Founders - #340 Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant

Starting point is 00:00:00 On the night that the Chicago Bulls were eliminated from the 1995 NBA playoffs by the Orlando Magic, I sat with Michael in the darkened arena until 3 a.m. He had just returned to basketball two months earlier, following his first retirement and brief baseball career. So much had happened in the last year. Dressed in a suit and tie, he looked around the brand new arena that had replaced the legendary Chicago Stadium earlier that season and said, I hate this fucking building. You built this fucking building, I said. During that series, some of the Orlando Magic players said that he didn't look like the old number 23, which he didn't. He was wearing number 45, and he wasn't ready. And I knew it better than anyone else.

Starting point is 00:00:45 His endurance, his shot, there just hadn't been enough time to get him back to the level of excellence that people had grown accustomed to. Predictably, there was plenty of talk about how his baseball career had failed. His basketball comeback had failed. He had failed.

Starting point is 00:01:02 Michael Jordan was done, they said. And as usual, they were wrong. Michael Jordan is done, they said. And as usual, they were wrong. Michael Jordan is done when he says he's done, not when you say he's done. In fact, you saying it usually ensures the opposite. At the end of that game, he had a message for the Orlando Magic as all the players shook hands and left the court. Enjoy this win, because it ain't going to happen again. The following season, he led the Bulls to an NBA record 72 wins, swept the Orlando Magic in the playoffs, and won the first of three more championship rings to go with the three

Starting point is 00:01:33 rings he already won before he had failed. That was an excerpt from one of the two books I'm going to talk to you about today. Both were written by Tim Grover, who was Michael Jordan's trainer for 15 years. And he also trained Kobe Bryant. In fact, Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan both blurbed both of the books. So the first book is called Relentless, From Good to Great to Unstoppable. And the second one is called Winning, The Unforgiving Race to Greatness. So what I want to do is a little different than I normally do. I've already done two episodes on Michael Jordan, two episodes on Kobe Bryant. This is just going to be stories that Tim Grover has about Michael

Starting point is 00:02:11 and Kobe and then insight into their mentality for their life history, their biography. For Jordan, you can listen to episode 212 and 213. For Kobe, it's episode 272 and 273. So I'm going to jump right into Relentless. This is the updated version of the book. I read the audiobook or I listened to the audiobook many years ago. And I decided, hey, I'm going to buy the paperback version and do a podcast on it. And so the updated version, he's talking about all the feedback he got from the first version. And the most common criticism he got was, the book doesn't tell you what to do.

Starting point is 00:02:45 And this is what Tim Grover said about that. That is 100% accurate. Why would anyone want to be told what to do? The whole point of this book is that in order to be successful, to truly have what you want in your life, you must stop waiting to be told what to do and how to do it. I can't give you a 10-step process or a checklist. What I am giving you is insight into the mentality of

Starting point is 00:03:06 those who have found unparalleled success by trusting their own instincts. And so there's a very old story that's very reminiscent of what he's talking about. Obviously, he's talking about Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant, some other people he trained as well. But there was a story about back in Mozart's day and a man, a young man was 21 years old and he asked Mozart, he's like, well, how do you write a symphony? And Mozart replied that you're too young to write a's day. And a man, a young man was 21 years old. And he asked Mozart, he's like, well, how do you write a symphony? And Mozart replied that you're too young to write a symphony. And that young man said, but you were writing symphonies when you were 10 and I am 21. And Mozart's response was very much the point that Tim Grover is trying to teach us right in the first chapter. He's like, yeah, but I didn't go around asking people how to do it. And so he talks about why he titled the book Relentless. And he says the word relentless is used to describe the most intense competitors and achievers imaginable, those who

Starting point is 00:03:48 stop at nothing to get the end result. And what popped to mind when I read that is, of course, Kobe and Michael are relentless. But when I hear the word relentless, the first person that comes to my mind is not Kobe or Michael Jordan. It's Jeff Bezos. In fact, to this day, you might already know this, but Jeff Bezos owns the domain Relentless.com. If you go in your browser and you type Relentless.com, it will forward to Amazon. For a brief moment, he loved the word so much he was thinking about naming Amazon Relentless.com. I've done, I don't know, eight podcasts, six podcasts, something like that on Jeff Bezos. And that's the word, the one word I would choose to describe him. One of the reasons I would heavily recommend getting the audio book, if you like audio books, of Relentless is because it talks about a lot of things in this book that

Starting point is 00:04:34 most people, you know, kind of omit. You'll see them in biographies. But this idea, the dark side, the dark side of Michael Jordan and Kobe's personality is mentioned a lot in this book. And so I just want to go into a little bit here. He says, I understand how they think, how they learn, how they succeed and how they fail. I understand what drives them to be relentless. And it's not all pretty. If you're aiming to be the best at what you do, you cannot worry about whether your actions will upset other people or what they'll think of you. Your strategy is to make everyone else get on your level. You are not going down to theirs. You're not competing with anyone else

Starting point is 00:05:09 ever again. They're going to have to compete with you. And so that idea that, hey, I'm not going down to your level. You have to rise to mine or you need to leave is something that Kobe and Michael repeat over and over again across decades. It's something that their teammates mention over and over again. It's something their competitors mention over and over again. I re-watched The Last Dance over the last week. I kind of keep that documentary playing over and over again.

Starting point is 00:05:34 Most of the times I'm not even listening to it. Like it's just on the background if I'm reading or working or whatever. But there was something that popped out this, you know, I don't know, the 10th time I've watched this documentary or something like that, maybe eighth. And he's talking about why he was so hard on his teammates, the fact that he came to Chicago. He's like, listen, we were a terrible franchise. I had to

Starting point is 00:05:52 fail and fail and fail and fail year after year after year after year, I think it was seven or eight years before he won his first championship. And then you come in here, you know, now you're joining a world-class organization, yet you didn't do any of the work to build it into a world-class organization. So I'm not coming down to your level. You're going to rise to mine. And he says something, he goes, we were shit when I got here. And we elevated to being a championship quality team. There are certain standards that you have to live by. You do not come pussyfooting around. You have to come in and ready to play. And so those are Michael Jordan's words. And then Tim Grover's words on that is your strategy is to make everyone else get on your level. You're not going down to

Starting point is 00:06:28 theirs. You're not competing with anyone else ever again. They're going to have to compete with you. And then Tim Grover has a unique vantage point because he starts working out with Michael and training him way before Michael ever won his first championship. And so he says Michael was the best because he was relentless about winning. No matter how many times he won, he always wanted more. And he was always willing to do whatever it took. Michael never cared about achieving mere greatness. He cared about being the best ever. And then he immediately starts comparing people like Michael, Kobe, Pat Riley, Phil Jackson, Larry Bird. And this is really a list of traits that Kobe and Jordan share. He says, these are the most driven individuals you'll ever know with an unmatched genius for what they do.

Starting point is 00:07:08 They don't just perform a job. They reinvent it. So this idea you're going to see repeated over again. They're the most driven. They're the most competitive. There is no one in their industry like them. Another trait they share, they expect to succeed. They expect to succeed.

Starting point is 00:07:22 And when they do, they never celebrate for long because there's always more to do. Another thing, they take responsibility for everything. So in addition to reading these two books, I collect, I think I've already said this, I'm slightly obsessed with both Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. I collect stories about them all the time. So in addition to reading both books, I also have a bunch of these stories saved on my phone. They're little short videos. And I watched this excellent interview. One of the best, I've watched all the Kobe Bryant interviews that I can find. One of the best

Starting point is 00:07:53 ones happened shortly before he passed away. And it was actually with the Hall of Fame baseball player A-Rod. I will leave it linked down below. I highly recommend watching and listening to the whole thing. I've probably watched it four or five times. In fact, I'm supposed to meet A-Rod soon, which is kind of cool. I'm looking forward to that. But this idea where they say, hey, you know, people like Michael and Kobe, they take responsibility for everything. There is so there's a fascinating exchange that happens in that interview between A-Rod and Kobe Bryant, where Kobe says the following. He says, the people that have always had issues or problems with are people who don't demand excellence for themselves. I will not tolerate that. Because when the career is all said and

Starting point is 00:08:32 done, no one, they're not going to be looking at you, just a player on this team, saying, oh, you didn't win a championship. No, they're going to be looking here, meaning him as the leader of the team, as the founder. Think about the founder mentality, right? Everything is always the founder's fault. The founder has to take responsibility for everything. And so back to what Kobe says, he's like, listen, when the career is all said and done, they're not going to be saying, looking at you,

Starting point is 00:08:53 a player on this team saying you didn't win the championship. No, they're going to be looking here. So it's my responsibility to make sure I'm holding everybody accountable. And so that's what I think of when I get to this page and it says, hey, they take responsibility for everything, more on traits they share. They never stop working physically or mentally because it gives them too much time to think about what they've had to endure and sacrifice. There's two examples of this, and you can actually see it with your eyes when you're watching The Last Dance. The first time is when he wins, when Michael Jordan wins

Starting point is 00:09:21 his first NBA title ever, you know, seven, eight years of struggle, really an entire lifetime of struggle. And he's, you know, like just he's got his head. There's a famous picture of him like with his head on the Larry O'Brien trophy. And, you know, he's he's happy, but he's like also very emotional. What was fascinating about that is his teammates said that he had never up until that point they didn't even know if he was human that he had never showed them any uh other emotion other than anger and frustration and so they make the point of documentary they didn't even know that was that he had that side to him and then there's an even more extreme version of this because think about this it's like they never

Starting point is 00:09:59 stop working physically or mentally because it gives them too much time to think about what they've had to endure and to sacrifice and the second title or excuse me it was his fourth title but it's the the first NBA title that he wins after his father is murdered and it is visceral what happens it's this is something that's also famous you can see it on YouTube it's in the last dance too but he's on the floor in the locker room and he is just heaving and sobbing. Like you can hear the sobs. But what I would do is when you watch it, I would pay attention. You just see his entire it's like his entire chest cavity. He is shaking. It is a complete emotional release. And I think it goes back to the fact that, hey, you never stop working because it will give you too much time to think about what they've had to endure and sacrifice.

Starting point is 00:10:43 And in sports, unlike business, like there is a finish line, right? And so he can stop and everything comes rushing through. They're never in it for the money. He knows what he's worth and he'll remind you if you make the mistake of forgetting it. But the money is secondary to what really drives him. The most important thing, the one thing that defines and separates him from any other competitor. He's addicted to the exquisite rush of success and he'll alter his entire life to get it. Another trait that Kobe and Michael shared, something that's mentioned over and over again is just how strong their mentality is, the fact they had control over their minds. I'm going to read you something that's in Michael's autobiography, which I covered all the way back on episode 213 in one second, but he says, you can't excel at anything before you train your mind.

Starting point is 00:11:23 Mental dominance is what ultimately makes you unstoppable. Michael talked about this in Driven from Within, the book Driven from Within. And he says like your mind will play tricks on you. So he says, the mind will play tricks on you. The mind was telling you that you couldn't go any further. The mind was telling you how much it hurt. The mind was telling you these things to keep you from reaching your goal, but you have to see past that. You have to turn it all off if you're ever going to get to where you want to be. And I don't think that part can be overlooked because your own mind can be your worst enemy. It can actually stop you from even trying. There's this great speech, talk Kobe Bryant was given. I think he was doing it on a tour in China.

Starting point is 00:12:00 And he said something that was fascinating to me. And he says, the greatest fear we face is ourselves. It's not anything that's external or anything that's superficial. I think the greatest fear that you face is yourself because we all have dreams. And it's very scary sometimes to accept the dream that you have, and it's scarier still to say, I want that. It's scary because you're afraid

Starting point is 00:12:21 that if you put your heart and soul into it, and then you fail, how are you going to feel about yourself? So being fearless means to put yourself out there and going for it. No matter what, go for it. Not for anybody else, but for yourself. This dedication to learning how to control your mind is something that's mentioned over and over again. Later in the book, it says, if one thing separated Michael from every other player, it was his stunning ability to block out everything and everyone else. He was able to shut out everything except his mission. In the very last episode of The Last Dance, it talks

Starting point is 00:12:53 about this. It says, most people struggle to be present. Most people live in fear because we project the past into the future. Michael is a mystic. He was never anywhere else. His gift was that he was able to be completely present. The big downfall of otherwise gifted players is thinking about failure. He would say, why would I think about missing a shot I haven't taken yet? And you see this even after they win the sixth and final championship in Chicago. They're having this big celebration. There's a bunch of Michaels in his hotel room with a bunch of reporters he's playing the piano he's smoking a cigar he's having a good time and then somebody asks him hey you got another one in you and he just stops he goes it's the moment man it's the moment it's that zen buddhism shit

Starting point is 00:13:35 get in the moment and stay there just stay in the moment until next October and then we'll know where the hell we are and so this idea of controlling your mind, controlling your emotions, not panicking, not letting emotions blur judgment and staying in the present moment is repeated throughout both books. Here's another example. People like Kobe and Michael, they feel the same excitement and anxiety and nerves before big adventures like you do. The difference is they have the ability to control these feelings.

Starting point is 00:14:01 Michael used to say that he had butterflies before a big game. And I would tell him, get them all going in the same direction. They're not going away, but now you're controlling how you feel about them. Michael would think, if I'm feeling nervous, how the fuck are they feeling? They have to deal with me. That subtle reframing of a negative emotion into a positive one, into actual fuel. And so another thing that Michael and Kobe had in common from Tim Grover's perspective is the ability to keep it simple and to master the fundamentals. And so it says, at some point, you've made something simple into something complicated. I get frequent calls from

Starting point is 00:14:34 athletes who are completely overwhelmed by all the experts and trainers and nutritionists and coaches, everyone throwing so much of them that they lose the natural ability that made them great in the first place. The boxer Leon Spinks once said when asked what he does for a living, he said, I knock motherfuckers out. That is it. Simple. You don't mess with it. You don't alter it. You don't teach it to be something different. And so there's a great story later in the book that talks about like, OK, for Michael Jordan and Kobe, you know, if you ask him what to do, it's like I win championships. Kobe would also say, I give them numbers and I need to tie this together. So we're going to come back to this. I'm going to I'm going to jump ahead so I can just give you this part about Kobe. And so Tim's talking about the fact that there's just a lot of people that are dabbling in way too much and they're not focused and they're wondering why they're not they're not successful.

Starting point is 00:15:22 So he says there's a lot of people that are dabbling in a lot of things and succeeding at none. I listen to those people and I think, as far as I can tell, the only thing you're good at is keeping busy. I want to hear someone say, I do this. If you ask Kobe what he does, he says, I give out numbers. Numbers? Yeah, I gave them 81. Or I gave them a triple-double. Or I gave those guys 61 points.

Starting point is 00:15:44 I want to make you excellent at this one thing. When people talk about someone who can do this, you're going to be the first name on the list. People get paid a fortune for being the expert at one thing. Anytime others need that one thing, you're the only one that they're calling. And so one of my favorite books

Starting point is 00:16:02 that I've ever done for the podcast, I did all the way back on episode 191. It's actually written, it's a book written by my friend, Eric Jorgensen. It's called The Almanac of Naval Ravikant. And Naval said something genius in that book, because really talking about like the effect of like the modern age, the fact that we're living in the age of infinite leverage. And so it really affects everything, what you're doing for work, how to do it, how to think about it, really. It's the book that I give out as a gift, you know, most frequently. In fact, I bought four more copies like last week or a week before. But when I get to this point, he's like, you know, I want somebody to be to be excellent

Starting point is 00:16:35 at one thing. And I think this is going to become even more and more important. And Naval says in that book, being at the extreme of your craft is very important in the age of infinite leverage, which is what we live in. The person that is the best in the world gets to do that for everyone. And I've been taking Duvall's ideas that are in a book and trying to apply them with a vengeance where it's like, I'm just going to focus. I want to be the best in the world in studying, condensing, and clarifying how history's greatest founders thought. And therefore, I get to do that for everyone in the world.

Starting point is 00:17:04 And so to illustrate this point, Tim Grover tells a story where him and Michael Jordan went to, they go and they visit an FBI training facility. And this is an excellent story because the idea behind it can be applied to everything, right? So they show up and it's a practice range for the most elite sharpshooters in the world. So snipers. There's one guy out there alone, practicing his craft over and over and over again. The target is 400 yards away, four football fields. He has to get in his truck, drive to the target, set it up, and drive back to where we're standing. He gets his gun with the scope, takes aim, one shot. Then we get in the truck with him and drive back to the target. He hit it dead fucking center. Michael asked him how many people use that

Starting point is 00:17:45 target range and he said, just me. He was alone working on this one shot over and over again. So when people in the military need someone who can hit that kind of target, they call him. No one knows what this guy does every day to be this good. People just know that he can deliver results. Figure out what you do, then do it and do it better than anyone else. And then let everything else you do build around that. And that's something Michael talks about, because now, you know, obviously he's one of the greatest, if not the greatest basketball player of all time. But if you look at what he's done in his, he's one of the best entrepreneurs, too.

Starting point is 00:18:19 And his whole point was like his game was his best endorsement. He said, my dedication to the game led to all this other stuff. You know, the fact that he made, I guess, like a billion or two billion dollars selling his NBA team. The fact that he's got this crazy deal with Nike that he's been getting 5 percent royalty. I think he's going to make something like 300 million dollars this year. And that only happens because he figured out what he did, then did it better than anyone else. And he let everything else that he did build around that. And so now I want to go back to this page where it's like, hey, you have to keep it simple.

Starting point is 00:18:51 At some point, you made something simple into something complicated that Kobe and Michael would talk over and over again about the importance of fundamentals. And so there's this great story in that interview with A-Rod and Kobe. And Kobe's talking about this, you know, this, I think a year before the helicopter crash. And he's like, you know, I'm, I called Michael Jordan and he was talking about the fact that his 12 year old daughter was playing basketball. And he feels that they were being taught like just too much, like too much fancy stuff. Like this is, this is just crazy. And so what he wanted to do, he's like, I just try to teach my kids, you know, the most basic stuff. And when we just do the basics and we do it over and over and over and over again. And so he calls

Starting point is 00:19:33 up Michael Jordan and he's like, listen, man, I'm having a hard time remembering like what I was learning when I was 12 years old. You know, what, what kind of, like, what was I, what techniques were I learning to play basketball at 12 years old? Cause I think these kids nowadays are just, nowadays are just doing too much. Uh, and so Kobe asked him, he's like, what techniques were I learning to play basketball at 12 years old? Because I think these kids nowadays are just doing too much. And so Kobe asked him, he's like, what were you doing? You know, what were you learning about basketball at 12? And he goes, and Michael goes, dude, I was playing baseball. And Kobe's response to this was excellent.

Starting point is 00:19:58 He goes, let that sink in for a second. For all the people who are out there overtraining their kids at 12 and doing all this fancy stuff, just let that sink in for a second. Okay, so back to traits that Michael and Kobe shared. They both never stop learning. They put in all these hours of work to create an unstoppable internal resource that you can draw on in any situation. And so one of my favorite examples of this is I read this like 700 page biography of Kobe. I did the same thing on Michael too.

Starting point is 00:20:24 It's actually the same author. It's episode 272 if you haven't heard it yet. But in that book, one of Kobe's high school friends comes over and Kobe opens up this closet and it's a closet full of VHS tapes of all of, you know,

Starting point is 00:20:39 closet full of Michael's games. And they would just watch him over and over again. In fact, also in that book, Kobe's high school girlfriend was asked, like, what was it like dating Kobe in high school? He's like, well, I would just come over his house on Friday night and we'd watch Michael Jordan games. So this idea that they just never stop learning, all those hours of work have created an unstoppable internal resource that you can draw on any situation. Kobe and Michael both talk a lot about trusting their intuition. In fact, they quote Oprah. I just did an Oprah episode a few weeks ago, and she talked about this.

Starting point is 00:21:09 And the quote in this book is, Oprah once said, every right decision I've ever made has come from my gut. And every wrong decision I've ever made was as a result of me not listening to that gut, to that intuition. You know, Steve Jobs talked about this too in his biography written by Walter Isaacson. He says, intuition is a very powerful too in his biography written by Walter Isaacson. He says, intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect, in my opinion, that has had a big impact on my work. And so in addition to that, they both seek out difficulty. They want pressure. And this is Tim Grover's interpretation of, you know, Michael's legend at Trash Talk. I got a bunch of stories about that,

Starting point is 00:21:46 that I'm going to, that I've collected from the internet that are great. I'll read to you and tell you about in a minute. But I love this. Tim says, I always felt Michael's legendary trash talking wasn't meant for the other guy. It was another way for him to heighten the pressure that he put on himself. Because once you've told others how bad you're about to fuck them up, you're going to have to deliver on that promise. Pressure, pressure, pressure. Most people run from that. Most people run from stress. Stress keeps you sharp. It challenges you in ways you've never imagined and forces you to solve issues and manage situations that send weaker people running for cover. So in that biography, this giant biography of Michael Jordan I read for episode 212,

Starting point is 00:22:27 I remember this paragraph because it came to my mind when I was reading this book. And it's describing Michael. Mostly, he tested himself. It seemed that he discovered the secret quite early in his competitive life. The more pressure that he heaped on himself, the greater his ability to rise to that occasion. And I think one of the benefits is if you're holding yourself to a higher standard or putting more pressure on yourself than the external world ever could, it makes dealing with expectations of the external world easier if you're even paying attention to them. This is great.

Starting point is 00:23:00 Another video I talk about over and over again is Kobe was interviewed by Ahmad Rashad rashad and he was asked like you know when you're struggling you win three championships then you have this drought you're trying to win more you know at that point you didn't know you're going to win two more like were you are you ever worried about fans expectations and ahmad like kobe doesn't even let ahmad finish the question he has this like what I call the stanky face. It's like, oh, like if you just disgusted at even that thought and he just shakes his head no and he goes, their expectations will never be higher than my own. And I think that is the exact right way to approach your craft. And it's something that's repeated over and over again. If you have that, then, you know, you're indifferent to the opinions of other people. It says over and over again, you know, Michael does not care what you think. Kobe does not care what you think. They're holding that there's nobody that can hold themselves to a higher standard than themselves. And when you do that, you don't have any fear of holding yourself accountable because everybody's going to fail. Everybody's going to make mistakes. And they say

Starting point is 00:23:59 like when Kobe or Michael made a mistake, they would just own up to it. They said they would look you in the eye and they would say, I fucked up. That's it. Confident, simple, factual, no explanation. You made a mistake. Fine. Don't explain it to me in an hour. The truth is one sentence. And that relentless pressure that they put on themselves. I mean, there's going to be a million stories. They're going to put it on.

Starting point is 00:24:20 If you have a founder, you have a leader that has relentless pressure. That's from an internal source that they're applying to themselves, chances are they are also going to apply relentlessly to their team. And so there's a bunch of stories about Michael doing that, about Kobe doing that. This is an example of Michael doing it. For all his countless gifts as a player, sensitivity to others was not among them. He was driven to attack, to dominate, and to conquer in every way. Whatever he had to do, he did it, and he expected the same from every individual around him. And every day, those teammates had to show up to face him in practice, completely dreading what

Starting point is 00:24:53 was ahead. Not because practices were hard, but because they knew they had to deal with him and that legendary mouth every fucking day. Just absolutely going after each other and every guy, pushing and demanding, challenging, abusing, and finding every possible way to make them go harder. Once during the playoffs, on the day after a grueling overtime game, the team was ready to start practice until Michael looked around and noticed one guy was missing. This is later in his career. So this is the second three-peat that they're on.

Starting point is 00:25:22 Because I think his name's Scott Burrell. I think he only played for the Bulls from like 96 to 98 or 97 to 98. And so it says Michael looked around and noticed one guy was missing. Where the hell is Burrell? He barked. Scott Burrell was in the training room. I don't even think he started. They said he was a part-time player, so it sounds like he didn't play that much. Michael stormed in there where poor Scott was on the table

Starting point is 00:25:41 getting treatment for an alleged hamstring issue. Michael grabbed the table with Scott still on it and completely flipped it over. I just played 48 fucking minutes last night, Michael roared. Everything's killing me and you have a fucking hamstring? Get your fucking ass in the fucking practice now. Get on my level or get the hell out of my way. When you're the guy at the top, it's on you to pull everyone else up there with you. Or everything you've built comes crashing down. Jordan demands excellence of himself, and he has no tolerance for those who can't or won't rise to that level. Think about Kobe talking to A-Rod. He's like, listen, the people I have a problem with are people that don't demand excellence for themselves. I said I'd recommend getting the audiobook version of Relentless because I really do feel

Starting point is 00:26:25 it's very, it can be, I mean, it was motivational for me because I have like a fairly negative inner monologue and, you know, I kind of abuse myself in the way that Michael abuses himself and his teammates. But what I liked about the book is like, it didn't really hide the fact that, you know, a lot of these extreme people seeking extreme achievement, these extreme winners, do have this dark side to them. I don't think it's a prerequisite for extreme success. I mean, you think about John D. Rockefeller, one of the most successful companies in the world, or the world has ever seen, rather. And people who worked for him said he would never raise his voice. He was never impolite.

Starting point is 00:27:02 Now, his competitors would say he's Genghis Khan, the way he would dominate. You know, but he wasn't throwing things and yelling at people like this. But so, you know, it's not a prerequisite, but it is a Michael or a Kobe or even a Steve Jobs, I think the worst thing that you could do because they're such domineering personalities is back down from them is the worst thing because they're just going to keep abusing you. They're just going to realize, you know, this person's soft, this person's weak. I can basically have my way with them. And even somebody that's not as talented, they do respect strength. And there's a story demonstrating this in the book. It's also in The Last Dance where Steve Kerr, you know, is like, I don't know, half a foot shorter than Michael, much smaller.

Starting point is 00:27:54 And yet Michael would love Steve because Steve actually would stand up to him. And, you know, they're having this scrimmage in practice and Kerr didn't appreciate something that Michael said and snapped back at him. I think I heard that he had pushed him or Kerr had pushed him or something like that. Michael hauls off and punches him in the face. And then Michael gets kicked out of practice. And surprisingly, Steve Kerr said it was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

Starting point is 00:28:20 I needed to stand up and go back at him. And he was right, because as soon as the practice ended, Michael called him, apologized. And from that point on, Michael trusted Kerr. And this is something that Jordan's teammates talked about a lot. I have more examples of Jordan's teammates talking like that than I do of Kobe's, but I think it still applies to them. They knew that this was not a, like, he was an unusual talent. You know, even early in his career, you have, I saved screenshots and I look at them on my phone, and it's Larry Bird and Magic Johnson had dominated the NBA in the 1980s. Now we're getting to the early 90s, late 80s, and they're playing against the young Michael Jordan.

Starting point is 00:28:59 And Larry Bird said, there's nobody like him. Point blank, I've never seen nobody play like he plays. This is before he won a championship. Before he won a championship, Magic Johnson said, there's nobody like him. Point blank, I've never seen nobody play like he plays. This is before he won a championship. Before he won a championship, Magic Johnson said, Jordan is the most talented player in the NBA by far. And what was fascinating is people knew that years, years before he would be considered successful. He was a successful individual player from the get-go.

Starting point is 00:29:21 But if you don't win championships, nothing else matters. And Bobby Knight is his legendary coach, and he's coaching Michael Jordan in the 1984 Olympics. This is before Jordan ever plays a game in the NBA. And so the Portland Trailblazers, who have the second pick in the draft that year, they're going to call Bobby Knight. And it says, before the 1984 NBA draft, the Portland Trailblazers called Bobby Knight, who was coaching the U.S. Olympic basketball team that summer, which included Michael, and asked him his opinion on whom they should take with the second pick in the draft. Everyone knew that Houston Rockets are going to take Hakeem Olajuwon with the first pick. But no one, including Portland, was sure whether

Starting point is 00:30:03 Portland would take Sam Bowie or Michael Jordan. Remember Sam Bowie for later. There's a hilarious Michael Jordan story with him. So, you know, should Portland take Sam or Michael Jordan with the second pick? Take Jordan, said Bobby Knight. Right, said Portland, but we need a center. Then play him at center, Knight said. And so Tim's interpretation of this was you have to look at your teammates and your employees and see what they can do, not what they can't. This reminded me of a story from one of the Rockefeller biographies I read, the fact that they said he would hire talented people as found, not as needed. He's like, listen, talent is the best asset class. It doesn't matter if I

Starting point is 00:30:41 don't have a job opening or I don't have a position. This guy's so talented. If I can get him now, I'll figure out what to do with him later. That's the equivalent of Bobby Knight saying, who cares if you need a center? Play him at center. This guy is gifted. Take him. And usually people like this are so talented, they don't even know how talented they are. And so you run into a problem.

Starting point is 00:30:56 When you're so extraordinary at your craft, when your talent is so natural and your skill is so elevated, it's hard to understand that not everyone is like you and can do what you do. It's not a matter of they're trying more or working harder. They really just can't do it. And if it's not handled right, it will destroy your entire team or office or wherever you have elite performers surrounded by less gifted colleagues. That is exactly why Steve Jobs said that you cannot indulge B players. He's like, A players only want to work with A players. If you indulge B players, you keep them around A players only want to work with A players. If you indulge B players, you keep them around,

Starting point is 00:31:26 you're going to lose your A players. You cannot indulge B players. You're going to have a problem when you have elite performers surrounded by less gifted colleagues. One of my all-time favorite maxims that I learned from the history of entrepreneurship comes from the founder of Four Seasons

Starting point is 00:31:42 that excellence is the capacity to take pain. Tim writes, one of the hardest decisions is to determine how much pain you can endure and how far you can push yourself. Everyone plays with pain. There's always something going on. Kobe has a finger that moves in all kinds of ways a finger isn't supposed to move. A normal person would have it surgically repaired, but that surgery would cost him nine months of basketball. People like Kobe and Michael have a high tolerance for physical and mental pain. There's this great quote in Driven from Within that Michael Jordan has, and he's talking about himself, but he's using Tiger Woods as another example. And he says, look around,

Starting point is 00:32:19 and just about any person or entity achieving at a high level has the same kind of focus. The morning after Tiger Woods rallied to beat Phil Mickelson at the Ford Championship in 2005, he was in the gym by 6.30 a.m. to work out. No lights, no cameras, no glitz or glamour. Uncompromised. So this idea of you have to be uncompromised is something that Jordan repeated over and over again in that book. The best way to summarize his mentality on that is you have to be uncompromised in your, this is him speaking, you have to be uncompromised in your level of commitment to whatever you are doing or it can disappear just as fast as it appeared.

Starting point is 00:32:52 So Tim Grover observed this when Michael was still playing in the NBA and Tim was training him. He says that after every game, I used to ask Michael one question, five, six, or seven, as in what time are we hitting the gym tomorrow morning? And he'd snap back a time and that was it. No matter what had happened the night before, good game, bad game, soreness, fatigue, he was up working out every morning while the other guys slept. Interesting how the guy with the most talent and success spent more time working out than anyone else. Kobe was the same way. Kobe had an insatiable desire to work. And Kobe had that from day one. It says most guys on the day that they're drafted go out and celebrate. Kobe went to the gym. There's a great quote that I have saved of Kobe Bryant. I don't remember where it's from. I think it might be

Starting point is 00:33:36 a camera. It might be from mama mentality. But Kobe, this is Kobe Bryant on how he knew he was going to win a lot of championships. It was easy to say this is Kobe speaking on how he knew he was going to win a lot of championships. It was easy to say, this is Kobe speaking now. It was easy to size other players up in the NBA. I found that a lot of guys played for financial stability. Once they got that financial stability, the passion, the work ethic, and the obsessiveness was gone. Once I saw that, I thought this is going to be like taking candy from a baby. No wonder Michael Jordan wins all these fucking championships. And so in the same chapter, they talk about a lot of the workouts they're doing. This is fascinating. This may be my favorite idea in the entire book.

Starting point is 00:34:13 I'm going to read it to you, and then I'm going to read the summary. Now I have this note on my desk to myself now. For all of Michael's amazing moves and unforgettable moments, he knew that none of that could happen without the fundamentals, those basic moves that he practiced over and over and over again. He worked on being consistent and he worked on it relentlessly. Michael Jordan worked on consistency relentlessly. And that's something I believe. And I learned that from just reading all of these biographies. You see it over and over again. I really believe that assuming that you're in a business that's

Starting point is 00:34:44 working, that time carries most of the weight. And if that's the case, then the best thing you could do is work on consistency relentlessly over a long period of time. So I mentioned that quote earlier that Michael Jordan said in The Last Dance, that my game was my biggest endorsement. My dedication to the game led to all this other stuff. And the way I think about this is a season of no. My friend Jeremy Gaffon said that one of the most valuable things I could do is just say no to everything else that's not making the podcast or growing the podcast. And he's right about that. It's very similar to what Michael Jordan would do every year on Labor Day. So every year on Labor Day, Michael would

Starting point is 00:35:18 shut or by Labor Day, Michael would shut down everything outside of basketball and just train three workouts a day, workout, golf, workout, lunch, golf break, workout, dinner, bed, every day. No commercial suits, no promotional tours, no events, just work because he knew better than anyone else that all the outside stuff was the result of hard work on the inside, not the other way around. Shoe deals and commercials don't make you an icon. Being unstoppable makes you an icon. And being unstoppable only comes with hard work. My game was my biggest endorsement. My dedication to the game led to all the other stuff.

Starting point is 00:35:54 Another trait that Tim observed in both Kobe and Michael is the fact that they have a hard time trusting other people. Or maybe not. Maybe we put this as like they trust themselves more than anybody else. There's a great line in Michael's biography on episode 212 where it says, Jordan mostly believed in himself. In Mike, he trusted. All others were open to question. And so Tim has some ideas on why this is maybe the case. Trusting others is the same as giving up control. And they usually have a painfully hard time with that. They have this in common. At some point, they learn that they can only trust themselves. Maybe it was a lesson

Starting point is 00:36:27 they learned in childhood or something that happened later in life, but it forced them to rely on the sheer power of their gut instinct, and they realized that to survive and succeed, they could never take their hands off the wheel. And finally, the last story from this book that I want to share with you is, this is a story about Kobe. It's really on just having one focus. In fact, my home screen on my phone has been just this quote from The Last Dance, and it's been this way for a long time. And it says, a guy that was totally focused on one thing and one thing only. That was obviously a reference to Michael. This is Kobe. Everything Kobe does is all about excellence. Everything. Nothing else matters. You hear people say that all the time. I'll do whatever it takes. But Kobe truly lives it. Every detail of his life,

Starting point is 00:37:08 every hour of his day, the lonely time he spends in the gym, the people he seeks out to help him maintain that excellence. Everything. Everything revolves around being on top and staying there. That's why we work so well together. He has one focus, and I have one focus, our shared addiction to winning. And everything we do is about that one objective. Okay. So before I jump into the other book, the other book is the winning or is winning the unforgiving race to greatness. I have to just share a couple of, I have a ton of these stories. Mostly they're Michael stories. I have some Kobe stories in here too, but I'm just addicted to like reading. I don't even know why I just something about Michael's

Starting point is 00:37:45 unapologetically extreme mindset just makes me laugh I don't even know what it does it fuels me in very bizarre ways and what's great is you know these stories happened way before the internet and so the only times they would like tumble out was they'd be like a documentary or maybe a book or something like that right but now you have all these like athletes and former athletes and people that played with Michael that go on podcasts and they tell all these crazy Michael Jordan stories. And so I collect these crazy Michael Jordan stories, usually from podcasts. Sometimes they're, you know, written somewhere, but I just want to give you, cause he's just not normal. And so Steven Jackson played for the Charlotte Hornets. He played for Michael Jordan's

Starting point is 00:38:25 team when Michael owned it. Right. And he told this hilarious story on the podcast. So I'm going to read a somebody else's summary about this story because I thought the summary was hilarious. And it just talks about the fact that, you know, this is not a normal, we're not, we're dealing with an outlier of an outlier. And so Steven Jackson tells the story, this is the summary because he's playing for Michael Jordan, right? And he goes, and this is the summary of Steven Jackson's story. So this is not Steven Jackson speaking, this is the summary, okay? I completely understand why so many people think that Michael is the greatest. Normal human beings don't do shit like this. While on a podcast, Steven Jackson told a story about Michael Jordan.

Starting point is 00:39:04 MJ was angry with the Bobcats for being so bad, right? They're just losing games. He owns the team. He is super competitive. He says, like, there's a scene in the book and in The Last Dance where, you know, they ask him when he started playing in the NBA, like, do you have a gambling problem? And he laughed. He's like, I don't have a gambling problem i have a competition problem and you know super competitive back then he is still competitive to this day and kobe tells a hilarious story because he's like you know i he there's like is michael jordan the most competitive you know person you've ever met he's like listen i'm just as competitive with him at basketball the difference between me and michael's he's competitive with everything which shit that doesn't matter i think is the way kobe put it And so he's like, you know, with basketball,

Starting point is 00:39:48 yeah, we go back and forth. But he's like, I was having dinner with Michael one night and Michael's like, oh, what about my 91 team versus your 2003? I would have whooped your ass. And Kobe's like, Mike, just enjoy your salad. Calm down. We're not going to have this debate. And so he's just competitive with everything. And so let's go back to this. I completely understand why so many people think he's the greatest. Normal human beings don't do shit like this. Well, on a podcast, Stephen Jackson told a story about Michael Jordan. MJ was angry with the Bobcats, with his team for being so bad. So he came to their practice, took away all their Jordan gear. So keep in mind, Jordan brand, right? The brand under Nike, his entire team, everybody in the NBA has, I think has this stuff. So you have like the shoes, you have all the work,

Starting point is 00:40:29 the warmup gear, everything, right? So he came to the practice, took away all their Jordan gear and beat the starters with the second unit. Keep in mind, MJ was in his fifties and he came and waxed NBA starters with the bench. Think about the inner competitive drive that you have to have. First of all, you've been out of the league for a decade and a half, or however long it's been. You make them take off their clothes because you don't think they're worthy of your brand name. Then you take the bench and say, hey, come with me,

Starting point is 00:40:59 and you play scrimmage 505, and you beat them. Steven Jackson was telling that story. Steven Jackson was one of the starters, and he is telling the stories that Michael in his 50s came back and waxed NBA starters with a bench. That is one of the craziest stories I've ever heard. And so I talk about, you know, that was probably, let's say, a decade ago, maybe eight years ago that happened.

Starting point is 00:41:19 Michael's still like this. There's this young player, Ja Morant, I think is how you pronounce his name, and he was, you know, talking a lot of trash, And he was like, oh, Michael's not that good. I would cook MJ. That was a quote from John Morant. This is MJ's response. In my third season, which is how the season that John Morant was in when he said that about Michael, right? He's like, oh, I'm better than him. I would beat him, whatever the case is. Michael goes, remember, Michael's like damn near 60 when he's saying this. In my third season, I'm better than him. I would beat him, whatever the case is. Michael goes, remember, Michael's like damn near 60 when he's saying this.

Starting point is 00:41:47 In my third season, I averaged 37 points and the next season I won my first MVP out of five. Show me what you can do, little boy, and stop tweeting. I just love this idea of a 60-year-old MJ calling and saying, show me what you can do, little boy, and stop tweeting. And so this like, you know, super competitive drive, you know, it fueled him when he was younger, still has to this day.

Starting point is 00:42:13 It's something that Kobe, you know, I've told the story before. It's one of my favorite Kobe stories because he's being interviewed by Ahmad Rashad. And this is really the foundation of Kobe. And this is the very beginning of Kobe and Michael Jordan's relationship, you know, that they had, you know, I watched a eulogy recently to prep for this podcast that Michael Jordan had at Kobe's memorial. He's like, he was my little brother. Kobe would say the same thing. In fact, one of the last interviews he did was for The Last Dance. And in that episode, I think it's episode five or maybe four. And, you know, Kobe's talking to me. He's like, listen, when I came into the league, Michael provided a lot of guidance for me.

Starting point is 00:42:46 I had questions about shooting his turnaround shot. He gave me a detailed answer. And on top of that, he said, if you ever need anything, give me a call. And so Tim talks about the fact that you can't tell Kobe to give you a call because he'll call you like two, three in the morning over and over again. Michael talked about that in his eulogy too. But what was fascinating is the respect they had for one another and where it originated from, where Kobe is now retired. And he's like, listen, I truly hate having discussions about who would win one-on-one or fans saying, hey, you would be Michael, you're better than Michael. And Kobe says something that I love. He's like, listen, I feel like, hey, what you get from me is from him. I don't get five championships without him because he guided me so much and gave me so much great advice. And part of that is tied to what I said earlier is like my study of these extreme individuals, like the worst thing you could do is back down from them. And so Phil

Starting point is 00:43:34 Jackson coached both Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. Michael's retired at this time. Phil invites Michael to a Lakers practice and it's Phil Jackson, Michael Jordan, Ahmad Rashad and Kobe Bryant and all sitting in the room. And Ahmad is talking about in this interview, he's like, listen, I read this piece that said you didn't challenge him or that he didn't challenge you and that it never happened. And he goes, it did happen because I was sitting right there at the table with you guys. And so one of the first things that Kobe says to him is like, you got your shoes. Let me just read the transcript here. And so, you know, Phil Jackson asked Michael if he wasn't doing anything, just come by practice and maybe,

Starting point is 00:44:10 you know, he'd want to play. And Michael said to Kobe, a young Kobe, hey, maybe we can figure out what you got. And then you said back, no, maybe I'll figure out what you got. And then Michael said, you can't guard me. And then you said to Michael, you can't guard me. And then Ahmad asked Kobe, how old were you? Kobe's response, 21 years old. And so you said to Michael, you can't guard me. And then Ahmaud asked Kobe, how old were you? Kobe's response, 21 years old. And so Michael and Ahmaud wind up leaving. There was a silent moment. And as they're walking out in the hallway, he goes, man, I love that dude. He's a warrior. And he loved you because you didn't back down. And Michael would do that on purpose. He says in The Last Dance, like if you're trying to maintain dominance over people, you don't want to give them

Starting point is 00:44:44 a chance to gain any kind of confidence. And Kobe had that same exact mentality. He says in The Last Dance, like if you're trying to maintain dominance over people, you don't want to give them a chance to gain any kind of confidence. And Kobe had that same exact mentality. He says, Mike and I both know there are certain players that we can intimidate. There are certain players that are afraid. But every now and then you run into a player that has the same DNA that you do, the same competitive spirit that you do. And you quickly realize that the bullying and the trash talking is not going to work with this person. And as you read about Kobe or you read about Michael, you hear all these stories, you realize like there's this constant search for them internally to find other things that keep their motivation up, to keep them like fully engaged. And they would compete even in like meaningless exhibition games. So there's this former NBA player named Eddie Johnson, and he

Starting point is 00:45:24 tells two hilarious stories. He tells a Michael Jordan story, and then he tells, I'm going to share one that he tells about Larry Bird. I'm a huge Larry Bird fan. In fact, I have Larry Bird's autobiography on my desk. I'll eventually make an episode on it. But Eddie Johnson goes on a podcast and tells a story about Michael Jordan. And they're playing the Bulls in an exhibition game, and Michael comes up to him before the game, to Eddie and this other guy named Tom, and he goes, Hey, I'm going to give your boy 40. And they're like, who are you talking about? I was like, Dan, the guy you have covering me, like, I'm going to give him four. I'm going to put 40 points on them. And they're like, yeah, whatever. And MJ didn't like that. They doubted him. He

Starting point is 00:45:58 goes, bet $200. And Eddie says, I took the bet and Tom took the bet. So, you know, if Michael doesn't score 40, he's going to have to give up 400 bucks. If he does score 40, he gets $400. And so Eddie and Tom are on the bench and they're watching the game and they're like, oh, this guy just starts going nuts. And it says Tom and I are looking at him like this dude is just insane.

Starting point is 00:46:18 And so a short while later, he has like 38 points and he walks over to the bench. He looks at Tom and I and he says, get that money ready. He then catches the ball, reverse pivots on him. And he just tries to tear the rim up, tongue wagging and all. He dunked on him for the 40th point. And then he held up four fingers in each hand for 400. Nobody else knew what the four meant, right?

Starting point is 00:46:43 So everybody's like, what is Michael doing with each hand has four on him, right? Then he runs past us and says, I want my money. And then he checks himself out of the game. And so that was later in Eddie's career, right? But when Eddie is a rookie, he's playing against, I got to tell you this Larry Bird story, because there's so many, just like I collect Michael Jordan stories, I collect Larry Bird stories. He was like a legendary trash talker. I just think it's hilarious. And so Eddie Johnson is now telling another story. And this time it's on Larry Bird. He goes, listen, I remember playing against Larry Bird.

Starting point is 00:47:12 It was my second game of my career and I am scared to death. Larry Bird walks over to me, stands next to me, and he leans over and he looks at me. And he says, do you honestly think that you can guard me? I didn't say anything in response. So he goes over to our bench and says, do you honestly think that you can guard me? I didn't say anything in response. So he goes over to our bench and says, you made this rookie guard me. I'm going to bust him up. And he says that right in my ear. He says, I'm going to wear your ass out. The game starts and he is wearing me out. Later, he comes up to me and he says, I bet you can't do this. He raises up and shoots a long three-point shot. It's an air ball.

Starting point is 00:47:48 I just look at him and he says, that don't matter. It's the fact that I can do that and stay in the game. I bet you can't. And so there's just a million of these like psychological warfare, psychological games that Kobe's engaging in, that Michael's engaging in. Dominique Wilkins told another great story. They're about to play the Bulls. Says Michael Jordan walks into the locker room. He's got a suit and tie on. And they're like, what the hell is going on here? Like, why are you in our locker room? And so he walks up to me and says,

Starting point is 00:48:20 lace him up. It's going to be a long night. And then he leaves. And Dominique's like, what the hell? Did he just come in our locker room? He's like, I didn't even know what to say. I was completely shocked. And then the punchline of the story was he had 60 that night. He had 60 points that night. And then this Michael Jordan story

Starting point is 00:48:39 is the most recent one I came across. And it's Julian Elliman who played on the Patriots. And he's talking about this, that he's about to play in the Super Bowl, right? It's a few days before he plays in the Super Bowl. He sees Michael Jordan and Derek Jeter having dinner together. And so he goes up and introduces himself and says, hey, I'm playing in the Super Bowl.

Starting point is 00:48:58 And he says, they couldn't have been more different. Like Jeter was welcoming and charming and Jordan was really standoffish. And so the conversation only lasts a few minutes. But as the conversation is about to end, Jordan says, hey, kid, I got a bunch of money on you. Don't fuck it up. And Edelman says that was the only thing that he had said to me. And I responded, yes, sir, Mr. Jordan.

Starting point is 00:49:20 And I think all these stories besides the Edelman one where because he wasn't competing or anything he was just literally betting on something I think he understood what he was doing himself because you can go back and watch these interviews with him and there's another Jordan interview and I'll link it down below and he says something that's interesting and he's relatively young I think he's still in playing in the NBA when he says this and he says a good competitor always evaluates his opponent and you understand him for what he really is. You never try to give him confidence. You try to take it at all times. Mentally, I've got to find a way, and sometimes what you have to do is you have to trick yourself. You have to look inside yourself and find different types of challenges from game to game.

Starting point is 00:49:58 That's how I got myself motivated, and it wasn't the same every game. I had to find a focus to go out and play at a certain level. In that same interview, he says, I just feel my competitive drive is far greater than anyone else that I've ever met. I thrive on that. I think that is my biggest motivation in life. I find certain competitions in life and I try to overcome them. I feel confident about my competitive drive.

Starting point is 00:50:22 And so I'm going to pick up the book Winning. And he tells you exactly what he's trying to do while he's writing the book. There's a bunch of obviously Kobe stories in here, a bunch of Michael Jordan stories in here. And he's trying to take you into the world of elite cutthroat competition. And so what's very fascinating is he would ask all of his clients and people that wanted to be his clients the same question. He's like, you need to describe winning in one word. And he says, you'd be surprised like how many people would describe it, you know, in very similar ways. They say it's glorious. It's awesome. Amazing. It's euphoric, et cetera, et cetera. And he's like, but the weird thing is like, why are the same descriptions being applied over and over again? And he thought that Kobe was the only

Starting point is 00:50:58 one that ever answered in one word this way. And Kobe's answer was everything. And Tim thought that was the best one word answer. He also thinks that Michael had the best description of winning that he ever heard. So he says, I never asked MJ, but he answered it anyways. In the last dance, in this one moment, he summed up everything he knew about his lifelong partnership with winning. His answer is more than a word, but it's worth every one. And so this is the quote from Michael Jordan that Tim loved from The Last Dance. This is what Michael said. I pulled people along when they didn't want to be pulled. I challenged people when they didn't want to be challenged. And I earned the right because my teammates who came after me didn't endure all the things that I

Starting point is 00:51:37 endured. Once you join the team, you lived at a certain standard that I played the game and I wasn't going to take anything less. Now, if that meant I had to go in there and get in your ass a little bit, then I did that. You ask all my teammates. The one thing about Michael Jordan was that he never asked me to do something that he didn't fucking do. When people see this, they're going to say, well, he wasn't really a nice guy. He may have been a tyrant. Well, that's you because you've never won anything.

Starting point is 00:52:05 I wanted to win, but I wanted them to win and be part of that as well. Look, I don't have to do this. I'm only doing it because it's who I am. That is how I played the game. That was my mentality. If you want to play that way, then don't play that way. And then Tim's interpretation of this is, again, why I think it's so valuable to read biographies because you don't just see the, oh, the book doesn't start out like, oh, this person's rich and successful. It's like most of it, most of what you and I are interested in is like the struggle.

Starting point is 00:52:28 How did they get there? And so Tim says, yes, winning is glorious and amazing and powerful and awesome and all those things. But if you think that's all it is, then as MJ said, you've never won anything. It's the punishment he took from the other teams before becoming the greatest to ever play the game.

Starting point is 00:52:42 The years of relentless pressure and scrutiny of everything that he did. The single-minded focus on one thing, winning championships. Not just for himself, but for everyone around him. Winning can be glorious, but it can also fuck you up. This is why I said, I think, the Relentless audiobook, you know, because it talks about, like, the dark side, the struggles, you know, just the extreme traits and extreme things that happen to them in sacrifice.

Starting point is 00:53:06 They said something, you know, something, that line in the book was like, they'll alter their real rearrange or alter their entire life just to win. I probably have 30 highlights from this book, but this is my favorite line in the book. Everyone wanted to be like Mike. Mike did not want to be like anyone else. Every great creation and invention started with people who knew how to think

Starting point is 00:53:25 and didn't allow themselves to be told what to think. Remember that Kobe quote I said that, you know, what you get from me, you know, I got from him. I don't get five championships without him. He guided me so much and gave me so much great advice. Tim saw this because Tim is training Kobe after he trained Mike, right? And so I said, Kobe would call or text Mike in the middle of the night asking how he played against a certain guy, how he handled the situation,

Starting point is 00:53:47 what he thought about this or that. And Michael would always answer his questions and help him learn. That is a major trait of the greats, by the way. They want to pass along their knowledge so the next generation can keep learning. Going back to everyone wanted to be like Mike, Mike only wanted to be like himself. The greats figure out what works for them regardless of what everyone else does. This is something that you'll see if you watch The Last Dance because they show a bunch of examples where Michael is before game, he's

Starting point is 00:54:15 lacing up his shoes. And I didn't know this until I read the book that Tim said that he had that Jordan had the most disciplined game day routine that he's ever seen. So it says, and really, when you read this, this happens over several pages, but routine reduces the number of decisions, right? So if you outsource, you make routine things that you just have to do all the time, then you can actually focus on the important things. Michael planned and organized every detail of his day, from the time of his workout to the car he drove to the arena. I knew what time and how long we were working out for. His automobile manager knew which car he'd be driving and what

Starting point is 00:54:48 time to have it ready. The chef, his chef knew exactly what he'd be eating and what time he needed it served. Part of his routine was to lace his shoes before every game fresh out of the box. This ritual had a special meaning to him. One day the team bus was delayed so I went ahead and laced his shoes exactly the way he did just to save him some time. He refused to wear them. I had interfered with his routine. He had the equipment manager get him a new pair unlaced so he could lace them himself. Every time he warmed up in practice, he started with a chest pass. The greatest player in the world working on a basic chest pass. Why? Routine, basics, fundamentals. If you can't master the fundamentals, you can't master anything.

Starting point is 00:55:31 Why was routine so important to him? Because the game themselves were so unpredictable. His routine allowed him the mental freedom to focus on one thing, the complexity of the game. And then one of the most fascinating parts of the book was that he compared and contrasted like talent, MJ, versus hard work, where Michael worked hard, but was more naturally talented. And Kobe worked harder, but was less naturally talented.

Starting point is 00:56:00 And so it says he starts working with Kobe in 2007 because Kobe's having problems with his knees. He calls Michael, he's like, what the hell should I do? Michael's like, go work with Grover. And so they start he starts working with Kobe in 2007 because Kobe's having problems with his knees. He calls Michael. He's like, what the hell should I do? Michael's like, go work with Grover. And so they start working out together. And it says Kobe wanted to learn everything he could about MJ, the program, the schedule, the workouts, the whole routine. He wanted to know about Michael's lifestyle, how he reacted to certain situations, how he handled teammates and coaches,

Starting point is 00:56:19 and anything else Kobe could add to his arsenal of weapons. He wanted knowledge, not so he could become MJ, so he could become a better Kobe. Kobe never stopped. He was insatiable for game film. He also never slept. So he said, you know, Kobe would text him work and he'd want to work out from like two in the morning, four in the morning, 3 a.m., all different times. And so Tim says, I never slept during those years. I just napped because you never know when he'd be ready to go back to work. MJ knew when to stop. Kobe didn't. You would never find MJ on a court at 4 a.m.

Starting point is 00:56:51 He slept at night because he knew sleep was part of his training. But above all, they had this in common. They each possessed an unshakable confidence in themselves that never wavered. And you see this in this recruiting call that the Bulls asked Michael Jordan to be a part of. Remember I said, remember that phone call between the Portland Trailblazers and Bobby Knight? Hey, should we draft Sam Bowie? Should we draft Michael Jordan?

Starting point is 00:57:14 He's like playing at center. The Bulls management asked Michael to be part of a conference call with Sam Bowie, who was a free agent at the time. Everyone made their pitch to Sam about why he should join the Bulls and et cetera, et cetera. And then it was MJ's turn. And he just said, Sam, are you coming or not? We're winning with or without you. His belief in himself was so powerful that he never doubted the outcome. And that's something that they share with a lot of greats inside and outside of sports. In fact,

Starting point is 00:57:38 Sam Walton talked about having that same exact mentality when he was building Walmart. He said in his autobiography shortly before he died, he says, it never occurred to me that I might lose. To me, it was almost as if I had a right to win. Thinking like that often seems to turn into some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. And I think that relentless self-belief is important in avoiding the following. Very few people are willing or able to bet on themselves. They become the assistant manager of their own lives, waiting for direction and approval from some higher authority because they don't feel confident enough to make decisions and take action on their own. Kobe and Michael were the opposite of that. And everybody around him knew this.

Starting point is 00:58:16 This is one of my favorite Michael stories from early in his career. In the early days of Michael's career, a reporter asked his coach, Doug Collins, about his strategy for coaching the greatest player in the game. It's pretty simple, said Collins. Give him the ball and get the fuck out of the way. Michael elaborated on this mindset in the last dance. My mentality was to go out and win at any cost. If you don't want to live that regimented mentality, then you just don't need to be alongside of me because I'm going to ridicule you until you get on the same level with me.

Starting point is 00:58:42 And if you don't get on the same level, then it's going to be hell for you. And this is a great explanation of that. When you're giving everything you have, making every sacrifice and devoting every part of your life to winning, it's hard to tolerate anyone in your circle who isn't doing the same. And so that's key. It's not going around and then being dictators or, you know, being jerks or assholes to everybody around them, even though, you know, most people would describe them as that. It's they're never asking somebody to do something that they're not doing themselves, that they're not first asking of themselves.

Starting point is 00:59:10 And so this idea, this is very, I mean, I have a million notes, like post-it notes in this book because there's so many times where I'm reading both of them. And I'm like, oh, this is like the Steve Jobs vein story. And it's one of my favorite stories

Starting point is 00:59:22 because it really illustrates Steve Jobs mentality more than anything else. And it's one of my favorite stories because it really illustrates Steve Jobs' mentality more than anything else. And it was told after he passed away. And Johnny Ive is giving an interview, I think it was at Vanity Fair, if I remember correctly. And, you know, he says one time they're having this design meeting. This is like maybe a year or two before Steve passes away. And, you know, to be on the design team, you have to be like, you know, the best of the best already. And Steve just lit into them. He was not happy about their performance. He did not and to be on the design team, you have to be the best of the best already, and Steve just lit into them.

Starting point is 00:59:48 He was not happy about their performance. He did not think it was excellent enough, and everybody leaves, and Steve and Johnny are by themselves, and he's like, hey, can we just tone it down a little bit, think about the delivery of the message. I'm paraphrasing now, and Steve goes, oh, I'm disappointed in you.

Starting point is 01:00:05 You're vain, and Johnny's like, whoa, whoa in you. I didn't, like, you're vain. And Johnny's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. That's like, why are you insulting me? Like, why are you calling me vain? He's like, I thought the work was the most important, that the quality of the work was more important than anybody else. The fact that you're worried about the delivery or other people's feelings mean that, in Steve's opinion, Steve Jobs' opinion, that now other people's feelings

Starting point is 01:00:24 are more important than the work. And you just want people to like you. And so therefore you're vain. And Johnny was taken back for a while, kind of insulted or maybe hurt by this. And then he realized he's right. Like we say the work is more important. So therefore that has to come

Starting point is 01:00:39 or that has to be a higher priority than anybody's feelings. And there's a line in this book that's one line that made me think of that story. And it says, Tim is talking about Kobe and Michael. He says their minds were stronger than their feelings. And so this extreme dedication to excellence

Starting point is 01:00:55 was not only for the teammates, but everybody around them too. And so one thing about Michael Jordan, I'm gonna read a story from Driven From Within, which I'll pick up in one minute. And so there's two main things that jump out at me that are related to things that you and I have talked about in the past. One, that you can't ride the fence when you're with Michael Jordan. That's going to be a story from Driven From Within. And then there's a great quote by Bill Walsh, who wrote that excellent book, The Score Takes Care of Itself. And he says,

Starting point is 01:01:19 champions behave like champions before they're champions. And so Tim is telling the story the very first time that he meets Michael. He gets to the house, rings the bell. Michael Jordan opens the door. He's head to toe in full Nike gear. Remember, this is probably 88, 89. Hasn't won any championships. He has this deal with Nike.

Starting point is 01:01:37 He has no idea, no idea what's in the future, right? The fact that this deal alone is going to make him hundreds of millions of dollars in income every year, be worth billions and billions of dollars if he ever wanted to sell it back to them. But he's already in full Nike gear, looks down at Tim's shoes and sees Tim is wearing Converse, shakes, stares at them, shakes his head. They have the meeting. At the end, as Tim walks out, he takes another look at his Converse and he says, never again. And then he shuts the door on Tim. Okay. So I'm going to put down the winning book and I'm going to pick up

Starting point is 01:02:09 Driven From Within, which is the autobiography or the closest thing that Michael has an autobiography, which I did all the way back in episode 213. I'm going to tell a very similar story. And this guy is telling the story. His name is Fred White Whitfield. And he's like, listen, Michael's whole being is all about loyalty and winning. And he really feels that you can't ride the fence. And so Fred is close with Michael and this guy named Ralph. Ralph was a player who had a Puma contract send him a bunch of, you know, clothes and also in shoes and Michael would do and Nike would send the same thing. Like, so half of his closet is Puma, half of it is Nike. And so Michael comes to Fred's apartment and we're getting ready to go out and he says, hey, it's kind of cold. Can I borrow one of your jackets? And I said, sure, go in my closet. He went in there and he saw everything separated out. He's in there a little longer than necessary. And he comes out of my

Starting point is 01:03:04 room. He's taken all of my Puma stuff out, brought it into the living room, and laid it on the floor. He goes into the kitchen, gets a butcher knife, and literally cuts up everything. This was like his second or third year in the league. He literally took a butcher knife to my shoes, ripping and cutting. When he's all done, he picks up every little scrap and walks it down to the dumpster. He says, hey dude, call Howard from Nike tomorrow and tell him to replace all this. But don't ever let me see you in anything other than Nike. You can't ride the fence. That is how Michael thinks. And so in this story, I'm about to read from the winning book to you. It says like he pursued victory in everything. He pursued victory in everything. That's the way I think about him. So, you know, he sees Tim. He's like, oh, you're

Starting point is 01:03:44 going to be my trainer now. But don't ever come around here in Converse. Like you're, you're on my team, then I'll be loyal to you. And if not, like it's very black or white with him. Right. He also said that you have to keep up with them. Remember this whole thing, like how many, we've been talking for a very long time now. And every time Kobe and Michael are saying the same thing, I'm not coming down to your level. That's not happening. You will rise to mine. Right. And so he says, keeping up was essential. If you're a part of MJ's world, that was non-negotiable. And the very first time I ever traveled with him, he was taking his entire personal team. So he's got, you know, a chef, uh, all these people that are, in fact, they make this point later on that this is not luxury. These are business partners, which is a

Starting point is 01:04:24 great line, but I'll get there in a minute. So he's got, you know, he's got security, he's got his chef, he's got his trainer, they're all coming. And he's like, listen, meet at my house and then we'll travel to the airport from there, but everybody's driving their own car. And so MJ jumps into his Ferrari and he says to everyone, you better keep up. Now, Tim is driving his father's 1987 Sterling. And he's like, this is not the fastest car ever made. But I somehow managed to pull up at the same time he did. There was no way I was going to fall behind. I drove on the shoulder.

Starting point is 01:04:51 I ran red lights. I drove on and off exit ramps. Anything I could to keep him in my sights. I do not recommend this. I'm just telling you what happened. Everyone else was five minutes late. And of course, Michael let them hear about it. Keep up.

Starting point is 01:05:04 That was his directive for everyone around him and everything he did. We all knew we do not compromise. We do not take shortcuts. We do not make excuses. Keep up with me and my standards or you're out. He pursued victory in everything. He was unapologetically extreme. A lot of, you know, he's relentless. You can call him that. People call him ruthless. They would have in Chicago, during the summer, they'd run these pickup games at Tim's gym, right? And you'd have people all you know, some NBA players coming over some college players, all these other people, and they just play pickup. And it's a very hot day. Some new guy who was trying extremely hard to impress Michael, he got overheated,

Starting point is 01:05:40 and he collapsed right in front, like in the middle of the game. And so we call 911. Tim is giving him CPR while we wait for an ambulance. And he feels like a presence over him. And it's MJ like hovering over him. And the guy opens his eyes, slowly sits up, looks around and sees Michael Jordan standing over him. Michael looks down and asks Tim, is he okay? And I go, he's alive. Michael says, are you good? The kid looks up and smiles weakly. He says, yes, sir, I'm good. Michael's response, good. Go get a sub. I got a game to win. And the point of that story to me is like, oh, this like ruthlessness, this relentlessness, this addiction to competition, it doesn't matter if there's no stakes, right? It's a play up play. It's a pickup game during the summer. It is practice. if there's no stakes, right? It's a play up, it's a pickup game. During the summer, it is practice.

Starting point is 01:06:30 But isn't that just like the story that Eddie Johnson told where he's like, I'm going to put 40 points on this guy in an exhibition game. Most starters aren't even playing in the game. I don't see an off switch with when I'm reading about Michael and Kobe and when I'm studying Michael and Kobe. I just don't see an off switch. And I don't think that's very different from Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari, mentor of Steve Jobs, hired Steve Jobs when he was 19. He's like, listen, Steve Jobs has one

Starting point is 01:06:51 speed and that speed is go. And what's interesting between Michael and Kobe and Steve Jobs is they were about like mastering the fundamentals and trying to get, they were addicted to simplicity. And I think one of the reasons, there's a great line in this book that is just talking about Michael and Kobe's approach, but I think it's really Steve Jobs' approach. And maybe the best book that ever taught this was this book called Creative Selection. It's written by this guy named Ken Kosienda. I've read the book three times. It's episode 281 if you haven't listened to it. I'm going to read the book and do another podcast on it over and over again. I love that book.

Starting point is 01:07:29 But because it goes into – Ken was a programmer who worked directly under Steve Jobs and he demoed to him on multiple occasions. So you get a real insight into how he was like thought about building products and building his whole organization. But there's something that is very similar I see now is their approaches, where it says stop adding, start deleting. Winning demands total focus. Delete. Is it easier to climb a mountain with a weighted vest and a full pack or just with the essentials? And I think this like relentless dedication to focus, relentless dedication to simplicity, relentless dedication to the fundamentals, it just helps them get to where they're going faster because they have one focus. And there's a huge theme, I don't know if I've hit on it enough, is they're never going to be, they're just not, they're never complacent.

Starting point is 01:08:15 There's this interview that Michael Jordan gave where he says, I never feel that I'm at my best. I feel I still have room to improve. I still set goals for myself to strive for. I've never complacent with what I've achieved. Even though it's been very successful for me, I still have room to improve. I still set goals for myself to strive for. I'm never complacent with what I've achieved. Even though it's been very successful for me, I still feel I have a lot to prove. I still feel I have a lot to prove. So I'm never really too complacent with myself for what I've achieved. Kobe mentions this. Kobe and Michael are both incapable of complacency, right? And so Kobe mentions this in that interview with Alex Rodriguez, where he says, you know, when he tells people that if the next 20 years of his life isn't better and he doesn't achieve more than the last 20 years, he would consider that

Starting point is 01:08:50 a failure. And people would tell Kobe, like, you know, when you say that, that's crazy. You know, it's disrespectful to what you accomplish in basketball. And Kobe's response to this was perfect. And Kobe's point was like, I wouldn't have achieved those things without that mindset. That idea is like, okay, you achieve something, great. Then you move on and you do it again and you move on to the next thing and you achieve something and then you move on and you do it again and again forever. And then one thing that appears over and over again is the commitment to reinvestment that Michael and Kobe would make. reinvestment in education and constantly training and learning from people that came before them, for people that anybody that can help them, right?

Starting point is 01:09:30 But also in like, what is getting you to the pinnacle of your profession anyways? And in their case, it's physical. So this is what I mentioned earlier, where like, oh, these aren't luxuries. These are business partners. I love that framing. I'm always amazed when the media report on a superstar athlete who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars or even more on their training and health as if that's a luxury. Look, they have a chef. They have a masseuse. He's got a whole gym and a basketball court in his house.

Starting point is 01:09:54 Those are not luxuries. Those are business partners. And then related to that is why they spent so much time learning and honing their craft. They can take everything away from you, your house, your money, your clothes, your car. But one thing they can't take is your education and what you've learned. And the one thing you can count on if you do indeed lose everything is that education. And I mentioned earlier that Michael and Tim would talk about the self-doubt, the butterflies, you know, the nervousness that would happen before a game. Those people are performing well not in absence of fear, but in spite of it.

Starting point is 01:10:25 And so there's another example of Kobe saying the same thing. Kobe says, I have self-doubt. I have insecurity. I have fear of failure. I have nights where I show up to the arena. I'm like, my back hurts. My feet hurt. My knees hurt. I don't have it tonight. I just want to chill. We all have self-doubt. You don't deny it, but you also don't capitulate to it. I love that. You do not capitulate to your self-doubt. You embrace it. And towards the end of this book, Tim is reflecting on his relationship with Kobe. It was written after Kobe died, and I think this is a very important lesson. He says, Kobe's impatience was legendary.

Starting point is 01:10:58 The biggest mistake we make in life is thinking that we have time. The longer it takes time to capture your wins, the less time you have to enjoy them. And that's the biggest thing. We don't know how much time we have. The biggest mistake we have in life is thinking we have time. You can see this in one of the last interviews Kobe did. He's talking about the next 20 years of his life. He had no idea. And I hate even saying those words. I hate the fact that this is even real. Because I spent so much time studying him and learning from him, and he spent so much time inspiring me. But I think that takeaway that Tim has is dead on. The biggest mistake we have in life is thinking that we have time.

Starting point is 01:11:30 And so I think the perfect place to end this is exactly how Michael ended the last episode of The Last Dance. He was talking about his entire journey. He says, it started with hope. It started with hope. We went from a shitty team to one of the all-time greatest dynasties. All you needed was one little match to start the whole fire. And that little match that helps ignite my inner fire is exactly what spending time reading, learning, and watching

Starting point is 01:11:59 Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant have done for me. That is where I'll leave it for the full stories. Highly recommend buying both the books. I will leave the links for both books in the show notes. If you buy the books using that link, you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. That is 340 books down, 1,000 to go. And I'll talk to you again soon.

Starting point is 01:12:19 Just a few quick things before you go. You can now get Founders merch if you go to shop.founderspodcast.com or you go to founderspodcast.com and just click through there, you can actually order sweatshirts and hats with the founders logo on it. If you're interested in that, I'd highly recommend getting a few sweatshirts. I own four of them. They're ridiculously comfortable. Get yourself a comfortable sweatshirt and you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. Also, I started posting some of the older episodes to YouTube. I will leave that link

Starting point is 01:12:46 down below. If you can do me a favor, just go over there and subscribe. And what I'm doing is eventually in a few weeks, I'm actually building out a studio in a library right now. And there'll be video for all the episodes, the new episodes of Founders. But for the old episodes, what I did is actually matched up the audio with the transcript. So if you're interested in listening to the episode at the same time as you're reading the transcript, you can do that on YouTube. I will leave the link down below. And the last thing I was thinking about was a line that was in the episode that you just listened to that they were describing Kobe and Michael. And they're like, the greats never stop learning.

Starting point is 01:13:20 All the hours of work that they do have created this unstoppable internal resource that you can draw on in any situation. They were referencing the fact that Kobe and Michael were constantly watching game tape. I think of listening to Founders Podcast, and I've said this multiple times before, I think listening to Founders Podcast is like watching game tape of history's greatest founders. And I think reading Founders Notes is an even deeper version of that, since the majority of my notes and highlights don't make it into the podcast and so a bunch of people that have signed up for founders notes have sent me they're like there's a ton of notes and highlights in here that aren't even on the podcast and so

Starting point is 01:13:54 since i work in founders notes every day and i've been using and adding to this database a searchable database of all my highlights and notes since 2018 that was obvious to me but i'm like a fish in water and so i was like realized it's like oh I should probably tell people that founders notes is even deeper than founders podcast. I consider founders podcast, like the free trial to founders notes. It's if you want to sign up for founders notes, you go to founders notes.com that's founders with an S founders notes.com. But it is a deeper version of the podcast since the majority of my notes and highlights don't actually make it into the podcast. Actually, majority is probably not the right word, but you get what I mean. A bunch of notes and highlights are in Founder's Notes that never appear on the actual podcast.

Starting point is 01:14:33 And so this was on my mind when I was listening back to the Jordan and Kobe episode because I was like, oh, if there was an MBA equivalent of Founder's Notes, it's obvious that Jordan and Kobe would have signed up for it and used it as a tool. In that 600-page biography of Kobe, I referenced this fact in that episode and in this episode too, that he used to subscribe to this service that would send you VHS tapes of NBA games. And then he did this so much that he had a closet full of Michael's games. And then when you listen to their interviews and you read their words, Michael and Kobe would talk about over and over again that they sought advice from the great players that came before them. And I really do believe that reading founders notes

Starting point is 01:15:07 gives you the ability to do that exact same thing, but you're doing it for history's greatest founders. And I can say that because I've been doing this for myself. This was a tool, you know, up until the last few months, you couldn't even access it. This was a tool I was building internally for myself.

Starting point is 01:15:20 If you listen to the Jay-Z episode that I republished a couple of days ago, actually, there's a reference, I had listened back to that episode too, right? Because I make founders podcasts for it's a tool for me as well as for you, where it's like, okay, I may not be able to reread these books in the future. But I can go back and listen to like, I haven't read Jay-Z's autobiography since I made that episode two years ago. But I listened to that, to that episode. And I was like, Oh oh, all these ideas came back to the forefront of my mind. And in there, in that episode, I referenced the fact that I had this daily practice, because

Starting point is 01:15:50 Jay-Z's talking about the importance of practice, and the importance of practice comes up over and over again. Jordan would talk about it. Kobe would talk about it. And in that Jay-Z episode, I was like, well, my daily practice is actually reading and rereading my notes and highlights that I put in this gigantic searchable database in this app called Readwise. And because I talked about Readwise so much, I went on other people's podcasts, talked about it, I talked about my own podcast. A bunch of people over the years have asked to get access. They're like, I want access to your

Starting point is 01:16:18 Readwise. I want to read your notes. I want to read your highlights. And so a few months ago, I actually contacted the founders of Readwise because they listened to the podcast. It's like, hey, why don't we partner? I want to build my own version, right? Like I'm not building a new version of ReadWise. I want to build a version where if you sign up at foundersnotes.com, you see exactly what I see, which means you see my notes and my highlights. And then you have all the features that I have, which is the ability to search through this. And so Founders Notes, because so many people listen to founders podcast asked for a way to go deeper. And so that's exactly what it is. Now, there's another thing that I'm doing right now, for a limited time only, that came because people ask over and over again,

Starting point is 01:16:58 it's like, Oh, David, Michael Jordan has this great thing that successful people listen to people don't listen don't last long. He's I love that line. And you know, I've thought about that line a lot. Since I read it for the first time, you know, two and a half years ago, I was like, David, maybe you should take Michael's advice and listen, because a bunch of people have been sending me messages like, hey, can you build a version of founders? And first of all, they told me, hey, you should build, you know, your own version of readwise, which I did for founders notes. Second thing they asked is like, hey, is there a way you could do this where there's no ongoing subscription? Like, can I just pay once and have access forever?

Starting point is 01:17:28 And so I've been testing that over the last, I don't know, like two weeks or something like that. The response has been incredible. And what I realized is why they asked that is, one, that means that if you sign up now, you get access to every single highlight and note that I've ever done and ever will do. That makes it even more powerful. So then Founders Notes becomes a tool that you can actually use your entire career to tap into the collective knowledge of

Starting point is 01:17:50 history's greatest entrepreneurs. And so Michael Jordan's version of that for his craft would be watching NBA games on TV, right? Kobe Bryant's version of that at the beginning of his career was he actually got tapes. But as technology keeps improving, it gets easier and easier to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs. And I don't think there's another tool in the world that can help you achieve that better than Founders Notes does. And right now, it has all the features that I've been using forever. But because I'm working so closely with the team at ReadWise, and we have dedicated engineers in this, now I'm developing features that no one else has anywhere. So there's gonna be a lot of updates that are coming to Founders Notes soon. I will

Starting point is 01:18:24 go into more detail on this as they become live. I'm testing them myself, but I wanna just give you a sneak peek because I've become obsessed with a bunch of these new features that I've been testing that aren't live yet, but will be. And the good news is, is that if you sign up now, you get access to all these features

Starting point is 01:18:39 because I'm just gonna keep adding them, all the new features and all the new improvements for free. So right now, this minute, you can access all my notes and highlights. You can search by keyword, by person, by subject, by idea, any keyword you can possibly think of, you can search. That's available right now, right? You can also read all my highlights and notes by book. It's amazing how much you can learn by rereading my highlights and notes of a particular book. Usually takes, you know, five, 10 minutes. The third way that you can browse my highlights too, and don't worry about remembering this. If you sign up, you'll

Starting point is 01:19:07 get all of in the welcome email. I go into detail how I use it, but I do want to give you an overview here. So the third ways that you can browse my highlights is that you can have the notes presented to you in a random order on this thing called the highlights feed. Those three ways. That's how I've used this tool for years and I couldn't make the podcast without it, but I'm not going to stop there because I, again, I'm building the tool for myself. And so as I keep doing this, I'm eight years into this project, you know, we just hit what, 340 books. I'm going to constantly need to develop more and more tools so I can remember all of the lessons that you and I are learning on this giant mission to condense and clarify the collective knowledge of history's greatest founders. So soon, you'll also be able to search every single transcript from every single episode,

Starting point is 01:19:48 I already have this feature. Another feature that I have that'll be live for everybody soon. It's the founders GPT, like chatbot AI interface, that's not what it's gonna be called, I got to figure out what it's gonna be called. I call it super search, because I really do feel like this is search on steroids. So you can search it semantically. And it has actually been making connections that I have even missed. So I've been asking them to essentially like, I want to build like mental models. And I already do this to reading. But is there a way to do it's like, okay, tell me all the important things that you know about Andrew Carnegie's career, or tell me what are the most important ideas Edwin Land had? Or what are the similarities

Starting point is 01:20:19 between Kobe and Michael as an example. And so what this AI chatbot does is it goes through all my notes, my highlights and all my transcripts, and it'll show you what it fetches. That's the term it uses where it's like, okay, I read these 50 highlights and then I summarize it in these six bullet points. And so if you want the long in-depth version,

Starting point is 01:20:36 you can read all the 50 highlights and all the notes, or you can just go to, here's the TLDR version of that. Another feature that I'm working on as well, I want bullet point summaries for all the key ideas on every episode we are all busy i want to get right to the point and then another idea this is going to take a long time but another idea is i want a collection of ideas organized by theme across every book and episode so instead of learning by person right as what we do on each individual episode we're learning like today we just learned about michael

Starting point is 01:21:03 and kobe there might be some stuff in there about Rockefeller and jobs. But the main focus on Robert is on Kobe. No, I almost said Robert instead of Rockefeller. The main focus is on Kobe and Michael. But instead of learning by person, I want all on one page. And again, this is what I want. I'm very selfish.

Starting point is 01:21:18 I want this for me because it's not just good enough for me to learn it once. I want this in my memory for the very idea and reason that they covered in one of these books. The greats never stop learning and all the hours of work that you do have created this unstoppable internal resource that you can draw on in any situation. That was a description of Kobe and Michael, but I want that in my life. And so what I would love to see is like, okay, I want a collection of ideas organized by theme, right?

Starting point is 01:21:39 Across every book and episode, all on one page. And so for example, I was like, I want to know how all of history's greatest founders that we've covered up until this point, how did they think about topics, different topics, you know, marketing, recruiting, distribution, managing, how to fire people, how to think about product development on and on and on and on. And so my very, very long term vision of this, again, I'm going to be doing founders. This is my life's work. I think it's obvious if you listen to the podcast. I want to do founders for as long as I have a voice.

Starting point is 01:22:08 And founders notes is the tool that I'm building right alongside that to fulfill my life's work. And so over time, what I really want it to be is not just my notes and highlights, which they're by itself, it's a crazy value, right? But over time, I want it to become this ever increasing giant, valuable curriculum that condenses and clarifies the collective knowledge of history's greatest founders. And so that is the long-term plan. Right now, for a limited time only, if you are interested, if you're one of these people that are interested in not having an ongoing description that you want to pay once, that you're in forever, which would mean that Founders Notes becomes a tool that you use your entire career to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs.

Starting point is 01:22:46 Do not dilly. Time is limited. This offer could end at any time. Sign up now at foundersnotes.com. That's foundersnotes.com. Founders Notes, just like everything else that I talk about, is always, if you can't remember the URL, if you don't want to go through the show notes, whatever, you just go to founderspodcast.com. Everything I do is at founderspodcast.com. As always, thank you very much for the support.

Starting point is 01:23:04 Thank you very much for listening. I'm going to go read a book. I'll give you a hint. You probably already figured out who this is. But there may never have been an American that was wealthier if you figure out their wealth in relation to the money supply. So that is the hint on the book that I'm reading right now. Hopefully the podcast will be done, you know, four or five days.

Starting point is 01:23:23 I will put it out as soon as it's done. In any case, thank you very much for listening. I hope you sign up at foundersnotes.com and I will talk to you again soon.

Founders - #340 Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant

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