The Tim Ferriss Show - #332: Coach George Raveling — A Legend on Sports, Business, and The Great Game of Life

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Starting point is 00:02:40 else that's very limited, I share it first with Five Bullet Friday subscribers. So check it out, tim.blog forward slash Friday. If you listen to this podcast, it's very likely that you'd dig it a lot and you can, of course, easily subscribe any time. So easy peasy. Again, that's tim.blog forward slash Friday. And thanks for checking it out. If the spirit moves you. Hello, boys and girls, this is Tim Ferriss. And welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show where it is my job to interview and deconstruct world class performers of all different types to tease out the lessons, habits, routines, and much more that you can apply in your own lives. And my guest today really blew me away. I implore you, I beg you to listen to this entire conversation. I was so impressed from start to finish. His name is George Raveling. And I do owe a debt of gratitude to Ryan Holiday for making this introduction. George Raveling on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram

Starting point is 00:03:45 at George Raveling, R-A-V-E-L-I-N-G. CoachGeorgeRaveling.com is an 80-year-old living legend and Nike's former director of international basketball. Coach Rav, as he's often called, was the first African-American basketball coach in the Pac-8, Pac-12, and is often referred to as the human Google for reasons that become abundantly clear in this interview. He has held head coaching jobs at Washington State, the University of Iowa, and USC. Following a prolific basketball coaching career, he joined Nike at the request of Phil Knight, where he played an integral role in signing a reluctant, not many people know that story, Michael Jordan. He's also been inducted in

Starting point is 00:04:26 the Nismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, as well as the College Basketball Hall of Fame. We cover a lot in this wide-ranging conversation in Austin, Texas. We cover how he was given the original copy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s I Have a Dream speech, which was not the name, by the way, originally. How his practice team ended up beating the 1984 US Olympic Dream Team in basketball. What? The story of getting Michael Jordan to sign with Nike. Why Coach Rav has been nicknamed the human Google. His voracious reading habit and how he picks books and takes notes. We had a huge nerd out over how to take notes in books, the wisdom of his grandmother and other mentors, and much, much, much more.

Starting point is 00:05:12 I really walked out of this conversation floating on the air and reflecting on and thinking about so much of what he shared. He's an incredibly impressive human being. I hope you enjoy this even half as much as I did, which would mean it's probably going to be one of your favorite episodes that I've done. So without further ado, please enjoy the ever impressive George Raffling. Coach, welcome to the show. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be part of your world. I have been looking forward to this conversation ever since our mutual friend Ryan Holiday gave me a teaser of your life story. And when I started doing homework and prep, I started thinking to myself, I should try to get Coach to spend the next two days with me. I should cancel my flights because we are going to barely scratch the surface in the time that we have today.

Starting point is 00:06:10 And I struggled with where to start because I have pages and pages of notes of my own. And you also sent me, I will give you credit where credit is due the the absolute best exploratory bullets any guest out of 300 plus guests has sent me and uh we're going to start somewhere that i think may surprise people and that is the i have a dream speech so could you could you tell us about your relationship with that please well it's it's uh uh one of those stories about being in the that place? Well, it's one of those stories about being in the right place at the right time. It was a Thursday night in Claymont, Delaware, and I was having dinner at my best friend's home,

Starting point is 00:06:58 and his dad was a very prominent dentist in Wilmington. And so in the background as we ate dinner, those days, everyone ate dinner as a family. And so in the background, the television was on and the news commentary was about the forthcoming march on Washington. And so my friend was named Warren Wilson. His dad was Dr. Woodrow Wilson. And so he asked a question of us, are you boys going to go to the March on Washington? And we said no. And he asked us, why not? And we gave him some youthful excuse that we didn't have any money or way to get there. And so he said, well, I have a feeling this is going to be a historic event. It could be the largest gathering of black people in the history of America in one place.

Starting point is 00:07:51 And so he said, and I think the two of you should be there. He said, so what I'm going to do, he had two cars. He said, I'm going to give you one of the cars and money and you guys should attend. And so the next day we took off for Washington, D.C. on Friday. And at that time, there was one main thoroughfare into Washington, D.C. was Route 1. And so when you come in, you come in off of New York Avenue. And so there were a lot of what we call motels in those days along there. And we found one that was suitable to our economics and we got a room and so we decided that we would go down to the monument grounds just to get a feel for the best way to get there and what it was going to look like and so as we were walking around we encountered a gentleman and he asked us

Starting point is 00:08:38 I'm 6'4 and Warren's 6'4 so he asked us if we were coming to the march the next day, and we said, absolutely. And so he said, would you want to volunteer? And so we said, for what? And he said, to be security guards. So we said, sure, we'll volunteer. And he said, well, we're expecting twice the attendance that the papers are predicting, and so we have to add additional security. So he said, we'll meet you down there the next morning at 8.15.

Starting point is 00:09:08 And so we got there early. We woke up, we were all excited. So we get down there and we find him and he said, wow, you guys are really early. And so he looks at how tall we are and he says, well, we've decided we're going to put extra security up on the podium and so we're going to assign you guys to the podium. And so they had these little white hats, which may be like a sailor hat, but they were cardboard to wear for identification. So we were stationed at the podium where all the speakers were going to.

Starting point is 00:09:43 So to give you some backdrop on it, all the speakers, and they start at 9 o'clock in the morning. If I remember correctly, John Lewis was the first speaker, and then there was a series of speakers throughout the day, concluding with Martin Luther King as the last speaker. Some people would suggest that he was a keynote speaker, but he really wasn't. They put King last because they knew he would hold the crowd. So part of the stipulation was each speaker had to submit in writing his speech that he was going to give, and it could not exceed five minutes. There was a hard and fast

Starting point is 00:10:18 rule on this. And what was interesting about it was that James Baldwin submitted his speech and they felt it was too exclamatory. They were worried about getting the crowd too excited and maybe having a demonstration. And Baldwin's speech was over five minutes. And so they wouldn't accept it. So Baldwin refused to speak. But he was originally to be one of the speakers. So as the day goes on, it's a hot and humid day. And as you look out from the Lincoln Memorial, you look out to what they call a reflecting pool all the way back to the Washington Monument.

Starting point is 00:10:57 And as the longer the day went, the hotter it became, the more energized people were. And so we finally get to that point of the end of the day, and Martin Luther King comes on to speak. And so as history will show, King speaks. He's speaking from prepared notes. And he gets about one paragraph left. And as he's speaking, the crowd is just mesmerized by him. He has captured every single ounce of attention in each human being. And he had a cadence about the way he spoke that he would say, how long, and he had what I call drum beats,

Starting point is 00:11:50 and he had a way of raising and lowering his voice to manipulate you as a listener. And so he's just about toward the end of the last, going to the last paragraph, and you hear a voice, and today with technology you could certainly do it, but a female voice seated behind the podium says, tell them about the dream, Martin, tell them about the dream. Well, the voice was that of Mahalia Jackson, who most people would say is the greatest black gospel singer of all time, maybe greatest black gospel singer of all time, maybe the greatest gospel singer of all time, she had worked on previous demonstrations and gatherings with Martin Luther King.

Starting point is 00:12:35 So she had heard Martin Luther King tell the I Have a Dream part in Selma and Detroit. And so if you look at the original speech, it was not part of the original speech. And second, he's the only speaker who exceeded five minutes. And so at that point, the crowd is just mesmerized by him. And so then he ad-libs in the I Have a Dream speech. And then at the conclusion, he goes back and closes out with the prepared closing. So when it's over, we were told to form a V around the podium and help to usher him out. So just as he finishes, the most frequently asked question is, why did you ask him for the speech? I have no idea.

Starting point is 00:13:27 It was just impulse. So I say to Dr. King as he's folding his speech, I said, Dr. King, could I have that copy of the speech? And just as he's folding it, he instinctively hands it to me. And then a rabbi who's doing the benediction says, Dr. King, that's a great speech. I'm so inspired. So his attention shifted away from me to the rabbi. And so when the rabbi finished the benediction, I actually, CBS went through the archives of Johnson & Johnson, Ebony Magazine, and they found a picture of me standing right beside him at the podium. So I actually have a picture that verifies that I was there. And CBS was able to find some

Starting point is 00:14:12 footage where he was folding the speech, and they can see him handing it, but didn't show my hand in it. And so at any rate, when it's over, they go over to the White House. And as they walk into the Oval Office, President Kennedy says, Dr. King, I loved your I have a dream speech. Well, so the media significance that it did. It actually took 50 years for it to really find its rightful place in history. It makes me mindful of something I heard Malcolm X say one time, that history is best situated to record all man's deeds. So my interpretation of that is history and historians ultimately will put things in their rightful place. And so it took 50 years. Well, so I had no idea at that point when I had the speech that it was going to become a valuable historic document. So when I got back home, I put it inside of a book that I had from

Starting point is 00:15:28 that President Harry Truman gave me. So my senior year at Villanova, I played in the East-West All-Star game, and it was in Kansas City. And one of the things that they did is they took us out to Independence, Missouri to meet President Truman. And when we went out to meet him, his office at his home was a replica of the Oval Office. And so as we walked in, each of us noticed there was two huge tables to the right with books stacked up on them. Well, at the end, after President Truman had talked with all the team and the coaching staff and trainers, on the way out, he gave each of us a two-volume book that he wrote on his presidency. And so in the book, which I still have both of them now, both books say, to George Raveling from Harry S. Truman, best wishes, and it has the date. So I put the speech inside of one of those for a couple of reasons.

Starting point is 00:16:30 I would remember where it was, and two, I knew I'd never throw those books away because how many people can say they have an autographed book by the President of the United States personally to you? So it stayed there for years and years, and I never thought about it. I actually, my wife didn't even know I had it. And so I go to the University of Iowa as head basketball coach, and, of course, I'm the first black coach there and first in the Big Ten. And so there's much to do about this. At that time, all the local newspapers, big newspapers, had a Sunday magazine

Starting point is 00:17:06 section. And so the cover story on the Cedar Rapids Gazette paper and this magazine section was going to be about me taking the University of Iowa head basketball coaching job. So as he was asking questions, what I call a throwaway question, he said, Coach, were you ever involved in the Civil Rights Movement? And I said, well, kind of. And he said, what does that mean? And I said, well, I attended the March on Washington. I was a security guard. And I was able to secure the speech.

Starting point is 00:17:39 And at that point, if I've ever seen a person just physically decompose, I mean, he was he just he he didn't know he was so much more. I couldn't figure out why he was so excited. And so he says, oh, my God, are you happy? He said, where is it? I had only been there about six weeks, so I hadn't unpacked all the boxes down in the basement. So I said, it's in a box down the basement. He said, can we go look for it? And so we go down. I figured out which box it was and I pulled it out and he was literally

Starting point is 00:18:08 shaken. And so he said, oh my God. He said, can I call my editor? Can we take a picture of this? And so I said, sure. So little did I, that was the first public notice that I had this speech. So the story kind of now starts to split between Raveling being the head basketball coach and Raveling having this speech. And so from that point on, it took on a little different significance, but it's still time had not placed it in its rightful place. And so over the years, it became more, and I literally, one of the miracles, Tim, is that for 50 years, I had this, and nothing, no flood, no house doesn't catch on fire, somebody doesn't steal a book, whatever. And if you saw the actual speech now, I have it in a vault in L.A., for the speech to survive this long and the quality of the paper, it's typewritten. You can see little typos in there and so forth.

Starting point is 00:19:21 And I had a friend of mine who graduated with me from Villanova who was with the FBI. And so one time we were talking about it, and he said, well, if you ever get in a situation where someone doubts that you really have the speech or that it was good, he said, we can lift the fingerprints off of there. He said, your fingerprints are on there, and so's King's. So it was an interesting circumstance that what became the focal part of the speech was something that he never really intended to use. And only through the motivation of Mahalia Jackson did he ad-lib the I Have a Dream piece in. sin. So as the years went on, it took on a unique value. And so at one point, Turner Sports does a documentary on it. And so my wife goes to work, people are talking, oh, I didn't know about your husband having the speech. So my wife comes home one evening, she says, hey, we got to have a talk. I said, okay. She says, the speech has got to get out of this house right away she said you travel too

Starting point is 00:20:29 much somebody's gonna break in the house and and and i might get killed over this speech so she said you got to get it out of here so I never felt that I had total ownership of it. I kind of felt like I was the guardian of something historic. And I became so sensitive about it that I stopped. On Black History Month, I'd get many invitations to come, bring the speech, talk about it. But I was so self-conscious that I stopped doing it because I never wanted anybody to think I was profiting off of this. And I never entertained any of the offers to sell it. And when I was growing up as a little boy in D.C., my grandma used to always say that money's the root of all evil. Don't build your

Starting point is 00:21:25 life around money. And so it wasn't, you know, I wasn't rich, but I wasn't poor and I wasn't desperate to make money or headlines on it. The headlines accrued because of people's curiosity about having it. But I look back on it now and it was a classic example of being in the right place at the right time and which has happened so much in my life, getting good adult advice. If Dr. Wilson doesn't say, hey, you two need to go and I'll provide the opportunity for you, then I would have missed out on a piece of history that put an indelible mark on my life. What an incredible story.

Starting point is 00:22:11 What an incredible experience. You think about how the stars aligned for that to happen. And from that point on, I learned a good lesson that you don't have to have a relationship with a person for them to become your mentor. And so in those days, I don't even know if I knew the connotation mentor, but I looked at King more as someone, as a teacher, someone I could learn from. So as we fast forward, and I'm now working at Nike, and in my office, I had this picture in my office, and it was a headshot

Starting point is 00:22:55 of Martin Luther King, James Baldwin, and Malcolm X. And so when people would come into my office, they would look at the things on the wall, and they would always be drawn to that portrait. And so what was interesting, most people, I would say 99% of people could not tell you all three of them. A lot of people would get King. Some would get James Baldwin. Very few Malcolm X. But it was rare that anyone got all three of them. So they would ask me why I had it up there. And I said, they're my mentors. They're my inspiration.

Starting point is 00:23:33 They're the people that I whose that I wanted to learn from him. share with you and i don't know if the vast majority of people uh that follow king nudist i just found out this past week in reading a book review in the new york times book review section that when dr king was in the seminary at crozier which is in chester pennsylvania that's where he he took his practice to become a preacher uh that that they had a basketball team, and Dr. King was on the team. And so that delighted me to know and to discover that he played basketball during the time. And the person who wrote the book actually found in the archives a box score from one of their games, and unfortunately they got waxed 124 to 41. But I was so pleased to find out that there was an athletic side to him.

Starting point is 00:24:50 And I don't know. In all I've read about King over the years, I had never known that he participated in athletics. So there was an immediate joy to find out that he, and particularly that he played basketball. And when you say you had a relationship with, say, Dr. King in the sense that you viewed him as a mentor or a role model, and you revisited that, would you find yourself in specific situations and ask yourself, you know, what would Dr. King do? Or how did that fit in your life from a mentorship standpoint? Was it just putting yourself in their shoes to make hard decisions, or how did you think? I think one thing that became quickly apparent to me was the value of words. words and and and and the spoken word is such a a powerful tool perhaps maybe more powerful than

Starting point is 00:25:48 the atom bomb in many ways uh the fact that uh that he had a vision the whole i have a dream so all great leaders i believe share a vision and then. And then they have a journey. And so he talked about the vision, the journey, the completion of the dream, and the conquering of injustice. But to me, King was so many things. He was a preacher. He was a messenger. He was a visionary. he was a messenger, a visionary, he was a precursor, a leader. He was a man for all seasons and all reasons in many ways. And so many times I reflect back on something that he said that when I'm in a tough spot and I think about giving up, you say to yourself, what kind of sacrifice is this going to be? And one thing I remember Dr. King saying is if a man or a woman hasn't found in this mission that he ultimately had to give his life for it. And I've watched a number of documentaries over the years on the sit-ins and doing the depth of segregation.

Starting point is 00:27:31 And one was the night before they were going to sit at the lunch counters, and the person who was leading the demonstration, as they were planning out it strategically, at the end he said to them, he said, I want everybody in the room to look around at each other and shake hands, because tomorrow night when we have this meeting, some of you are not going to be here. And I thought to myself, oh, my God, would I have the courage of commitment to know that if I were part of this demonstration, tomorrow night I might get, I have to put my life on the line. I might not be back if I'm sitting in that room. I have to say to myself, are you willing to sacrifice your life for this cause? And the injustices that black people have faced most I say to myself, do you feel so strong about this that you'd be willing to give your life for it? Do you feel this strong about it that you would be willing to risk getting fired? And over the years, especially when I was at Nike, sometimes I had a depth of belief and conviction that what I was suggesting was right. And I was willing to

Starting point is 00:29:05 fight right down to the end. And if it meant I got fired, then I got fired. But I never allowed the position or to threaten me to be less than what I should be as a person. You mentioned your grandmother in passing, and she seems to have been a very important figure in your life. How did that come to be the case? Well, my grandma was basically, if I can borrow a religious concept, my grandmother was the pope. Her word was infallible. And what was interesting, my grandma was a product of a Blackfoot Indian tribe. And on both sides of our family, we really are descendants of American Indian tribes,

Starting point is 00:29:57 which I find interesting sometimes because now I've gone through these connotations. When I was first born, which you'll find interesting, I was born in a segregated hospital in Washington, D.C., Garfield Hospital. And there are four floors for whites and one floor for blacks. So I came into the world in a segregated world. But so as I was growing up, when I was nine, my dad died. And when I was 13, my mom had a nervous breakdown, and she was institutionalized the rest of her life. In those days, the economy was in poor shape, so you got rations from the government. You got like flour, sugar, milk, so forth. And so I come home one day, and my mom's

Starting point is 00:30:56 standing at the sink, and she's got the water running, and she's pouring this big bag of sugar into the sink and just letting the sugar go down. And so I grabbed it and turned it off. And I said, Mom, what's going on? And she was incoherent. So anyway, my mom ended up being institutionalized. So now here's George at 13 years old. No, 12. And so what do you do with George?

Starting point is 00:31:26 He has no he has he has no parental supervision. Dad's dead. Mom's in a mental institution. She spent most of the rest of her life there. And so my grandma worked for this white family in Georgetown. And so she was sharing with the lady of the house this dilemma. And she was saying, I don't know what I'm going to do, but I have to do something for him. And so the lady said her daughter was a head of Catholic Charities in D.C., and she would mention it to her, maybe her daughter could do something. So lo and behold, the daughter decides that she's going to help. And so she found a school, a boarding school for me, a Catholic boarding school in Pennsylvania. It was called St. Michael's School for Boys.

Starting point is 00:32:16 And so she was able to get me into the school there. You stayed there year-round as a resident. And so I went off to St. Michael's, and the structure where priests were at ran the institution, and the teaching and the service part were done all by nuns. And so over the course of the time I was there, I did everything from bale hay to pick apples, to clean chicken coops, to work in the kitchen, to scrub the floors in the chapel, to make beds. You had to do a chore to help offset your presence there. And so the classes were very strict and rigorous. The classes were small, so we got a lot of individual attention.

Starting point is 00:33:09 And it was just a stroke of a miracle that my grandma was able to get me into this situation. And my grandma never graduated from high school. In fact, no one in my family, my mom or dad finished high school, but she knew that there had to be a better way for me. And she did everything that she could to help me grow as a person. I remember one time, Tim, my grandma took myself and my brother out. And she said, we're going to go outside. I want to teach you some manners and lessons. And so my grandma takes my brother and I out on the street. And she says, I'm going to start to teach you how to treat women.

Starting point is 00:34:02 Women are to be respected. And so she says when you walk down the street, you always walk on the outside. A woman always walks on the inside. When you get to the corner, you make sure you check the traffic in both ways before, and then you walk more as a guard. If a woman's getting in the car, you always open the door for them first. If you sit down at the table for the meal, you hold a chair and help them. And so long before feminist movement was even thought of, my grandmother was teaching us social graces. Yes, sir, No, sir. I go on a flight now

Starting point is 00:34:48 and it's just part of my DNA. When people say something, if a stewardess says something, I say, yes, ma'am. No, no, ma'am. Yes, sir. No, sir. And I'm 80 years old and I still do that. But so invariably what will happen on the flight is either during the flight or at the end, the stewardess will say to me, can I ask you a question? I'll say yes, and I know it's coming. They'll say, are you from the military? I say, well, I was in the military, but no, I'm not in the military now. They say, well, are you from the south?

Starting point is 00:35:23 I say no. I say, why do you ask? They say, well, are you from the South? And I said, no. And so I said, why do you ask? And they say, well, because you're so polite. No one says yes, ma'am, and knows. And I have a lot of people now who find it uncomfortable if I say yes, sir, at 80 years old, and they're younger than me, but it's just the way I was born. My grandma was huge on manners, and if we went somewhere, and there were adults, in those days, if you were a child, kids were to be seen and not heard. And so if there was a conversation going on with adults, you just listen. But if someone asked me a question and I didn't say yes, ma'am or no, ma'am, when I got home, my grandma would say, I heard Mrs. Jenkins ask you that.

Starting point is 00:36:05 And you just said, yeah. And she said, bend over. And she would she with me. And so and my greatest quote for my grandma was she told me one time she said, there's more horses asses in the world than there are horses. Now, that's all. That's been my favorite grammar quote. She's a good teacher and a good enforcer, it sounds like. Well, were there any other mentors during that or teachers or people who had a strong impact on you over that stay in that Catholic school?

Starting point is 00:36:42 Yeah, there was a nun who took a liking to me named Sister Delora. She lived to be 87. But for some reason, she saw something in me I never saw in myself. And she would always say positive things to me. At the time, I didn't realize the value of them, but she'd always say to me, George, you can be special. Or if I wasn't working up to my potential in whatever area it was, she would say, now that's not being special, and you're on earth to be special. And to me, I've never had anybody look at me and and and and make me think i

Starting point is 00:37:27 could be anything other than than average but she she constantly preached that to me and she would watch the basketball games and and and after she would come up or the next day in class she would say well you know in the third quarter you you you you really you really were loafing out there i was embarrassed but she always found a way to to uh uh i'd write a paper and she'd read it and she'd say this is really good but this is not your best stuff you can do better and so she always kind of created this contest of having me compete against myself. It was never competing against the other students. It was always me competing against myself.

Starting point is 00:38:11 So she taught me the power of a positive attitude, and she would never allow me to think negatively. And then the other person was my college or was my high school coach. He taught me so many lessons about life. At our school, there were four sports, boxing, baseball, basketball, and football. And so one of the things that you learned if you wanted to get off campus some, you participate in sports. And so I actually participated in every one. And the one that probably gets zero attention, because a lot of people just don't know, was boxing.

Starting point is 00:38:54 I actually boxed Golden Glove for two years. Yeah, I know you're Chinese foot boxing, so you can probably identify with that. I wouldn't want to deal with your reach. So I actually, somewhere in one of my high school scrapbooks i have a picture of me in the ring in those days you wore the headgear and you had the big glass big gloves and so i fought in in my weight class which at that time i wish i was under 200 pounds now. But so I actually won my senior year. I won a Golden Glove event. And so and then I played baseball.

Starting point is 00:39:32 I played first base and pitched in football. I played in all except the last year. And then we didn't have a good quarterback. So my coach put me a quarterback. But I was was believe me my talents were I wouldn't even have gotten a walk-on offer but I was the quarterback and then what happened was basketball between my eighth grade year and ninth grade year I grew four inches so I went from six foot to six four in one year and so obviously the height advantage

Starting point is 00:40:06 proved beneficial to me early on in basketball and so over the course of the four years I got better and better and when I look back on it now a lot of it was sister Deloric encouraging me tell me oh you're getting better oh and and you and so she kept me motivated all the time. So my senior year, I ended up being the second leading scorer in the state of Pennsylvania. And so at this point, let's just step back real quick. So at the end of my junior year, I'm waiting for to take the Greyhound bus back to D.C. for, I got a week vacation back in D.C. So I'm sitting there waiting for the bus to come by. And Tim, I can remember it was like yesterday. I thought to myself, God, if I can just graduate and become a pilot in the Air Force,

Starting point is 00:40:57 I'll have it made. I had no idea anything about basketball was going to take me and get me a scholarship. So the following year, I end up the second leading scorer in the state. And so we're playing at St. Rose in Carbondale. And after the game, when I come out of the locker room, a gentleman comes up to me and he says, hi, my name's Jack Ramsey. I'm the coach at St. Joe College, and he hands me a card. Of course, Jack Ramsey is in the Basketball Hall of Fame, great coach. And so he said that, I like the way you play. We'd like to offer you a scholarship. And I said, yes, sir. Every time he'd say something, I'd just say, yes, sir,

Starting point is 00:41:38 because I didn't know what else to say. And so on the school bus ride back to the school, my coach says, who is that man you're talking to outside the locker room? And I said he was a coach, and I handed him the card. And so my coach says, well, what did he tell you? And I said he said that he wanted to offer me a scholarship. And so I said, coach, what's a scholarship? Because I had no idea that they would pay for your education in return you participated in basketball so then by over the course of the remainder of the season I

Starting point is 00:42:11 had an offer from Michigan State, Villanova and Gettysburg and a bunch of other schools but I had Gettysburg because their coach did the best job of recruiting me. He'd write me handwritten letters, four and five pages on what it was going to mean to go to Gettysburg and so forth. He'd drive up to games. He was so persistent. But at the end of the day, the reality was this. As far as the nuns and the priests were concerned, it would have been heresy to go to a state institution. I was going to a Catholic school. So then it basically came down to St. Joe's in Villanova, and I went down for the visit at Villanova. And while I was there, they gave me an admissions exam.

Starting point is 00:42:57 You didn't have PSAT and ACT then. And so I took the admissions exam the first day I was there. And once again, amazing insight by Sister Dolores. When she found out I was going to get scholarship offers, she started to make me stay after school every day and work on the entrance exams. So I was prepared. prepared and and i and so the sunday before we left the drive back up to hoban heights uh the coach al severance offered me a scholarship and and they wanted a decision why we were there so basically my my high school coach made the decision he thought that that's where i should go and and uh little did i know that that basketball was going to be this transformative force in my life that was going to take me someplace I never thought that I could go.

Starting point is 00:43:49 Tim, never in my life, and I don't mean this in a mean-spirited way, did anyone in my family ever say to me, George, when you grow up, I want you to go to college. It was no reason for them to think that at that time it was it wasn't it wasn't even a dream or thought because nobody had received that type of education. And go back to my grandma. So I call my grandma and I tell her what's going on and that I'm going to get this scholarship. And so I tell her, well, how does it work? I said, OK, so if I agree to play on the basketball team for the four years, they'll pay for my education. So all of a sudden there's utter silence on the phone. And I said, Grandma, are you still there? And she said, yes. And I said, Grandma, are you still there? And she said, yes. And I

Starting point is 00:44:46 said, why are you so quiet? She says, oh, I just feel like a failure. I said, what do you mean? And she said, I thought I raised you better than that. And I said, well, Grandma, what did I do wrong? And she said, stupid. No white people are going to you a a free education to play basketball you how can you go how could you be so stupid to believe she could not comprehend that that because of the the racial situation that someone would pay for your education and all you had to do was play basketball and she she just it took her over a year before she fully was able to even trust that this was happening. When I finally got on campus at Villanova and went to the first class a stain of racism and how things are implanted in your mind that you just can't, they're incomprehensible. So on that note, when I was doing homework, I read somewhere that you have a collection of racist mementos in your house.

Starting point is 00:46:07 Yes. Wow, you did do some research. Could you – beyond that, I don't know the details, but that just stuck in my mind. Because that's something I think that a lot of people would actively avoid. So why do you have this collection? First of all, no one's ever asked me that question, but I probably have over $100,000 worth of black collectibles. For about eight or nine years, it became an obsession with me. And so I would go to antique shows and go to stores and hunt down all black memorabilia. I have things that date back before. I actually have a first edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin. So I started to collect books, figurines,

Starting point is 00:46:53 and postcards. Postcards, I started out with figurines. And so a friend of mine told me about an antique store that was closing, and the gentleman had a huge collection of black collectibles. And so it was in San Pedro, so I went down and I paid him $35,000 for the collectibles. He had over 100 pieces, and part of the deal was that he had to mark them and write a little card so I would understand the historic significance of them. Postcards, Tim, I have them back before you had, which this might surprise you, originally you didn't have to put a stamp on a postcard to send it out to mail. So I have them back in, the earliest one I have is 1891. Wow. But what was interesting about the black postcards was they always made blacks. They picture them in a derogatory term.

Starting point is 00:47:56 One of the more frequent ones you see is a black person with eating watermelon with a smile on his face. But they were all derogatory. Now, here's what's further interesting. We've now put stamps on them. So I was able to read the messages on some of them. And so the one that I remember the most is a lady's writing to one of her girlfriends, and we'll just make up the name. She says, Helen, we have a nigger that works at our house that smiles just like him. And so in those days, to use the word nigger was commonplace.

Starting point is 00:48:40 And you just learn. I don't know that you ever learned to accept it, but it was it was something that was said commonplace. So I started to build this historic collection of memorabilia so that I could have a legacy for my children and their children, and I have them on display at my home to remind me of where we were and where we are today and the trials and tribulations that we've gone through. So I easily have postcards. I probably have over 300 of the postcards, and I probably have about 500 of the figurines. I was just thinking, because I have some, the original Aunt Jemima flower packs, and once I got going, it was amazing the things that I was able to collect. And so I had so many of them that I couldn't put them all on display. So I have probably three quarters of them are boxed up in storage, and then the others are

Starting point is 00:49:53 around my house. Do you collect anything else or have you collected anything else? Books and friends. In my library at home, I have well over 2,500 books, and probably I have another 600 or 700 that are in storage because it just ran out of space. But I just continue to buy books to read them. I have, as you probably researched, I have an unusual way of going about reading books. And friends, I don't have a strategy or anything for friends. Most times people, when I meet them, are not who they ended up being, whether it was Phil Knight, Bob Knight, John Thompson, Sonny McGregor. I could tell you tons of people, when I met them,

Starting point is 00:50:49 they were not who they ended up being. But for some reason, we were able to build an authentic and sustainable relationship. And I've always looked upon relationships as a privilege that you have. And at the end of the day, at the core of all relationships, in my mind, is trust and respect. And so both of those have to be earned. we've stayed in touch and there's been this level of trust that uh that's allowed the the the relationship to endure but it's something it's a lot like marriage you have to work at it you have to to to to understand that there's a balance in relationships that and and with me i the number one thing that I ask myself continually is, what can I do for you?

Starting point is 00:51:51 And your good friend Ryan Holiday and I had dinner last night, and one of the very last things I said to him, I said, Ryan, is there anything I can be doing for you in the next 30 days? I've always had this theory that if you help enough people get what they want, you'll always get what you want. And so I've never tried to enter a relationship based on selfish motives, that if I know this person, I'm going to get these benefits. I try to find out what do we have in common as people? What is it that we can share?

Starting point is 00:52:27 How can I help this person? No matter how famous they are, how successful they are, everyone has certain needs, even if they're just psychological needs. Or we all need truth tellers in our life. And so in building relationships, I try to make sure that I surround myself with people who want to see me become better and can help me become better, that I can learn from them and that I can contribute to their lives. And so most of the friendships I have in life, they all started by mistake. One of the young men that's here today that has taught me almost all I know about technology, I spoke at a clinic in Orlando.

Starting point is 00:53:19 And so a friend of mine, Kevin Eastman, was running the clinic. And I said to him, I said, who's going to put my presentation up on the screen and that? Do you have an IT guy? And he said, yes. And so I said, well, introduce him to me because I want to put my presentation up. I want to walk to the back of the room and make sure it's clear and so forth. So I met Alex Lavoisier, and during the time I was there, we just hit it off. And so I'm pretty sure he was taking me back to the airport, and I asked him if he would be interested in doing a website for me, and he said yes.

Starting point is 00:53:59 And so that's how it started, and it's turned into a lifelong friendship and um and i think that was the start of me recognizing that i needed to be around more young people and so i i don't associate and maybe it's bad to say this but i don't hang out with many people my own age most of the people that i associate with are younger people because I think they're the future, they're smart, they're naive enough that they'll tell you the truth and they're not afraid to tell you if they think you're wrong. And when I hang around people my own age,

Starting point is 00:54:39 it tends to always revert back to the past. And I don't want to talk about coaching at Washington State or being the first black this or the first black that. What I want to do is figure out at 80 years old, what is it that I don't know but need to know? And how is this going to help me stay relevant in this ever-changing world? And so I tend to spend most of my time with younger people who inspire me, who I can have a partnership with. That's the other thing about relationships. I think relationships at their most authentic stage, it's a partnership.

Starting point is 00:55:20 It's we share common vision, common goals, common objectives, common strategy, common execution plan. It's a we mentality. It's not a me mentality. And it's a win-win mentality. It's not I win, you lose, or you lose, I win. It's not about that. We were in this thing together, and we're in the boat together. We're going to row in the same direction and we're going to get the boat ashore.

Starting point is 00:55:51 You mentioned books and I want to make sure we give reading at least a few minutes because you are known as a voracious reader. The human Google, one nickname, and you've read probably, I'm sure, thousands of books at this point. You were very kind when we first got here, we're recording this right now, you said, I learned from the wise man, it's always a good thing to bear gifts or something along those lines. And you gave me several books. You've also gifted many, many different books. How did this love affair with books start? And could you tell us about how you read books? Because as you alluded to earlier, you have a particular way of reading books.

Starting point is 00:56:35 Well, as I look back on it now, Tim, and with a point of reference to so many times as we speak, it's always going to be my grandma. Well, my grandma told me one time, when she'd be in the kitchen cooking, she'd tell me stories. And one time my grandma told me, she said, George, you know, back in the days of slavery, the plantation owners used to put their money in books and put them up on the bookshelves because their banking system wasn't as sophisticated as it is today. And so I said, well, Grandma, why did they do that? And she said because they didn't have to worry about the slaves stealing the money because the slaves would never take the books off the shelf because they couldn't read. And so from that, I began to understand that as long as someone can

Starting point is 00:57:29 control your mind, they can control who you are in your body. And so I decided that I was never going to allow myself to be in a position where someone could control my mind and control my body because of my lack of information and knowledge. And so I decided that I was going to try to read and learn as much as I possibly could on a continual basis because I believe that people will have a greater respect for you if they respect you intellectually. And I've often felt in life if I had the choice between Tim liking me or Tim respecting me, I'd far more hope that you respect me than like me and I figured the byproduct of you respecting me will be that you'll you'll learn to like me so I don't work at trying to get people to to like me so I've I've been on this mission for for a reading for years and it's it's become an obsession now with me i i i i don't go anywhere without a book and

Starting point is 00:58:50 and and a notebook so i if i'm if i'm in line if i go to the doctor's office i take a book with me if i'm in the i have a new system now if i go to a bookstore and i'm in barnes and noble and the line has got eight or nine people in it, rather than stand there for 10 minutes waiting, I start I'll start reading the book right there in line and start underlining things. And so I have all these quirks that I've acquired over the years with reading books. First of all, I divide the book into messages. I don't spend any time now trying to read a whole book because there's probably, in most books, there's probably maybe eight to ten chapters

Starting point is 00:59:37 that are really powerful and influential, and the others I skim through. So I never start a book from the front and go to the back. I just go, I'll open the index and I'll find what I believe is an interesting chapter. And I start there. And that's actually how I purchase a book. When I'm in the bookstore, I have this routine that I go through that. And if it passes, I buy the book. And if it doesn't, I don't buy the book. What's your routine? So let's say I'm going to envision this one. So our office is in El Segundo, which is

Starting point is 01:00:15 outside of Los Angeles. And so I go to Barnes & Noble. One thing I found out that because there's so many corporate offices within a two mile radius that they tend to house really excellent business books. So I'll go in and soon as I go in, I look at the books that are on reduction sale to see if there's something there that might be a good buy. Then I go to the new releases, nonfiction. And by the way, I go to a bookstore four to five days out of the week. I'm constantly going in, and I just call it search and discovery. So I'll go to the new releases in a nonfiction, and I'll look through the books. There's usually 20 books on the table.

Starting point is 01:01:03 I'd say eight out of ten times I'm going to find a book that I had never heard of before. And so I'll pick the book up. I go to the back. I read about the author. Then I go to the front part, and I read the promos down the side. And then the next thing I do is I go to the chapters and I'll find a chapter and I'll open it up and I'll see the writer's style. I look at the style. Is this someone that's a book filled with a lot of statistics or stories? Because I know what I'm looking for. The books that have had the most impact are the ones that make me change the way I think or act or behave.

Starting point is 01:01:52 And those are the books that ultimately end up being the best for me. So I'll go through the book. And then once I find this one chapter, I start to read some of it. And I can tell if this is going to be me or not. And at that point, I'll purchase the book. But I just don't go in and buy a book based on the top ten, not that there's anything wrong with that. It's just that I've had better success. So now, here at 80 years old, two of my favorite authors are Ryan Holiday and Walter Isaacson.

Starting point is 01:02:29 They've both taken me on interesting intellectual journeys. The first book I read by Walter Isaacson was Steve Jobs. And I was so blown away. I had underlined about three quarters of the book. I was writing down quotes. And as you know, the Steve Jobs book couldn't be anything you want it to be. It couldn't be a thesis on leadership. It was just utterly fascinating. I loved Walter Isaacson's writing style. So when I finished the book, I went back. I said, damn, I like the way he writes. So I go back and I look to see what

Starting point is 01:03:06 else he had written. And so then I see he's done a book on Benjamin Franklin. He's done a book on Einstein and subsequently Kissinger and others. So I go to the bookstore and I buy the Benjamin Franklin book. And I am blown away and a little sad because I feel like god damn I went through all this education no one ever taught me any of this stuff other than the kite and so before that I think if you'd have asked me who was the most important American of all time I think I would have probably tended to say Abraham Lincoln. But after I read Isis's book on Benjamin Franklin, I would now feel, I mean, the lottery system, the banking, schools, streets, the guy, he did so many unbelievable things. And then from there, I went to Einstein.

Starting point is 01:04:08 And anybody who can write a book on Einstein, that an idiot like me can understand the physics. And it was absolutely, it was a miracle. So in the book, Tim, I read that Einstein was very active in what they would capture in those times as the Negro movement. And it says that he wrote a book

Starting point is 01:04:37 on Einstein and the Negro movement. Well, I had never heard of this. So I immediately stopped reading and go Google Einstein on the Negro problem. And lo and behold, it comes up. So I chased the book down. And so what I find a lot of times in reading books and is in your book, Tools of the Titan, I'm reading, and I see this, you mentioned in there about masterminds, and I had never heard of masterminds, so I circle it, and I write Google behind it, so I go back, and I go online, and I find out, wow, so I'm thinking to myself, oh my God,

Starting point is 01:05:20 how did, I never knew about this, so how do I become part of it? So I sent some information to Ryan Holiday about this mastermind. So he gets back to me. He says, oh, I'm surprised you didn't know about that. He says, you want to go? I'll get you in. So the next thing I know, I get this invite to go to masterminds in Carmel Valley. And my 80 years on earth, that was the greatest collection of intellects that I've ever been around in my life. I was so intimidated. And what was marvelous, that was when I knew I was on the right path. Because I'm 80 years old, the next oldest person

Starting point is 01:05:59 there is probably 49. They're all young, energetic people. And I readily admit, I was so intimidated. I was thinking to myself, God, how am I going to fit in? And every night I went to bed with the worst headaches that I ever had because I couldn't process all this stuff. By the second day, I've already filled up a notebook of notes. And it was one of those life-changing experiences. So you helped me grow as a person just by what you mentioned in Tools of the Titan. Well, thank you for reading it, first of all. And this is, I'm sure that with all my notes here today, I'm going to have to figure out a way to have another conversation with you for sure. So hopefully I won't blow it between now and the end of the interview. But books that you've reread the most yourself or gifted to other people the most, are there any books that come to mind?

Starting point is 01:07:06 Well, you know, being 80 years old, it's a long span of reading. The books that I've given out the most, rarely do I go to meet anyone, and I can't tell you the last time I met someone and I didn't bring them a book it's just become a habit now to bring to give them a book in most cases I give

Starting point is 01:07:32 them two or three books but the books that I've given away the most lately are Ryan's two books Obstacles and Ego is the Enemy and Twelve Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson. This was one where I happened to go into Barnes & Noble the day the book arrives.

Starting point is 01:07:54 And I go through it, and it passes my test. And so I get back to the hotel, and I start reading the book. And before I know it, it's 2 a.m. in the morning, and I'm still, the guy's got me hooked already, and so I start telling people, oh, you got to get this book out, and no one's ever heard of this guy, although in Canada, I understand he's quite controversial. He's a professor at the University of Toronto. So then about three weeks go by, and all of a sudden there's an explosion. It's now number two on the bestsellers and so forth. So I would say I probably have given away somewhere between 20 and 30 copies of that to friends.

Starting point is 01:08:45 I'll get a note from someone every now and then saying, hey, tell me a good book to read. That's the one I recommend the most. I give Ryan's books away a lot. One thing that I like about Ryan's book is it's easier to carry because it's smaller. So I can get a little bag and I can put 12 of them in there. Yeah, mine are not as user-friendly from a caring perspective. No, but that's the one thing I found with your two books is I take them on as a personal challenge. I said, if he spent this much time with this many pages, I am not going to allow the length of the book to intimidate me.

Starting point is 01:09:26 I'm going to see this as an opportunity. And so what I did with Tools of the Titan was I call that my China book. So it's 13 hours to Shanghai or 13 hours to Hong Kong and 13 coming back. That's 26 hours, man. So I can knock that sucker out. In some books, you just have to find the right environment in which to read them. Totally. So I'm going to actually just pause for a minute. We'll keep the recording going. I'm going to go grab the books that you brought for me because i'd love to talk about those i'll be right back okay so here we have five books and i'll just read off the titles quickly and then uh i'd love to hear you explain your reasons for choosing a few of these perhaps so the first is

Starting point is 01:10:18 life is so good george dawson and richard globman the next next is The True Believer, subtitled Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements by Eric Hoffer. Next, we have Blue Highways by William Least Heat Moon. That's quite a name. Then we have Whiplash, How to Survive Our Faster Future, Joy Ito and Jeff Howe.

Starting point is 01:10:38 Actually, no, Joy. I have not read this book, though. It's been a while, Joy. Please contact me. Truth, Hector McDonald. I would love to hear you explain why you like or why you chose perhaps a few of these. I think, well, my first goal was, as I said to you when I first entered the room, is that what I learned from the three

Starting point is 01:11:07 wise men was they always came bearing gifts. And so I felt that I wanted to share something with you of values as you were sharing something with me of value and allow me to be on your program. So I thought long and hard about the types of books that a Princeton graduate would find interesting. And so I went back through and the first one, Life is So Good, is about a black young man who was a slave. And at 98 years old, he decides that he's going to teach himself to write. And then he subsequently goes back and gets his GED. And it's a fascinating story about that he never allowed his environment to imprison him. It took him a while to realize that that he had the capabilities to still read but what was more important was that he wanted to do it and so he he taught himself to read he ended up going back to school and now and one of the things in here was uh they have a

Starting point is 01:12:22 couple of letters that young kids who read the book. And so here's a cute one. It says, Dear Mr. Dawson, I'm in second grade. I live in Wisconsin. I'm glad that your brain still works. Happy 10th anniversary. And then one other one. It says, I'm happy that you can read now.

Starting point is 01:12:46 I'm glad you like school. I do, too. I'm in the fourth grade. Your friend, Alex. So it just and this is to me is one of the true classics of all time. This is The True Believer by Eric Hoffer. Eric Hoffer was a longshoreman in San Francisco. He's self-educated.

Starting point is 01:13:14 And this book is about fanatics and how the people become so engrossed in mass movements. A lot of the backdrop for his rationale has to do with Hitler's rise to power in Germany. And I just want to remember, I'm pretty sure the book came out in 1951, he wrote this. And so it's every bit as contemporary as, in fact, if there was one of these books that I would say that someone should pick up and read right now, I would say it's so applicable, even though it was written in 51, on Is This the True Believer by Eric Hoffer. I don't think you can get it in hardback now, but it's a marvelous book. Blue Highways was one that I read twice, and William Lees Heatmoon was a professor in English at the University of Missouri, and he arrived at a point where he was totally bored at being a professor,

Starting point is 01:14:12 and he makes a unique decision to abandon his career, sell everything he has. He has a credit card. He sells everything he has, and he decides that he's going to travel the blue highways of life, and he's going to go all around America, and all he's going to do is go into small towns off of blue highways and take up residence there for a day, two, a week, and just talk to the local inhabitants and go into restaurants and learn other people's stories and their challenges and successes. And so the Blue Highway connotation, and I know this because I taught map reading when I was in the Army, is on the map, the Blue High are a secondary third pair, and the major highways, they're drawn in red. And so he decided that I don't want to travel around America on the main highways of life, because the real stories are off the blue highways. And it's just an incredible story of his journey.

Starting point is 01:15:26 And it gives you a look at America from a perspective that you wouldn't normally. And what you find out, even in these little towns around America, there's not a whole lot of difference. People, they have their anxiety. They have their joys. They have their visions. But one thing I noticed was that people in the smaller towns tend to lead a much simpler life, and their values are a lot more sustainable. And what I mean by that, they have fixed values that they've grown up with from a child, and they've never compromised. This is a great book. Once again, I spent a good bit of time trying to figure out

Starting point is 01:16:12 which ones I thought you would like. The actual next one is I bought at the University of Penn bookstore about five months ago. I never go to Philadelphia and don't go to the Penn bookstore, and they have an incredible collection of books. And so at that time, I was thinking to myself, you know, you need to change the subjects matter a little bit. The dominant conversation is America is the future, the future. Get to the future first. What's the future going to look like? And so I started to realize, you know, you need to understand more about what the future and what it is and what the potential are. So as I'm going through, going to the bookstore, I decide only books I'm going to buy are books that talk about the future. So I ended up buying about six books. And so I came across this

Starting point is 01:17:05 as the good Lord helped me discover this book, and it's called Whiplash, How to Survive Our Faster Future. And it's written by two professors at MIT. And the book is incredible. And as you can see, I destroy books. You have a lot of underlines. Do you mind if I take a quick look at that? No, no, no. I'm a bit of a note-taking fanatic, so I'm always fascinated to see how people take notes.

Starting point is 01:17:37 So you have underlines. You have things that are circled, and I see Google here. Then you have something that are circled, and I see Google here. Then you have something that is circled and looks like it has spines around it. It's almost like a cactus. So what do you reserve that for? So the ones which circle are I'm always looking for new ways to explain things and to teach. So those are words that I'll go back and I'll transfer into one of my journals because I'm looking for new ways to explain things.

Starting point is 01:18:13 Sometimes a person will be mentioned, and so I'll circle that. I'll write those down. So every day I take about a half an hour in Google. I Google people's names. I Google, as I said, with masterminds. And then I'll have where you see the markings on the side of a paragraph. That means when I go back that I want to reread that in its entirety, and it's really important. Oh, this marking right here. So what it looks like, just for people who are listening to this, it's basically a bunch of horizontal lines stacked in the margin from the beginning of, say, this paragraph to the bottom of the paragraph.

Starting point is 01:18:55 So that's something that you will reread. Yes. And I make comments. Like in this paragraph, I wrote unbelievable. This was a quote that I wanted to put in my journal on quotes. And so this was a person that was mentioned that I want to Google. A lot of times what will happen, Tim, I go back and I Google a person. And then immediately I go to see if they have a Twitter account.

Starting point is 01:19:22 And if they do, then I sign up for their Twitter account. And so to me, the handheld device has become my own personal library and my source of information. But where I've discovered a growing problem is there's this huge proliferation of information today. We're overwhelmed with information. And so what I find out is that for me, I have to segment the information. So I have this little formula, information equals knowledge, knowledge equals wisdom, wisdom equals growth. Growth allows me to share. So I take the information and I segment it into magazine reading, blogs, articles, and books.

Starting point is 01:20:16 And what I found out is that I was devoting an inordinate amount of time to blogs, articles, and magazines and newspapers, and it was compromising my book reading. So what I had to do was to start to plan out my week. And so I'll have a day where I say blogs, magazines, and newspapers. And then I'll have a day where it's book day. So that day I'm not doing anything but reading my books. The other thing I have to do is try to figure out other ways to get book reading in. So if I hop on a flight from L.A. to Austin, I put four books in my book bag that I carry on the plane. And I read four books at a time.

Starting point is 01:21:16 I have a lot of crazy things I do. Is this what you're reading now? This is one of them, yes. So just for people wondering, I love how wide-ranging this is. The Mind is the title. It's Projections in Multiple Facets by Yogi Bhajan, Ph.D., Master of Kundalini Yoga, with Guru Charan S. Khalsa, Ph.D. Amazing. What I do is if I get bored when I'm reading, I'll just switch to another book until I get one that really captures my attention. When I get on the plane, I usually start off, I'll read the Wall Street and New York Times and the local paper.

Starting point is 01:22:00 Then by the second half, I'll go to my books. Like I said, I just have all these crazy things so for example I've trained myself to understand that the blank pages I've made all the blank pages in a book valuable because I take every blank page and I write and I write notes in there so I don't have to switch to my notebook. It's more handy. So as you can see on a lot of the blank pages- And you're writing on every blank page. Yeah, I write in it. And as I go, I skip around. Wow. So hold on. So in this spread, you have three different highlighters. You have, I suppose, pink, yellow, and green. and you have some red emphasis at the top of that particular page.

Starting point is 01:22:50 Well, what I do is it helps redirect my attention to what's important. If you saw a speech that I gave, for example, I was a graduation speaker a couple of years ago at Villanova. And if you saw the speech, it's just a maze of colors. And my brain is trained that the colors will redirect my attention. And so if it's all pink, then in many ways, there really wasn't any sense to underline it, I mean, to color it. So I tend to go back. Once I read a book, I go back now,

Starting point is 01:23:35 and I'll reread the book and go with the underlining again. And sometimes if it's really powerful enough, I just do it right then. So on the key phrases or words that you circle, so my system is I put PH in the margin next to it, which stands for phrase. And then on the very beginning of the book, I create an index of phrases. So I'll have PH and then I'll put in the book numbers.

Starting point is 01:24:07 And similarly, you do these multiple passes. So when I'll go through a book and I'll underline or highlight, and then I'll go through it a second time in the margin, I'll put T2 and a circle around it just for Tim too, like second pass for things I find really interesting. Then if I read it a third time, I'll go through and I'll do T3. And so I can not only see what was interesting to me at different times, but also sometimes I'll get so excited reading a book. I don't know if you do this, but I'll highlight so much. I'll be like, okay, well, I might as well have not highlighted anything because I highlighted everything. And then the second time around, I'll be a little bit more precise maybe.

Starting point is 01:24:45 So then I can go back and I have my own table of contents, which it looks like is similar to what you do. What I found out in reading books now is when I go back on the second passage of the book, reading it, I find some pages where I didn't have anything underlined. And so just my inquisitive self, I'll go back and read that page. And there'll be three or four things that I want to underline or I want to ponder on. And I can't understand, wow, how did I miss this? So the second reading for me is revealing because I always find something that I missed, that maybe my brain just was functioning too fast or I was being distracted. And so I've learned that a second reading is vitally important.

Starting point is 01:25:44 And so then the last thing I would do is I would end up transferring these to journals. And I actually have book notes back to 1972 is when I started to keep them in three ring binders. And what I would do is when I was done with a book, I would just give the book to my, at those days it was secretary, so I'd give it to my secretary, and she would type out everything that I had underlined in the book, and then she'd create a cover page for it. And so I have three ring binders. I probably have 12 or 15 from Washington State, and I probably have, I only stayed at Iowa four years, but I'd say I probably have about eight from Iowa, and probably maybe 15 or 20 from USC. So I actually have, I saved my notes over the years. And one thing that they've been a great source of not only learning and reflection, but I find information that I can utilize in speeches.

Starting point is 01:26:53 And it's interesting also when you look back in the, I think people 50 years ago placed a greater importance on writing skills and word usages. And it was an art form now. And how people go about explaining themselves. But most of the books I read, there are very few of them that I don't come away and feel that I'm a better person. One of the things I like to ask myself at the close of every day is, what did I do to make myself a better person than I was yesterday? What did I learn today? And so from a talk that I do, I say that every day is composed of 86,400 seconds of opportunities. And how shameful is it for me at the close of my day to say that I didn't do anything, even if it's no more than a thank you, a random smile, a pat on the back. Think about this, Tim.

Starting point is 01:28:12 There are a lot of people in this country who go through 24 hours and never have anyone say anything to them positive. You might be the only person that day who said something to that person that was positive. Or I know we're in a different culture now, and I always think I'm running a little risk, but if I'm in a restaurant or somewhere and a person's waiting on me and he or she has a great smile, I invariably say, hey, you have a great smile. Sometimes I feel a little uneasy when I say it to a female because I don't want, you know, someone might think you're trying to come on to them. But at the same time, I'm willing to take that risk.

Starting point is 01:28:58 So earlier when we were leaving breakfast, as we were leaving, the two waitresses said, thanks for coming, and they had a big smile on their face. So I said to both of them, both, you two of you have a great smile. Well, to me, I like practicing random acts of kindness, because so much today, we're cruel, and unintentionally cruel. But we don't think how valuable the little things are, the thank yous, the smiles, the taking time to listen. I had a situation, I still grapple with this when people stop you on the street and ask for money. So we were having lunch yesterday and a lady came, and she asked if we could spare some money. She wanted to get something to eat or drink.

Starting point is 01:29:49 So I gave her $5, and I said, now, I hope you use the $5 on what you said you're going to do. So she points, and there's a little grocery store a few doors down. She comes back, shows me the drink and the three dollars change and so wow so we it was a win for both of us but uh i i grapple with this thing about do i give them some money and or do i or do i not but and in this case i i mean, I really felt good that I was able to do something for her, and she did something for me because she made me feel good that I could trust. What she really did is help fortify my mind that I should probably be giving more instead of less. Well, you've given a lot in a lot of ways in many years of your life, and certainly one capacity is that of coach or educator or teacher. And we could spend days, and hopefully we will.

Starting point is 01:30:59 Hopefully we'll get to know each other even better and spend more time together. But for now, I thought we might jump forward, at least from your childhood stories to the Olympics, 1984. And there are many different angles we could take to get into this. But I suppose where I want to start, there's so, so many different things that I want to touch on, but since we were talking about communicating and phrasing and words, could you, uh, could you share the motivational quote that you came up with at that time? And I think it's each one of us has a relative who gave his life for this country. The least we can do

Starting point is 01:31:46 is give 40 minutes of ourselves. Yes, that's actually a Bob Knight quote. And it was a motivating force because when you stop and think about it, very seldom in our lifetime does our country ever come to us and say, we need you. It's always the exact opposite, that we're looking for something from the government. But I felt that this was a unique opportunity that the country was basically saying to the team and the coaches that we need you and we need you to bring back a gold medal for us. And so this this was a unique opportunity for us to serve our country.

Starting point is 01:32:40 And I can remember vividly in the months leading up to the 84 Olympics in Los Angeles, I would envision that we were going to win the gold medal and we were going to be standing there and hear the national anthem play and to be at attention and look at the American flag. I know that we're in a different era now and a different time but the reality was this is how i felt and so i've i grew up in an era where where my grandma taught uh america right or wrong america whatever the problems are we'll work them out but but at the end of the day we're an american and so i i envisioned what was it going to be like when we stood there and received a gold medal and heard the national anthem played and you ever had in my life to be in a position where you could represent your country and you could have a good feeling about it. I'm sure there will be a lot of people who will question why I felt that way, but that's the truth of the matter.

Starting point is 01:34:07 And I was chatting with Ryan or texting with Ryan last night after he had dinner with you. And he was peppering me with suggested topics, which, of course, we have an overabundance of. But one of the bullets here in the notes in front of me is that it refers to you leading the practice team to beating the dream team. Can you elaborate on this, please? What happened was for the first time in the history of the Olympics, the United States decided not to use college players anymore but to use professional players and so that year the olympics were in barcelona and chuck daly was the the head coach of the u.s team and of course you had i think the only player on that dream team that's not in the basketball hall of fame right now is christian latner was he was the only college player on the roster and of course you had magic bird barkley uh uh jordan you name it was and uh so chuck and i had been lifelong friends uh back from when he was an assistant at duke and

Starting point is 01:35:19 i was an assistant at villanova and uh he was a pennlvanian, grew up in Punxsutawney. So we had a longstanding, authentic relationship. So Chuck decided that they wanted to put together a group of college players that would scrimmage the Dream Team twice a day in practice. And so he suggested that I be the coach and so CM Newton who was head of USA basketball at the time called me and asked if I would would be the coach of the team and I said I'd love to do it so they picked the players and Bobby Hurley and uh uh Chris Weber and a bunch of guys we only had eight players And Roy Williams and I coached the team together.

Starting point is 01:36:06 And so the first night that we had the scrimmage, I think the NBA guys basically looked at us. This is just a scrimmage of college guys. And so they didn't really take it as serious as we did. The college guys, we were all fired up. This is a great opportunity. So we scrimmaged for 37 minutes, and we actually beat them in the scrimmage. And so the word got out, and they were livid.

Starting point is 01:36:34 So one thing that happened, I picked one of my managers from USC to be a manager for our team. And so when the practice ended, Larry Bird came up to me and he said, Coach, can you do me a favor? I said, sure, what? He says, can you leave a van and a driver here or have somebody come back and pick me up? And so I said, I'll leave one of the managers with a van.

Starting point is 01:37:00 So Larry hadn't shot the ball that well in the scrimmage, so he stayed and shot for an hour and 15 minutes straight. And so I told him, Dennis Johnson, who was the manager, I said, when you get back, let me know you're back. And so when he came to my room, I said, how'd he go? He said, coach, he said, unbelievable. He said he just continually shot. He said he only took one water break, and he said he was drenched head to toe. And he looked at me, and he said, Coach, if Larry Bird is doing this,

Starting point is 01:37:38 what should the average guy be doing? And it was just a great experience uh i i so the next not the time we scrimmaged uh they were they were fired up and so we i'm embarrassed to say this we didn't score a field goal for the first nine minutes i mean they were on us like white on rice man they were they said oh you guys think you're hot ass you know we. We're going to show you. And Jordan was leading the pack. And so they were determined, okay, you guys think you're good? We're going to show you what good is. So I want to talk about coaching a team.

Starting point is 01:38:19 And I think the way I'd like to get into this is by asking if you could maybe mention just one coach that you have been impressed by, alive or dead, past, present, doesn't matter. And what impressed you about them? Oh, I would say two coaches who, or I'd actually have to say three. Three coaches who have had an immense impact on me as a person, as a coach, my life, would be Bob Knight, John Thompson, and Lefty Drizelle. Lefty Drizelle, I was his assistant at the University of Maryland. He was the one who taught me, who fueled my passion for reading. He was the one who taught me that you don't just read the sports section. He actually got me into a system that I still use. When I go to a newspaper now, the last section of the newspaper

Starting point is 01:39:22 I read is sports. And that's something that started back with him. He also told me the importance of reading the editorial page every day. And then the other thing was he wanted us to be the best dressed staff in the ACC. So I picked up a lot of habits from lefty that I have to this day. John Thompson and I grew up in the same neighborhood in Washington, D.C. He's had so much influence on the way I think, the way I act, what I believe. The one thing I learned with John is when you're around John, your talk to listen ratio, the listen ratio should be 90% and the talk should be 10. Because if it's any other way, you've lost a great opportunity to learn and to be taught. Because he's, a he was John is a maverick thinker and he was a maverick thinker before the connotation even existed and the other person Bob Knight just had an absolutely

Starting point is 01:40:36 amazing impact on I was at a summer league game as an assistant coach at Villanova and at halftime I go down to look at the scoreboard and the guy guy taps me on the back, and I turn, and he says, hi, my name's Bob Knight, assistant at West Point. And I say, hi, George Rowling, assistant at Villanova. And from that moment on, we had a lifelong friendship, and that's how I ended up being the assistant coach on the 84 Olympic team. But maybe Bob's greatest gift to me was that he saw something in me that I never saw in myself, and he was relentless to make sure that I achieved it. He said to me, George, if we're going to survive in this profession, we have to become an expert in some phase of the game. And you need to make yourself an expert in some phase of the game.

Starting point is 01:41:30 Bob's was defense. And so he said to me, he said, I know you speak a lot of clinics on rebounding. That's your niche. You've got to make yourself the foremost authority on the globe on rebounding. And he stayed after me on the phone he called me one night he said hey i i looked it up in the in the uh library of congress there's no book in the library of congress on rebounding so you've got a unique opportunity and so i still didn't believe that i could actually write a book and so he bob just stayed after me. So finally he said, write an outline and send it to me.

Starting point is 01:42:07 And, of course, we didn't have the technology. We did it. So I wrote an outline and sent it to him. So little did I know he was setting me up for this to walk me through this. And so the moral of the story is I end up writing a book called one night where it was Rebounders Workshop Workshop and the other one's called War on the Boards. That was the thesis in the manuscript for The Art of Rebounding. And I've probably sold 100,000 copies over the years of the book, but without Bob staying on me and being relentless and never accepting, no, he helped me find something inside of me that I would have never in my life ever thought I would

Starting point is 01:42:53 have written a book and, or even had the talent to do, but he, he saw something in me that other people didn't see in me. And that's been a lot of the relevance for this magical carpet ride I've had in life. People seeing something in me that I didn't see in myself. My grandma's seeing something in me. Sister Dolores seeing something in me. My high school coach seeing something in me. My college coach, Al Severance, he said he said something tim that i'll never ever forget one time he was talking to us and he said the first sign of intelligence is to admit that you

Starting point is 01:43:33 don't know something and and uh here i am 80 years old and and i i still remember him telling me this. And so I've learned so much. Everyone, including yourself, have touched my life in a productive way. If I don't read tools to the titan, I don't learn about mastermind. If I don't learn about mastermind, I kill myself in 20 different relationships. I learn things about people that I didn't know. So it's just been a blessed journey that you meet people who are willing to help you continue to grow, especially at 80 years old.

Starting point is 01:44:20 You think, Tim, at 60 years old, the thought process in America was you retire, you get a gold watch, and you live happily ever after. But between 60 and 80, it might be the most productive years of my life. I've grown so much. I was 63 years old, and I get appointed global director of sports marketing at Nike at 63 years old. So how does you defy the odds? Ex-basketball coach, black was an econ major, an economics major. And at that time, they didn't call it a business school.

Starting point is 01:45:13 They called it School of Commerce and Finance. So I graduated with a degree in economics. And I used to think, God, this is a waste of time. I learned all this. I'm never going to use it. And little did I know that at 63 years old, all this was going to come back to fruition, and it was going to be necessary. And so it did pay off.

Starting point is 01:45:36 And as I understand it, the job offer, or at least your beginning with Nike, came through what seemed like a prank call from Phil Knight. At least that's what I've read. Actually, it started long before that. When I went to work full-time for them, I get this call, and then we'll go back to the origin. I get a call one night and I answer the phone and the voice says, this is Philip Knight. And that's basically how Phil always

Starting point is 01:46:11 addresses it. To this day, if he calls, he's going to say, this is Philip Knight. And so I, for a momentarily, I thought, oh, somebody put me on. So then I said, is it really? He said, yeah, it's full night. I said, what's going on? He said, I just called to see if you'd be interested in coming to work for Nike full time. And so we talked it through. And I said, well, what do you want me to do? And he said, I want you to come.

Starting point is 01:46:38 And at that time, Nike had this camp called the All-American Camp. And he said, I want you to upgrade it, but I want to figure out how we can reach younger kids. And so I still have somewhere in storage the original presentation that I made to him to start a grassroots program. At that time, there was no such thing as a grassroots program. And so that was the start of me working full-time. But I actually started at Nike in 1978. Nike decides they're going to get college coaches to endorse their product. And they fly 11 of us to Las Vegas. And Jerry Tarkany was one, Jimmy Valvano, and so forth. And so John Slusher Sr. and Phil came and made the presentation to us.

Starting point is 01:47:29 And essentially, they would give you a compensation and all the product for you and your team. And this is in 78. And so I was sitting beside Bill Foster, who was coaching at Clemson at the time. And so the second day, we had to make a decision. And so part of it was they give you the compensation. The compensation was $5,000 in cash or $5,000 in stock. The impediment really wasn't, as it turned out, was if you took the stock, you couldn't cash the stock for five years. And at that time, the stock was about six bucks. And so Bill Foster leans over to me and he says, George, take the stock.

Starting point is 01:48:11 Take the stock. I'll explain to you later. He said, all these other idiots are going to take the cash. And so the five-year thing ended up being a disciplinary factor because even if you wanted to, you couldn't cash it. So then when the five years passed, Bill called me about six months before the due date, and he said, listen to me again. Don't cash the stock. Don't cash the stock. Just let it roll over.

Starting point is 01:48:36 You got this far without it. You can get the rest of it away. So anyway, by the time I finally sold the stock, it was up to $46. And then it was split. But to go back, so that year in 78, Nike sends Bill Foster, myself, and Eddie Sutton to China for a month to do clinics. And so we went to Peking, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. So at that time, Beijing did not exist. Subsequently, Beijing was, Peking was replaced with Beijing.

Starting point is 01:49:13 But at that time, it was called Peking. And so we went and did these clinics in China. And at that time, it was highly communistic. Everybody dressed the same. The women dressed with white blouse and olive green slacks. And the men had these little Nehru jackets that olive green. And wife had a Polaroid camera, and she was taking pictures. And so she took a picture of a group of Chinese people standing together conversating. And so when it developed, she showed it to them, and they were like, we might as well have been for the moon. We couldn't tell what they were saying but they were they were so excited pointing and then more people came and they they had no idea uh uh uh how this was transpiring so here's here's a an interesting story tim so a chinese gentleman steps out of

Starting point is 01:50:18 the crowd and he comes up to me and he and he and he picks my hand up and he rubs my hand looks at his fingers and so it was apparent he had never seen a black person before in his life and he thought it was paint wow and so he was rubbing to see if the paint because he couldn't figure out he'd never seen a black person before and it's just it's a story that's left an indelible mark on my my uh stay but that was maybe one of the great trips of all time. I'll tell you one other quick story. We're doing a clinic in Shanghai, and an interpreter comes up to me at the end of my lecture,

Starting point is 01:50:54 and he says, Coach, he says, this coach would like to borrow your rebounding book, and he'll bring it back in the morning. So I thought he just wanted to take it home and read it. So the next morning he comes back. Sure enough, he gives me the book, wanted to take it home and read it. So the next morning he comes back. Sure enough, he gives me the book, and he's got 25 copies of it. So overnight he printed 25 copies of the book and gave me mine back.

Starting point is 01:51:14 Welcome to China. Yeah. So you started working full-time at Nike at age 63. Is that right? Well, no. I actually took the global sports marketing job at 63. Is that right? Well, no. I actually took the global sports marketing job at 63. I actually had put in about eight years in developing this grassroots program at Nike. And then subsequently, I got this opportunity to be the global director. And you mentioned a familiar name to a lot of people,

Starting point is 01:51:46 Michael Jordan, earlier from the Dream Team. And I've seen a photograph of you with a very young Michael Jordan. So I've read that you were the one who actually convinced Michael Jordan to sign with Nike, or certainly were one of the driving factors there. Could you share that story? Yeah, I don't know if I would go that far, but I was a conduit. So early at the Olympic trials, Sonny Vaccaro, who was then heading up Nike basketball, and Phil had came to me, and they said, Hey, can you see if you can get Michael to visit with us? And so we were still training in Bloomington.

Starting point is 01:52:27 So I brought the subject up with Michael. What happened was, I don't know exactly how this happened, but Vern Fleming, who was on a team from Georgia, Patrick Ewan, myself, and Michael, we were inseparable the whole Olympic experience. We went everywhere together, and we were like the four amigos. We'd go to McDonald's. We'd go to the movies, the shopping mall.

Starting point is 01:52:51 Wherever we did, it was always the four of us. And so I developed a really unique relationship with Michael. So from time to time, I would bring it up to him about the Nike thing without being overbearing. And in the very beginning, he said, Coach, he says, I have no interest in Nike. I'm an Adidas guy. I'm going to go to Adidas. I don't even like their product. And so every now and then, I would bring it up, and he would say, Coach, I'm telling you, man, it's a waste of time.

Starting point is 01:53:21 I'm going to be an Adidas guy. So now we get through the uh we're at the Olympics and we get through pool play and we have a day off and so Sonny Vaccaro calls and he says hey can you bring Michael get him to come over and meet meet me at Tony Romer's in Santa Monica so I bring it up to Michael and I think just out of frustration to get rid of me he just said okay I'll go so we're going over in the car and then he said coach this is I'm only doing this for you he said that uh it's a waste of time whatever Nike offers me I'm going to take it to Adidas and if Adidas matches it that's it that's who I want to be so to the fast forward he ends up him and his mom and dad and david falk come up to nike for a visit

Starting point is 01:54:08 and the meeting is is successful but it didn't move the needle because michael was still convinced that he should go with uh under armor but part of nike did this i mean i'm sorry with with adidas and so part of the deal was at that time there was no such thing as a signature shoe. And so David Falk came up with this idea of Air Jordan. And Nike would make a signature shoe that would be marketed under this logo of Air Jordan. And so when the meeting goes well, we think we got a shot. And so true to his word, Michael took the deal back or David took the deal back to Adidas and Adidas passed on it because of the signature shoe thing, because they didn't feel there was any market for it, and they still made him an offer,

Starting point is 01:55:05 but they wouldn't go on the signature shoe thing. And if I remember correctly, Michael was getting five cents royalty on his shoe. So at any rate, Michael ended up accepting the offer from Nike, and as they say on television the rest was history but here we are today and and Jordan Brand is is a business of it so and so so like there's Nike Inc and then you have these subsets Hurley Converse Jordan Brand so Jordan Brand is the second biggest seller of basketball shoes in the world basketball shoes other than Nike Inc and they sell more basketball shoes in the world. Basketball shoes other than Nike Inc. And they sell more basketball shoes than Under Armour or Adidas.

Starting point is 01:55:51 And so here you go back to 84. And here today, he sits at the head of one of the most profitable sport footwear companies in the world. And what's interesting, which historians will put in their rightful place one day, is Nike was the first Fortune 500 company to take a black male and make them the face of their company. And I'm sure you're familiar with the Spike Lee ads and all those things like that. And so there was a huge uh a risk in some ways but one time i mentioned to michael about nike taking a risk and so he quickly came back to me he says nike took a risk hey i took a risk too so you've you've spent so much time teaching and guiding and cultivating players and people who work for you and the people around you.

Starting point is 01:56:56 I had read, and please feel free to correct this, but that you've said the most important conversation is the one you have with yourself. Right. Right. Yeah. So could you elaborate on that, please? Because I think that self-talk is, and I'm not sure that's what you're referring to, but it's so, so terribly important. So I'd love to hear you just elaborate on that the older i've uh gotten the more i've come to to to to the conclusion that the the that the conversation that you have every day with yourself as you characterize it self-talk

Starting point is 01:57:37 is so vital it's far more important than the conversations you have with those around you and the best part about the conversation with yourself is you're in total control of that conversation. You can craft the conversation any way you want to. And so I try to have at least 90% of the conversations that I have with myself, which I have two or three times a day, that it's positive self-talk. If I start to linger on to something negative, then what I'll do is I'll immediately deal with it and discount it. For example, since I'm Catholic, I'll make this confession. So this morning when I got up, your reputation is so impeccable that I was I was I got up at five. I'm really nervous. I'm thinking to myself, God, what if I if I do a bad job, I'll be so embarrassed. And so the minute I started thinking that, I said, nope, that's not it.

Starting point is 01:58:42 Get fired up, man. You're going to do it. And I'm so I'm in, I'm in, I'm in the bathroom and I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm doing this motivational talk for myself to eradicate any doubt that I have. And, and, and, and I keep saying to myself, you got to go in there. You got to give me the best shot. You can do it. So I'm, I'm getting myself fired up for it. And this is out loud. Yeah. I mean, because I really spend as much time as probably at least, I wouldn't say probably, once a day, I'll find an hour to just go someplace and sit by myself. And all I'll do is take a notebook and just put it in a pen in front of me and I'll just sit there and think. Whatever comes into my mind,

Starting point is 01:59:27 and then I start to fixate on those things, or I'll write down notes as a result of something that I think, or I'll write out a strategy. For example, the way I govern my day, Tim, is I get up in the morning, and I put my two feet beside the bed and I say to myself, okay, George, you only have two choices today. These are the only two choices that you have and you got to make one. And the two choices are to be happy or to be very happy.

Starting point is 02:00:00 And there's no other choice. And so then I start to plan out my day and i'm all and so i i have these these points of focus energy uh time man energy management time management environmental management productivity and to me productivity is a byproduct of the other three so how do i manage my my energy every day so that i can i can be at maximum efficiency so one of the other three. So how do I manage my energy every day so that I can be at maximum efficiency? So one of the things I try to do is declutter my mind. I won't do any more than four things a day. And it reverts back to something one of the presidents at Nike, Charlie Denson, said one time in a leadership meeting. He said, let me ask you guys this. Would we be better off doing 25 things good or would we be better off doing six things great?

Starting point is 02:00:53 And so to me, to make simplify my day, I will not do more than four things. I try to limit the meetings to two. And if it's two, one of them is usually a breakfast meeting. When I go into the office, I have a total commitment once I get into the office to be totally focused on business matters, try to be as disciplined as I can not to get on the telephone. And also to meet with the two people that work with me. We meet every single day and we talk as a team because I want us to function as a team. I want each person's opinion to be valued. If one person happens to be 50 years younger than me, so what? Their opinion is valuable to me. I respect

Starting point is 02:01:47 everyone's knowledge. And I think to myself, they know something that I don't know. And so I want to value their opinion. So we meet every day as a staff. We talk about things. And it helps me grow, and it keeps my day simplified. I try to once a week have a personal audit. I go back through the week, and I audit my week, and make course corrections along the way. So that's when I really get into the self-talk part is having these little mental audits that my life's just not going on and on and on. I try to evaluate, am I making progress? What am I doing that's good? What am I doing that's not working?

Starting point is 02:02:35 And then make those course corrections. And at 80 years old, I try to hold myself to the most severe standards. And I just despise the idea of retirement. I think that it's the biggest force that's ever been predicated on us is this idea of retirement. Because the first thing that happens, you retire physically and then you retire mentally. And then you're just taking up residence in in in in society and i don't ever want to be a resident of society i want to be a contributor to society well you you seem like you're just getting warmed up uh you certainly have lots of energy uh what are you most excited about uh these and working on? Well, what I get most excited

Starting point is 02:03:28 about is just when you're 80 years old, you damn sure better be excited that you wake up the next morning and you have a growth opportunity. I'm still trying to understand, like most of us, what the future is going to be like and how can I get to the future first? And what's the future going to be like? But I read a lot of books and talk to a lot of people, but I don't know if anybody can really tell you what the world's going to be like five years from now. Not 10 years from now, but five years from now, we're in a society where it behooves all of us to be comfortable with change and to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. If you could, metaphorically speaking, put anything on a billboard,

Starting point is 02:04:22 not commercial, but a message, a quote, a word, a question, somebody else's quote, could be anything to get out to millions or billions of people. What type of message or word or quote or anything might you put on that billboard? I would say if I could put up a billboard and a message to people, the quote would be, if it is to be, it's up to me. Because at the end of the day, each of us have an individual responsibility to ourselves and to our society to figure out ways to be positive difference makers. And it all starts in life. I'm fond of reminding myself that nobody's going to row your boat but you. You've got to get in and you've got to row your boat to the other side of the lake. And so I would remind people, as I said, if it is to be, it's up to me and that's something that uh i had on my

Starting point is 02:05:28 office door i had a big sign at washington state i had it on my office door it's something that i've tried to to make an indelible mark on my brain that it's up to me it changes about the best, the most authentic change takes place within yourself. And so, and oftentimes in life, Tim, as you know, the most important person you ever get to lead is yourself. And if you can't lead yourself, how are you going to lead other people? And so, I would like to challenge people to start to look within before they look out, is to look within. And what are the things that I can do to be a positive change maker in my life and in the life of others? And when we talk about being a positive change maker the thought process is this is about trying to change society but when i hear people always say do something that'll change the

Starting point is 02:06:32 world what would if you want to do something that's going to change the world you change first and that's going to that's and if everybody started to feel that way we'd have this huge movement of change that would be authentic. Hear, hear. I'm getting all fired up. You're good at that, Coach. I want to be respectful of your time, so I think we're going to wrap up shortly here. But is there anything else you'd like to share, any other parting words? Certainly people can find you at George Raveling on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, website, coachgeorgeraveling.com.

Starting point is 02:07:06 I encourage everybody to check it out. But is there anything else that you'd like to recommend to people? You got me off the hook because all my youthful advisors said, Coach, make sure you tell people how to stay in touch with you. But technology has helped me create a platform of sharing to try to share. One thing my grandma said to me one time, she was correcting me, and I was a little smart-alecky. And so she looked at me in a stern way, and she said, boy, let me tell you something. I know where the potholes are in life And maybe if you listen to me I can help you avoid stepping into them

Starting point is 02:07:48 So at 80 years old I think of my grandma And I say, hey, I know where a lot of the potholes are in life And maybe I can tell you where they are And share my life experiences with you So that you don't have to step into those potholes And so that's what I try to do is to share. An old guy told me one time,

Starting point is 02:08:09 nothing in life is of any value unless you can share it with other people. And so that is the essence of me at 80 years old. What is it that I have that I can share with others, and what can I give away? I don't even know if I said this to my wife yet, so you're going to be the beneficiary of a movement. I now have committed that I'm going to try to give away most of my personal belongings. I'm going to give away my clothes and my books. I won't. I'm trying to give away as much stuff as I can to simplify my life. I can only wear one pair of shoes. I can only wear one pair of underwear.

Starting point is 02:08:46 I don't need all these things. And so I'm going to rid myself of all these material things that I thought were important at 80 years old. The money's not that I learned. Money's not that important. Collecting things are not that important. How you dress. All those things become what I call surrender. Someone tells you what time to get up in the morning, what time to go to bed,

Starting point is 02:09:14 what to eat, what to dress, how to act. And so we end up being prisoners of someone else's expectations. So I want to live to whatever time I have left. And I want to, as Martin Luther King said, free at last, free at last. Thank God almighty, we're free at last. I just want to be free of all these fences that society has put up around me. And I want to try to find out where are my outer limits. And once you take down the fences, you allow a person to seek their outer limits. And that's what I'm trying to do at 80 years old, is to figure out where my outer limits are and to keep reaching for them. Well, Coach, I hope to have many more conversations with you.

Starting point is 02:10:00 So thank you so much, sir. Thank you. And may you be around for at least another 80. And what a gift of a conversation. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate you giving me the time. And for everybody listening, for links to everything we talked about,

Starting point is 02:10:20 certainly where you can find Coach Raveling online and learn what he's up to. In addition to the books that we discussed and everything else, you can find all of that linked in the show notes at Tim dot blog forward slash podcast. What a ride. And, uh, to everybody out there until next time.

Starting point is 02:10:40 Thank you for listening. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend. And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've

Starting point is 02:11:11 been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out.

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #332: Coach George Raveling — A Legend on Sports, Business, and The Great Game of Life

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The Tim Ferriss Show - #332: Coach George Raveling — A Legend on Sports, Business, and The Great Game of Life

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