Right About Now - Legendary Business Advice - OG YouTube Influencer Dre Baldwin Dishes Assists on Mindset & Business Success

Episode Date: December 12, 2023

Welcome, radical listeners, to another episode of The Radcast! Today, we're dialing up the radical meter with none other than Dre Baldwin, the dynamic CEO, and Founder of Work On Your Game Inc. Dre's journey is nothing short of extraordinary, transitioning from a 9-year career as a professional basketball player, gracing courts in 8 countries, to emerging as a thought leader with 4 TEDxTalks and authoring 33 books. His daily podcast, 'Work On Your Game,' isn't just a show; it's a movement with over 2,798 episodes and a staggering 7.3 million listeners. Today, Dre shares his incredible story, taking us from the basketball court to the realms of mindset, strategy, systems, and execution. His narrative is a testament to the power of persistence, adaptability, and a formidable mindset. Join us as we unravel the journey of a true game-changer, drawing inspiration from Dre Baldwin's insights on embracing change, overcoming mental hurdles, and consistently working on our game. Stay tuned for more radical conversations with industry disruptors! Dre's journey began in Philadelphia, fueled by the city's basketball passion. Despite high school setbacks, his persistence led to a successful 9-year pro basketball career. In 2009, facing unemployment, Dre ventured into entrepreneurship, harnessing the internet, particularly YouTube, to build a powerful personal brand and reach a broader audience beyond basketball circles. (00:42)  Dre's early exposure to personal development books, like 'Think and Grow Rich' and 'Rich Dad Poor Dad,' laid the foundation for his entrepreneurial mindset. The shift to mindset content happened when Dre's audience expanded beyond sports, revealing the universal appeal of his motivational content. (09:37)  Dre excels in simplifying complex concepts, coaching through Work On Your Game University, and addressing mental barriers. He emphasizes the pivotal role of mindset in achieving success and shares plans for returning to the speaking circuit post-COVID. (17:06) Dre underscores the 'Be, Do, Have' principle, emphasizing the need to change one's mentality for desired outcomes. He delves into common mental roadblocks, including self-limiting beliefs, trauma's impact, and the challenge of recognizing one's true capacity, advocating for crucial mindset shifts. (17:33)  Dre explores unlocking potential through the insights of Ben Hardy and Dan Sullivan, highlighting the critical role of the environment. He advocates for surrounding oneself with high-achievers to enhance perspective. Additionally, Dre discusses the concept of thinking big and encourages listeners to embrace substantial growth, emphasizing that it's easier to 10x than 2x. (20:53)  Dre stresses the impact of the environment on beliefs, advocating intentional association with high achievers. He highlights the challenges of instilling grit and offers insights into the entrepreneurial journey, advising consideration of trade-offs before pursuing it. (21:49)  Dre differentiates between confidence and courage, emphasizing the latter's role in taking new steps without past experience. He discusses the power of social media and personal branding, emphasizing the importance of balancing attention-grabbing content with tangible business results. (25:32)  Dre emphasizes effective delegation, preferring audio platforms like podcasting. He stresses the mindset shift required for letting go of control, highlighting the importance of courage over confidence in effective delegation. (28:49) If you want to learn more about Dre Baldwin, follow him on Instagram @drebaldwin and his website www.workonyourgameuniversity.com. If you enjoyed this episode and want to learn more, join Ryan’s newsletter https://ryanalford.com/newsletter/ to get Ferrari level advice daily for FREE.  Learn how to build a 7 figure business from your personal brand by signing up for a FREE introduction to personal branding https://ryanalford.com/personalbranding.  Learn more by visiting our website at www.ryanisright.comSubscribe to our YouTube channel  www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to the latest edition of the Radcast. I'm Ryan Alford, your host. We appreciate you wherever you are, whenever you are, however you are. However you are. We are your number one marketing and business show on Apple, and that's because of you, and we appreciate you. We're getting radical today.

We say if it's radical, we cover it. I'm talking to my man. Talking to Dre all day, Drey Baldwin. What's up, man? I'm doing great, Ryan. How about yourself? Hey, I've just been dying to have a guess where I could go think back to my days. Like, Dre all day.

We talked before today. Dre Day. I'm like, damn, this is the coolest name we've had on the show. And I know we're going to get into it all. So I just appreciate you for having the coolest name, I think, of anybody we've had. Oh, thank you. I made it up myself, 2007. Yes.

Hey, man, it's cool. Hey, I like anybody that's, hey, I'm going to be me all day, every day. I think it has that mantra. I know that's part of what we're going to talk about, results, performance, and all that. But, hey, be yourself every day, right? That's right. I know you're a former basketball player. We talked about that.

I got four boys trying to get their game on. And you played nine years overseas, Division III. school. Hey, you were just a guy that kept on going. I mean, what got you in the ball? Man, great questions. The environment, I come from Philadelphia. And when you're in the city, where I come from, big cities, especially on the east coast, in northeast part of America, New York, Boston, Baltimore, Philly. That's all we do is play basketball. You got some football players. You got some baseball. Maybe somebody goes over to the tennis courts. But the player I grew up at, no, I was on the tennis courts. Grass was for the dogs.

and they didn't even keep the baseball field manicured. So you either played basketball or you were standing on the corner. That's pretty much all you did. And you were going and talking to girls. So I try a little bit of every sport. But the only sport that I really, I played baseball for a while, but I wasn't really that good. Then I just went over to the basketball court because that's where all my friends were. Everybody in the neighborhood was on the basketball court.

So that's just what you did. And usually if you're not somebody by around age 15 or 16, you may still play, but you're not like in. ambitious. You're not serious. You're not coming to the court by yourself practicing, but I was stupid enough for Ryan to keep practicing, even though I had no success by age 15. I just kept practicing and, you know, here we are. Hey, practice makes perfect, clearly. I mean, you end up playing overseas and the pros and doing a lot of things and something that, some smart bug in your year told you to go do some YouTube stuff where you got 142,000 followers now. So you've been doing some things right. I see it. I see it. And look,

I'm just going to say for the record. So everybody listening. We're on, we're, I don't know. I think this will be over 400 episodes by the time this launches. And we have a lot of people that want to come on the show. But I can't think of a single one that sent me a personal video that like Dre did. He sent me a very nice video. I'm like, dude, for effort alone, I'm, this guy's coming on the show.

And I want to tell his story. And then I got to do you like behind the scenes, looking at all your stuff. watching videos and stuff. But I'm like, I really appreciate the effort. That said a lot about who you are. You're living up to what you're preaching, brother. Well, I appreciate him. I'm glad it worked.

It did, man. It says a lot. I appreciate the personal touch involved. But I know we jump right into basketball thing. That's just where my head being the ex, I guess you're always a basketball player, but ex-player myself. But let's tell this at the stage for everybody a little bit more about who is Ray Baldwin? Sure. I come from the city of Philadelphia, as I said. It was always in the sports and told you about that.

I only played one year high school ball. No, I scored two points per game. So anybody who doesn't know basketball, I always tell them of you, my one year was in my senior year. So you scored two points per game in soccer or hockey, you're in the Hall of Fame. Two points per game in basketball, you're nothing. You might as well quit. Getting out of high school, I knew I was going to college just as a student, but nobody was calling for me to come play on your team. So I had to walk on. For those who don't know, that means you're going to be walking the gym and you try to, play your way into a spot on the roster. Which I did. The thing is, it was at the D3 level, which doesn't produce pro players. Pro's usually come from Division I. Those are the guys you see on TV. So when I got out of college, I was in the same situation again.

Nobody was checking me for me to play pro. So I worked a couple jobs. I worked that Foot Locker selling sneakers. Or at that Ballet Total Fitness selling gym memberships. And Ballet's out of business now, not because of me. I sold a lot of memberships. But this was a graduate college in 2004. So this is the summer of my first year, I worked those jobs.

And in summer of 2005, I went to this event called an exposure camp, was like a job fair for athletes. And you had to pay to go to these events, like a casting call, basically, but in the sports world, I played pretty well with that event. And that event, and what happened after that pretty much launched my career, playing ball. So I started playing overseas in the summer of 05. At the same time, I took that footage from that exposure camp was on this thing called

a VHS tape. You remember those, right? Oh, yeah. My first job at school was at a place called Movies. It was a competitor blockbuster. All I did was put the tapes in and had to rewind them. Yeah, you had their membership card, and they asked you to rewind the tapes. Be kind, rewind.

That's right. I put those stickers on them. Exactly. And it took a couple of minutes to rewind the tapes. Yeah. So I had the VHS tape with my footage from that exposure camp, which was very important footage because it was me playing against pro-level guys. Mind you, I played D3 in college. So my tapes from college weren't as valuable as that exposure can't take. So I got it.

I took it to an audiovisual store. They put it on a data CD and I put that CD on this new website. I put the CD in my desktop computer and uploaded the footage to this new website that said, you can put as much footage up here as you want for free. It was called YouTube.com. And that's where I start to build my name online. Most of the time, people recognize me in the street these days is not because I was a almost 10-year professional basketball players because I had videos on YouTube. Go figure, right? They know you from YouTube but not from your actual career. So I'll have YouTube going and I'm playing ball at the same time, but the ball career wasn't always on the straight and narrow path because I came from the Division III level. So

sometimes one contract would end, but there wasn't the next contract. So similar to like actors and actresses, you don't know when the next deal is coming through. So 2009, I was unemployed, phone was not ringing. I started to focus a little bit more on this whole thing I was doing on the internet, which we now call having a brand and content and social media. These are all becoming new phrases at that time. And you're in a marketing world. So that was like the turn. That's when things started to turn. And that's when the critical mass started to hit. I had an audience of ballplayers. They were just ballplayers. So I started to create my own products, a $4.99 for a dribbling program and a shooting program. That's how I became technically an entrepreneur was through that.

And when I saw the audience response to that, I said, man, I could do this for the rest of my life. Not as going to be able to jump high. I won't always have a 40-year's vertical and be able to dribble. But I can take an idea out of my head, turning into something real and put a price tag on it and exchange it for money, which we now call intellectual property. I wasn't even familiar with that term at the time, Ryan. But when I did that, I said, I can do this forever because basketball is not the only thing I can do this in. But at the time, that was my audience. Then a ball player started asking me about mindset.

So I started talking about mindset. And then people who didn't follow basketball, didn't care about basketball, started finding these mindset videos because I used to do this video every Monday called the weekly motivation. And I only started that because the ball players were asking me about showing up every day or how do you get the, how do you get over performance anxiety? Or you got cut from the high school team, Dre, three times. Dre, I just got cut from my high school team. I'm thinking about quitting basketball. Should I keep going? I just graduated high school.

I never played high school ball. Everybody in my family, my family, telling me to give up. this hoop dream, should I keep going? Can you give me something I can use to make a decision? And I started talking about mindset just for the ball players. Because at the time, 100% of my content was just drills and shooting and dunking. And I did the weekly motivation, Ryan, every Monday for 400 Mondays in a row. And that became the foundation of what I have now.

Because what happened is a bunch of people who did not play sports started finding me through those. And they would say, Drey, I don't play ball. I'm not trying to play ball. But the mindset stuff you're talking about, that applies to everybody and they don't have to play sports to get value from that. And that told me, when I get done playing ball, I'm going to take this piece right here. I'm going to go over into this space and find these other people who aren't athletes and see how I can serve them. And that's pretty much what I've been doing ever since then. Man, you were ahead of your time.

Like everybody's talking about personal braining now and like it's gotten popular. No, nine other than maybe like Gary V and a few other people like. Doing YouTube and I don't know what year was the YouTube started? That was early. 05. Yeah. Damn, you're pioneer, man. Personal brand YouTube pioneer.

You've been watching it all unfold going, I told you so. Right. Now everybody's trying to get in on that game or not everybody. I still enough people are because there's still so much leverage to be had. But you've written 33 books. Is that right? Yeah, that's right. Dang, man.

What was the first one? First one was the only one that's a story, which is called buy a game. And it was just me telling my story of when I first started playing ball up through my college years. And I really made it for the basketball. It's a narrative. All the rest of them are more like personal and professional development.

Yeah. Where did your inspiration? One, what got you inspired to leverage the personal brand stuff? But what also inspires some of the personal brand stuff? But what also inspires some of your motivational approaches? Is that all like just internal or do you have mentors? What was some of your inspiration for the approaches that you now share with people? Great question.

So several answers to that. So first of all, I got to give credit to my parents. My mother's an educator. So she had my sister and I reading from a very young age. So I've always been in the books. So always a reader. And that's what led to the writing. And I was always into the human psychology stuff.

Like how does the brain work and how does our thought, how do our thoughts translate to actions? I couldn't have said it that way, no, 20 years ago, but I was always thinking it because the bookstore, no, back in the day, before we had audible and Amazon, if you wanted a book, you had to go to the store, right? You had to actually buy the book. And my mom, because she was in education, she would always go to the bookstore to get, no, kids, because she's in early education. She would get kids books and stuff. And I would go to the sections I like. I would go to the sports section. And at the time, the section was called human psychology.

right now they broke it down to personal development personal growth self-help now they got all these subsections but back then was this human psychology it was one little section and i used to always go there and that's where i started to notice that there are people who actually wrote about this stuff and i'll give you a couple experiences so first of all i got invited to a hotel network marketing meeting in 2000 maybe two and in that meeting is a couple things first of all the speaker on the stage spend about 80% of the time just breaking people's false beliefs about how business works and how money works which was completely different than the stuff I was learning on my college campus and I have a business degree. They weren't talking about that in those lecture halls, what this guy was talking about in that hotel meeting.

So that, first of all, opened my eyes a lot. Secondly, the guy said at the end of the meeting, go outside and buy the personal development books. Because if you're going to build a business, you've got to build yourself too. And that's when I realized there was a term called personal development. And I couldn't afford the books as I was a broke college kid. But when I got back to my campus, I went on eBay. This is pre-Amazon. When you want to buy stuff, you went to eBay.

And I bought a couple pirated copies of two books that I remember. One of them was Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. And the other one was Risk Dad, Poor Dad, by Robert Kiyosaki. Thinking Grow Rich told me that you could consciously and intentionally alter the thought patterns in your head to alter your actions to alter your outcomes. I didn't know that was a thing until I read that book. And mind you, I'm 21 years of age at this point. And then Robert Kiyosaki, risked that poor dad, he went even further on what the network marketing guy was talking about. oh, you think the only way to make money is to do it this way,

but there's a whole different world of people making money doing it this way. And that told me, I said, I know when I get out of college, I want to play ball. I still had my hoop dream of life. But I said, after basketball, because I know this not going to last forever, I'm going to do what this guy's talking about. I'm going to go into entrepreneurship because I knew I didn't want to do the, quote-unquote, regular thing. So one more experience was around that 2009 time.

About a year earlier, I just finished reading maybe the digital era's version of Rist dad, poor dad, which was the four-hour work week by Tim Ferriss. Now, what he was talking about was how can you get more done and less time by leveraging the internet and hiring a person in India to do work for you for way cheaper than an American? I never heard anybody talk about that. How do you delegate? And I took a lot of the concepts that he was talking about because a lot of people don't notice. The reason Tim's books blew up because he had a really popular blog. And he had a lot of relationships with bloggers. So when his book came out, they all pushed his book. And that's how it blew up. I was reading his blog and he's the one who gave me the experiment that led to those $4.99

cents programs. So I've always just been a big reader. So you see everything I mentioned here comes from a book. Right. So these books and Tim's blog and then just following the instructions because I knew I didn't want to do the regular nine to five thing. And the basketball at the time was not doing anything. So I said, just in case this never does anything again, what can I do? And the internet was the internet at this time. It was about to hit critical mass and I already had an audience. So that's what kind of led me in all these directions. So that 08, 09 through about 2011 period when I started talking about mindset and I started leveraging my online persona and then everybody started using social media all at the same time. It all came together.

Exactly. That's fascinating, man. I will say this, like being an athlete myself and having friends, a lot of friends that are athletes, you don't meet too many people that are, it's not that all jobs. or all athletes aren't book smart. But it's typically like passions don't always align with scholar. But you're like the athlete and the scholar. Any kind of the book words, that's a rare combination. Yeah, I think so.

And that's why I said I got to get credit to my parents because my mother is an educator. So I was lucky. I had a teacher at home. I know, exactly. My wife's family's been our educators. My wife's the principal of a middle school. God bless her soul. So I know that educator side.

I was somewhere in the middle. I mean, I was a jock and played sports, but I was a good student, but I was not a scholar. I did not. Me neither. That was good enough. Once I realized the good enough level that I could get by with a C, that's pretty much. I graduated with a 2.6. So Cs get degrees.

That's what they said. Yeah, exactly. That was me in college. I think I had the highest income ratio to GPA out of Clemson. So, you know, we'll leave that one there. But yeah, man. So explain to me exactly like, what's the day job now? What do we do?

You've written 33 books. You're working with people. But what exactly are we doing to help people today? The main thing is really just, I talk about unique ability. And my unique ability is taking a complex concept, relatively complex. And breaking it down into bite-sized pieces and put. it back together so someone else can understand it. So I can do that through a lot of different formats. I can do it through a book. I can do it through conversations like this. I can do it through

coaching. I can do it through a course. The main thing we do here at Work on Your Game is our university, which is coaching. And that's, we have groups. We have, we do some one-on-one. Of course, we sell the books. They have a bunch of courses and stuff inside the university. And that's the main thing. The speaking, I do speaking as well. I haven't been as active in it since the, since COVID hit. But I'm going to get back into that game, probably going into 2000. But those are really the main things. What's some of the common things? When I talk to perform, I'll call you a performance coach.

I don't know if you call yourself that, but that's in a performance mindset, coach, uh, get more out of yourself coach or get the most out of yourself. That's right. Talk to me about what are like the common fat things that you see like when you work with people. And I'm sure when you work one on one, everything's got everybody's got a personal story of things. But I feel like there's got to be some common. roadblocks that you see and then maybe solutions that you provide to them.

What's like the biggest holdup for most people that you work with or see or some of the common issues that you tackle? Number one is always in the mind. Everything starts and ends in the mind. So even when someone's challenged, Ryan, is they want to make more money. And this is often one of the things you hear, especially with entrepreneurs. I want to make 10,000 a month. Somebody told me I want to make 100,000 a month.

And the thing is, if you don't change. your mentality from where it is right now, I can give you all the how to in the world. You're not going to do it. You're not going to execute on it. So the number one thing is the B do have principle and it works in that order. And a lot of people don't understand that. You have to change the way you're thinking and the way you're showing up, your internal posture first. Then we change the behaviors. Then we get a different outcome. But a lot of people want to go straight to the behavior to get to the outcome. But what I tell people all the time, Ryan, is if all you need it was a change in behavior, more how to and more strategies,

Just go to Google or chat GPT. You can tell you everything you need. But we all have access. We have access to all that stuff for years. Why isn't everybody successful? Knowledge is cheap. What did you say? Knowledge is cheap now.

It's not the knowledge issue. But people don't execute. So the problem is people don't have the mind to execute on the knowledge. It's fast. I talked to a lot of smart guys and you're one of them. But it's, we're so self-limiting. Like in our own brain. I don't know where some of us have trauma and there's certain things that we've all gone through and that have a lot to do with it.

But in general, we just get in our own damn way in our head. And I think like we don't we don't understand the true capacity that we have. It just seems that way, right? No, absolutely. And it applies to all of us, even myself sometimes. I know that the only thing stopping me from doing this stuff is I'm just, I just haven't found the right trigger to move myself. self to do the axes that I know I need to do. Yeah.

And I feel, and I've learned this and is, it's don't go big enough sometimes. Like, we, we think, like, we think small, we want to go small. And one of the concepts that I really believe in is it's easier to 10x than it is to 2x. And it's like the concept of, of the, I think it's still back to that mental roadblock that we have. I don't know if we don't think we don't think we're deserving of it or if we think that it's a lot of factors, but it's, I find that people just don't know how to go. So I didn't say they don't know how, but they hold themselves back from being all that

they could be. And how do you, when you work with someone that you feel like that is, what's, what's the unlock typically for something like that? Great question. Did you read that book by Ben Hardy and Dan Sullivan? I've had a, I've, I feel like I should have, because. so many people have told me every, like, principle from it. But yes.

So I've read that book four times back to back. I just finished it for the fourth time this morning. As a matter of that. Synerty. Because, yeah, because that's the season that I'm in. The season that I'm in right now is I got all the pieces. Now, how do I put some gas on this? So absolutely.

And to answer your question, number one thing is environment. I believe it's the number one thing. Because let's say you have a $10,000 product, right? and you want to sell it for $100,000. You want to, but you keep, no, your mind keeps defeating you to sell it for $100,000. The main reason is because all the people around you

are $10,000 people. So you don't see anything around you to make you believe you can get $100,000 for this product because everyone around you is offering you $10,000. So you have to get around people who are already selling stuff for $10,000 and buying stuff for $100,000, and buying stuff for $100,000

so that you can see that it's real and then you can believe it. This is one of the values of things like masterminds and being around the right types of people and investing in environment and going to conferences and getting in coaching because you get around other people who are playing at a higher level, which makes you believe that the higher level is real because you're around those people. But when you're hanging around small-minded people, you're eventually going to think small. It's just how it works.

All of association, you become the average of the people you spend the most time with. So even someone listening to this who doesn't know anybody or you don't have access or you, maybe you can't afford to get into a program. This is the biggest excuse most people have. I don't have money. Okay, can you listen to this show every day? Can you tune into somebody's YouTube every day? Can you follow just 50 people on Instagram

who are only talking about high-level things and unfollow everybody else and stop paying attention to the nonsense? So you can vicariously associate with someone even if you never met them. But people don't have the discipline to do that. So the environment, answer to the question is environment, 100%. Yes. We are the product. of the five people we hang out with.

It's like a single. It's as simple as that. It's bigger than that, but there's truth to it. Like, the voice inside your head gets compounded by those around you. And if you hang around small people, you'll have small thoughts.

I think you said that. And small minded, not physically small, just small minded. And I think you're 100% right. And there's so much free again. Geez, I give away all my best advice. I've posted over 3,000 times,

and social media. It's all out there. So you can get it. And it's more accessible than you think. I answer, I get three or four hundred DMs. And I answer a lot of, especially if they're legitimate. Like the access, it's 100% what you said. It's either it's a product of discipline or excuses or whatever it might be because it's all right there at your fingertips if you want to go get it.

Have you, do you experience a lot of that? That's the thing that I think is hard. Grit is tough to put it to instill in people. Yes, it is. And I think sometimes you just got to find the people who already have it. And there's a, there's two sides to it. There's the benevolent side where you want to help people who are in a helpless position. Yeah.

But then there's the side of we got to turn our. filters on and find the people who are swimming towards the ladder, right? And as they say, when there's people in a cap-sized boat and the helicopter comes, they can only save the people who are swimming towards the ladder, right? You can't save everybody. So it's a decision that we have to make, like us who are out there serving, that we have to help the people who need it, once it are coming towards it and will actually implement what we share with them. And if they won't do all four, then you can't help them. And you try to help somebody who doesn't want to be helped. They're only going to hate you and you're going to waste your time.

And that's pretty much how it goes. How you feel about you successful entrepreneur and we all have our journeys. But what do you tell people that want to be an entrepreneur? Are you pro working for people or working on for yourself? I'm pro both because I had a lot of jobs. Before I even for my basketball career went, I probably had 20 part time jobs. I started working when I was 15. And I've had a lot of jobs.

and because I know how to follow instructions and follow rules, that's how I know how to be a good leader. That's how I know how to delegate and tell people what to do and move people around as necessary because I know how to follow. So I believe many good leaders started off as good followers. So I think it's both. And I don't think entrepreneurship is everybody because people want to be entrepreneurs because they want stuff that comes with it. They want the freedom. They want, say, it's two in the afternoon and I'm at the mall, right? I'm going on vacation for a week

and I don't have to ask anybody for the time off. They want the things that come with it. But they don't want all the other stuff that goes with it as well. It's Wednesday. I got to make payroll on Friday. And I'm not sure how I'm going to pay everybody. They don't want that. They don't have to figure that part out.

Or when someone does a, you get a chargeback on a five-figure sale. And you got to deal with that. And the credit card companies, they don't want to deal with that part. That's part of the game as well. What people have to understand is that there are no perfect outcomes in life. They're only trade-offs. So just the question is, what are you willing?

to trade for what you want because anything you choose in life there is a trade-off. You just need to know what it is and decide which one you're okay would take it. Boom. That's a good one there. That's going to be a highlight clip. We're going to circle that one right there because so many people, I don't know if I've ever heard it phrase quite as good as that, right? Because it's the truth.

And you sit there and you gave those examples and I've lived every one of a brother. I have, how's going? Man, I was have negative flash bags. It was like a, it's like, damn, this is going to be. I like clip and I'm like shaking in the seat because I remember some of those days. Like it is not easy. We all want the spoils and it's a great thing and the terrible thing about social media. It's all out there.

But we glamorize some of the benefits of entrepreneurism, but we don't always shine the light on the truth. That's right. One of my face. People need to know. Exactly. That stuff happens in this part of the game. And anything else you pick, there's a game.

And that's why we call our thing work on your game because everybody has a game. You just need to know the rules of the game that you're getting in and understand what comes with it. It's not all just the pretty stuff. There's a shadowy side as well. What do you tell people, but you were early, man, but with personal branding, what do you tell people what? I assume you're still pro personal branding. Oh, yes.

You talk to people about that, like what the power of, social media and what that does for you once you're known? Yeah, I think most people understand it. You use social media. I think people can see the power of it because they see how people get popular and they get all the likes and the followers and the note of vanity metrics. And a lot of people incorrectly think that just because you have vanity metrics that is a leading indicator of income when it's actually not.

It's actually usually in the opposite direction. Vanity measures are a reflection of what your business is doing is not an indicator of what is about to do. but most people are most people want to get that attention because they they want the dopamine hit that comes to social media is engineered that way but as far as building that personal brand if leverage the right way if someone understands the the fundamentals of how having a personal brand can be leveraged towards getting the job you want or running the business you want or attracting the type of clientele that you want or just making the right type of associations

If they understand those fundamentals, then it can be very powerful with the understanding, the caveat that you can't get sucked into the matrix of giving all your resources to the social media platforms and not getting anything back because they're already making out on this right now. They're doing that on all of us by the day. So we just got to make sure we're not getting used up too much. Exactly. Because you can get sucked into it. And I mean, summarized it well. The vanity metrics and the, but at the end of the day, it's got to be dollar. and cents metrics.

You can have all the followers you want, but how many customers you got. And it doesn't always translate. But there's two sides of it, man. You need and want to have volume of attention, but you can have a million followers and not have a dollar in the bank. And I think it's probably more of that going on

than the other. It's the flip side of it. Oh, yeah, because it's easier to get a follower than it is to get a dollar. somebody can follow you but never buy anything from you. And I've even talked about that to my audience. I said there are people on my social media who every time I post something, they're liking it and commenting,

but I look this person's name up in my customer list. They're not there. They never bought anything. They're liking every post. And often the people who give you the most money, you never see them in your comments, right? They're never engaging. But they're watching, but they're not liking.

They're not commenting. They're not doing anything. So it often can be the exact opposite of what it looks like from the outside. Yeah, it's so true. It's so true because I've experienced that where I can think of my clients and I get referrals from the podcast and for different things. And I'll talk to them or I'll see they come on to the radar and I'm like, I've never seen or heard this person before. But they've been hovering for a while, clearly. And that's where you never know who's watching for good, matter, and different.

You're leaving an impression in a legacy that can either make you or break you. I think a lot of people want to take advantage of it, but then get caught up and, I don't know, trying to be something they aren't or perhaps showcasing something they shouldn't. Yeah, I agree. And I think you're right that most of your best clients, if they're even on social media, they're the lurkers, right, hovering and lurking. They're not making themselves very known. But they are looking at and seeing everything you're posting, but not letting you know that they're seeing it.

But then if you talk to them, they tell you. Or they'll reference something that you said and you only remember that you posted it, right? But they remember it because they saw it. So that's definitely a thing. And also with social media, the one thing I say about it is social media was created so that people could just tell the world their business. And it's pretty much what it is. You're telling everybody, what's your ate for lunch, where you're going, where you're at, when you're going on vacation, where you live? or you're telling everybody everything about you,

which can be beneficial because it lets people in, but at the same time, you also got to be wary that, again, you're telling people everything. So you also just got to be aware of what you're putting out there and notice that you need to know that people are noticing every little thing, even when you think they're not noticing. Bingo.

Ding, ding, that's exactly right. What are the things that are in your, I don't know. You've been doing social media for so long. You've been doing YouTube for so long. Are there other platforms or tactics or things that you're always forget whether it's bullish or bearish. I think it's bullish when you're high on them. But we'll go down that road. Things that you're high on that you like or you see you're growing or where you're growing most. So as far as platforms, I like this kind of platform, audio platforms, podcasts. So I have a solo show. So I just do a solo show every day. So it's like the radio.

So I like doing that because the type of clientele that I'm looking for, Ryan, are the type of people who they are not sitting and watching a YouTube video. They don't have time. They're at work. They're working during the day. They're running their businesses during the day. So they listen to my, they will listen to something like me or an interview like this while they're working out or while they're headed to the gym or while they're driving back and forth to work because those are the gaps in their schedule. As far as the social media platforms, I'll get on anything where there's a. attention to be gotten. But I really want to have my assistant handle that. I don't do most of my

posting. I let my assistant take care of all that stuff. I just show her exactly how to do it and then just make sure it's done. I'll look at it and make sure it's done right. Something's missing. I'll catch it. But other than that, just make sure it's done. Biggest thing that I'm bullish on right now is really offloading as much as I can so that I can just focus on what I do best and what only I can do. So I don't want to build another funnel in my life. I don't want to have to go. I don't want to have to go make another call for a speaking gig. What's the other things? I don't want to open up Facebook ads anymore. So all these things that I know I need for my business, but I know there are people who do

it better and actually enjoy it. I want to let them work with it. If I got to give you a cut of the sales, okay, I'll give you a cut. Get out, get it off of my hands. If I need to pay you a lump sum up front, I'll pay you up front. But I don't want to have to do those things. Those things take a lot of time. And over time, they start to put me to sleep. What I need to be doing is stuff like this. I'm a front-facing individual. So I need to be in front of the people having ongoing conversations one-on-one and with groups. That's what I need to be known or writing. Those are my three major skills, one-on-one, group conversations and writing.

So everything else I need to off-load. There you go. That's smart, man. Got to let other people do what they do best and you do what you do best. And that's one of the harder things to learn, like from a lot of people with scaling. They have control, letting control, let go. control of things. When you can master that, you get real powerful because that's what holds back the most.

I see, because I see me lots of people, man, they're like, maybe a little older than me. They're like 50. And they're still like a one man rolling crew. And I'm just, and they're the lifelong entrepreneur. But I know that they barely have what they can rub two rocks together with. And I'm just like, because they just can't. let go of it. And I think that's a hard thing for people. Yeah, it's a mindset thing. It's not a how to do it thing because how many books are there out there on how to delegate and pass off

work and people do three hour webinars for free, right? Yeah. How to pass off work to other people. But a lot of people don't have the, they don't have a stomach for it. They don't have a stomach for giving that stuff up. And I heard Dan Sullivan talk about this. You familiar with Dan Sullivan? Yep. Yep. He says he talks about confidence and courage. And what's the difference between the two? He says, confidence feels good, right? Courage is what you need to, again, drop something that you've been doing for a long time and hand it off to somebody else.

It doesn't feel good. It's anxiety-inducing. And a lot of times people will say to me, Dre, I don't want to take this next step forward because I'm not confident in doing it. And I say, you're not supposed to be confident because you have no experience in doing it. So you're not going to have any confidence. Confidence is about past experience because you're drawn on what you did in the past and though you can do it again.

Courage is about future experience because you're doing something that you never did before, but you have to find the internal fortitude to do it anyway, even though you have no past experience and no guarantee that is going to work. Most people are good at finding their past courage, but many people cannot draw on courage, whether their confidence, rather, but they can't draw on courage to move themselves forward. And this is how a lot of people get stuck. Like those people you describe, they just get stuck doing the same thing because they can't find the courage to stop doing it. I love it, man. But hopefully people have the courage to reach out. To you. For those that are courageous, where can they find Drey Baldwin online in social media?

Where can everybody keep up with you? I'm on every platform. I'm probably most active on Instagram. I use the Instagram stories function a lot. So if you want to get a feel for what my day is like, Instagram stories. My Instagram is just my name at Dre Baldwin. I'm on every other platform. So whichever one you like, we publish there every day. I see to it. My assistant, again, my assistant stays scared that, but is all coming from me. And the other place to find me is work on your game,university.com. So that's the place where I do all of our coaching, all of our programs. Everything happens at work on your game, university.com.

But if you follow me on any platform, you'll probably end up hearing about that somehow, somewhere. I love it, man. I appreciate the personal video to come on. You've added a lot of value to this show. And I look forward to staying in touch, man. Absolutely. I appreciate the opportunity.

Thank you for sharing your platform. My pleasure, man. We say if it's radical, we cover it. And Dre all day is radical. And if you want to learn from me directly, join my newsletter. Ryanofford.com backslash newsletter. Sign up. I give daily advice on marketing, personal branding, podcasting, life.

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