Interview with Dre Baldwin

This is the Momentum Podcast. I am really excited for today's podcast interview with Dre Baldwin from Work On Your Game. Dre runs a very unique company, helping athletes become professional athletes, those who have the talent but maybe aren't getting recognized. But that's not why we brought him on. We brought Dre on because he's one of the most committed members we have, he's on all of our calls, he's implemented our models and our frameworks like crazy, and he's experiencing radical success and really getting into Momentum. I can't wait for him to share it with you. You're going to love this interview. In just a moment, I'm introducing you to Dre Baldwin.

I'm Alex Charfen and this is the Momentum Podcast, made for empire builders, game changers, trailblazers, shot takers, record breakers, world makers, and creators of all kinds. Those among us who can't turn it off and don't know why anyone would want to. We challenge complacency, destroy apathy, and we are obsessed with creating momentum so we can roll over bureaucracy and make our greatest contribution. Sure, we pay attention to their rules, but only so that we can bend them, break them, then rewrite them around our own will. We don't accept our destiny, we define it. We don't understand defeat because you only use if you stop, and we don't know how. While the rest of the world strives for average and clings desperately to the status quo, we are the minority, the few who are willing to hallucinate there could be a better future, and instead of just daydreaming of what could be, we endure the vulnerability and exposure it takes to make it real. We are the evolutionary hunters, clearly the most important people in the world because entrepreneurs are the only source of consistent, positive human evolution, and we always will be.

Dre, I'm incredibly excited to have you on the podcast today. You have created some raving fans on my team. They talk about you a lot. You come up over and over again. Welcome to the podcast, man.

Dre Baldwin: Thank you for having me, Alex. I'm excited to be here.

Alex Charfen: Yeah. It's my privilege. So real quick, I just want to share with everybody, Dre, what you do for your business. It's a very unique, very intriguing business. So what is it that you do?

Dre Baldwin: What we do is oversee basketball blueprints is what it's called. We provide a framework for basketball players who feel like they have the talent to play professional basketball, but for whatever reason, they feel like they've been underrated and overlooked. We provide the information and the harsh truths that they need to understand about getting a career and sustaining a career in professional basketball so they can actually get paid for their talent, which is something that 99% of athletes never get an opportunity to do.

Alex Charfen: What's interesting, Dre, is to the uninitiated who don't understand sports, I've had a ton of friends who played pro sports, so I have some understanding of the European leagues, the minor leagues, where you have to prove yourself. To the general public, they just think it's talent. Like, if you have the talent, you're going to end up playing. That's not always the truth, is it?

Dre Baldwin: Oh, absolutely not because what makes the sports world different from the business world or maybe being a lawyer or a doctor is that in business, anyone who has a product or service and a customer can be an entrepreneur, but in sports, there's a finite number of jobs. Everybody cannot [inaudible 00:03:19]. So in the basketball world, in the whole world, there are fewer than 5,000 jobs total. So if there are 10,000 good players, you're going to have 5,000 unhappy players because everybody's not going to have a job.

Alex Charfen: Yeah. And so it's not necessarily just about talent. And it's interesting. It's a lot like being an entrepreneur, isn't it? When you're an entrepreneur, you're marketing yourself, you're selling yourself, you're showing up in a certain way. Isn't that a lot of what you have to do in pro sports? Dre Baldwin: Absolutely. And I should say 5,000 jobs for American born players, just to correct myself. But as far as talent, you do need talent to play professional sports. If you don't have talent, you're not even getting in the room. So talent makes you eligible, just like as an entrepreneur, having a great idea or a product makes you eligible, but then, if you don't have the other elements around it, then you won't be able to produce the return on investment off of your talent.

Alex Charfen: So your business is called Work On Your Game, and it doesn't refer to just working on your game. It's working on the game and then the game behind the game. It's got a little double entendre, doesn't it?

Dre Baldwin: Absolutely. That's why it's the perfect slogan.

Alex Charfen: It's so good. Now that we're talking about it, it just hit me, I'm like, "Oh, that's really better than I thought it was." I thought it was good. It's really good.

Dre Baldwin: Right. So it doesn't limit itself to sports. What I tell people all the time is that the game is bigger than just your ability to play because if basketball was all based on people's talent, I would never have become a professional athlete. There were players who were more talented than me that I played with in my neighborhood, in high school, and in college, and none of them had the career that I had. I had some of the intangibles, the mindset tools, the mental game tools, and I just knew how to market and promote myself, which was a requirement if I was going to get on from where I came from. So all of those are part of the game, and me getting to where I got to and even still to this day in the business world, I'm still learning the game. I still consider myself very, very new in the business world, so I have to learn the game, and that's why I find coaches like yourself who have that information and have that knowledge and I try to apply myself as best I can. Same way I did in sports.

Alex Charfen: So you know, Dre, whenever we have a professional athlete member, whenever a pro athlete or somebody whose been heavily involved in athletics selects us, I always find it super flattering and very humbling because athletes know how important their coach is. Every athlete has had a good coach and every athlete has had a coach that they did not connect with, and what they know is they played way better with the good coach. Am I right?

Dre Baldwin: Absolutely.

Alex Charfen: So give me an idea. I'd like to know what was going on in your business that made you seek us out?

Dre Baldwin: Great question. Well, first of all, coming from the sports world, I remember listening to something like Tony Robbins, for example. Everyone can relate. Tony would always say things like, "All you have to do is look at where you're succeeding and then find the parallels between where you succeeded. What did you do when you were succeeding? And then apply that to the areas where you're not succeeding." And one of the things about sports is that every athlete has a coach. People use that cliché all the time. So coming into 2020, one of my goals was I needed to really get a handle on what the hell I was doing as an entrepreneur in business. So I went through ClickFunnels Conference earlier this year and I started catching up on their podcast, ClickFunnels Radio Podcast, and they had about 400 episodes I was catching up on, and I heard you on there, Alex, and I had heard your name before, I had heard Russell Brunson mention you a few times in passing, but I never looked you up or anything, I just remember him saying your name. And then I heard you on that podcast and you just ... It was like a breath of fresh air. And

I'm not saying that to kiss up to you because I'm on a call with you right now. But the way that you were talking is, you sounded completely different from everyone else who was on the ClickFunnel show. They were all talking about, "Here's how I sell my product. Here's how I run my ads. Here's how I create content. Here's how I get an audience." You were saying, "Okay. You have all those things, but how do you structure and organize your business? How do you make your business predictable?" And I always was of the belief that, well, business can't be predictable because you don't know when a customer's going to come in, you don't know when somebody's going to buy anything.

So when I heard you saying that, and then you made a really easy call to action. You said, "I have this thing called the Billionaire Code, which automatically gets anybody's attention." I was like, "Let me see that code." And then you said, "All right. It's a simple form. I'm going to show you where you are and then show you how to get to the next step." I said, "Okay. I'll do that. I'll give you my email address in exchange for that." So I went and got that Billionaire Code, and I looked it up, and I looked at it and I said, "Damn it. He's right. He knows exactly where I'm at. That is exactly the question I'm asking myself." And the question was, what is wrong with me? I would literally say that to my girlfriend. I would say, I have all this value, all these skills. I know what the hell I'm doing, or at least I know what I'm doing as far as I know what I know. Some things I don't know that I don't know. But I know that I'm not a fool, so why is this not working the way that it should be working? I'm seeing people walk across that stage who, I know they're not smarter than me. I know they don't work harder than me. I know they don't have more talent than me. What's wrong with me?

So when I saw that question, I said, "This guy understands something." So then I filled out the form and got on the call with, I believe it was Journey, actually, I know it was Journey, and two days later, actually on Friday the 13th, the day that COVID took over America, that's the day that I joined the Charfen [crosstalk 00:08:25].

Alex Charfen: That's so awesome that you remember that day.

Dre Baldwin: Yes.

Alex Charfen: And man, we've been living through that Friday 13th since then. So Dre, give us an idea. So you came in really it sounds like because the promise of structure, the promise of predictability.

Dre Baldwin: Right.

Alex Charfen: Whenever I'm working with athletes, I say, "Look. You know things can be predictable. Wins are never predictable, but if you do your training, and you show up the right way, and you sleep the night before, and you're prepared for the game, you have a much higher percentage chance of winning. So while all of business isn't predictable, if you create your plan, and you show up the right way, and you knock it off one day at a time, you can have a ton that's way more predictable." How has that shifted how you look at business?

Dre Baldwin: Absolutely. There's a guy named Scott Adams, an author, who talks about systems versus goals. That some people have the goal that they want to achieve something, but if you follow a system, you may not always get the win, but over the long run, you are going to get that outcome. And Alex, I heard you mention before that you've done some distance running back in your time.

Alex Charfen: Oh yeah.

Dre Baldwin: And it's kind of like running a marathon, and over the course of a marathon, you might not always be in the lead, but if you do all the right things, you will get to your outcome at the end. So that system was something I was definitely looking for. But as far as answering your question, how has it helped my business, well, first of all, now I'm actually tracking things in my business as opposed to just doing stuff and wondering what's working and what's not. I can see where I'm growing, where I'm getting better, I'm getting worse from month to month. I have an assistant in place who is really great at tracking that kind of stuff because I'm not naturally inclined to those type of things, but she is, so it's perfect. So I am starting to get a better picture of where my business is, and exactly where I'm at, and exactly what I'm doing, and what needs to be fixed moving forward.

Alex Charfen: I want to bring up a conversation we had before we hit record because I think it fits right here. We have this theory in our business that there's three things required for momentum. A clear outcome, you have to know where you're going. Clear transparency, which means there's a clear scoreboard, and then you have to understand what you're doing and the people around you are doing. Right before I hit record, we had a quick conversation about athletics and scoreboards. When you are playing a sport, you can't avoid the scoreboard. Well actually, I just want you to tell me. How did that shift in your business?

Dre Baldwin: Great question. I actually was just thinking about this this past Saturday. I had just finished a run, because since I stopped playing basketball, I like to run outside. So I had just finished a run, and anyone who's ever run, you know when you get to the end of that run, you're in the zone. So I'm in that zone at the end of the run and I always ask myself when I finish those runs, "How can I take this energy that I'm feeling right now for this little five minute window and bottle this up and use it in my business?" Because I know if I did, I could rule the world. But I haven't really been able to nail it down, but the thing that I thought of, because I've been so immersed in the Charfen content was that OTA, a clear outcome.

When you're running, you know exactly how far you're going to go. Transparency, you know exactly what the route is that you're running. Accountability, you know it's just you. And the other thing that I added in was a clear focus. See, when you're running, there's no notifications, there's no Twitter, there's no Instagram, there's no email to check, and that was really, once I realize that, I said, "All right. I really need to start cutting the fat in my life when I'm not running so I don't get distracted from doing what I need to do." Can you tell me the question again? I tend to do this.

Alex Charfen: Dude, I love this answer. Before, when we were talking, you had said, "In athletics, I had a scoreboard. In business, I didn't." And you recognized the need for that.

Dre Baldwin: Right. So when I hired an EA and I had her understanding the Charfen material, we put together a board that basically has all the KPIs. And she is funny, my EA even asked me about this before I even told her about the Charfen material. She was like, "Can we have some KPIs so we know what we're doing and we know that we're making progress and you can see that I'm actually helping?" And I smiled when she said that, I said, "I'm so glad you asked that question because that's exactly what we're going to do." So now, we have that board that basically tells us, all right, here's our stats for the website, here are the things we're going to measure, here are how many people coming into membership, how many free plus shipping books we've sold, here's our revenue so far, here's how close we are to the target, how close we're not. We put together our OTAs just last week, I think I mentioned on the expert call, we finally did our first quarterly at the beginning of July, so now I can see a snapshot of exactly where we're at. I can see the scoreboard of my business.

Alex Charfen: Yeah, that's huge, isn't it? So there's so many different questions I want to ask. The fact that you didn't put the scoreboard together, the EA did, because so many people, here's what a lot of entrepreneurs feel, "I'm not a numbers person. I have a hard time with that." When you have it put together for you, though, doesn't it provide clarity?

Dre Baldwin: Absolutely, because one thing you realize when you start handing tasks off to other people is that they may not be as clear as you thought they were when they're in your head. It sounds perfect when you're just saying it to yourself, and when someone else looks at it and then they start asking questions or they're confused, you realize that maybe it wasn't as clear as you thought it was. But yes, it is absolutely a game changer to have another set of eyes that is completely objective looking at your material and basically showing you yourself.

Alex Charfen: Yeah. And then you have that feedback. One of the things that is so important to me in business is I want feedback. I want to know what's going on. I want to understand what's happening. What are my efforts creating? So it's just like sports, only in sports, you get to look up at a scoreboard, in business, we have to create it and go check in on it, but that still gives you that same motivation. That's awesome.

So what does your business feel like now, Dre? Now that you have some structure, now that you've hired the EA, you brought in some clear outcomes, clear transparency, the accountability around it, how has this changed running your business for you?

Dre Baldwin: What's changed for me is I know, first of all, that I have to hold myself accountable because every day, I'm getting on a call with my executive assistant and we're going over what was supposed to be done, what needs to be done next, and knowing whose responsible for what. Secondly, I know what to do with my time because I don't know if any entrepreneurs who are listening to the show are anything like me, but sometimes I would get too worked in the morning, and there's 20 different things I could do, and I spent more time just trying to figure out which one to do than actually working.

Alex Charfen: Yeah.

Dre Baldwin: So a lot of time was getting burned up there. And then, I would be working on this, but is this actually getting me to where I want to go? Well, I couldn't answer the question because I didn't know what the scoreboard was. So all of these ideas, and all the talent and skills that you have, you may be using it towards an end that is not even getting you where you want to go, but if you don't know where you want to go, you could end up anywhere, and I guess you made it. So that's one of the main things that's helped for me is just knowing where I'm going and every day I have a clear plan of exactly what I'm supposed to be doing.

lex Charfen: That's huge. For all of us. Even me sometimes, I'll come in and I'll spend that 10 or 15 minutes spinning, and then I'll go, "Wait a second. I have a plan. I've got a waterfall. I need to go look at my weekly commitments. What am I doing?" And it's so much easier when your productivity's set up for you and you trust it. So Dre, a lot of entrepreneurs feel like process, structure, and routine is going to hold them back and take away freedom. I have this saying that I share, "Process will set you free." But what I know is the idea of having a daily meeting, and having to follow a process feels like you're giving something up. Can you speak to that? First, I want to know for you, has it felt like you're giving something up? What has it felt like to add in the process, the structure, the routine that so many people fight against?

Dre Baldwin: Well, the process feels great to me. That was never a problem for me. Coming from the sports world, you do the same thing over, and over, and over again every single day. In practice in basketball sometimes in college especially, I would butt heads with the coaches because I would get bored doing the same stuff every day, and there was no crowd, so there was no one to perform for. I would get bored of seeing the same faces every day, but when I became a professional, I actually started to buy into that because I realized, in the basketball world, especially playing overseas, for those who don't know, when you're an American player, everybody's watching you. So if you're not showing up every day doing your job, you can get fired just from having a bad practice, let alone a bad game.

So every single day, every practice is even a game. So just getting used to that discipline of showing up and that mental toughness of doing the same thing all the time is great. And I like the process of being able to hand off tasks to other people and they are excited about doing them because they have a scoreboard. So it's a lot different when you're the entrepreneur. Your scoreboard might just be some vague thing in your head, but when you have people working for you, they want to know that you know that they're contributing, that they're doing something to actually help. So being able to hand off tasks to other people, I'm all for that. I want more people to hand off tasks to. I don't want fewer, I want more. I have no problem of doing everything myself, I don't have that issue. I want to give it all away.

Alex Charfen: And Dre, I want to wrap this up with one last question. What do you feel like is the biggest difference from before you were working with our process, the structure, the routine, the scoreboards, and now? What do you think has been the biggest game changer for you personally?

Dre Baldwin: The biggest game changer is that I now know what I'm doing and where I'm going. Before, one day I might wake up and say, "Okay, let me build a new funnel." Next day, "Let me write another book. Let me make a new course. Let me focus on getting speaking gigs. Let me see if I can get some consulting contracts." Now, I can put all of those things in their proper place and get rid of things that need to be gotten rid of, and now I have a scoreboard. I know exactly where I'm going this year, this quarter, this month, this week, and I know what I'm doing each day. So it has reduced the pressure and noise in my life and in my head, that I know exactly what I'm doing every single time I turn on the computer or every time I'm talking to one of my staff members, I know exactly where I'm going. It's actually like addition by subtraction. As I told you at the beginning, when I first was looking for a coach, I was finding a lot of people saying, "Well, let's make you another funnel. Let's sell your product. Here's how to sell [inaudible 00:18:53] for 10 grand." I said, "I didn't need more." The last thing ...