An NBA Pro's Playbook for Entrepreneurial Success

Jim James (00:00)
Welcome to this episode of The Unnoticed Entrepreneur. Really a special, special day today because I've got the former NBA basketball star, Dre Baldwin, joining me today. We're going to talk about performance and results and how as a professional athlete who played at the very highest level, both in the US, but also in eight other countries, has gone on to impact over a hundred million entrepreneurs around the world. He's given TED Talks,

Dre Baldwin (00:29)
Thank you.

Jim James (00:29)
He's written an astounding 35 books and is on the show today to talk to us about really how an entrepreneur can get focused around performance and results. He's also gonna give us his one mistake that he's made that we can learn from and a key tip so that we can be just as successful in life as we are on the court. Dre Baldwin, joining me from Miami. Welcome to the show.

Dre Baldwin (00:32)
Thanks.

I am pleasured to be here Jim. Thank you for having me on. How are you?

Jim James (01:02)
I'm great, thanks. I have to confess, I'd rather be in Miami, I think, than in a fairly damp February here in the UK. But you've got the sunshine coming in, but I've got you coming into the studio, so I'm very blessed. Dre, first of all, tell us your backstory, and then we're going to talk about how you transition from being a pro basketball player into being a prolific entrepreneur and author.

Dre Baldwin (01:12)
It's pretty nice here.

Sure, come from the city of Philadelphia. Now, as you said, based in Miami, always played sports growing up. Got into basketball as maybe the last sport that I tried, decided to stick with it. Wasn't very good when I started, only played one year of scholastic high school ball, walked on and played division three college ball, which is the third lowest tier of college basketball. Hustled my way into playing pro basketball, which started that career that you mentioned, spanned almost a decade. At that same time, I started publishing to this brand new website called YouTube, and that's where

I started to build an audience of people just knowing me, but mostly just athletes. About halfway through my career, around 2009, 2010, I started my career in 2005, the players who watched me started asking questions about mindset. And that's where I started to lay the foundation for what became what we're going to talk about today, the Work On Your Game framework, because not only did the players appreciate the mindset pieces, but also people who didn't play sports, they appreciated that stuff about mindset. And that's how I knew, okay, here's an audience that I can serve

if I decide to step outside of the realm of sports, which I knew I wanted to do from the very beginning. So when I stopped playing in 2015, that's what I jumped into doing full time. So these days we work with high level professionals and entrepreneurs, people who are just ambitious and urgent about being in the top 2 % of what they do. The same way a pro athlete is in that top 2%. I work with professionals now who are either already there or want to be there. And that's what we help people do to this day. So that is what Wor On Your Gane is all about.

Jim James (03:00)
Thank you for that, Dre. So the top 2%, how difficult is it for people like me to get into the top 2 %? Do you kind of have to start in the top 5 % to get to the top 2 % or can people really learn that mindset? What they have to do in order to get into that top echelon?

Dre Baldwin (03:22)
Good question and no, you don't have to start at a certain place because even myself, I became a professional athlete even though my start was very humble, very humble beginnings from where I started as an athlete. So it's just a matter of, yes, there does need to be some, you got to have some clay to work with. You got to have some material to work with. But at the same time, it's mostly just about you having the right mindset, applying the right strategy, having the right working systems and then the accountability to make sure that everything and everyone

is and are doing their jobs. That's really the key to getting into that top level. And of course, the key to staying there.

Jim James (03:55)
Dre, mindset is used as a term, you know, frankly, quite a lot by quite a lot of people. Can we get your definition of mindset?

Dre Baldwin (04:00)
That's right.

Sure, well the definition is the way that your mind is set to be used. That's really what mindset is about. It's about your consistent and habitual ways of thinking. Your mind, your thought patterns, your ideas, your beliefs and your attitudes and the way that they are set, meaning they're happening over and over and over again, habitually and unconsciously. That's what mindset is.

Jim James (04:25)
Okay, and so if someone's got, let's say, an underperforming mindset, and they want to be in that top 2%, in your experience of working with over 100 million now, entrepreneur, or rather influencing over 100 million, and you've got tens of thousands that you've worked with and coached, yeah, it would be a lot of people, you've been, you've been through all of your videos and your 35 books, but it's tens of thousands of people you've coached, what would you say

Dre Baldwin (04:42)
Yeah, a hundred million would be a lot of people to work with. Yeah, a lot of work.

Jim James (04:54)
to these people, what do you say to them that gets them into that mindset? What if there's a pivotal moment or a pivotal phrase? Is there something that you could share that really helps people to get to the other side?

Dre Baldwin (05:07)
Well, there was a phrase that I could do that without charge a lot of money for it. But what actually what it actually is Jim is a matter of conditioning. It's a matter of changing your habits. Because if all human beings, most of what we do think and say are habit based, meaning we are not even consciously aware that we're doing it or thinking it. And that controls about 85 % of our behaviors mentally and verbally and thoughtfully. So what we need to change are the underlying habits. And that's done through the process of conditioning.

And mental conditioning works the same way as physical conditioning in that you take a certain strategy of behaviors and you do them on a consistent basis on purpose consciously to the point that your subconscious mind realizes what you're doing. It takes over the task and then it starts doing it on its own without you having to think about it. The same way that if you tied your shoes this morning, you did it without thinking about it because you've done it so many times that the subconscious mind now takes over the task and you don't have to think about it anymore. That's the way you change your mindset through subconscious

programming or what we call mental conditioning.

Jim James (06:10)
Dre, was this something that you always had or is it something that you learned along the way? Because it sounds as though you have acquired a great deal of insight. I'm just interested in whether you had this sort of, that's how you got onto the court or you learned it on the court or afterwards.

Dre Baldwin (06:31)
Well, it did not come from the court. I wish I had it when I was a little bit earlier because I would probably would have been a better player. So it was absolutely not something I was born with. This is something that I've developed over time. But as far as that word that you use there, insight, that is my superpower. That is my most valuable skill when it comes to what I do these days is my ability to kind of see inside of things, break things down and put them back together in a way that makes it easy for anyone to understand. That's the most valuable thing that I bring to the table. And so I appreciate the compliment there.

And for me, when it comes to the mindset piece or anything that we're gonna talk about here in this conversation, this is all stuff that I learned, applied, developed, and then of course mixing in with my own mental wiring the way that I think and the way that I communicate and the things that I've experienced. And then I can package it up and put it out there in my own way. So that's how it came to be.

Jim James (07:22)
So Dre, that's essentially a very positive message, isn't it? Because it doesn't matter where someone comes from or even frankly, where they are today. With the right mindset and the right approach and self -discipline, I'm sure, you can move into that top 5 % of whatever dedicated field you want. You mentioned performance, but you've also mentioned results. What role do

results or the definition of results play in attaining that focus?

Dre Baldwin (07:57)
They're huge. They're actually one of most important pieces you need because what are you going to focus on if you don't know where you're going? Right? So it's like if you're driving somewhere, you turn on a navigation. First thing navigation wants to know is where are we going? Where do you want to go? What's the destination? So if you don't have a clear destination, then there is nothing to focus on. So the destination is required for focus with no destination or no target, then focus is impossible. So,

We have to know what we're trying to do, what we're trying to get done, whether that be in the short term or the long term, that is the result. And when you're clear on the result, then you can decide on what to focus on, at least in the moment or again for the long term.

Jim James (08:36)
That's wonderful. And now you've got the Work On Your Game, University, and you've published 35 books. Let's just talk about what's the university doing. And then I'd love to know really how you've been building the brand for Dre Baldwin, because you've really gone from the court to the TED Talk stage and into boardrooms. So that's a fantastic trajectory. So tell us first of all about

the university that you've created.

Dre Baldwin (09:08)
Sure, so the university is where we do all of our high level coaching, consulting, that's where our speaking, our programs, our courses, that's basically where all our focus is right now inside the university. So that's where people get their education, their Work On Your Game education, I guess we can call it, is where that happens there. So anyone who's being coached by us, anyone who comes to us through any form of consulting is all happening inside of Work On Your Game university,

Jim James (09:18)
Eh -heh.

Dre Baldwin (09:37)
based on our four part framework of mindset, strategy, systems, and accountability. And the goals there, the results are about your highest level of performance done consistently. And of course, the goal is to help you bring in more money in your business. Because we're working with entrepreneurs and an entrepreneur's number one mandate is increasing value for shareholders.

Jim James (09:56)
Absolutely it is. So you've got the university and is that a physical place that people need to go to or is it online or a hybrid?

Dre Baldwin (10:05)
Hey, maybe one day we'll build a campus, but right now is online. Yeah.

Jim James (10:08)
Okay, yeah, I'm sure the UK would love to have a campus. It sounds like a fantastic approach too. And what we need, yeah, what we need too really is a mindset, not just academic frameworks. Dre, can we turn the focus to this kind of amazing and frankly prolific content production and how you've been building your brand? Tell us which came first. Is it the frameworks or the books or the videos and...

Dre Baldwin (10:13)
Yeah, that's a good idea. Yeah.

That's right.

Jim James (10:37)
What strategy have you taken to produce so much content so consistently over time?

Dre Baldwin (10:45)
The videos came first and then the books, I would say it was second and the framework was third. So the videos came first because I had getting out of college again, I played at the division three level, which is a level that doesn't produce pro players. So to get into pro basketball, I had to take some extra steps. I had to go to this event gym that is called a exposure camp and exposure camp is like a job fair, but for athletes and you pay to go to these events and a bunch of people who all think they're good enough to

have a job as a professional athlete, all show up and we all basically play basketball for a couple of days. And we're trying to prove to an audience of pro basketball decision makers, these are agents, scouts, coaches, team owners from around the world. They all come to one place for this. We're all trying to prove that we're good enough to play pro. Hopefully we can impress someone. So I went to that event and that was my segue into pro basketball because I played pretty well at that event. And the footage from that event, because this was in 2005 that I went to this exposure camp.

The footage was on this thing called a VHS tape. You remember those, Jim? All right, so the Gen Zers listen to this. You can ask your parents or you can Google it. They'll tell you what a VHS tape was. So the VHS tape was basically YouTube, but a physical version of YouTube. Let's just put it that way. So I took that video to an audio visual store. They put it onto a data CD. And that CD I put into a computer and I uploaded it to this new website called YouTube. And again, this is 2005. That was the year YouTube

Jim James (11:48)
I'm afraid I do, I'm afraid I do, yeah.

Yeah, that's right.

Dre Baldwin (12:14)
came out and I just put the footage up there just for myself because with a VHS tape you know you can lose it you can get wet you can leave it in the Sun the footage is gone so I just wanted it to be somewhere where I wouldn't lose it so that's how I got into creating I kind of stumbled into creating content that wasn't the original idea I'm just gonna make a bunch of videos and get known from video that wasn't the plan but when I put the video out what happened Jim is when I went back to YouTube to check on it some months later because again who cares about YouTube in 2005

I noticed that there were comments on the video and people were just saying, hey, who are you? Where do you play? How often do you practice? Who taught you? They could tell, they could clearly tell that this random guy who they don't know, it was obvious that I could play, but they didn't know who I was. And I was putting video on YouTube and there wasn't anybody else doing it. So they were, I could tell that they were presuming, hey, maybe I can learn basketball from this random guy because clearly he knows and he's making himself available. So maybe he can help me.

So these kids were basically crowdsourcing their knowledge from the internet, which is a normal thing to do now. But in 2005, this was not normal. And if you're from my era or any era before that, I grew up in the 1990s. If you didn't know a person, actually physically know them, you couldn't get information from, there was no, you couldn't go on the internet and get information. You had to go to the library or you had to know somebody. Right? So now they could go on a computer and get information. So I realized in a very short time,

there's an opportunity here because number one, I already went to the gym and practiced every day anyway. That was my normal behavior. This was without a camera, without YouTube. Then I realized, okay, there's an audience of people who want to see what a high level player does every day in practice. And I had the ability to do it and I also know how to break down and explain things. Again, you mentioned insight earlier. I know how to do that. So,

Eventually I got the I got the idea. Hey, maybe I can start doing this on purpose and doing it strategically putting video out now Let's take a few years Jim. So this is not like there's some overnight thing I didn't wake up the next day with this bright idea. So 2005 will put the first video out and from 2005 through about 2009 I'll just put out videos sporadically maybe once a month every few weeks whenever I felt like it and got around to it in 2009 what happened here is first of all YouTube was purchased by Google and

and Google immediately began to monetize the website, which meant anyone who was publishing content can now make money from publishing content. That wasn't the thing before that. And number two, I found myself a free agent in sports. So I didn't have any contract offers coming in and I wanted to make sure I had a secure way of continuously making money. And it wasn't gonna, it wasn't happening from basketball, at least at that moment. So that's when I started really focusing on, okay, I will put out a video every day. I'm gonna start writing articles on my website

all the time. So I started doing this on purpose and doing it much more intentionally. And that's when this is also the same time that social media started to become ubiquitous. Everybody started using it. So for that period, one more thing, I also started creating my own products. I started creating training programs for basketball players all at all in the same timeframe. So that's when all the brand and all that stuff began. So that was the video. You want me to talk about the books and the frameworks or? Okay.

Jim James (15:30)
Yeah, I mean, what a wonderful story. And as you say, I think also just to point out that one, that you are doing this on purpose, but secondly, that it took time, that you can do it on purpose, but you still need time for it to accumulate and for people to find you and to subscribe. It really isn't such a thing as an overnight success tray. So, but then let's talk about

how you then move into books because many people get comfortable in one medium and they stay there. But you've gone on not just to publish one book, but 35. So tell us how you've done that. It's an amazing accomplishment.

Dre Baldwin (16:14)
Yeah, well, yeah, it seems it sounds like it when you say it that way it doesn't it doesn't seem like it when I think about it was I was there for every one of them but uh when it comes to the books I had always been writing so I've always been a big reader and a big writer So before I even got that video on YouTube in 2005 I was actually blogging first had a blog before I had a YouTube channel now and I'm blogged didn't take off I didn't get a bunch of fans from blogging. I did it from YouTube, but 

Since I was always a writer around that same period, maybe 2009 through 2011, this is when all this stuff was happening, self -publishing became ubiquitous. And I realized, or I found out that you could write a book and put it out and you didn't have to go through a gatekeeper in order to write your book. So that's when I started writing even more. And I wrote my first book. It's the only book of mine that's a complete, just narrative book. It's called By A Game. And it was really just from my basketball audience, because all I was talking about was just my basketball

story, my upbringing in basketball up through my college years. And then I started writing more books on mindset. And then I wrote some books about how to play basketball professionally overseas because a lot of players were asking about that. How do I play overseas if I want to? Because the industry doesn't have a ton of information. So I started writing books about that. And then anytime I just came up with a solid enough idea that had enough meat on the bone, so to speak, then I'll write another book about it. And then

And that's how I really got into the writing. And the good thing about the self -publishing is that you didn't have to go through a gatekeeper or be approved by anybody in order to use your book out. And you could do it extremely quickly.

Jim James (17:45)
And so from a practical point of view, were you, you were writing those, typing those out yourself, or did you get some voice and then have some people help you to type it out?

Dre Baldwin (17:56)
No, well, first of all, nobody helped me. Every word that comes out of Work On Your Game is written by me. Always will be. And secondly, the voice to text thing, I don't even think it was that big of a thing at that time. I don't think it really became a thing until maybe I know when I wrote my book, Work On Your Game, which came out in 2019. By that time, voice to text was more of a thing because I remember writing certain portions of that through voice to text, but everything before that.

Jim James (18:01)
Fantastic. Fantastic.

Yeah.

Dre Baldwin (18:24)
Because Work On Your Game was probably book number maybe number 20. So about the first half or 60 % of my books were all just typing with my fingers. I like to write on my phone. I can write on the phone very fast.

Jim James (18:36)
Well, okay. Well, that's even more inspirational. Dre, you've now built this amazing business. And as you say, in the old days, when you started, every learning institution was in a physical place. And now you've got an online university. That's how much it's all moved in 20 years. It seems like almost as if a textbook case of how to build a brand through just sheer hard work, but also a great deal of inspiration and passion. If there's something that you've done that hasn't worked,

quite as you might have hoped. What would that be? Is there something that you can share with us as a lesson that we can learn from something you've done that didn't quite work out and why would have not worked out?

Dre Baldwin (19:19)
Yeah, every product that we haven't mentioned here didn't work out. So I've created a ton of products that didn't really didn't really sell that well. Might not even sold at all. I just would just move on to the next one, next one, next one, trying to find the right, just trying to find that next hit. Because a lot of what I did from, let's just say from 2009, that's when I created my first product, which is a $4.99 training program for basketball players. Those are my first two products, one for dribbling, one for shooting, $5 a piece.

Jim James (19:21)
Yeah, we've all got those. Yeah.

Dre Baldwin (19:49)
So from 2009 to 2020, that whole decade plus period, there was no, I didn't have any formal, as far as entrepreneurial, business building, marketing, advertising, I didn't have any training on that stuff. I have a business degree from college, but nothing they were teaching then has anything to do with what we're talking about here today, zero. So I was just doing it like, okay, I got another idea, let's put this out. Here's another idea, let's put this out. Here's another idea, put it out.

There was no big brained strategy behind this. It would just be put something out. If it does, if it works, let's keep pushing it. If it doesn't work, then let's move on to the next one. So I've created probably in my lifetime up probably created 500 different products, things that had a price tag. And I'll put it out and told people you could buy this. Now how many of them actually worked? Meaning people were actually actively buying them. I would say 10 % maybe, but everything else didn't work.

Jim James (20:48)
Yeah. Okay. So would that be product market fit? Do you think?

Dre Baldwin (20:52)
Maybe it might have just been oversaturation might have been I didn't do a good job of marketing it letting people know that it existed Maybe I didn't position it the right way Maybe I was just putting out so much that people just missed it because I just gave him too many things It was like drinking from a fire hose. They just missed some of it So it could have been any of those things and any of those products the good news is Because I understand the concept of positioning good news is any of those products. I could go grab one dust it off the shelf Reposition it talk about it differently and probably make a sale right now

because none of them were time -sensitive. So when I come up with some, then I still feel like I'm relatively new in the business game. So as I learn more and I have more resources and more, maybe more hands on deck to do things, I can get every product I've ever created and market it and advertise it and position it better. And maybe we can make those products sell. So I'm not going to say to any of them is dead because who knows, they might come back. Exactly.

Jim James (21:22)
Hmm.

Yeah, they're just in the archive, aren't they, really, for getting back out into the market. Dre Baldwin. Yeah, well, that's right. You've got a young son there. So it's all in the IP of Dre Baldwin. Dre, if there's a number one tip that you'd give to an unnoticed entrepreneur who's listening as I am to your story and just being frankly inspired and amazed.

Dre Baldwin (21:55)
Right, I might make my son some.

Yeah.

That's right.

Jim James (22:15)
What would be your number one tip to the unnoticed entrepreneur?

Dre Baldwin (22:19)
If their challenge is that they're unnoticed, if that's what they're calling themselves, Jim, then I would say the number one tip is you need to figure out some ways to draw attention to yourself. And when it comes to marketing online, there are basically three ways to draw attention. May I share those three ways? Okay, so number one is advertising, and this is not in any particular order. Advertising is just the fastest, it is also the costliest, but it can produce the results the quickest. So that's advertising.

Jim James (22:36)
Please do, yes, absolutely.

Dre Baldwin (22:48)
Second one is through collaboration. And this is what we're doing right now is a collaboration because some of my audience is gonna now know you, some of your audience is now gonna know me. So collaboration is you connect with someone who already has an audience, you two do something together, share something together, and now both of your audiences get to kind of cross pollinate. And the good news about that is that Jim doesn't lose anything, Dre doesn't lose anything because most of our audience members are polygamous anyway. They're not just listen to one person.

They buy and read and listen to and watch multiple people. So number two is collaboration. And number three is content. Most of us know about content. You put something out for free and let the world see it. And the more of it you put out, hopefully the more attention that you get. Now content is the slowest to turn over from action to result, but it costs you absolutely nothing, which means you can put out as much of it as you want and Work On Your Game. We put out a ton of content. I think we've talked about that a lot right here. So advertising,

collaboration, content and every entrepreneur, every marketer should be doing a mix of all three.

Jim James (23:49)
Dre Baldwin, and you've articulated that wonderfully and also you've demonstrated it brilliantly. Dre Baldwin, if people want to find out more about you, where can they go?

Dre Baldwin (24:00)
Well, of course you got WorkOnYourGame.com. That's the place where we do all of our coaching, our consulting, our speaking, our programs are all underneath the umbrella of the university. As far as socials, we are on every social media platform. So I'm on all of them. My profiles are public everywhere. So I just put my name up. I am extremely easy to find. I'm hard not to find. And we publish on every platform every day. So I'm over indexing on social media, meaning I post more than any marketer would recommend you post. I post

on social media every single day.

Jim James (24:30)
I'm glad that you've taken some time to post and join me and collaborate with me on the Unnoticed Entrepreneur Show today. Thank you so much for joining me.

Dre Baldwin (24:38)
Thank you for sharing your platform Jim and I appreciate the opportunity.

Jim James (24:41)
Well, it's really been inspiring. And so for all of us that have thought about mindset as being something other people have, I think what Dre's really shown is that there is a process and that we all have the potential to improve, but we do need to have results in mind before we start with the behavior change. Because if you don't have a result, as Dre says, if you don't have the location in the sat nav, the vehicle doesn't know

in which direction to travel. It's just the same with our own lives. So he's also shown us how creating content is really a wonderful, wonderful way to share what you think and to bring in an audience and also to serve that audience consistently over time. And that's really why he's built such a wonderful business. And now a man with a mission has built a university to train the next generation. So really an amazing story. So thank you for joining

me, Jim James and our guest today, Dre Baldwin. Dre, thank you so much joining us from Miami today.

Dre Baldwin (25:42)
Thanks for having me, Jim.

Jim James (25:44)
And it's been wonderful, hasn't it? So if you've enjoyed this as much as I have, do please place a review on the player that you're showing this with and also share it with a fellow unnoticed entrepreneur. Many, many great lessons from today's episode. And until we meet again, I just do encourage you to keep on communicating.