. And, mind you, you couldn't make money putting videos on YouTube, so I didn't make any money from just from the videos themselves until 2010. So this is the reason why many people didn't take advantage of it, because what do you get? What's the benefit? There was none, so I just had to keep putting myself out there and that's how I built the. In any type of sales, people talk about the know like and trust factors, factors.

Dre: 56:02

So people knew me they liked me and they trusted me Because for five years, I was putting content out for free and asking for nothing in exchange, because I literally had nothing to sell. I couldn't have sold them anything if I wanted to. I didn't have anything. I was just playing basketball and putting videos on YouTube, so that no like and trust factor. That foundation was built over five years and it still matters to this very day.

Dre: 56:22

When it came to the content, when it came to the books that started with, actually, the basketball players, a lot of athletes I can say this a lot of athletes don't read, especially basketball players. They don't read, they watch YouTube. They don't read books. But because they connected with me and I was writing a book, they read my book and then they read my next book and my next book and they got me to read books because I would mention books and I would mention how this thing that I do on the court I learned this because I read this book by this guy and they would say, okay, well, I normally wouldn't read any books, but because you mentioned it and you mentioned how it helped you in basketball, I'm going to go read that book. I'm going to go read Napoleon Hill, I'll go listen to Earl Nightingale because you you play ball and that connection.

Dre: 57:03

I was the bridge between the books and the basketball because I've always been into books and of course I was writing them. So that was one of the things that helped me get started with that. But that was more the marketing side, just through my audience, that know like and trust factor as far as selling books to people who didn't know me, that was just simply advertising. I just learned how to run ads and hopefully they'll break even at least on the ads that I was running so I can acquire a customer. That stuff I learned from this guy named Russell Brunson. Have you heard of him? Clickfunnels guy?

Klara: 57:32

Yeah, I've heard of the name.

Dre: 57:33

He's the first one explaining to me which was the concept of breaking even on your advertising. So you can spend $1,000 on ads and you make $1,000 back, but you didn't make any money. Is that good or bad?

Dre: 57:44

He said that's good because now you have $1,000 worth of customers who you don't have to spend money to get their attention again. So now you just, let's say, sell a $10 product, you make 100 sales. You've got 100 new customers, but you made zero money. That's good, because now you have 100 customers who have spent money with you. Your customers who have spent money with you Assuming your product is good, now they'll spend money with you the second time. You don't have to spend to get money from them the next time you have to run ads to them twice. You only got to run ads once, so you're acquiring customers for free is literally how he described it. So that is what helped me understand that when it came to the marketing, the books, when it came to speaking, that was just getting on the phone. I still do that to this day. I still, to this day, the crm we have. We probably got 3 000 contacts in our crm. Uh, people were just emailing, calling, following up and some of them tell us no, actually we get told no a lot and they say, no, we're not interested, or we already got our speakers or we wouldn't hire somebody like you, we don't bring in speakers from outside the industry, or we don't pay our speakers. We get this stuff kind of responses all the time, so we might have to go through 30 leads to find one possible possible opportunity, and that's just being willing to get out there and be active. So I still do that to this day.

Dre: 58:57

And, as far as my overall brand, the content is a big part of that. Putting content out, collaborations like this conversation right here. So there are people in your audience who have never heard of me, but because they're here in this conversation, they'll take an interest and they'll come take a look at what I'm doing. Maybe some of them will add me to their list of who they listen to. And then, of course, you still have the advertising that you can do, where you use money to get attention. So these are all things that are part of the marketing mix, and the reason why this matters so much is because marketing is business. That's business.

Dre: 59:29

If you know how to market, then you can always have an opportunity to make money, and if you know how to market, it doesn't matter what industry you're working in. You can help others make money. So I have a lot of clients, a lot of members in our university who are not in my same industry.

Dre: 59:46

We have people in finance people with brick and mortar businesses, people in the clothing industry, people in the food industry, people coming out of government, and I have never worked in any of these industries. But they work with me because I know how to market and marketing. Principles are universal. It doesn't matter where you apply them, they always work.

Klara: 1:00:04

Yeah, I'm curious. You described beautifully some of the pillars of your persona now and how marketing sort of helped you elevate some of that success or hustle. I guess I would call it still in many ways and persistence and consistency that listeners can again even go listen to our first conversation. I think it's a great example of that. What aspects of your business do you like the most? I'm curious because you have just so much. Is there a favorite one that you like investing your time and effort into?

Klara: 1:00:36

Because, running a business I have to say even podcasting I was terrified of conversations first. At first it was something I was was afraid of and I took it as a learning lesson to get better at and it gave me almost like this championship feeling like when you go to the most important game you're never stressed, and I enjoyed it in a way because I missed that feeling from tennis when you go play the most important match that you know really matters. I've gotten to a stage where I look forward to those. This is my most favorite part of the podcast thing and others are just do, let's say, like social media, obviously, like I hate everything around it, like doing the mini videos. I've created a process how I do it, but I hate everything about social media. So curious about you when do you enjoy spending your time most on? Versus the things, even if you want to share, that you really don't enjoy and you just do because it's part of that business?

Dre: 1:01:32

Yeah. So first let me ask you English is your what? Second, third, fourth language?

Klara: 1:01:38

Actually it was my third, but now it's almost better than my Czech. But I would say it will never be perfect because I learned it quite late in my life.

Dre: 1:01:47

What's your first language?

Klara: 1:01:48

Czech.

Dre: 1:01:49

Czech. Okay, so well, the first thing for you, it's a great accomplishment because English is not your first language and here you are having a podcast, talking to people in English, people who are native speakers, like myself. I don't speak any other language. I mean, I can know a couple of words, but I can't speak another language definitely not conversationally.

Dre: 1:02:10

So kudos to you for even being able to do that. And as far as me, to answer your question, the favorite part of my business is when I can look at the merchant processor dashboard and I can see the money went up. That's my favorite part. I'm in a conversation with someone and they say, hey, we're going to join, and I give them a link and I sit there and watch and they say it's done and I see the bar go up.

Dre: 1:02:30

That's the favorite part. So, as far as overall, though, in the business, marketing is the best part. I like the marketing. Marketing is just about the relationship that you build and nurture with your audience the relationship that you build and nurture with your audience. So, as opposite to you, I like social media. I actually like using it. I like using it when I'm engaging with people. So one thing about social media my discipline is that I do not scroll on social media. So when I get on Instagram, anybody who I'm following, like I'm following you on Instagram, you never see me liking your pictures because I don't see them, because I don't scroll.

Dre: 1:03:04

so I open instagram, I post and I get off of it. So I don't look at other people's stuff because it can be distracting and the algorithm is designed to distract you and I don't want to get distracted and I know what I get distracted by, so I don't put myself in a position to get distracted, so I don't look and I only look at stuff that. Let's say, somebody leaves a comment on my post, I'll engage with that, but I don't comment on other people's stuff. I don't like other people's stuff. I don't want to know what's happening. I don't do that.

Dre: 1:03:29

The only social media app that I engage with is X, formerly known as Twitter. That's like the, that's like the market, is like the open town square where people are just talking about current events and stuff that happens there. I will school, I will comment, I will comment on other people's stuff. I'll engage with people who I don't even know. I'll argue with people. I do all kinds of stuff on that app. That one, that's fun for me.

Dre: 1:03:56

I enjoy doing that kind of stuff because I know that my approach and my way of thinking and my ability to articulate it, clara, is what differentiates me from other people. So when I engage on an app like X and people who don't know me see it. They're like okay, the way that he said that is interesting is different and I like it. And those people now come into my world. So I'm doing it strategically. I'm not doing it as a it's not like some jerk off, I'm doing a waste of time. I'm doing it strategically because I know it works. I know that works for me when I jump into a conversation of some random person who doesn't know me I don't know them I disagree with them and tell them why they're wrong, and then people start following me because they like the way I said it. I do it on purpose.

Klara: 1:04:34

I wonder if X is like the right platform, especially for disagreeable people, because it's almost created to have this like disagreement and conversations right kind of conversations you would have in the crowd in the street. So maybe people who are disagreeable that again we talked about it in our first conversation enjoy that.

Dre: 1:04:55

Yeah I'm disagreeable, so, and I don't mind disagreeing with people out, well and. But I'm not disagreeable in a negative way, if people understand it. If I disagree with somebody, I'm not goingable in a negative way, if people understand that. If I disagree with somebody, I'm not going to be disrespectful of you. I'm going to disagree with your point and I will beat your point up, but I'm not going to say anything personal about you. That's the line, and a lot of people don't have that ability and I find myself a lot of times I'll disagree with a person who I don't know and their response is to say something about me because they can't handle it.

Dre: 1:05:26

I disagree with them and they can't say anything about my point. So they got to say something about me and I'll even call them out on that and again, so I just have that ability. But I know myself. The key is for anyone out there you have to know yourself and what works best for you. So some people they do best and they don't say anything. They just post pictures of themselves, and that works. That gets them a bunch of attention. Or they just post videos, and that works for them, and I wish I could just post pictures of myself and get all the followers, but it doesn't work.

Klara: 1:05:54

Have you tried to drink?

Dre: 1:05:56

I have tried, maybe you haven't tried enough.

Dre: 1:05:58

It doesn't work for men, it only works for people eligible for that. Unless you're marketing to gay guys, I guess. What do you think about that? So for me, I have to use my words. That's what works for me. I can use my language and use my brain, so that's what. X is the app where I can do that. Instagram is good because people can. They will listen to the little clips and they'll say, okay, let me, let me go a little bit deeper with this guy, let me go get the book, et cetera, et cetera. In a perfect world, if everything was just based on logic and intellect and people just all the money just flow based on that, then I'd be Joe Rogan. But it doesn't look like that. So you got to mix with some entertainment and for some people that kind of intellectual jousting is entertainment. So I know that I'm not eligible to reach everybody, because not everybody's looking for that. Some people just want to be entertained. That's all they want. They just want entertainment.

Dre: 1:06:56

They want something funny. They want something that they want the visual version of junk food. I'm just not that person. I don't have that ability. I can't make myself do that. So I know that I'm not talking to everybody when I put my messages out there and I accept that Everybody has a different approach and everybody has a different destiny for where their stuff's going to go and a different potential based on who you are. So I know what mine is and I know exactly who I'm trying to reach.

Klara: 1:07:23

I like you talking about finding your strength, and you know clearly what your strength is. I think it's important as an athlete to know what are the shots or positions in place that you want to lean into, and it seems like you found yours in business. Was it natural to you, did you discover it early on, or did it take you some time to figure out? Oh, I'm actually pretty good at this. Let me lean on the strength and polish it more and lead with it.

Dre: 1:07:52

You mean in the business direction.

Klara: 1:07:54

Yes.

Dre: 1:07:55

Man, it was something that well. There's a couple of answers to that, clara. Number one is that I've always been a business person. I've always had a business mindset, even when I was playing sports. I can't remember who I was talking to. I was just telling somebody this other day that I'm a business person who happened to have basketball as his business for 10 years, and so I'm not a basketball player.

Dre: 1:08:15

I'm a businessman who happened to play basketball and I just got into basketball. I did that as a business for a decade. When I was done with it, I stopped playing basketball and I moved on to doing whatever we call what I do now thought, leadership, books and coaching and speaking, et cetera, et cetera. So I was thinking business even back when I was in, let's say, in college. I graduated college exactly 20 years ago, so in college I was looking around at my classmates. Does that have a degree? You went to college in the USA.

Klara: 1:08:45

Yes.

Dre: 1:08:46

Okay. So I graduated with a business degree four-year business degree from Pennsylvania State University and I remember looking around at my classmates because the last couple of years you're taking all your classes for your degree. So it was like the same people in all the classes, same people. Like the same people in all the classes, same people. And I was looking around at these people and I'm like I'm different from them. I knew I was different from these people. They were very diligent in doing the homework and being prepared for the quizzes and the tests. I didn't do any of that stuff. They took notes in class. I would fall asleep in class. I remember the professor once called me out for falling asleep and I talked like honestly I wasn't sleeping but he saw me. I was a very average student. I was intelligent enough to get a degree but I wasn't diligent enough to be a good student.

Dre: 1:09:31

If that makes sense Like if I had applied myself I would have been a good student. I didn't apply myself, I did just enough to get by. So I knew I already understood what the system was in America and the education system in the United States is designed to put people into back in the industrial revolution, was designed to create factory workers. That's what it was. Now, these days we don't send most people to our factories. Most of the work these days is intellectual, but the educational system is still designed to produce the same type of thing, just for a different reason Intellect work instead of backbreaking physical labor, manual labor. So I knew I didn't want to go into that space. I knew I wanted to play sports first of all, but I knew after sports it has to be something else, because sports doesn't last forever and remember coming out of a Division III college.

Dre: 1:10:14

No guarantee I was going to get even one shot at sports, let alone 10 years. So I was already thinking, all right, how can I get into the business space? I got introduced to network marketing when I was still in college and that experience told me that, ok, there's a whole other realm of people out there making money in a completely different way. And I said I'm going to go in that direction. Because I read Robert Kiyosaki Rich Dad, poor Dad when I was in college and that told me, ok, there's a whole other way to have a full time work, full time career. That's not what college is preparing me for. Because I look at my classmates and I say all these people it'd be about 40 of us in these business classes. I said they're all going to be very good employees at somebody's company. I knew they would because they showed up to class every day. They did all their work, they were prepared for the test. They the teachers. Every day they did all their work, they were prepared for the test, the teachers liked them. I said the only differences between this and work is that here they're a student and that's a teacher. There you're an employee, they're the boss.

Dre: 1:11:12

I knew I wouldn't be a good. I could be a very good employee, but I knew I wouldn't be a good one long-term because I have too much of an independent streak. I don't always like being part of a group, so much no-transcript. When the content space came around and I'm putting this material out, I'm like, ok, I can build a name for myself. Now people know me and they know what I'm about and they like me. There was no money being made, but there's something here. I knew there was something there when I was doing YouTube and blogging in 2008. And then, when the opportunity to make money from it came, I said, okay, there's something here, but it's not like this is retirement money. My first check from YouTube was for $110. All right, so it's not like you can just stop doing everything off of that and then, I came up with.

Dre: 1:12:16

I found out that you could create products and you could sell them on the internet. I said, okay, this is another thing. And then somebody asked me do you do coaching? I said, okay, well, that's the thing. Okay, I can do that. Then the professional speaking and writing books and making courses. So all this stuff just started to come. And the key thing is that and I talked about this earlier is I had to take advantage of the opportunity. It's not I didn't create or invent the opportunity, but once I noticed it, I had to do something with it, and that's how the entrepreneurship kind of started to build in me. I don't even remember what your question was. I've gone on so many tangents here. What was the original question?

Klara: 1:12:54

No, this is great Just about your strength, like you talk about your intellect and understanding that you can actually engage with the audience most when you have sort of this thought through leadership. So have you discovered that early on? It seems like you always knew there was a path and you were pulled that direction, even with the youtube videos, and you just continue to lean on that strength and skill more to practice it and continue to refine it yeah, so the thing is part of that.

Dre: 1:13:24

Thank you for clarifying. That is, I always knew, even back in high school, that I had a different perspective than most people, whether it was my high school classmates, my sports teammates, even going into college I knew I had a different way of looking at things and the way that I saw the way that most people articulated their thoughts, I always knew there were gaps in their thinking. I'm like, okay, I get what you're saying, but the way that you're explaining that there's something that you're not getting and I wasn't always able to explain it to them back in my high school and college years. But the better I've gotten at communicating and the better my vocabulary has become, the better I get at being able to knock down people's nonsense. A lot of people, their thought processes are based in just complete fallacies. They don't even understand why they believe what they believe, and I know how to knock that stuff down and that's really where a lot of sources are out of my content. Honestly, when I'm doing that and anybody looks at my stuff, you'll see that that's often what I'm doing. I'm taking things that people widely believe and they think that they believe it for one reason, but then I break it down, explain to them why either what they believe is untrue or the reason you believe it is wrong, you're basing on a wrong idea and again, I have the ability to do that. So I've always thought like that.

Dre: 1:14:39

But there was no outlet for telling anybody that in 2006. There was no way you could get that message out. But then podcasting came along. Now you can write your own books, now you can make a YouTube channel, and now there's a whole space for someone like me. So let's say I had been born 30 years earlier. I was my parents' age. I would have had to just take all this, and there was nowhere I could go with it. Maybe I could write a couple of books. Maybe, if I was lucky, I could get a TV show or a radio show. But how many people get that? It's like a 1% opportunity. But now anybody can do it. But now anybody can do it. So I happen to come along at the right time as well.

Klara: 1:15:07

Yeah, that is always very important, like the timing and the change of era or new opportunities coming up, obviously this generative AI. Now we're on the next intersection, so we will see what that creates and what's the next opportunity for having new jobs, professions and skill set. We haven't even imagined that we could maybe create and make our living out of. Speaking of that and timing we talked earlier. We could probably go for hours and I don't want to take all of your Friday, but a few more questions that I have, maybe one even specific coaching, because you mentioned you were pulled into the coaching.

Klara: 1:15:49

I personally enjoy coaching. I've tried it for a little bit. I think if you are from the athletic or someone is from the athletic perspective, we resonate with it because we understand that you need coaches to become better, that you need coaches to become better, help you see some of your blind spots and even lean on your strengths like pinpoint your strengths and help you guide through specific direction. At the same time, I feel like there was so much of this coaching. I'm curious what your perspective, because it's like everybody in the world nowadays is a coach or wants to be coach and it's getting to a point where sure, some people maybe should be coaches is great, but it seems literally like every other person, and there are so many people, especially coaches, they'll have to be on podcasts. I've almost started saying no to most of them because it seems to be kind of the same message. They don't have maybe the athletic background like you do. It's just very different. So what's your view on this?

Dre: 1:16:53

And why do you think there's this rise of coaches suddenly? Man, there's a lot of juicy stuff in that one. So let me ask you a question. First, if you don't mind, you get a lot of coaches. You say you get a lot of people who are coaches reaching out to you about being on your show. What's the reason when you say no? What's the reason that you say no?

Klara: 1:17:07

Well, I typically look into their Instagram, their LinkedIn. Typically, when I say yes to a person, I want to do some sort of deeper diligence whether the message actually resonates and do I feel it has good enough substance. Number one and number two a lot of coaches nowadays play on this mental actually opposite of mental toughness. We're trying to make people feel good about themselves, which I think is actually weakening the society, so especially those that follow that area. I just started saying no to automatically because I don't want to serve that population. I actually think there's a certain amount of struggle we humans need in life to understand who we are and find out our strengths and refine our skills, and if we're going to try to make everybody's lives awesome, happy and easy, I think it's the wrong way to go to develop a better society and population. Next, so sorry, that's my longer run to your answer.

Dre: 1:18:05

So I'm going to answer your question, but I will say one thing to what you just said I think you really should look into leaning into that, what you just said, because there's a huge wave right now of people are just calling it mental health or mental wellness.

Dre: 1:18:20

Let's make people feel good, let's validate, let's affirm. Let's not say anything that might make someone feel hurt or threatened or bad or invalidated, and especially coming from a female. It's one thing if I say it because they look at me and maybe expect it, but with you saying it, I think there's a huge lane there that I think you could jump into, because so many people are going in the opposite direction. So that's just a side note.

Dre: 1:18:46

So, for me when it comes to the coaches. Yes, a lot of people are stepping into the coaching space. One reason is because you don't need anything to be a coach. You don't need a storefront, you barely need a website. But you just got to have people know you and get them to trust you and like you and put the price tag on and you can boom you're a coach. So I think it's because of the ease of entering the industry. That's why so many people are positioning themselves as coaches.

Dre: 1:19:12

Also, because, again, you don't have to have anything to say that you're a coach. Like if you say you were an athlete, people are going to say, okay, what'd you play? Where'd you play, who'd you play against, who'd you beat? They want to know what you did. They want to know your resume and you have to show one. I say I play basketball. I got to tell you I played here, here, here, I did these things. You got to show something to say that you're a coach. What do you have to have done? Nothing. You don't have to go to school you, because coaching can be a high ticket offering that you can charge 20, 30, a hundred thousand dollars for coaching and you don't have to give people anything tangibly. You can just talk to them, be their friend, be nice to them, make them feel good. You hold them accountable. That is coaching. Technically, that's coaching. They're not wrong, and if someone was willing to pay for it, you might as well take the money.

Dre: 1:20:05

So, yes, that's why a reason a lot of people do step into the coaching space and there are people out there who value the coaching at the same time is not everybody. There's only a small percentage of the population as a whole who is even eligible to receive coaching, meaning that they understand that they could benefit from having someone outside of themselves talk to them, hold them accountable, tell them things they don't know, help them see perspectives that they don't see, and they're willing to pay that person money in order to do it. How many people qualified even be willing to do that? Not many, not a lot.

Dre: 1:20:40

I say about 2% of the population is open to it. 2% doesn't sound like a lot of people, but amongst 8 billion is a lot of people. So that's the reason why a lot of people are stepping into the coaching space, and it makes perfect sense to me that you get a lot of people reaching out to you because you have an interview-based show and they're trying to piss themselves. And it's funny because I don't even interview people, I don't have guests on my show, but I get some of those emails from coaches and authors. Coaches, authors and speakers Usually they're all three right and they have a PR person reach out and they have this long email with all these links and all the things they could talk about, and I'm like.

Dre: 1:21:18

these people have no idea what they're doing. They're paying PR people. They're getting ripped off because they don't even know how to market themselves. That's the problem. It's not that they're bad. Some of them might actually be good quality people, but if you don't present yourself the right way, nobody will ever know.

Dre: 1:21:32

And that's the challenge, and that's where a lot of people miss it, and this is what we talked about earlier. So when I go to a conference and I see somebody on the stage and I'm like my material is better than theirs, well, well, they did something that I didn't do that got them on that stage.

Dre: 1:21:46

And that's the next thought that I have. I'm like all right, my material is better than this guy, so I know my material doesn't need to get better. What did they do to get them on the stage that I'm in the audience?

Klara: 1:21:55

and they're up there.

Dre: 1:22:01

I got to figure that out, I got to crack that code and that's the marketing and that's the job. That's literally what I'm doing all day is trying to crack that code, because once that code gets cracked, I know if you put me up on stage with the same billing and the same status as some of these other people, I'll beat them. But right now they're beating me because they have the billing and the status that I don't have. So I have to close that gap.

Klara: 1:22:18

I love it. What it makes me think about actually confidence too, and going back to our previous episode, we talked about gaining confidence in basketball and in sport. Even for me in tennis, because I started late, it took me a lot of time If I actually you could say ever if I ever was confident enough about my game. But I laugh now with the confidence with which you had spoken. Obviously, you have produced a lot of content and have watched and are following a lot of thought leaders in the confidence that you have about being on the same stage and building up and fine tuning the marketing and also what clarified for me same thing in probably basketball and specifically in tennis, when I played, you may have had a better game, but you lost that match and it might have been because of one specific thing, and so you always go to what was I worse in, or why did that person beat me in that specific day and time, and what do I need to practice Like?

Klara: 1:23:16

There's always a reason why you lost a match or a game and so I laugh. Actually, you're looking at it from the same lens. What is that person doing better than me? I may be better in one context, but what other pillars of my business or entrepreneurship type of journey that I'm lacking or I need to build up to then reach, kind of the next level, which it makes me think more simplistically about what even me personally can I get better at if I want my audience to grow and I want more people to listen to these conversations Because, again, I get a lot of insights from my guests and thank you for being on the show but, yeah, how can I get it scaled to more people so more people get the wisdom too?

Dre: 1:24:04

That's right, and a couple of things here. So, since you play tennis, it reminded me of something when you mentioned confidence. Once I was watching this tennis match this was years ago Serena Williams was playing and they had this graphic that came up on the screen and it said they asked the other players what's the number one key to beating Serena in a match? Do you know what the answer was?

Klara: 1:24:25

Confidence.

Dre: 1:24:25

Confidence yeah, it was like overwhelmingly. It was like four choices, it was like serving returns the ground game and confidence.

Dre: 1:24:34

Confidence was like 70% of the answer and I took a screenshot of it and I posted it on Instagram. This was years ago, probably 2017, something like that, but really that is the key in sports, especially at the highest level. You get to play in college or you play in pro. Everybody's good. So the difference is how much do you believe in yourself, Because that determines how much of your skills you bring to the table when it matters, especially against somebody else who's good. You're playing against somebody who could beat you. What's the difference? How much do you believe in your game versus how much they believe in theirs? So it just made me think about that.

Dre: 1:25:06

And the other thing to answer the rest of your question there is the marketing is the difference and what I tell my audiences and also remind myself of and I've alluded to it several times here is the difference between doing the thing and selling the thing. Once you get to a certain level of ability, when it comes to doing the thing, getting better at doing the thing doesn't make that much of a difference. So as a speaker, for example, or an author or a coach, I and again I say this humbly I don't need to get better, I don't need to get better at those things.

Dre: 1:25:40

I need to get better at selling it. I just need to get better at people knowing my name, knowing what I'm about and believing that I am worth what I'm asking for. That's the selling thing. Selling thing is 90 percent of the job. Once you get good enough, there's a baseline. So I want to make sure people understand that. So don't misconstrue this. People are listening Once you get to a certain level and I even say this, and you could probably equate this to tennis I definitely say it in basketball.

Dre: 1:26:07

As I told you and people know I came out of a Division three college there's a certain baseline level of ability you have to have to be eligible to play professional sports. So once you're at that baseline as long as you're at that level or above the difference is now confidence, marketing, selling yourself. Who's your agent? How do people know you? Are you getting seen? Are you playing at the right events? That's the only thing that makes a difference at that point, once you're above the line. If you're below the line it doesn't matter what you do because you're just not good enough. But if you're good enough, then all the rest of it is marketing. And in the business world, which is extremely subjective, the sports world is more objective. Because in sports there's a tennis match. You won two sets, they won one set, you won. That's how it goes. Period Basketball I had 100 points, you had 90 points, I won. It's objective. The scoreboard determines. In business there's no scoreboard. There is a scoreboard but not everybody's playing by the same rules.

Dre: 1:27:01

In business everything is subjective. So if I'm trying to land a keynote and they come down to, all right, we might take Clara for the keynote, we might take Dre how do they decide. There's no objective measure between me and you. It's just who they like. That's what it comes down to. Who they like better, who they think better, resonates with the audience. Well, we got a bunch of women in our audience, so let's hire a woman. We had a bunch of white people every year, so let's hire a black guy. That's how they decide. That's how they make their decisions. You don't control it, so it's extremely subjective. So in the business world, it's all about marketing. It's not about being good, because you'd be really good and nobody and not making any money. So you have to really figure out the marketing piece and when you really start focusing on the marketing and you get good at it and I'm working on getting better at it I feel I'm far from mastering the marketing space.

Dre: 1:27:48

I'm good but I haven't mastered it. When you get good at it, that's when your goodness at doing the thing. Now everybody starts to see like damn, and all of a sudden you're a superstar. And you're like, yeah, I've been this good for 10 years, but you just found out Now, everybody just found out last month, right, that I'm good because now everybody knows me. You know what I'm saying.

Klara: 1:28:07

Yeah, and one thing that came to mind as you were saying that also problem of getting good at something is you still know how many areas of that area you don't know. So the deeper you go into a subject, you may be good relevant to the rest, let's say, but because you know it so well, you relevant to the rest, let's say, but because you know it so well, you uncover all of these other things that you can be better at. So how do you recognize? All right, maybe these other things are not worth my time, because if I continue to invest the time in improving just this little bit, it's going to require much more time, focus, effort and attention. Maybe I need to strengthen these other areas that would then allow me to attention. Maybe I need to strengthen these other areas that would then allow me to grow.

Klara: 1:28:49

And I say it even from an athlete like there's some things, weaknesses, that drive you down. You've got to make sure, especially in individual sport like tennis, you have to be well-rounded enough that you don't have one stroke that stands out. Let's say, like Coco, she's a fantastic tennis player and her forehand breaks down all the time under pressure, so everybody knows when there's pressure points. She's been working on it and improving a lot, but when you continue in important points hitting to her forehand, that's her weakness. So how do you cover up to elevate that game so you don't lose that match because of that? But then also lean on your strengths, whatever that strength stroke is, or in business specific area, because that's always the way that you're going to create your game as an athlete, but also create your business as an as an entrepreneur. Now, I don't know where I was going all.

Dre: 1:29:39

So we talked about collapsing timeframes and we want to talk. 80-20 rule have you read 10x is easier than 2x by Ben Hardy? Have you read that book?

Klara: 1:29:51

I haven't read it no.

Dre: 1:29:53

Ben Hardy is a speaker who I didn't listen to him and say I'm better than him. I did not. I said this guy because he has a unique approach. He's not. We're not in the same lane. And when I heard him speak, I remember I was at this marketing conference. He was speaking. It was actually Russell Brunson's conference, clickfunnels conference and Ben Hardy is not a he's not a hype speaker, he's not a motivational speaker, he's an author and he just said up there, he just talked, and he talks is really conversational tone, very low tone. He's not jumping up and down, he's not doing any of that, he's just going through his thighs. He was probably the and I don't say this, I say this respectfully he's probably the lowest energy speaker who stood on the stage that whole week and it was probably 20 speakers, but he was the best to me because of what he was talking about and the things that he was talking about. He was basically giving you a, basically a synopsis of his book and I went and bought that book audio version. I just did an audio book about five times back to back in a row because I needed that message right then at that time. I need to listen to it again as a matter of fact.

Dre: 1:30:56

I'm bringing that up to say that you're familiar with the 80-20 concept. Right, 80% of your results come from 20% of your inputs. So once you get to a certain level, if you want to get, let's say, you're at 80% as an athlete, and this is a good distinction for people to understand when you're an athlete when you get to, you're at the 80% level of sports. So you're better than 80% of people who play tennis and you're a pro. You need that last 20%. You have to put in the work to do that last 20%. That's why you can be a pro tennis player, but you still have a trainer, even though you're better than 99% of people who play tennis, because you're trying to beat that 1% who you're not better than. So you have to do the 80% of input to get that last 20% of results, because that's the only way you'll be able to compete at the professional level. Same thing in basketball.

Dre: 1:31:41

When I got good enough that I was better than 80% of people who play ball, I still had to keep training because I'm trying to compete against the top 20% now. I'm not trying to compete against the bums, I'm trying to compete against the guys who play for money, so you had to put that vast amount in. Now in business it flips a little bit because the business is not objective, so there's no scoreboard. So let's say, a professional speaker or as an author, I'm better than 80% of people who speak or write books. I don't need to work on this skill anymore. What I need to work on is what's going to give me. That last bump is the marketing and the sales and getting my name out there. That's how people are going to come to know who I am, and that's the 10X part is when I mastered the marketing, rather than the 2X part was getting better as a speaker. It's like if I was to go to a conference and I was to go to a workshop how to be a good speaker on stage.

Dre: 1:32:30

I don't need that Somebody tried to sell me that a couple of years ago and there was no way I was going to that.

Dre: 1:32:34

Now, if they, would have sold me the marketing, then I would have bought it, but they tried to sell me the skill of speaking. I don't need the skill of speaking and this is one of the things that I do as a coach is you need the insight to understand what you need, and a lot of people are very bad at self-diagnosing what they need. They self-diagnose they need to get better at doing the thing when they actually need to get better at selling it. So then they focus on these things that only produce marginal results. I could go to a workshop about how to speak on stage and I would get better. Assuming the teacher is any good, I could probably get better, but is that really going to make a difference in my business? No, because if you can't book the stage, it doesn't matter how good you are, because you never get to get on stage and show how good you are. So if you don't book the stage, it doesn't matter. And this goes to collapsing timeframes, because we would talk about this at the beginning. The best way that someone like myself let's just say, using speaking as an example that I could collapse a time frame is if a speaker's bureau, who has a whole lot of calls coming in was assigned me and they just start booking stages for me. So now I don't have to keep calling people on the CRM, they're taking the calls for me and they're booking me on stages. Now, every stage that I get on does several things. Number one I get paid and make money. Number two I, my brand grows because now I've been on these stages. So now he's been on that stage, been on that stage and that stage he must be good. I haven't gotten any better, but all of a sudden I must be good because of where I've been, because of the law of association. I've been on this stage and this day I spoke at Google, I spoke at Microsoft. I must be great because I'm speaking at those places. So it must make sense. And in the business world it's a bandwagon business. So as soon as you start booking one, two, three, now four, five, six, seven, eight, now everybody wants to book you. And that's how it happens, and that's how it can seem like there's this big gap between this guy and that guy, when it's not really that. It's just one thing, because if this guy has that one thing happen, he'll be right up there too.

Dre: 1:34:27

And the force and I call these force multipliers. Force multipliers are skills and abilities and outcomes that, when they happen, they make everything else that you have better. They basically multiply all your abilities. So we talked earlier about communication, conversational skills. So we talked earlier about communication, conversational skills. Conversational skills are a force multiplier because if you get better at communicating, it makes everything else you do better. There's no downside to getting better at communicating. Building relationships is a force multiplier. If you know more people who are about something and they like you, it only makes everything else you do better. There's no downside to it. What's another one? And just having energy, confidence, those are force multipliers. They make everything better. Your ability to sell is a force multiplier, meaning there's no downside, and the better you get at it, the more it makes everything else you have multiply, so I call those force multipliers. So when it comes to collapsing timeframes, speed is a force multiplier. Faster you can move with the same level of skill, it makes everything else better.

Dre: 1:35:30

So if I was to get with and I've tried this still trying trying to get with bureaus, speakers bureaus Now there are downsides to speakers bureaus and there are upsides, and I'm just using this as an example. Downside is they get a cut of the money and also they kind of get to dictate a little bit to you how they do things, because they're the ones taking the call. They're not calling for you to call for the bureau, but what they can do is get me on some stages that I otherwise might not be able to get on on my own. So, for example, in speaking, sometimes I call someone and say, hey, I'm a speaker?

Dre: 1:36:00

I'm interested and I find the right person. They say well, we do hire speakers, but we only hire speakers through a bureau. We work with this bureau, that bureau and that bureau. Have you ever called one of them? Because if you're not represented by them, we're not going to hire you. So now they tell me to go call a bureau. I call a bureau, the bureau doesn't respond and I can't get through to the bureau and I go submit my information to them and nobody calls me back.

Dre: 1:36:22

So it's kind of like this you got to get over that hump. If I can get over that hump now, it opens up a whole new world. And again I'm just using this as an example. So when it comes to collapsing timeframes, again this is where insight comes in, and this is my best skill as a coach is helping people take the information that's out there and make sense of it and understand who, what, when, where, why and how to use it, not just what the information is. Information is free, so nobody has a problem with information. People's problem is application of information.

Dre: 1:36:52

So for me, the force multipliers I'm always looking for. So if I can find something or someone that can get my message out to more people. Then I can do everything else better and everything else just looks good and all of a sudden I look 100 times better than I look now. Again, I didn't get better. I just look better because now I have these force multipliers that are all of a sudden just making me look bigger than I actually am. Now, of course, these are not all outside of my powers. There are things that I can do. I can put more money into ads. I can just take every post I do on Instagram and put money behind it. There are all different things that I can do and continue to do, and make more calls and send out more emails and all these things. So you want to basically have a combination of all this stuff happening at the same time, so you give yourself the most opportunities for some serendipity to happen.

Klara: 1:37:44

Yeah, I love that, I agree and just want to touch on a little bit the confidence. I think that is important when you're talking to these people to have confidence, come up confident and know your credibility. I do want to share one more story. Actually, you mentioned Serena Williams, and it is so true because I have some insights from my tennis friends that actually end up making it professional. But when they played Serena, they already went on the court with a mindset that they had lost. And it's actually everything around her. It's the posture, right.

Klara: 1:38:18

So knowing what your even physical abilities and strengths are, which I never appreciated, mine like I'm a six foot tall, so I have some pretty good frame. So if you actually carry yourself with confidence on the court, like that alone plays on the mental game of the opponent, and Serena just has so much of it. She has the toughness, she has the physical ability, the skill, the body posture, and so when my friends that are maybe one head shorter and tinier went on the court, I was like, oh my God, I can never even return the stroke because she has so much power and just the grit. And so going on that court, especially in tennis, because it's the one-on-one game. So I feel like it's a very energy game. It's like one or the other, and you can actually sense the energy of the player being up or down if you pay enough attention. It's quite important having the confidence. So I just wanted to share that story and I know we're way over time.

Klara: 1:39:12

And maybe just one thing I caught on your videos recently you talking about working out. I'm sure confidence, at least for me, translates a lot from being active still and doing some physical activity, because it helps me with my posture, which is also very important on the stage. Curious about what your workout routine is like or what have you found out works best for you? I know you've mentioned you have some injuries from basketball too, which every personal athlete has somewhere in there from so much abuse during the years. We tried to push our bodies to and past our limits. But what works best for you, dre?

Dre: 1:39:51

So these days workout routine is I like to run three times a week and I go to boxing gym the other days. So that's the running is still a challenge because basketball is a lot of running. So you put all that wear and tear on your joints the ankle joint, the knee and the hips Running. I don't know how much longer I'm going to keep running because I'm right-handed. In basketball you jump off your left foot. My left Achilles is a little sore. Knees get a little sore. Boxing is fine because even though you move your legs in boxing, it's nothing like the movement that you do in basketball.

Dre: 1:40:25

Boxing is more upper body and it's footwork, but it's not running. So that's what I do workout-wise, but still work out every day. I've always had a personal standard that I'm going to be in professional athlete shape, meaning that if somebody asks me what I do for a living, that's how I'm a professional athlete. So I can still do that, Even in the boxing gym. Sometimes people ask me I thought you were a pro boxer, because they see me in there all the time working out.

Dre: 1:40:52

And I'm like no, I used to play basketball. I'm not a boxer. I wouldn't even try to be a boxer if I was trying to the point being that's just a standard for me to be in shape, and it absolutely translates that when you're in good physical shape, it translates to everything else that you do, because when people see you walk into a room I know this is true for men and I'm sure it's true for women as well, especially as you're tall that people view you differently when you're in shape than when you're not in shape.

Dre: 1:41:18

That matters a ton and it translates to them thinking that you may have other abilities that you might not even have, just because you look good physically, and that is a thing. And again, human nature is not logical, but it's yeah, nine percent plus.

Klara: 1:41:34

It's my own brain. Actually, more than anything, I hate being out of shape. I feel crappy about myself and if you feel specific way, I think it again, the energy translates and resonates. So right. I always say working out is one of the maybe good addictions that I've gotten from my athletic years. There's many that aren't good. I work out just to feel decent about being a human, because if I don't, I actually feel awful about myself, which, again, is not the most positive part of me, but I tend to accept it because it creates the positive outcome of me putting in the work every day and trying to stay in shape. Yeah, thank you so much, dre, for the fun conversation. Anything you want to close out with open mic that you want people to take away, I will add the links again from last episode to this one as well, so they can easily check out all your Instagram, youtube and books and websites. But anything else you want to get out, Well, I appreciate this conversation.

Dre: 1:42:33

I had a lot of fun in this question. What I would tell people is think about that doing the thing versus selling the thing and it's really important, especially as you get into the professional world where money is being exchanged, that your ability to sell the thing is more important than your ability to do the thing, because we've all seen people who might not even be that good at doing, but they're good at selling, so they get opportunity. So learning how to sell your stuff and sell yourself is a force multiplier skill that can help you move forward a lot faster than just getting better at doing it.

Klara: 1:43:03

I love that and we've had several conversations actually with some of my girlfriends on the podcast like learning how to talk about yourself, your achievements and your wins. People always say it's really hard and it's unnatural, and I agree. I think it's unnatural to everyone other than those small percentage of people who might be naturally born narcissists and if those are, that you probably don't want to associate yourselves with those. But I think it's a skill like anything else. You just got to learn how to articulate your worth, your strengths and skill, and that goes across anything business being an athlete Actually, you talked about it as well as if you're looking for any sort of job interviews, et cetera. I think it's very critical and important to articulate those, so I love that. Closing, thank you so much, trey, and have an awesome weekend ahead.

Dre: 1:43:52

Absolutely. Thank you for having me on, Claire. I had a great time.

Klara: 1:43:55

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