Finding Transformation In Mindset Shifts with Dre Baldwin
“PRESENCE IS WHAT REMAINS WHEN YOU STRIP AWAY ALL THE NOISE, ALL THE EXCESS.”
In this episode, Nick speaks with Dre Baldwin about his journey from basketball to internet entrepreneurship, emphasizing mindset, self-awareness, and overcoming challenges. Listen in to discover how his experiences shaped his approach to self-mastery and success.
What to listen for:
* Dre Baldwin’s basketball career and transition to entrepreneurship
* The importance of mindset and self-awareness in success
* Lessons learned from sports and their application to business
* The role of discipline and resilience in overcoming challenges
* Strategies for personal growth and self-mastery
“You can have all the right skills, desire, motivation, and resources, but if you’re in the wrong vehicle, you will not get to where you want to get to.”
* Knowing where we want to go is incredibly important to continuing on the right path
* Sometimes our “right path” is only really just a leg of the journey, and discernment is important to keep on that path or not
* This also urges us to consider what we really want and to look at the “vehicle” we’re in, honestly and without bias or interpretation.
“To get to the actual issue, you really have to find out who’s the person behind the issue. Who’s the person behind the problem?”
* Looking deeper than the surface at our “why” with our goals and pursuits is critical
* This speaks to ourselves as well as the people we interact with and work with
* Getting to know a person, or ourselves, deeper ties in wants, hopes, dreams, motivations, and understanding the person behind the problem helps us understand context.
About Dre Baldwin
Dre built Work On Your Game® to turn disciplined execution into dominance. A 4x TEDx speaker and 43-time author, Dre played pro basketball for 9 years. Today, he helps experts and entrepreneurs install mindset, systems, and strategy to scale from six to seven figures with presence and power.
* http://DreAllDay.com [http://DreAllDay.com]
* http://LinkedIn.com/in/DreAllDay [http://LinkedIn.com/in/DreAllDay]
* http://Instagram.com/DreBaldwin [http://Instagram.com/DreBaldwin]
* https://www.workonyourgame.com/ [https://www.workonyourgame.com/]
Resources:
Check out other similar episodes:
* The Greatness Inside Of You Like A Superstar Athlete With Darlene Santore [https://themindsetandselfmasteryshow.com/greatness-inside-with-darlene-santore/]
* How To Not Rush Through The Trauma Storm With David Kitchens [https://themindsetandselfmasteryshow.com/how-to-not-rush-through-the-trauma-storm-with-david-kitchens/]
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Interested in starting your own podcast or need help with one you already have? Check out Nick’s website for more information: https://nickmcgowan.com/ [https://nickmcgowan.com/]
Learn more about our host, Nick McGowan [https://nickmcgowan.com/].
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Click Here To View The Episode Transcript
Nick McGowan (00:00.206)
Hello and welcome to the Mindset and Self-Mastery Show. I’m your host, Nick McGowan. Today on the show, we have Dre Baldwin. Dre, what’s going on, man? How are you doing?
Dre Baldwin (00:11.005)
I’m doing great, Nick. How about yourself?
Nick McGowan (00:13.004)
I’m good. I’m good. I’m stoked that you’re here. I think it’s gonna be a really good conversation. I told you right up front, I missed the memo for the suit. I’m sorry. But I appreciate you showing up and looking how you are. One of the things that stood out to me when you were your team member reached out about you being on the show was your history in basketball. And being able to tie that into the work that you’re doing now, and how your pursuit of your own version of self mastery has really flexed
through every single bit of this. So I know there’s a lot of stuff that we’re gonna get into, but that’s one of the main things that really stood out to me. So I’m excited that you’re here. I always like to get things started though with telling us what’s one thing that most people don’t know about you. It’s a little odd or bizarre and what do you do for a living?
Dre Baldwin (00:59.369)
One thing that’s a little out of bizarre. once went out on a date with a woman who turned out to be a man and What do I do for a living is I hope I get to give context to that. But anyway, what do I do for a living is We have high level professionals with structured execution if I put it in the one statement
Nick McGowan (01:12.75)
Yeah.
Nick McGowan (01:20.218)
Cool. I appreciate that. I’m still chuckling a little bit like who in their right mind wouldn’t give you the platform to like follow up on that? Because the first thing I want to make sure is that you’re not saying it in a really hateful way. I assume that’s not the case. And based on what I know of you, that doesn’t seem to be the case. But again, who in their right mind be like, Nope, we’re leaving that they’re just gonna fucking cliffhanger. So go on, tell us the story.
Dre Baldwin (01:27.622)
You
Dre Baldwin (01:46.739)
So this is about, I was about 19, 18, 19 years of age. So we are both from the Philadelphia area. And every year in the summertime in Philadelphia, there’s this event called the Greek Picnic. I don’t know if you knew about it. So the Greek Picnic is all these fraternity and sorority organizations, usually the black fraternity sororities, they all have this big event down at, I think it’s the Belmont Plateau in Philadelphia. Then that’s during the day, the picnics during the day. Then at night, everybody goes to this place called South Street.
Nick McGowan (02:10.392)
Mm-hmm.
Dre Baldwin (02:16.553)
And South Street is a place in Philly where everybody just goes and walks. So was kind of like Times Square in Manhattan, the Strip in Vegas, Ocean Drive in Miami Beach. You have South Street in Philadelphia. So I did not pledge in college, but every year, even since I was in high school, we would always go to South Street and 90 degree picnic because everybody’s out there. It’s kind of like New Year’s Eve, Times Square. Everybody’s out there. It’s hard to drive, but there’s so many girls out there. You go out there just to talk to girls. So we go out there and talk to girls and I meet this girl. She was interested in me. I’m interested back. So we
exchange phone numbers and all of that. And she lived all the way down there near South Street. I lived up in the upper Northwest part of the city. I go and see her. didn’t actually go on. It technically wasn’t a date. We didn’t go anywhere. I just went to her house. We were basically sitting on the steps talking, but we sat there and talked for an hour or two. She had a roommate. Her roommate came by. She went, goes into the house and another guy while I’m sitting there talking to her, another guy comes up. He goes in to see the roommate. So anyway, we have the conversation, whatever I leave.
And a couple of days later, I’m talking to this girl on the phone and I think she noticed my naivete. And she said to me, Dre, I want to let you know something. She said, I’m a pre-op transsexual. I didn’t even quite know what that meant. And I was like, what does that mean? I did know, but I didn’t know. So I had her spell it out. And she said, no, I’m guy, I’m not as endowed as you, but I haven’t had the operation yet. And I just didn’t know. My vision was not.
tuned enough to have noticed this when it was all happening. And then I was thinking, I was like, well, what about that guy who came by while we were sitting on your steps, who went in the house to see your roommate? Because a roommate was the same thing. Also preop transsexuals. said, well, yeah, he knew the deal. So I guess he thought I knew the deal. I didn’t know the deal. So this was my learning of finding out what the situation was. So that’s the story there. That was 19 years of age. I’m 44 now.
Nick McGowan (04:04.396)
Man. Yeah, how old are you?
All right, cool, I’m 41. So back then, that you really had an opportunity to be a fucking asshole about it. There’s a lot of people, especially in the Philadelphia area, that would have been so pushed away from that, even gotten violent, and really become hateful with it. And a lot of it was normal back then. There was just hatred of other people and just…
just bullshit and especially with guys from the area, we would just be douchebags to each other. And then if something like that happened, like your boys could be after you because of it or whatever. So what a cool thing for you to not be a complete fucking asshole about it. Only for years later to understand like that is, that’s gotta be a big, big life transition for people and to not even think about it from their perspective. Like that’s awesome that she said, this is what’s going on. This is where I’m at.
That took a lot of courage to even say that and a lot of courage to step out, you know.
Dre Baldwin (05:10.899)
Yeah.
I guess so, because I think she could tell that I didn’t know. So I think most of the time back then, because we would go to South Street all the time and you would see these cross dressing men walking around. And what would happen is men would drive by in cars and I say those are men and laugh and joke and all that and just drive by. And but you could tell even from across the street, like that’s a man. She had it done well enough that I didn’t know. And I had a couple of my boys with me when I met the girl. None of them said anything. So
Nick McGowan (05:25.464)
Mm-hmm.
Dre Baldwin (05:43.294)
They didn’t know. And when I told them, they made jokes about it at the, weren’t around the girl. They made jokes about it with me. I didn’t, I just didn’t even notice. But back then with us, it would be like, okay, you could tell that’s a man. We just keep going. But I think they knew the woman or the man dressed as a woman, whatever you want to call this. They would talk to men who knew the deal. And that was just, they were just cool with it. Like that guy who walked into the house while I was there, I guess he just knew. I just didn’t know.
And back then it wasn’t even a thing that we were thinking about, not the way it is now. We weren’t thinking about it in that way. Now it’s much more open. But back then for me, it was something I had never come across.
Nick McGowan (06:21.452)
I always find it interesting how people choose to answer this question and like what the thing is like I even said before we hit record like just don’t tell me your favorite colors purple or something like that so I always appreciate when people bring something up because there’s some some reason for that like that must have shaped you in some sort of way so even if it’s a subconscious thing that yeah it shaped me but you know I really think about it too too much in this context of this conversation as we talk about that how has that actually shaped you
And way that you look at not only people and their choices, but yourself and how it’s kind of folded within your life.
Dre Baldwin (06:57.577)
Hmm. It’s an interesting question. I never thought about it like that. I always looked at it like a, it’s like a funny thing to me. That’s the reason why I bring it up. Yeah. The other thing, other thing I thought about was I once was in a hot dog eating contest. I think this is a little bit more depth. So that’s why I went with that one. But for me, I never, I never really think about it except when I’m bringing it up, like, Hey, this is, appearances can be deceiving. And nowadays it’s kind of come full circle because now no LGBTQ is a big thing. But in this is what
Nick McGowan (07:02.99)
Snapple fact sort of thing,
Nick McGowan (07:11.279)
Hahaha
Dre Baldwin (07:26.665)
19, this is like 2000 around 2000 2001. It wasn’t a big thing. We knew it existed, but it was way in the shadows. Then as opposed to how it is now. I don’t know how it has affected me subconsciously. I’ve been stopped approaching girls. I kept doing that. So I don’t know. I can’t answer that question.
Nick McGowan (07:43.534)
Yeah, I appreciate. I appreciate the honest answer. You know, like even it might be something where like down the road you realize, maybe it shaped me this way. And it’s also, it doesn’t have to, you know, that might be one of those things where like, made you kind of look a little differently at things. I find it interesting how some people like your boys, your friends would talk shit or say whatever. And maybe some of those maybe
didn’t understand exactly what was going on, but we’re trying to fit within the system of things and like, let’s have these conversations. So I always think this stuff can shape us in some sort of way, because it was just a little different or abnormal or whatever. Sometimes the meaningless things in life are the things that can mean a lot to us or the like random happenstances of things. But it’s funny pointing out like, even with South Street and how South Street is like Times Square. I’ve never thought about that, but I lived on Fitzwater for a little while.
like right off of South Street for a while. Yeah, I was actually explaining to my partner recently. I was like, when we go to Philly, we’ll have to go to South Street. South Street is like a long street where you walk in their stores. She was like, that sounds like a normal fucking street. Like, but it’s more than that, you know, so I’m going to use the Times Square thing. But that’s cool. Yeah, exactly. Some people don’t know the ocean drive thing, but like, I get that. Man, so I appreciate bringing that up with
Dre Baldwin (08:40.499)
Yeah, that’s right there.
Dre Baldwin (08:56.809)
Alright, four O’s in draft. Yeah.
Nick McGowan (09:09.782)
the path that you’re on now and the business that you’re on, I think one thing that we could easily skip past is that you spent, what was it, nine, 10 years playing professional basketball?
Nick McGowan (09:22.925)
So I have never been a professional athlete. I remember wanting to be a professional, a couple different things, you know, as a kid, just like people are like, I want to be a rock star, I want to be this, I want to be that. There’s a level of discipline. There’s a level of belief in yourself, confidence, and like fucking around and finding out to be able to execute on stuff like that. Even if you didn’t get into the NBA or if you were the fucking, I don’t know, you turned into Kevin Durant or whatever, like there’s a lot that you actually went through to figure out.
what is it that I want out of life? And you started to do that early on, but you’re not doing it at this point. So I’m interested in how that shaped you. like, tell us a bit about the journey and how that actually led into what you’re doing today.
Dre Baldwin (10:04.905)
Great question. So it started with, let’s just go back to childhood, always in the sports. And I was playing, one of the first lessons I learned was getting into the proper vehicle. So I was playing baseball for several years. And I realized by the time I got to about right before high school, and this is because when you first played baseball as a kid, you had T ball, you just hit the ball off the tee. Then you have a pitching machine. You know the pitching machine where the ball goes to the same spot every time.
I got pretty good at the pitching machine baseball, but then when we had to play against real live people throwing the ball, I couldn’t hit the ball. I probably had a little bit of fear of the ball. So I was never good at hitting and my fielding wasn’t even that great either. So I realized, okay, I’m not going to go too far in baseball. No matter how hard I try at this, I just don’t have the natural inclination, but I was still into sports. So then I moved over to basketball and I started off not good, but I could feel myself getting better at basketball and I stuck with it. And eventually came to what you mentioned.
The thing is, later on, looking back, that’s when I realized this principle that I tell people about all the time nowadays is called the right vehicle. So you can have all the right skills, desire, motivation, and resources, but if you’re in the wrong vehicle, you will not get to where you want to get to. And for some people, the right vehicle is playing baseball. For some, it’s basketball. For some, it’s not sports at all. For some, it’s analyzing sports. You can be a podcaster or a YouTuber. For some people, it’s not being in the sports realm. It’s doing something different.
Not everybody can do everything even if you put the same amount of effort in. So that’s the first principle I got from sports. Looking back, I didn’t realize that when I was 13, but I realized it later. Then moving on, barely playing in high school, played one year, sat the bench. My going to college, I went to a Division III college. So anyone who doesn’t know sports, the guys you see on TV, that’s Division I. That’s football, basketball, that’s Division I. Division II is right under that and Division III is down in the basement.
And the players in Division 3 don’t usually think they’re going to make it pro. A lot of them will say they think they will, but they don’t really believe it because I’ve always been a believer in it. You want to know what somebody believes, that’s what they do. Don’t listen to what they say. And coming out of a Division 3 school, nobody’s calling you to go play pro, most players, even if you were pretty good because you’re playing against other guys who are not pro caliber. So when I got out of college, nobody was calling me. I had to go to these events called exposure camps. You ever heard of those? Know what they are?
Nick McGowan (12:18.701)
Yeah.
Nick McGowan (12:25.942)
No, but I would assume it’s like a talent sort of thing where scouts get together and see what you can do. Yeah, cool.
Dre Baldwin (12:30.621)
Yeah, casting call, a job fair for athletes. And it’s rough because you got 200 guys who all think they should be playing pro, all trying to prove themselves at the same time. And that’d cool if we were playing golf or tennis, but basketball is a team sport. So you’re playing on the same team with five other guys who all think they should be playing pro too. So everybody’s trying to show off. So it’s not the normal type of basketball. It’s not like everyone’s playing selfless basketball because they’re all trying to show off. I went to several of those over the course of my career, but
Nick McGowan (12:49.474)
Yeah.
Dre Baldwin (12:58.727)
The first one I went to led to me getting on and getting my first opportunity playing basketball. And in that experience, it was really about investing yourself. Let me tell you how I ended up at that event. So I’m from Philadelphia. The event was in Orlando, Florida. And this is the summer of 2005, graduated college in 2004. The event was not free. You pay $250 to go to the event. I reached out to the event organizers about a month ahead of time and asked them, would it be OK if I pay the event fee?
in cash at the door because I did not have a credit card or a bank account at the time. So I had to pay them in cash. They said, yes, you can pay in cash at this time. I’m working at a gym called Valley Total Fitness. I don’t know if you remember them. They’re out of business now, not because of me. I made a lot of sales and at Valley that the commission checks came on a certain Friday every month. I had I didn’t even have to work that day. I had to negotiate with my boss to get the weekend off because the event was Saturday and Sunday.
Nick McGowan (13:37.775)
yeah. yeah. Yeah.
Dre Baldwin (13:55.038)
I’m in Philly. We’re going to drive me and a couple of college teammates who are also ambitious. We’re going to rent a car in Philly and drive to Orlando. That’s a 19 hour drive. For those who don’t know the geography, I had to go to my job though first and wait for the DHL truck to come because the DHL guy brought the commission checks. I needed that commission check because I had to go around the corner to the Chinese store and cash it. So I had to cash to pay that $250 at the door. That was my last $250 at this time. I’m living in my parents’ house. I’m working at Valley Total Fitness. have a college degree, but I don’t have
anything going on. I spent that 250 at the door and I had to do something over that two day camp to get my first opportunity. So that was really about investing in yourself and really putting your back against the ball. And then you got to perform when it matters. That camp is only two days. It’s not like you have a month to prove yourself. It’s two days. And I played pretty well there. Got my first job. That was 2005. Moving on, fast forwarding in this story, there that
Nick McGowan (14:42.498)
Yeah.
Dre Baldwin (14:51.751)
basketball career wasn’t some smooth up into the right process. There’s a lot of people here, professional athlete. Now you’re an entrepreneur. So they think, okay, well, I guess it was easy for you once you got on in sports. But no, there were many times that, how do I better explain it? When there are people in acting, let’s say in the movies, you have your Leonardo DiCaprio’s or Scarlett Johansson’s, they get $50 million to do a movie Will Smith. And no, they don’t do a movie for a year or two. They’re okay. Most actors and actresses careers don’t go that
Nick McGowan (15:18.509)
Mm-hmm.
Dre Baldwin (15:21.159)
Most actors and actresses in between movies, what are they doing? All right, they’re bartending, they’re working at Starbucks and they’re bagging groceries. They don’t know if they’re gonna get another job. They are going from casting call to casting call, hoping to get an opportunity to get on. And in sports is the same way. Not every athlete is LeBron James or Lamar Jackson. A lot of athletes are on the fringes, meaning you have a job then you don’t. You’re waiting for your agent to call. You have to stay in shape just in case the call comes, if the call comes.
Nick McGowan (15:24.664)
Part-time job. Yeah.
Thank
Nick McGowan (15:34.755)
Yeah.
Dre Baldwin (15:49.546)
Then when it comes, you don’t know how long you’re going to be there because you may face the squeeze on the roster and you’re the one who gets squeezed, not because you can’t play, but because it’s just a numbers game. So a lot of times in my career, even playing overseas, it can be like that. So there are a lot of times in between jobs over the course of my career, I played on a different team every year. I never played in the same team twice in a row or twice total. Every year was a different team, every year, a different country because in between job and in between jobs, didn’t know where the next job was coming or if the next job was coming.
Nick McGowan (15:58.05)
Yeah.
Dre Baldwin (16:18.569)
There are times where I had to go get a job because there was no job. So the last time I had it, I went and got two more jobs in between the start of my career. My last job was in 2007. I signed in Montenegro 2008. Haven’t didn’t work a quote unquote regular job after that. That was because I was on this new thing called YouTube. And that’s where I started to build my brand. And that’s where I realized about 2009, 2010, I was putting basketball video content on the internet. That’s when I realized.
What I’m doing here on the internet is gonna be bigger than what I’m doing on the basketball court. Even though my content was basketball, it was the internet that was amplifying my name. So if I go to the mall right now today in Miami and somebody recognizes me, it’s not because I played in Slovakia for six months. It’s because I was on YouTube for 10 years making that basketball content. That’s where people know me from, is from YouTube. And I knew back then, I said, this internet thing is gonna be bigger for me than anything I’m doing on the court. And I was right about that.
Nick McGowan (17:00.983)
Hehehe.
Dre Baldwin (17:15.625)
At that time, I finished reading this book called The Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss, I’m you’re familiar with. And in that book, Tim was talking about how you can take an idea and start putting on internet and make money from it. I followed his advice and I started selling $5 training programs to basketball players. That’s where I knew my future was in internet entrepreneurship, or entrepreneurship powered by the internet, let’s put it that way. Harking back a little bit in the story, about 2002.
I people can keep up with this timeline. know I’m jumping a lot here. About 2002, I got introduced to a business opportunity. It turned out to be network marketing. I did not build a career in network marketing, but I went to some meetings. And I’m forever grateful for the meetings that I went to and the dabbling that I did in network marketing, because it teaches you a lot about entrepreneurship. It teaches you a lot about how to make money other than a traditional nine to five job, which is what my parents had. That’s all I knew until then. And also you learn a lot about people when you’re…
trying to sell them into a network marketing opportunity. So you want to know about yourself too. And as a great sales crash course. in there, two things I got from that. Number one, well, three things. Number one is the entrepreneurship. Number two is that they mentioned these books. They would say personal development, personal development. You got to do the personal development. And they would just mention the names of these authors who I’d never heard of. They would say Tony Robinson, Jim Rohn, and Brian Tracy, and Napoleon Hill. And I’m like, who? I never heard any of these people.
Nick McGowan (18:17.442)
Yeah.
Nick McGowan (18:29.475)
Mm-hmm.
Dre Baldwin (18:39.475)
But I remembered the names. I couldn’t afford the books. They were selling them right outside the hotel room. I couldn’t afford them. But I remember the names. So I went on eBay. So again, those of you old enough, eBay before Amazon was the place you went to eBay to buy stuff. Went on eBay and I bought two pirated copies of two books that I could remember. One of them was called Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. And I bought that book. It showed me that there is a way that you could intentionally alter your conscious thoughts that would alter your behavior and thus alter your outcomes. And he was right.
Nick McGowan (18:51.47)
the
Dre Baldwin (19:08.839)
And other book I bought was called Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. And that book told me, there’s another way that you can actually be an adult and make money other than what I saw the adults around me doing. And the reason why I was so inclined to look at what Mr. Kiyosaki was saying is because my parents showed up every day, did their jobs. They never bragged about it. They never announced it. They did their work every day. The reason I am
Nick McGowan (19:19.255)
Okay.
Dre Baldwin (19:35.038)
what people will call a disciplined person to this day is because the example that I had at home from my parents. At the same time, the adults around me talked about work as a necessary evil. It wasn’t, get to go to work. It was, have to go to work. They talked about their jobs as if it was a somewhat negative thing, good because it paid the bills, but negative because they didn’t really like it. And they didn’t really like the people they had to deal with. And I was looking at them thinking, okay, well, I graduated from college. I guess I got to go do maybe a little bit better version of what they’re doing.
Nick McGowan (19:45.42)
Mm-hmm.
Dre Baldwin (20:03.431)
But when I read Kiyosaki, he said, there’s another way to do it. And anybody who’s read the book knows he’s juxtaposing his real dad who had a great education, went and got a job and his friends, best friends, dad, the rich dad. He was the one who dropped out of school, but was a business owner. He owned assets and he made money. He seemed happy about going to work. Whereas his poor dad, his real dad got kicked out of the system when he got too old and too expensive for the system. So that put me onto that. And that I got all that from network marketing. Anyway, combined that with Tim Ferriss.
seven, eight years later, combined that with the internet, combined that with social media and basketball, that’s where I started to build what became my company, which was helping basketball players at first, and it transitioned into where we are today. Let me jump again in the story. 2015, I’m looking at the end of the road. Okay, I’m going to get out of basketball. What am I going to do next? So at this point, I was starting to make these mindset videos where basketball players who are watching me,
my material was all basketball for about the first five years, 2005 to 2010. The players started asking me about mindset because they saw I was putting out videos every single day before that was a normal thing to do. Nowadays, that’s normal. But back then it wasn’t normal. So they’re like, why are you going to the gym every day to work out? Sometimes because I would tell them where I who I was. Division three, Kyle is playing overseas right now. I’m unemployed. You don’t even know if you get another job, Jerry. Why do you keep working out? How do you keep yourself motivated? Or you got cut from your high school team three times like me.
Nick McGowan (21:10.968)
Mm-hmm.
Dre Baldwin (21:28.753)
How did you keep going when you got cut and there was no right at the end of the tunnel? And I started talking about things like discipline and confidence and mental toughness and being prepared and how you had to take negative situations and use them as fuel for positive action. And I called it the weekly motivation. And what happened is a bunch of people who didn’t play basketball started finding me there. That’s when I knew, okay, I can take this aspect of what I’m doing and I can serve people outside of the realm of sports, even when I don’t play anymore.
Because I knew that if I stopped playing basketball every day and putting these videos out, my $5 products are going to stop selling. I could read the writing on the wall. I saw how it worked. I could tell you that 15 years ago. People are now realizing it now on TikTok, but I knew that back then. So that’s how I knew what I was going to do next. I need to take this mindset stuff, and I’m noticing people who don’t play basketball need it. And that’s what became what I do today. So that was 2015, and now here we are. So let me stop my story so you can get back to ask some questions.
Nick McGowan (22:04.782)
you
Nick McGowan (22:28.078)
Like a true professional, ladies and gentlemen, somebody who’s been on many podcasts. I always look for what are the main components of these things. And one of the biggest things that I have learned from being specifically on this show and running this show for four plus years is if you don’t have awareness, you can’t do anything. You just can’t. If you’re not aware of something, you can’t do anything with something you’re not aware of.
And a lot of people will push their awareness off like the people that hate their jobs, you know, I got to go to my job. It’s got to pay for things. There can be a level of awareness to go, but wait a minute, fucking time out. If I don’t like this, why don’t I do something else? You and I experienced similar things where people just bitching complain and just fond of bitching complain. Then they belly up to the bar at the end of the week and drink through the weekend and then bitching complain throughout the week and just rinse and repeat instead of going, hold on timeout. Let me do something different.
you had a lot of different iterations and things that led you to something else. Like looking back, you probably would have thought way back in the day, I’m gonna be a professional ball player and make millions of dollars. This is how my life is gonna go. Cause you’re on that path and you’re really pushing for it. Even to go spend your last $250 all the way in Orlando, which 19 hours is if you’re fucking moving.
Dre Baldwin (23:48.723)
So,
Nick McGowan (23:49.408)
Most people will take like a day and they’ll have to stop, but you and a couple of friends like taking turns asleep and I’ve done that drive before I get it. There’s a lot of different things that could have really pushed you off the path, but you kept going with the path. And that’s what I like to be able to break apart of like, actually kept you going with that? Because you’re aware enough to go, hmm, well.
I don’t know if I’m going to get another job doing this, but I’m seeing that I’m having these conversations and I want to talk about these things. Even like with you to say the new thing, YouTube back then, it gets wild to think that, I don’t know, we weren’t super young when YouTube was new, but geez, we really were. And you were early to it, you know? I talked to people about social media at times where I’m like, I had a social media marketing company in 2013 and I was fucking late.
Dre Baldwin (24:31.303)
this early 20s.
Nick McGowan (24:43.508)
seven years late and other people now that keep pushing these things, they’re still doing the same thing over and over and over instead of actually saying what’s actually working. What do I want? What do I want to do with this sort of stuff? And I’d love that you actually, you saw a positive in the network marketing. There are a lot of people that shit on MLMs and network marketing because they’ve had bad experiences or they’ve had friends that have tried to push everything on them or wrap fucking things around their stomachs or.
tell them they can make money with a light switch or whatever. But you learn a lot through that. And I think that’s a big thing that taking those steps that are risky at times, like think back to the 250, that was a risk. But you were like, fuck it, I wanna go play ball. I’ll drive all the way down there. There are a lot of people in Philly that didn’t wanna do that. They wouldn’t have done it. They wouldn’t have even cashed that check or rented the car.
or gotten into the vehicle to drive down there, let alone all the other things that you did. So you had all these little steps that you had to take. There were all these little risks pieces. So how did you tie that into not only what you’re talking about mindset wise, but specifically for yourself? Like what are you able to look back to and go, man, I was really good at this thing. Like you pointed out discipline, because your parents got up, their shoes on, got to work, did their thing, took care of their kids and moved along in life. That’s great, but that’s just one.
Dre Baldwin (26:04.835)
Mm-hmm. Bye.
Nick McGowan (26:07.95)
piece of the recipe. What are the other pieces for you that have really helped you figure out this is what works for me and what I can share with other people.
Dre Baldwin (26:16.413)
Great question. I’m glad you contextualize it that way because it reminds me of something else. So first thing I’ll say, 2013 you had a social media marketing company. I’m sure you were doing well. That was a good business to be in in 2013. Yeah, I can imagine. So speaking of a couple of things, my parents and Napoleon Hill. So Napoleon Hill and Think and Grow Rich talks about this concept of transmutation.
Nick McGowan (26:26.702)
It was, but we were still late. Yeah.
Dre Baldwin (26:39.273)
And transmutation is about how you take, it’s the law of conservation of energy. states, energy is neither created nor destroyed, merely changes forms and moves from one object to another. So my parents were traditional, basically it was called them nine to five years. My mom’s in education. My dad worked basically construction as a day job. He was a musician by night. That was his passion, but he didn’t do it full time. This was before, you know, social media. If he was around now, he was my age now, he’d probably have his own brand. Couldn’t do it in 1985, right? So.
Nick McGowan (27:07.182)
short.
Dre Baldwin (27:08.999)
So when I graduated from college, again, division three college, my parents don’t know a ton about sports. My dad’s a big sports fan, so they knew some. They don’t know anything about overseas basketball, but they know division three from division one. I come home from college and they say, what are you gonna do now with your degree? I say, I’m gonna be a professional basketball player. Now mind you, I have no prospects. I have no offers. I have no contracts on the table. My mom’s an educator. So her biggest thing was both of my kids are gonna go to college and get a degree because neither of my parents had their degrees when my sister and I got our degrees. My sister became a college professor just to give you a
some comparison and my mom’s an educator, very good educator at that. So I say, I’m going to be a basketball player with no prospects. My mom can’t believe it because I sacrificed all this, her talking, I sacrificed all this for you to get your degree and get your education. And now you say you’re to be a basketball player. It was kind of like I was throwing it all away because again, if it would be one thing, if the New York Knicks were offering me a contract, I wasn’t getting offered anything. So she’s like, well, how are you going to do it? She started asking me.
questions that any logical person would answer and there were no answers to the questions. And she essentially was saying, hey, if you don’t have any answers to these questions, well, you need to go, you’re living under our roof. You’re an adult now. You’re still eating food. You’re using the electricity. You need to go get a job. And she was right. Nothing she said was wrong. It wasn’t even highly critical. was just, she was holding a mirror up to me and my dad basically co-signed everything that she was saying. Now that even though she wasn’t wrong, the mirror being held up to me angered me.
Not that she said anything specifically that bothered me or that my dad said anything specifically. was just the reality was the reality. So the reality became one of my oppositions. And I’ll tie this in in a moment. The other thing was in college, I didn’t even play my senior year because my junior year after my sophomore year, my junior year, the coach who recruited me got fired. New coach comes in and anybody knows anything about college sports. When a new coach comes into a program, they clean house. The same way that when a new CEO joins a company,
some of upper management, middle management gets flushed out, not because you’re not good, but because they want to bring in their own people. I ended up out of the program. So my senior year, I was in school, fully eligible, fully healthy, didn’t play basketball. And this is at a division three school. So again, it’s not like I’m looking at future NBA players when I’m watching games. And that bothered me because in my mind, I knew I was better than the players who were on the team. But at the same time,
Nick McGowan (29:11.512)
Yeah.
Nick McGowan (29:24.188)
He
Dre Baldwin (29:31.53)
I’m objective enough to look at myself. can step outside of myself and look at myself and say, OK, well, you think you’re better than them. But let’s look at the reality. Here they are playing. Here you are not playing. And again, this is the Vision 3 school. So how can you prove you’re better than them? Your eligibility is up. This is before name, image, and likeness. Eligibility is up. They’re on the team. You’re not. How can you prove this? Well, the good thing about back then, there’s no YouTube. There’s only one level to go after college in sports. And that’s the pros.
Nick McGowan (29:48.248)
Mm-hmm.
Dre Baldwin (29:59.422)
That story that I told you about how I made it pro and the things I was doing once I made a pro was not just off of talent. It wasn’t just off of intellect or strategy. It was the transmutation of the, if you want to call it disappointment, sadness, anger, embarrassment, frustration of those situations. That was the gas in the tank. I needed to prove for posterity sake that my career was not going to be ended by this coach and no, none of these players are going to be able to say that they outdid me. And also
Nick McGowan (30:12.163)
you
Dre Baldwin (30:28.017)
my parents, I wasn’t angry at them. They didn’t do anything wrong. They didn’t stop me. But the fact that they held up the mirror, they were the messenger. You know, sometimes you sometimes you to kill the messenger. I didn’t kill my parents, but they were the messenger. And I took it out on I didn’t I wasn’t angry at them personally. But I took that energy from both of those situations. And that was no the gas in the tank to get me from Philadelphia to Orlando. That’s a good metaphor right there. That’s right. So that’s that was a big part of what I did. I don’t even remember what your question was.
Nick McGowan (30:37.07)
Sure.
Nick McGowan (30:51.154)
Literally.
Nick McGowan (30:57.646)
It’s all good. Sometimes that’s the best. You’re like, I’m riffing in this direction. Because like you’d said, this this reminds you of some other things, you know, I think it’s interesting how, look, there are different conversations that have been had in so many circles, everybody’s had this sort of conversation, don’t let people shit on your dreams, don’t let people tell you not to blah, blah, blah. And I think a lot of that conversation misses the fucking mark in a big way, because there’s no context to it. Like your mom is an educator.
seems to be a logical person asking you logical questions. You interpret it in some sort of way where part of it was like, see it, but fuck you. But I also see what you’re saying. And I’m gonna go this route and I’m gonna go do this thing. And then there are specifically people that are like, no, you don’t wanna do that. This is gonna happen and it’s all gonna be terrible. Cause their fear and all that sort of stuff. There’s a level of discernment that you can sometimes not have the ability to have.
because you trust those people so much. And that’s where I think some of the conversation is like, don’t let your family shit out of your dreams, blah, blah. Yes, and still give more to it. If somebody’s trying to love on you and they have their own things, it’s on us to not interpret it in such a way, but it can be really hard when you go, it’s my mom, it’s my whoever, it’s this person. But some of those things will also move us in a beautiful direction. Like I think back to high school and bring this up at different times.
Where do you remember being in like 11th grade with like, we’re going to sit you down. We’re going to talk about what college you want to go to, what things you want to do. So next year we can start ramping and doing all these things. Well, when I sat down with the counselor, she was like, all right, well, you’re a musician and an art kid. Like I was one of those kids that if I didn’t want to be in class, I’d be like, I got a project. They’d be like, fuck off. And I’d go and live in the art room. And this counselor was literally like, well, we can get you into music school or art school, but you’re probably not going to make any money. So what do you want to do? And I checked out.
I was like, well, don’t want to fucking be here and talk to you because you just told me I’m going to be a starving artist. So fuck that. I ended up getting into a multi-level marketing company like six months later and you learn so much from that shit. And there’s things that I think some people learn manipulation. Other people learn how to actually be better versions in themselves. And some people use it as stepping stone and all that. Like you and I both did that where we didn’t do network marketing forever.
Nick McGowan (33:23.936)
It was a stepping stone that opened up a whole new world. But then later on in life, you start to see how systems work and how different pieces and components work with things. But you made all these different choices without letting people affect the way that you went about them while still taking some of the consideration of it. And I’m pointing it out in that sort of way, because as I said to you, even off air, the idea is for people to get something from this where they go, huh, maybe I need to think about this a little differently.
And somebody roughly our age or even in their late thirties or early fifties or whatever, you’ve been through enough of a career and have enough of a body of work in a sense where then you can look back and you can see patterns of things. What do I like? What do I not like? What do I actually want? Those are really fucking tough questions for people to ask because then they go, well, what if I don’t want my family? What if I don’t want this job that I’ve been here for 25 years? Or what if I want to do something totally different?
Dre Baldwin (34:13.513)
Hmm.
Nick McGowan (34:22.688)
And there’s a balance to that. Like, there are people that are like, fuck it, I was a lawyer one day and next thing you know, I’m painting and that’s it. There’s context there. There’s many conversations they’ve had in their own head. So what does that look like with the work that you do now, specifically with different people that are progressing through their life and having those conversations or maybe shying even away from those conversations within themselves?
Dre Baldwin (34:48.969)
It’s a great question because a lot of times these days, mostly working with professionals, entrepreneurs, high performers, these people usually come to you with a high performer level surface level issue, usually based around money and or the things they need to do to make money, more marketing, better clients, transitioning, quitting my job, starting a business, et cetera. So to get to the actual issue, that is an issue. Yes, they do want to make more money. Yes, they do need better clients and they want to sell this course or whatever it is they’re doing.
But to get to the actual issue, you really have to find out who’s the person behind the issue. Who’s the person behind the problem? And noticing their patterns, noticing their mental blocks. Sometimes the mental block is they can’t see themselves charging more money. Sometimes the mental block is I know who pays me the most money. That’s the top 20 % of my clientele, but the bottom 80 % for me to drop them, they’re going to think I’m a jerk. They’re going to think I don’t value them. They may not like me.
Nick McGowan (35:35.48)
Yeah.
Dre Baldwin (35:47.758)
They just don’t have the heart to do it. Not drop them, but pass them off to somebody who’s less senior than you and your company. Sometimes that’s the challenge for people. Sometimes the challenge is just moving themselves to do the things that need to be done, the grunt work. And there is no business, no career that does not have grunt work. A lot of people think that there is one, there isn’t one. There is some type of work you have to do no matter what you do for a Sometimes it’s moving themselves to be able to do that. Sometimes when I’m working with people, sometimes it’s professionals, but there’s a personal issue.
I’m not spending as much time with my kids as I want to. My wife is not initiating sex as often as she needs to. A single man who just wants to talk to more girls, but he keeps second guessing himself and hesitating and him and in hauling when he sees a girl on the train and by the time he approaches her, the energy is gone because he waited too long. So it’s sometimes just it’s not sometimes, but all the time finding out who the person is. And once we get to that part and we get through the layers of the surface level stuff that they’ve gotten so used to telling people and we get to the personal stuff.
And that’s when we can start to make the change because even though that personal stuff, the stuff that people see in the mirror, it’s hard to sell because you can’t count it, measure it, you can’t see it. That’s the main thing most people need. But almost nobody shows up saying, this is what I want. They show up saying, I want the thing on the surface, the thing I can count, measure and check the box for. But the only way to get those resolved is we got to get to who the person is. So you have to show them this, but you got to give them that. So the metaphor I like to use is feeding medicine to a dog.
Nick McGowan (36:55.48)
Mm-hmm.
Nick McGowan (37:01.24)
the
Dre Baldwin (37:16.963)
You they don’t really need the peanut butter, but they say they want the peanut butter, but you got to hide the medicine inside of it. So you got to get them to understand. Yes, I can help you with the surface level issue. Now that they believe that what we’re going to get to without me even having to say it explicitly, Nick, is we have to figure out who is the person you see in the mirror, because until this person changes, you’re never going to be willing to confidently say that number in the middle of a meeting to get the price that you want for this project. You keep charging about our you need to be charged about the project.
Nick McGowan (37:34.838)
Mm-hmm.
Dre Baldwin (37:44.424)
Now you’re accepting $200 an hour. You need to be charging them 100K for the project for six months, but you’re not willing to say that number. So until we fix how you see yourself, I can say the number for you. I can go get the deal, but you can’t get it. You have to say the number. So we got to deal with that part. Not all this other, all these other things are just details is we got to get to who you see in the mirror because who you see in the mirror leads to how you carry yourself energetically. 85 % of communication is nonverbal. So
Whatever you see in the mirror is how you carry yourself. Other people pick up on that non-verbally. They respond to it non-verbally. That leads to them saying yes or no for reasons that have nothing to do with what you actually said and nothing to do what they actually said. So whatever reason they gave you is not the real reason. And whatever you think is the reason is not the real reason. But that is the main conversation. Most people don’t understand that. So my job is helping people understand that and understand when you get the non-verbal part right, what you say verbally doesn’t really matter that much.
Nick McGowan (38:29.166)
You
Dre Baldwin (38:41.915)
One thing you learn in sales, you can’t say the right thing to the wrong person. You can’t say the wrong thing to the right person. When the energy is right, it doesn’t matter. But most people are so stuck in their heads, especially high performance, because high performance is usually really smart. They have a lot of information, a lot of knowledge. They read a ton of books. They’ve written books. It’s hard to get them to get past the intellectual level to the energetic level. But that’s where everything is happening.
Nick McGowan (38:45.912)
Yeah.
Nick McGowan (38:49.624)
Yeah.
Nick McGowan (39:05.353)
I’m so glad that you got to this point of the energetic level. There are the things that were, yeah, we want the surface thing because we need the surface thing. Just like we want to sell things because really we want to do these other things. Some people, it’s a thing where, I want to sell more because I want a second home or I want a beach house or whatever. That’s an issue in and of itself. If it’s like, I just want to do this to buy this thing where I’m not going to go down that path, but…
The reason why I bring that up is I think there are times where we can look at things and say, want this because other people want me to want it. The system of the world tells me I should have this. Like showing up to a meeting in this bad ass car, like if you have a broken down car or something that actually makes sense for you to have, and you enjoy having a 2009 Accord or whatever it is, that shouldn’t dictate the type of level of service that you have. But people will think that they have to put on this facade and the charade.
because they’re afraid to be themselves when in most times, as you know, most people don’t know who themselves are. They don’t know who it is that they really want to be or what they want to do. The energetic part of it is so huge, especially in sales. I mean, you and I could shoot the shit on sales forever. I think about the people that I’ve trained over the course of time where they just have such a hard time not reading a script because they can’t embody it.
They can’t embody the framework of how to have the conversation to ultimately level the person and fucking just see if you can help. Cause if he can’t get off the phone, if you can, beautiful, continue the conversation. But the bullshitting is not going to help either one of you. But people will go, well, I have to do this. And we do it mostly to ourselves. Like if you think about how many people talk shit to themselves, like, geez, if that was a friend or somebody outside, you would have a restraining order, you know, like you’d be fearing for your life.
So getting to that level is really difficult for a lot of people, even the people that do a lot of the work, because it’s asking them to shake the boundaries and the foundation of themselves. And that can be really uncomfortable, especially for high performers that are like, I’ve been doing this at such a high level. Now you’re asking me to go backward. Now we’re asking you to actually adjust the foundation so you go forward from there. I mean, I really appreciate you being on today. Appreciate the wisdom and the insight.
Nick McGowan (41:28.056)
For those people that are on their path towards self-mastery, be it somebody who’s a performer or somebody who’s an athlete or somebody who’s just really trying to figure out how do they fit within their own little piece of the world, what’s your advice for them on their path towards self-mastery?
Dre Baldwin (41:43.546)
Biggest thing is for people to get more fully present with themselves. Everybody’s heard the term being fully present. What presence is, is not something that you learn, is not something you add on, is not something you develop. Presence already exists. Presence is what remains when you strip away all the noise, all the excess. So anything that’s coming from your smartphone is noise. Text messages, emails, notifications, any app you can get on, all of it is noise. It’s an added on. It didn’t come with you standard equipment when you were born.
Nick McGowan (42:04.078)
You
Dre Baldwin (42:12.829)
Your thoughts about the future is noise because you’re time traveling into the future that didn’t happen. You’re reminiscing on the past is noise because you’re time traveling into the past that already happened. You thinking about something that’s not happening where you are right now in the moment where your feet are is noise because you are not in the place that you are. You’re not grounded in the current moment. Presence is what’s left when you strip away all that excess. The challenge for many people is that presence bothers them because they’re left with the only thing they don’t want to deal with, which is themselves.
When you strip everything away, all that’s left is just you dealing with you. And that’s uncomfortable for people. And interestingly enough, a lot of high performers are uncomfortable with themselves. So what we do is we keep adding on more noise. You can listen to another podcast. You can read another book. You can watch another YouTube video. You can go gather more information. You can go give out more information. That all keeps your mind stimulated and occupied so you don’t have to deal with yourself. When you get used to dealing with yourself, you calm down that, as they say, the monkey mind.
This is what they talk about in mindfulness or yoga or any type of meditation when you get comfortable being with yourself your signal Internally that you project externally gets ten times stronger and you actually get better results The challenge is you had to deal with the withdrawal symptoms of turning all that stimulus off Doesn’t mean you can’t stimulate doesn’t mean you don’t read talk do your work But you have to be able to turn it off and control it instead of it controlling you the world that we’re in now today Nick these devices
have trained us to be controlled. We’re not in control anymore. We’re being controlled. We have to still have a device. I still got a phone. I got two phones on my desk and an iPad and a computer, but I control them. They don’t control me. Exactly. So the thing is you have to learn to control them and turn them off when you want to not be pulled in by the dopamine rush. I think that’s the biggest thing in the world we’re in today, especially for the highly intelligent high performers.
Nick McGowan (43:41.806)
Mm-hmm.
Nick McGowan (44:04.216)
Yeah, and that could be fun. Literally in those moments like where you know, like I think about myself at times. I’m an iPad kid in a way. Like I have my video games that I play and I’ll veg out and I kind of work through them are primarily like 2K games, know, NBA and NFL and stuff. But there are times where I can feel like, I’ve just been doing this for a bit. And it’s an actual lift to put the fucking thing down to step up.
move out of the energy of watching TV, even if you’re like, look, I’m gonna give myself an hour or two to just veg and whatever. When you feel it, that’s one of those moments where it’s like you have an opportunity to do something with it, because you are really present and you’re aware of yourself enough to go, all right, motherfucker, get up, get out of here, go do something else. That is one of those moments that people that have a hard time sitting with themselves miss those because you don’t see them more often. But when you see it,
You can’t not see it. Like I joke about self-awareness at times. Like the more aware you become, the fucking more aware you become. And the more aware you become, the more aware you become. Like you can’t get away from it. And it can be really tough, but I appreciate the work that you’re doing. There’s a lot when people say like, you know, you want to be mindful. Like I hear from times different, different people listening. They’re like, you can’t just mindset your way through life. Like I get it. Listen to the fucking conversations. That’s not what we talk about. It’s not about just.
forcing yourself to do a thing that either one of us are saying. It’s about actually taking this and figuring out how does it work into my life? And how do I think about things a little differently? And what do you want to do from there? So Dre, I appreciate you being on today. This has been awesome. I’m sure we could just sit here and just keep talking about things, but it is almost top of the art. Before I let you go, where can people find you and where can they connect with you?
Dre Baldwin (45:51.997)
They can just go to work on your game.com work on your game.com and anything you need will be found there.
Nick McGowan (45:58.262)
Awesome. Again, man, I appreciate your time today. Thank you very much.
Dre Baldwin (46:01.321)
Thanks for having me on Nick, appreciate the conversation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCcqCo4KTqk
