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Speaker 1: Welcome back to the art of charm podcast, a show designed to help driven entrepreneurs and professionals. Like you create more opportunities, build more trust and close more deals every week we share with you interviews and strategies to help guide you towards your goals, by unlocking your X-Factor and giving you the edge you need in a hyper competitive world. The latest in science psychology and self-development tools will help you reach your full potential, whatever it may be by giving you the edge in any situation. So whether

Speaker 2: It's sales or clients, relationships, or even deepening bonds between friends, we've got what you need. You shouldn't have to settle for anything less than extraordinary. I'm AAJ. And I'm Johnny, ladies and gentlemen, we're running our live in-person boot camps again this year. And they're being held in beautiful Las Vegas. Yes, that's right. And it will be an immersive weekend of drills and exercises to help you master conversation and create more opportunities, build more trust and close more deals.

Speaker 1: We've been running these programs for over a decade. Our bootcamp is packed with the best strategies science, psychology, and entrepreneurship has to offer straight from our show. So if you've learned a lot from this show, just think what a packed weekend full of exercises, drills, and networking can do for you.

Speaker 2: Who's going to be there. Well, I'll tell you entrepreneurs, high-performing professionals, sales specialists, looking to gain an edge on their competition. Much like yourself. Seats are extremely limited and applications closed this week. So head on over to the art of charm.com/bootcamp. And don't just take it from us. I want to give you a testimonial of one of our favorite clients. This comes from our client, Rick, or

Speaker 1: Coming to bootcamp. Rick would describe himself like this. I've always been an extrovert, so I didn't have any trouble talking to people, but I wanted more out of my social and dating life. Any success I had just seemed to come for being in the right place at the right time, I felt like I needed to do so much work, but Rick wasn't willing to settle. So he committed to doing something about it and put in the work. I pushed myself during the week more than I have in the last 10 years, the instruction, the exercises and the support you guys gave was second to none, just wow. Who would have thought working on myself for a weekend could be so exciting, exhausting and unbelievably rewarding. I think the biggest thing for me was the consistent application of the principles that you guys taught us. I could literally feel myself growing more confident with each exercise we did.

Speaker 1: And after each night we went out and investing made all the difference with everything I gained from the bootcamp. Now those opportunities come to me. I effortlessly used the conversational tools to show my worth, build trust, and drive interest in me. Now I'm the guy who makes other people feel like they were in the right place at the right time to meet me. It's funny when I think back now and realize how many chances I missed out on, because I just didn't see them at the time. I should have taken bootcamp sooner, but better, late than never. Right? If you want results like this in your life, if you want to see an amazing transformation in your social skills, confidence and ability to connect, then head on over to the art of charm.com/bootcamp. Pause this podcast right now and apply today as applications close at the end of this week, are you ready to crush it in business loving life, then press pause on this podcast right now and head to the art of charm.com/bootcamp to apply today.

Speaker 1: Now, thank you everyone for tuning in let's kick off today's show, and it is all about how to win today. We have Tim Grover with us. Tim has been the trainer for some of the most elite and iconic athletes in the world, including the late Kobe Bryant, Dwayne Wade and Michael Jordan Kobe called them the master of mental toughness. Tim is also the author of the book, relentless from good to great to unstoppable and his new book winning the unforgiving race to greatness just came out and we can't wait to unpack what it takes to win over and over again with you, our audience, welcome to the show. Tim many in our audience are just getting started in their career and wanting to make an impact, wanting to gain respect. And you started your career training with one of the greatest athletes of all time. How did that come to be? And how did you build trust at such an early stage in your career with someone that we all recognize know and love? Michael Jordan

Speaker 3: Was my first professional client, but the road and the chase and the race to get to him, that was what people don't want to don't want to talk about. And so what happened was I graduated with a master's degree in exercise science. You go out, not that many jobs available in the fitness industry back in the early eighties, other than a health club. So I take a job at a local health club back then the minimum wage was $3 and 35 cents. That's a minimum wage. So here I am. I'm like, do I take this job with a master's degree? Or do I go lie down on my parents' couch? Well, we already knew what my parents were going to say. That was not going to happen. So I took this job. I took this job because what I, what I did was I had the, all the education, but I didn't have that actual practical experience.

Speaker 3: And the part of the training that I needed, the interaction with individuals. So I took a job at a local health club, got to meet some people, see things I was going on eventually got elevated to a, to a personal trainer. And I started to train individuals. And I was like, all right, remember, this is before social media. There's no emails. There's very few cell phones. And I'm like, all right, how can I distinguish myself from everybody else? Well, it's really not about me. It's about the results. I can get my clients because they're going to be my walking. Yeah. They are my Facebook. They are my Instagram. They are my, uh, but instead of showing it on a phone, people actually see those individuals. So I was like, all right, I have to pay attention to every little detail. Really let these individuals know that if you want to work out with me, these are the things that are going to happen.

Speaker 3: This isn't about just coming to see me three hours, three hours a week. There's a lot of stuff that else goes in there. So I started to hold people really accountable. And when through that accountability, I started to get great results with these individuals really, really good at this office. And that got to slowly start to spread in the di in the health club industry. And then I started to work with women. I started to work with children. I started to work with recreational athletes and starting to get all this thing gone. So that time between getting my first professional client, and it was three years before I got that first professional, our first professional client really allowed me to understand my craft, even better, figure out things that I didn't know. Then I saw a article in our local newspaper saying how the Michael Jordan was tired of taking the physical abuse from the Detroit pistons.

Speaker 3: And I was like, okay. I was like, you know what? If I write letters to all the other players and Michael sees the work I did with those guys, maybe he would be interested in me. So this was before the email process. So I literally wrote 14 separate letters to every player on the Chicago bulls organization except Michael Jordan. So I was like, oh, he's already so talented. He's not going to want it. He's not going to want to work with me. And especially since I never had a professional athlete. So somehow those letters made it to some of the players, few of the players, I don't know. And Michael reached into somebody else's locker and pulled out the open letter and looked at it and gave it to the athletic trainer and the team physician at that time and said, Hey, find out what this guy is about.

Speaker 3: And lowly through a three month process later, I went through it. I finally got a chance to meet. Michael had the opportunity to sit down with him, explain my philosophies. The first thing I told him, I said, listen, if you're looking for an individual that has played basketball at a professional level, I'm not that person. I said, I played in college, but I said, cause you know, a lot of people like in all, well, if you haven't played at that level, you really don't know what you're, what you're talking about. I'm just like, if, if we have an issue with that, this conversation doesn't need to go. And he finally, he goes, I don't need you to help me put the ball in the hoop. I can do that on my own said, all right, got it. So then I kind of explained my philosophy to him and the way things were going and he goes, this doesn't sound right, because nobody had told him what I wanted to do. Everybody wind up, bulk them up and make them stronger. And I was like, no, that's not the first thing we need to do. We need to address some other issues that are going on with your body. And he goes, this doesn't sound right. I said, well, it doesn't get any writer. I said, give me 30 days, 30 days turned into 15 years.

Speaker 1: And over those 30 days, obviously you were challenging him. And again, at that point in your not having worked with many professional athletes and certainly no one of his caliber, how did he react to that? And how did that trust get built? And that relationship cement itself, he

Speaker 3: Knew I was just as competitive as he was. That was very important. I paid attention to the details. And the one thing I always told him, I said, after each workout, after each training session, after each recovery session, I would always tell him how he's going to feel within the next 12 hours with the next 24 hours with the next 48 hours, whatever score. I said, Hey, these are the things you should feel in the body. This is where you'll feel a little stiffness. This is the way you'll feel a little tightness. This is where you feel more flexible. These are all things that could happen. So I was going to, I was telling him what his body's going to feel before it actually happened. And then by him seeing that, but like, yeah, you know what the, yeah, I do feel a little tight here.

Speaker 3: I do a feel looser. I am moving a little better here. Yeah. I had a little more soreness going to the right, going to LA. He was like, man, maybe this kid actually knows what he's talking, what he's talking about. So that actually built the trust more and more. And the other part that was extremely important was when you deal with high level athletes or even in business, they have a lot of, yes, people around them that all they agree to everything they say. And I was the complete opposite I would, when he would say something, I was like, no, Michael, now we're not going to do it this way. We're going to do it this way. And he wasn't really accustomed people say taking control of a situation because he was like, Hey, I'm the, I'm the alpha I'm used to telling people what to do. I'm used to dictating things and I was like a hundred percent true. You are. But when it comes to this, you hired me to do a job. You have to let me do my job.

Speaker 1: Obviously this book winning is not about exercise science or kinesiology, not at all. It's about the space between our ears and how we work our minds and get us to a place to win and win repeatedly. Right? It's not just once Michael, wasn't happy. It's settling with one championship Kobe, the same Dwayne, everyone you've worked with. How did you make that transition into? Wow. The mindset is such a big part of what I'm going to be doing with these athletes to push them, to build their grit and resilience.

Speaker 3: Well, you know, if you look at all the videos of all these individuals, everything that's available on Google or YouTube, all these different things, they always say, what does it start with? It starts, like you said, in between the years, it starts with a mindset NBA players. Aren't going to play basketball like these individuals, but being able to compete, being able to win, being able to understand what it takes to become better. It's an, all of us, we all have the ability to compete. So being able to sit down and watch these individuals, how they handled, wins, how they handle losses, how they handle times when they won with their teammates, how they handle times when they lost with their teammates, with their families, with their friends, how they prepared, all that stuff. I really paid attention to all those nuances and for myself in order to play at the level that I played at, which was at a small D one school, I was not physically gifted as a lot of the athletes that I had to play again.

Speaker 3: So I had to out-think them. I had to know, I had to know how to be more mentally prepared, how to be stronger than them when they were quitting, how to see things that they didn't see. So it was something that was part of me for a long time. And then working with these elite athletes and understanding their mindset, it just took it to it. It just took it to a different level because we have this space in between our ears. And it's funny, it's supposed to be our space, but so many times we let somebody else set shopping and we let somebody else control what's going on in there. And they're not even paying rent in that space. You know, you have the money, it's the most valuable space that you have and you not even controlling, it's somebody else's. So the one thing I always tell the individuals is I need you to be exactly who you are, because that's the most important thing once you know exactly who you are that I know the individual I'm dealing with. I know the physical capabilities, I know the limitations. I know the mental toughness of an individual because I'm getting that real person, not the fake individual. And once you see that person, the mindset kind of takes form on its own.

Speaker 1: I think many of us can't relate to the talent level of the athletes that you've worked with, but we can all relate to the challenges that come along with winning. When you look at Michael Jordan's winning percentage in his career, Kobe's the number of shots they missed outweighs the number of shots they made even game winners versus misses. Failure is such a big part of the journey to winning. And they're able to use that failure in a way that I think many of us aren't many of us quit before we get to the place of winning. We create self doubt and our insecurities overwhelm us. What did you learn about how they manage that self doubt and insecurity and failure to get to a level to not only win, but when repeatedly

Speaker 3: I break individuals down into three different, three different categories, we have the people that compete and there's individuals that compete. We all know how to compete. We compete every single day at something, all right? And a lot of people that compete at things, their win is to finish. They just want to finish whatever the, whatever they're doing to me. If you're going to compete at something and you're going to finish it, make sure it leads to a win. It might not be a winner in that particular area. It could be a win in something else. You know, people always love to run marathons. And unless you're the elite elite marathon, the chances of you, no matter how much training you have to go into any marathon and win the marathon is not going to happen. It's just, it's just not, but your mindset is to finish.

Speaker 3: So when you finish, what does that finish? Lead to a win in something else. Then you have the other individuals that win once. And we all know those individual. We all know those individuals. They tell you about that one when that happened 20 years ago. And they tell it to you over and over again. And we're so polite that we don't want to tell them. Yeah, we, you just told us that story last year, the year before and the year before that. And, and those people are just satisfied with one, that one, that one glorious with, then you have people that win at winning. Those are the people that know that every time they win at something, there's another start line there. And how do you get to that place? It's actually done through failure and losing. Cause like you said, you're going to miss more shots.

Speaker 3: You're going to lose more than you're going to win. You're going to fail more than you're going to win. But the one thing I learned and I teach these individuals, yes. You know, when people say, when you fail and you lose, you need to say stand right back up. Because if you stay down, it's a sign of weakness. I totally disagree with that. If you get knocked out and you fail, stay down there for a second, we stay down there for a minute, stay down there for a day. Understand, hi, you got knocked down. Why you failed? Because when you stand back up, if you jump right back up, you're going to get knocked down again. Cause you're standing up the same person. So once you fail, you stand up, understand why you got knocked down. Because when you stand up, you have to be different.

Speaker 3: So you know, you get, you fail and you fall, you stand up, you have to be smarter, you fail and you fall. You have to stand up. You have to be stronger. You fail and you fall, you stand right. You have to be more resilient. So with each failure, if you stand up differently and not the same, it brings you closer to that. When a set of farther away from it, can't stand up the same individual. And I've always noticed through all my, all my career with my athletes, with the business, people I work with is every failure, every loss it's brought them closer to that. Ultimate win for whatever they're looking for. And for like you said, most people, it creates that it creates self doubt. It says, oh, I didn't do this. Right. I don't want to go through this again. Winning. It's not about the glamour. It's about the challenges. It's about the obstacle. It's about the pain you go through to have that win briefly. I mean, look at, I'm pretty sure you guys are this isn't your first podcast.

Speaker 3: Yeah. You're very well known in this industry. You guys are very successful, but after every point odd cast that you guys do, that's your win. But then the net, it starts all over with the next one. It starts all over with the next one. It starts all over with it all over with the next one. And with each one, everybody will look at it and say, oh man, that podcast was absolutely perfect. There was, you know, the lighting was great. The sound was good. Your guests was unbelievable. And then YouTube will review it and be like, nah, this wasn't right. This was a right. This was a right. That, yeah. And those are your failures, even though everybody else sees this as a success, because the next time it has to continue to improve, it has to continue to improve.

Speaker 2: Tim. I want to make a comment about that mark. Right there. It is so true for AIG and I to the detriment of our own promotion. And let me give you an example in this world, with all the social media that's going on, it is incredibly difficult to feed these algorithms with fresh content every day and make it miraculous and make it special. And so the idea is the repurpose old content. And if we are people who are trying to get better on a daily basis, do you think that I want to be promoting content from a year ago? Yeah. And I can tell you, and then we have this problem where on one level we know that we hit the points and it was good and it's all there, but on a logical right now level, it's like, I'd rather just do it all over again because there's going to be more excitement. Or we, we know this, even this concept even better now or because of the way I'm viewing it. I know I could just get it across in a much better than where I was a year ago. There's you know, you

Speaker 3: Guys are asked a question, you think you've nailed all the questions and then you'll be like, shoot. That's I forgot to ask that one question. I should have asked them that I should have asked that one question or just something wasn't right. That's what winners do. They're constantly looking to get better because if you don't, if you remain the same, that'll be your only winning everybody. That's one, that's something repeatedly. They've never come back the same. They've come back better. They've come back different with each. If you come back exactly the same, you're not going to win again. You have to constantly be evolving. You have to be your biggest critic. You have to understand, you have to give yourself feedback and criticism and know it's genuine. And too many times we look for feedback and criticism from everybody else where the most important person that should be giving us that information is ourselves.

Speaker 3: Those are our wins. You hold yourself to a higher standard than every body else will. I love how people come up. And this, I know this happens to you guys all the time. People are, you know, when something doesn't go, right. They'll be like, oh, you know, don't worry about it. It'll be okay. Are you guys settling for okay. Winners settle for, okay. And it's usually when somebody tells you it's going to be okay, that's the answer. That's all you got for me. It's going to be okay. That's how is that going to solve the problem? We don't settle for it. Okay. We don't settle for fine. We don't do that. Winners don't do that. They speak a completely different language. Was

Speaker 2: It in your drive that allowed you to continuously be a few steps ahead of these relentless people in order to continue to help them change? And I'm sure on all that time and the goals that were set out and the level of competition that everyone was in, there's got a, the highs and lows and the, the relationship there had to have been built to such a degree to withstand a lot of those challenges.

Speaker 3: Yes. So the way I stayed ahead of everybody. So when you guys first started this podcast, all right, I'm sure you studied a lot of individuals. You read books, you did your research, you did all the things that you were supposed to do. And that's the ability of what to think. You sit down, you, you look at something, you read an article, you read a piece of paper, you read something on your phone, you do the research that tells you, these are, this is how you do. This is how you do things. I have the ability, not only to do what to think, but how to think. All right. And how to think is instinctive between each individual. So while everybody was saying, this is the manual to train a athlete. And I looked at it, I was like, I agree with some of this stuff, but I know there's a better way.

Speaker 3: There's a better way to do these things. So I incorporated a lot of my knowledge and the stuff that I had no bases on. There was no research, no thing that said, Hey, this is the way to do it, but I just knew it was right. It just made sense to me. It just made sense. So having the ability of how to think along with what to think really, really made a difference in how I was able to keep up with these athletes. How was I was able to go beyond what they, what they were expecting of me, how I was able to evolve and do stuff that everybody hadn't seen. I mean, we were doing what I used to train these athletes on a regular basis. You know, if you go work out and everybody let's just use a bench press as an example, because everybody knows what a bench press exercises.

Speaker 3: You put the equal weights on both sides of the bar. All right. And I was just like, well, you know what? He's right-hand dominant. This is what he has a tendency to do. This is what goes on the left-hand. I need to strengthen one side more than the other. And I need to be able to create this of this balance. And so I would load more weight on one side and less on the other. And I would explain to him, I said, Hey, listen, you got to trust me on this guy. You gotta try, you gotta trust me on this. And I would explain to them, you know what? My reasoning was behind this. And he hired me to do a job. He trusted me. He saw the results and then Lilly, 10 years later, other people were incorporating that kind of training method into these individuals.

Speaker 3: So what makes you so unique? And so successful is yet, you know what? The foundation, the fundamental principles are to have a good podcast, but in order for it to be a successful, extraordinary podcast, you got to put your own little recipe onto it. You gotta put your own little things into the soup. You gotta just know, Hey, this is what works for us. It may not. I don't care if it doesn't work for anybody else, this is what works for us. And having that ability to know, you know, not only what to think, but how to think is a huge advantage to individuals who want to stay ahead of everybody else.

Speaker 1: And you hit the nail on the head. I mean, when you look at winning one championship that off season, every team is studying tape and breaking down what you did to get there. They are learning all of your weaknesses and everything. That was a strength. We've seen the MBA evolve. Now it's a three point league. And if you just stay the same as you were the last year, you won the championship, you might be lucky to make the playoffs. It is so highly competitive. Now, obviously one athlete of Michael Jordan stature would be enough to end the career, lace it up. I did it. We won the championships. Let me go on vacation. But you've taken now multiple athletes, that level, and now executives, and as coaches ourselves, we realize a lot of this goes into reading that person and their personality and figuring out what they need at that moment to succeed. Michael, although many love to compare Michael to Kobe, they had different personalities. It sounded like Michael was more trusting of you. Kobe was, I want to know why I needed to push back and figure out what's going on here. And then you have Dwayne, who's just a lot more laid back and fun, totally different personality. And you were able to get all three to that level repeatedly. What is it in you that has allowed you to learn, to read people and find out how to get to what ticks and helps motivate them so effectively?

Speaker 3: Hey Jay, I'm glad you asked that question because no one's ever asked me that question before. So one of my biggest flaws that everybody says is a flaw of mine is I stare like, I'm like Lilly. I have this habit of just staring, but that's the way I learn. That's the way I learn. Like, if I'm focused in, on that person or that activity or whatever's going on, I have no idea what's going on around me. Not a clue. So what I was, I watched these individuals. I was like, so laser focused to watch their personalities, watch their movement patterns, watch how they handle stuff with their family. What kind of, you know, when their kids would come around, what kind of expression they would have if a teammate missed a shot or they, everybody knew how Michael would handle a teammate making a mistake, but you know that wasn't going to be how everybody else did.

Speaker 3: So it's just like being able to study human behavior and see it repeatedly over and over and over again. And I would always get this comment from these individuals. I said, man, what the hell are you looking at? I was like, just go do what you gotta do. Just leave me alone. Let me, let me focus. It, let me focus in on what I'm doing. And it makes a lot of people nervous. So what I like to say is everybody who's done something extraordinary. We all try to hide our flaws, our differences and all that other stuff. But that's what allows you to win when other people can't. So the things that you, your flaws, where everybody thinks it's an imperfection is actually one of your greatest gifts and allows you to Excel in areas that other individuals just can't. And I still have that habit of staring.

Speaker 3: I do it at a restaurant when I'll see somebody, there'll be like, Hey, you stand, but I see something happening in that, at that table. Or I see, I just, I'm trying, I'm trying to process what's going on with that person. No disrespect to them, but that's just, I can't change. I can't, I cannot change. I, and I don't, I don't want to change because my flaw has gotten me this far. It's gotten me this far and it's going to continue to get me where I want to go with same thing with the CEOs. When I get in there, I watched their mannerism. I watch how they work. I watch how they handle staff. I watch what they eat for lunch. I see if they drink during the middle of season, do they go, Tate? Do they go play golf? Uh, what is their relaxation activity? When they greet somebody? What's their mannerisms of, you know, when they shake an individual's hand, is there a hand over the top? Is that the, is it underneath? Is that a consistent basis where their eyes are all the different things and you have to see if they do those consistently over and over and over again. If you do that, you get to really learn the mental makeup of an individual.

Speaker 1: And it's that observation that allows you to see when things are right and when they're not right, and it's going to be small details that can take them off their game and you need to be perceptive to pick up on that.

Speaker 3: Exactly. So, you know, I, I watch a person Ron, or I've watched a person move and I'd be like, okay, this needs to be adjusted. This needs to go here. I used to have this thing where, you know, athletes sprain their ankles quite often when they, when they play, when they play sports. So with my athletic background, we have different types of, uh, taping that we do for the ankle, depending on where the sprain is. Well, almost like, well, let's take this a step further. So if you can support it with tape, how about if we figure out different ways to lace a gym shoe that enhances that even more. So we used to literally have eight different ways to lace a gym shoe, depending on what injury that individual had. So you, you know, everybody's stat is one way, but paying attention to those little details and be like, okay, Hey listen.

Speaker 3: And many times we would lace one shoe differently than the other, because we had to have one joint was more stiff. And the other one was a little bit, the other one had a little bit, had to be a little bit more lax because of an entry. So we were like, okay, we can't create the same stability in both shoes. We need to create one side that has to have more stability. And we need to create the other side to balance things out. So have to have a little bit of instability. So paying attention to those details came through, watching through observing things that other people just didn't think were important. People always say, you know, don't sweat the small stuff. When you're winning, you got to sweat everything. You got to pay attention to every little thing. The one thing that you miss out on to be the most important detail in that particular moment.

Speaker 1: And I think that's why winning is so fleeting for so many, because we are okay with the ordinary. We are okay with get back up, dust yourself off. It's going to be okay. Mindset. Yeah. You had an anecdote on another show around self doubt and how these athletes themselves had self doubt. And I know we've heard the Mamba mentality we see in the Jordan documentary. And we think of these athletes as superhuman and not having insecurities, not having self doubt, but they do. How did you coach them through those moments to get out the other side? When many of us quit?

Speaker 3: Well, you know what we all have. And I talk about this in the book, winning about winning wages of war, the battlefield of your mind. We all have our doubts that are going in our minds. We all have the stuff that can explode at any single time. You know, we all have to deal with anger. We all have to deal with fear. We all have to deal with anxiety. And those are bombs that bust all the time. So you have to know how to diffuse those things. You have to know what the triggers are, the set, those set, those things off. And we all, haven't. Now a lot of times, those things are placed into our heads, by somebody else that we allow to get into that space and they get to control the buttons. You know, I love how people always say, you know, you have to learn to push.

Speaker 3: You know, I want to learn how to push their buttons. You don't want anybody to ever push your bunch. If you allow that fat means they have total control over you. Now, you know, if they want to say, oh, I want this person to be angry. I'm going to push that button. I want them to be happy. I'm gonna push it. I want them to be frustrated. No, you pull your own buttons and you decide which ones you want to press at that particular time. So you understand how to diffuse whatever that battlefield is going on in your mind. And it's not always the negative things. All right. I know you guys hear this all the time. Oh, you work too hard. You work too much. All right, you guys should take a day off or you need to unwind. I'm so uncomfortable when I'm unwell, I'm actually more comfortable when I'm wild up.

Speaker 3: That's actually more comfortable to me. There are ways that I like to unwind, but that's how I like to do it. Not what somebody else wants me to do. People that win over and over again, people that have that mindset. And again, this isn't just about success and money. This is whatever you want to do in life. It's raising your kids. It's a terrible, terrible organizations. You're walking, it's education, whatever it may be. Those individuals, they enjoy being what they enjoy being wild up that feeling. It's good for them. It it's like it's something that's necessary when they're online. They're like, all right, how long has it been? I I've been sitting here for 30 minutes and you look at your watch men. It's been three minutes. I need some, I need something to do. I need something to do.

Speaker 2: Few years ago, we had the opportunity, the pleasure and honored to interview Kobe. He's been on this show. And one of the things that had come out was that he had put together the idea of the Mamba mentality, the black mama, as a way to handle everything that was going on in his life. And I'm going to expect you late from this conversation, perhaps there was too many people who had control over his buttons at that time. And he created this alter ego to take that control back. Where are you around for this inception? Was this part of your idea, or can you speak to that identity shift and what the black Bama was able to accomplish?

Speaker 3: Yeah. So the one thing I want to say, everybody thinks of the black Mamba as a mentality. And I was telling of it. It's not a mentality, it's a lifestyle, it's a lifestyle. And I've seen more individuals who have tried to adopt this mama mentality lifestyle. And it's actually been more of a hindrance in their careers than it has been a success. Yeah. But yeah, but what he needed to do was this was a time in his life that he was going through some, some personal stuff off the basketball court. And he came up with this idea through watching one of the kill bill movies. And I talk about this in the book, how this all thing came off because it, one of the kill bill movies, one of the, one of the characters is the black is the black mama. You know, if Colby is going to name himself, he's not going to name himself after a guard snake, he's going to name herself.

Speaker 3: And after like the most venomous snake out there, it became his alter ego where it was just like here, when I stepped between these whatever's going on outside, it doesn't matter. It's still gonna be here because I still have an obligation to perform at the highest level. Not only to myself, but to my teammates, to the organization, the people that are sitting, watching TV, the people that paid lots of money to watch the game. So he was like, I have an obligation to perform at the highest level. And what was so significant about this is during those times, he actually played some of his best basketball because it allowed him to focus even more on his craft. He had to, he was able to block everything else out and say, this is the thing that matters the most. And I'm going to do this at the highest level possible.

Speaker 3: We all have distractions in our life. I have this thing. Everybody is going through something that no one knows nothing about. I don't care who you are, how successful you are, what individual you are, how much money you have, everybody's going through something just because you're a great athlete or you're a highly successful business person. It doesn't mean you don't have relationship problems. It doesn't mean you don't have personal issues. It doesn't mean that your, uh, your children are going to be perfect. But Instagram, we love to, everybody likes to portray the perfection that's that's out there. And I always tell individuals that you have to be real with yourself. And one of the tests that I do with individuals and I came up with a, you know, well, Colby came up with a mob mentality idea. We kind of harnessed it to what it, what it was, what it became was I do this test now where I do a lot of my speaking.

Speaker 3: I always say, everyone pull out your cell phone and everyone, yeah, pause out their cell phone. I said, look at your profile picture on one of your social media pages, whether it be Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, Tik, TOK, whatever, whatever it may be. And everybody pulls out the picture. And I said, none of you looked that good. None of you look that good. Not a single person in this room looks that good. Right. But then I just, and everybody laughed. And I said, the reason I'm making this point is if you're constantly living your life through failure on this little phone platform, be careful, it doesn't transfer into your real life. Be very busy, very careful. Cause cause you start to believe that you start to believe that image. You start to believe that idea of perfection. You start to believe that fake individual that that's in here and the mama mentality became who Colby really, really was.

Speaker 3: He was, you know, he was that same way when he played back, when he played basketball, when he had business meetings, when he practiced with no matter what he did later on in his career, he, you know, obviously opened up a little bit more. You got, you got to see the, uh, you got to see the softer individual inside of him, but he was still an extremely competitive person. The mama mentality didn't stop on the basketball court. Even when he retired, won an Oscar wrote, you know, award-winning children's books was, you know, who knows what was next? Lily had his daughter practicing for three hours a day on defense, not on offense, on defense,

Speaker 2: Everything that you just said there about Coby. And especially, maybe softening up a bit as he got older, but that competitiveness was still there. And I thought it was, it came right through when we met him. I mean, he was serious as a heart attack. Yes. Incredibly focused, gracious to come on the show and talk with us. But there was something going on there that you could see it and you could feel

Speaker 3: It. Yeah. That's a key point that you just said, Johnny, not only can you see it, you can feel it. Individuals like Colby had the ability title. He could literally look at you and you could feel something that was like, he could like, he could touch you with you with his eyes. You're like, all right, there's, there's something go there's, he's trying to Pierce right through me. He's just like, you know, they used to call you, they used to call it that, you know, that that glare that he used to, they used to give you that death stare when he would just kind of Pierce. And I, I believe me, I was, I was on the receiving end of that death stare quite often.

Speaker 1: Now you, you bring up a good point around focus and it's, it's brought up in the book a lot around in order to get to a level of winning. You have to maintain incredible laser-like focus. Yes. We live in a time of distraction and everyone talks about time management, unwind balance. None of these athletes that you

Speaker 2: Work with are dogging about any of those things. So how do we

Speaker 1: Get to that laser, like level of focus with all of these distractions and what is your perspective on time management? Cause I've heard it and I want our audience to hear it because I really agree with it

Speaker 3: Wholeheartedly. We have all these cliches out here that everybody uses as motivation. All right. And I actually think instead of them motivating individuals, it actually takes them a step back because it kind of makes you more comfortable. And at some point you got to get beyond motivation. To me, motivation is entry-level. It really, really is. All right, you got to learn to elevate yourself. You've got to elevate your craft. And that comes from knowing stuff that's inside of you. And one of the things I've worked with, all my athletes, all my business, clients, everything, I was like, listen, I don't want you to manage time because everybody tells you to manage time, manage time, manage time. I said, I want you to manage focus. There's a huge difference between the two, because when you're managing time, you never have have enough time. But when you manage focus, you always have enough time to get what you're supposed to do.

Speaker 3: And what's the first thing you have to do. And when you have to start managing focus versus managing time, you got to eliminate the honor centrals. Now I'm not saying you have to be laser focused all the time was even a laser needs to be turned off. Otherwise it's going to open preheat. All right. Yes. Yeah. So, but the ability to go from being focused on focus and being focused again, it's, to me, it's actually something you can work on. It's something that you can, you can adjust in your craft. So I tell these individually let's work on managing focus. Let's not worry about managing time because when you met manage time, you're never going to do the things at its ultimate level. Think about an individual. Like that's constantly look where they have a bunch of stuff to do. And they're constantly looking at their watches or the times or wherever.

Speaker 3: They're constantly looking at their fault. They'll get all the things done or majority of the things done, but there'll be all done to add. Now, when you manage that focus, a set of that time, you get everything you need to get done. It's done to its highest ability and it's done so so well because you had the ability to block out the distractions. Listen, I take a break from time to time. I get into this zone. I get into this fo this focus thing. I enjoy a good puppy rescue video and a cat video. Just like anybody else does. All right. But does that 30 seconds turn into 30 minutes? People always think that what causes complacency. Everybody likes it. Well, just look at yourself. Yeah. Complacency. You literally cause complacency so that you have to have the ability to say, Hey, listen, everybody manage, focus.

Speaker 3: Don't manage time. And then the other thing about ballot, oh man, this one gets me. That's what really, really gets me. All right. There's there's so many books out there and there's so many individual that speak about balance. And it's funny. They'll tell you, you need more balance in their life. And this is after they've occurred, polished, almost everything that they wanted to do. They're extremely successful. They're there they're financially well off the families, everything good, but they don't want to talk about the time, what they had to, how, how their lives unbalanced in order to get to that thing. You do not find balance. That is totally incorrect. You have to create balance. And when you create balance, it's different for every single individual. What happens when you tell a person they need more balance in their life, they start to add more to add everybody, you know you, and now you're trying to balance even more things.

Speaker 3: You're trying to balance this. You're trying to balance this and that. And now you're more out of balanced. Well, how do you get more focused? You eliminate the unessentials. So how do you give come more balanced? You eliminate the unessentials and we all have on essential. The issue is we don't like to delete. We like to add, add, add every phone. Every computer, it has a save button. It has a delete button. All right. We know how to use the save button. Very few people know how to use the use, the delete button. So in order to have more time in order to get closer to balance, it's about the subtraction. It's not about the addition. And the one thing I always tell people is you don't want the scale totally imbalanced, but you have to decide how you're going to weigh this thing. And this thing I talk about also in the book is I ask this question, I'll be like, all right, who wants to zero happiness?

Speaker 3: You know, obviously nobody raises their hand. I said, who was zero success? Nobody raises their hands. You know, I said, who wants a zero life? Nobody raises their hand. I said, who wants zero money? Nobody raises their hand. Well, I said, well, what's the number on a perfectly balanced scale. It's a zero. It's an absolute zero. So if you're trying to balance all those things, you may have all those things, but you're going to have them at the lowest, lowest level. And that's not what life is about. You have to know, listen, this is what's important to me right now. And have that support system that you have next to you, with your family, with your friends, whatever that may be and be like, I respect where this person is right now. I understand. I understand

Speaker 1: That balance is the cherry on top. It's not the pursuit. Yes,

Speaker 3: Yes. And even that cherry on the top, have you ever seen a perfectly balanced round cherry? The stem has always curled one way and thing is so it's, it's never perfect. It's never perfect.

Speaker 2: I don't know where this idea of balance came from. And I will tell you with our clients and our X-Factor program, every time a new guy comes in, the first thing they're talking about is I need to organize my life and get some violence there. And I'm like, and I'm like, well, what does that even mean to you? Right? And, and, and they can't define it because what they define is giving it to them. I usually hear when they define it, happiness or tranquility or serenity, or just easy bag. And it's like, you're not going to have that until you start subtracting the things in your life that are making her life unbalanced. Right.

Speaker 3: And it's funny when you bring up that question to a giant, others say, well, I want more, I want more, I want more of that as always. I want more and more and more. Well, if you want more of something, you got to give away, you got to get rid of some stuff. You got to get rid of your stuff. There's only so much stuff you can put in that room before it starts to overflow. You know, there's almost so much room that you have in a closet, in a closet before your clothes start. That could be on top of each other in order to keep everything neat, to keep everything balanced, to keep everything clear, you got to get rid of some stuff. You gotta get rid of some stuff, but it's so tough. Yeah. But it's so difficult for people to delete. It's. So D listen, we all have, we all have this. Everyone has including myself. We ha have clothes in our closet or shoes or something that we're never gonna wear. Again. We got no chance. They're never coming back. They're never coming back in style. I'm not going to have that same waistline I had when I was 30 years younger, but we keep it because it's got that designer label. And we look at it one day. Now that one day is a know day. It's not happening. Get rid of it. I've been

Speaker 2: Harping on mainstream television, movies and entertainment for quite some time. In fact, I call it junk food media because it's empty calories. It's, it's like a McDonald's cheeseburger. When you're hungry, it'll fill you up. But there's, there's nothing. You're not, there's no ROI to Trish in there. And one of the conversations that I've been seeing with my regular friends, I'll call them normies, who are not in a self-development war or actualization. They're coming to this conclusion that they're watching more things on the internet than they are. They're they're all getting tired of the same old storylines and bad television and whatnot. And I see these questions of, Hey, I've been thinking about getting rid of cable. I've been saying, I'm like, get rid of your television. And I'm seeing more and more people go. And in this way, I had came to that decision. A lot of that, in fact, that same idea of subtraction has even entered into my diet.

Speaker 2: I was like, what is the, what are the necessities? Where do I, what allows me to work and function and be my best sharpest, mentally, physically, emotionally. And let's just, let's just go there and let's just do that. And I will tell you that world and process of subtraction has made things more interesting, more focused, who even when it comes to entertainment, I'm not scrolling through endless crappy movies to see which one will peak my interest today. It's like, no, I'm going to go and put a yoga video on. And I'm going to stretch because I know the ROI from that is going to be way more avid chaises to me than watching a Netflix series or whatever else

Speaker 3: Might be. So, Jay, it's interesting that you say that people always ask me, Hey, did you watch? So-and-so, I'll be like, I have no clue what you're talking about. I may catch a glimpse of it, or I hear a conversation from somebody else. Or, you know, I have people that like, they, they literally, they binge watch years and years of the show, or like, yes. Or it's like every Thursday at seven o'clock, I don't care what else is happening. I have to watch this. So the next day they can talk about it in their chat rooms or whatever it is. I don't even know these people there. Yeah. I just like, what are you doing? I don't know. It's not that important to me. It's not that important to my self growth. It's not that important for me to be able to have the ability to pass my knowledge on to somebody else. Somebody will ask me, Hey, did you watch? So-and-so? I'll be like, no, I did. I I'm sorry. I didn't end a conversation.

Speaker 1: A piece of mainstream advice is to not be selfish and what I yep. From the book. And why did I knew you were going to go there, the role selfishness in winning. And it's something that obviously when you look at all of these people and the sacrifices they make in their lives and the understanding of their values and their own personal goals and the pursuit of them, there's no question. There's selfishness involved. Of course they want to bring everyone else along with them, but they're doing it for them. They're not doing it for someone else.

Speaker 3: Yes. And you know, it's funny, the word selfish literally has self in it itself. When did taking care of yourself, become a bad thing. I've never understood that when, when did that happen? All right. You know, and in order to separate yourself from others, in order to have more power, to have a more freedom, to have new levels of self winning requires that it's funny. So we just put fancy names on the worst selfish. We like to call it like me time, or boys' night out a girl's night out or man-cave, that's all being selfish. So you tell somebody, Hey, listen, from two to three, I meditate. I meditate. And everybody says, oh, that's so good for your health. Everybody needs to do more of that. Everybody needs to spend time by themselves, you know? And then you're like, you tell somebody else, Hey, between two and three, my phone is off.

Speaker 3: Don't talk to me. Don't bother me. I don't want to hear from anybody else. Now, all of a sudden you're selfish. Well, what's the difference? What exactly? One just had a nice word to it. We do so many things for ourselves is working out selfish is eating better. Selfish is resting. Selfish is we do so many things. And, and the more you take care of yourself, the more you'll be able to take care of others. But if you don't carry yourself, you're not going to be able to take care of others. You look at all the most successful people that run businesses and so forth. They take care of themselves. So they have more to give to the others. Now, if you just take care of yourself and you just take, take and take, that's a completely different type of selfish, but the winning kind of selfish is you win at everybody. That's close to you, everybody else you want to win. They win. Also

Speaker 2: Was it, this brings up an interesting point. Then Tim, because with such demanding clients, you certainly had to set up boundaries to take care of yourself, dealing with their relentlessness and their selfish needs to be always better. And to give them as much time as you did, to be able to develop them, how did you set up those boundaries?

Speaker 3: Well, one thing about working with these athletes, you have a schedule, you know what time practices, you know, what time the games are, you know, where they're going to leave. So whatever you want to be selfish is you gotta fit it in between. You got to fit it in between those times and be like, Hey, this time is for me. It's for my time for me to get better. So I can perform better around these individuals. I, I have the ability to give back. And it's funny. A lot of those times my selfishness was just taking a nap because I had to be on call all the time. And it's funny now it's become like everyone talks like sleep deprivation is like this secret formula to success. Like you can't have sleep. You know what your body needs to recover. Your mind needs to you buy needs to recover.

Speaker 3: People always ask me, well, what's the best time to work out. I heard working out early in the morning is the best time to work out. I said, you know what? The best time to work out is when you can work out. That's the best time to work on it because of the advantages of doing something way early in the morning versus doing it in the afternoon are so small that it's not going to make a difference to you. And plus, if you can give more effort in your workout and more focus in the afternoon, you're going to get more results than if you did it in the morning, winning once you to figure out what's your formula, what's the best way to, for you to do it. You, how many people, you know, that hour, you got to get up before the sun and they get up before the sun and they'd done absolutely nothing. And by the time 10 o'clock on a time, 10 o'clock rolls around. They're ready for a nap. If you don't function early in the morning, don't do it. Those people are the ones that we talked about. They are trying to manage time instead of managing focus.

Speaker 1: Well, what jumps out at me is in order to win, you have to understand yourself at a deep level. You have to be honest and reckon with yourself. This book is not seven steps to winning. It's not a four step process or formula that is cookie cutter for everyone. You handled Jordan and Kobe and Dwayne all differently because they understood themselves and their needs. And then you push them beyond to get to that greater level. So many of us are walking around, not even willing to reckon with who we are, understand ourselves, to listen to our own body, to listen to what's going on inside of us. We're looking for the answers outside of us. We're looking for someone else to copy or some of their formula to follow or some shortcut. And the book is not about shortcuts. It's about understanding yourself at a level and getting into the motivation beyond just showing up beyond just doing it again and understanding that in order to really win, there are sacrifices involved. There is no shortcut to be had to winning. No.

Speaker 3: Yeah. When you make sacrifices, you're going to upset people. You really are going to upset people. And the reason, uh, myself and my coauthor Sherry, when we're writing this book, it was funny. Everybody was telling us, you know, the most successful books that are out there are the ones that give you steps that tell you five steps to this 10 steps to that. And I'm like, uh, well, we're not putting steps in this book because to me that those steps are infinite. Those steps are infinite and they're constantly changing. There is no easy steps to success. Those steps are constantly moving. They're constantly changing. Sometimes they disappear right underneath our feet, but we have to know that they are there. We have to trust that there is a next step and you can always climb those steps. Sometimes you got to demand. Sometimes you just got to sit down and take a breath.

Speaker 3: Sometimes you gotta crawl up those steps. You gotta run, you gotta hop, whatever it takes. And it's funny. Once you get to that top step and you look back down and you realize you're still on that first step and you look back up there. So those steps never, never change. Just like I said, you know, for yourself and for, for me was this podcast is over with, you got to those steps and now your next guests or your next podcast, those steps are constantly effort. They constantly keep going and think about all with all the technology that's going on. All the steps that you may miss. This person's microphone is not working. This person's zoom. The internet is bad. All this people don't plan for those steps. Your life is that way. No one planned for the pandemic. That was a step. No one saw coming. All right. That was something that no one saw coming. If

Speaker 1: You, you lived your life based on steps. By the time the book was published, it'd be a new set of steps. Yes, everything is evolving and changing. By the time they hit print, those steps would be irrelevant. So if you're looking to just follow someone else's path, I'm just going to be Michael Jordan. I'm just going to be Coby. Or I'm just going to be this executive. I look up to Elon Musk, whoever it may be. The steps that they took are different than the steps that you have to take. Exactly. Those steps were relevant to them. It's not relevant to you.

Speaker 3: Yes. And winning has no loyalty to any of us. You know, individuals, you can work hard that doesn't guarantee you success. You can be the most qualified for an individual. Doesn't mean you're going to have, you're going to get that job. You can put out the best content. Doesn't mean you're going to be the highest rated podcast. And then you'll listen to the higher rated podcasts. And you're like, really? You're like, okay, you know what? It works for them. So there are, there are no steps. There are no guarantees winning. It doesn't care. It doesn't care. You have to figure it out. And the key word is, you know what, Johnny and what agent, what you both said, it's you it's about understanding yourself. You spend so much time understanding everybody else. You spend so much time understanding a TV series or understanding what's going on or understanding a plot that's happening in there. Well, so what happens is you start to write everybody else's story and you forget that you have the ability to write and change your own story. And that's what winning wants you to do

Speaker 1: Well as a pistons fan, I'm pretty bummed that you taught Jordan, how to guard is I was enjoying the bad boy button pushing days. I, if I say so myself, we love to ask every guest what their X factor is. What is that skill set and mindset combination that makes you unique and successful understanding yourself? What do you think that is for

Speaker 3: You? I have a muscle that I flex quite often that a lot of people don't and it's the ID GAF muscle. Mine is extremely, extremely strong. It is extremely strong. And I've mastered the ability to say no, without an explanation, you say no to something. No is final. If you have to give an explanation to it, that means you have some self-doubt to it. So I've really, really learned to flex that muscle. I've practiced it. I know when to use it, how to use it. And I use a quiet offer, which allows me to have clarity, which I need in my life and my profession in order to pursue the things that are important to me, which indirectly will be important to the people that surround me that helped me get to this place.

Speaker 1: Well thank you for saying yes to getting on this show with us. We really appreciate it. And these great lessons around winning, definitely grab the book, winning the unforgiving race to greatness. Thank you so much, Tim.

Speaker 3: Thank you so much. This was an honor continued success to both of you. Yeah.

Speaker 2: This week, shout out, goes to our Facebook group member, Ryan Hernandez.

Speaker 1: That's right. Ryan struggling with imposter syndrome, joined us on our Facebook live. We go live every Thursday in our Facebook community. So be like Ryan and join [email protected] slash challenge and become a valuable member of our community. If you have questions from the show, you want to learn more about me and Johnny. You can find us there each and every Thursday, live answering your questions and sharing tips, strategies to help you breakthrough imposter syndrome, grow your confidence, master conversation, and connect with anybody. Before we go, could you do us and the entire team, a huge favor, pause this podcast and rate our show. You can do it on Spotify or in your apple podcast app. It means the world to us, and it helps us get amazing guests like Tim Grover until next week. I'm a J and I'm Johnny. Get out there and start winning

Speaker 4: [inaudible] [inaudible].