332. The Mental Game of High Performance: Turning Ambition into Execution with Dre Baldwin

Day one is exciting. Day two still feels fresh. Day three is when the “new car smell” is gone and the work gets real, and that’s where most goals quietly die. We talk with Dre Baldwin (Dre All Day), former pro basketball player and founder of Work On Your Game, about how to push through that moment without waiting for motivation to magically return.

We get practical about the difference between motivation and discipline, why you can’t build a career on feelings, and how to create execution reliability through structure, habits, and standards. Dre shares the mindset that helped him go from Division III basketball to the pros through personal initiative, cold calls, and proof, then translate the mental game of sport into business, leadership, and life. We also break down confidence as “competence minus interference,” why “fake it till you make it” backfires, and how identity drives behavior when no one is watching.

For leaders, we dig into accountability that doesn’t feel like a personal attack. Instead of vague expectations and late performance reviews, we explore a simple “scoreboard” approach that measures execution early, catches drift before results fall apart, and makes feedback easier to hear and easier to give.

If you’re chasing a big goal, leading a team, or trying to build real consistency, hit play, then subscribe, share this with a friend who needs a third day reset, and leave a review with the standard you’re raising next.

🌐 Connect with Dre:
• Website: https://www.workonyourgame.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dreallday/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drebaldwin/

📚 You can purchase Dre's book on Amazon:
• The Third Day: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B097XFT3NG

Transcript

Mick Spiers: 0:01

Have you ever started something with excitement, only to lose momentum when the novelty wore off? Have you ever waited to feel motivated before doing the work? And have you ever wondered what separates the people who talk about ambition from the people who actually execute? Today, I'm joined by Dre Baldwin, also known as Dre All Day. Dre is a former professional basketballer, the founder of Work on Your Game, a prolific author, and a four-time TEDx speaker. He's someone who has taken the mental game of professional sport and translated it into business, leadership, and life, and what I love about this conversation is that Dre does not romanticize high performance. Instead, he challenges us to look honestly at the standards we're living by. One of the most powerful ideas in this episode is what Dre calls the third day. The first day is exciting. The second day still has some novelty, but the third day is when the new car smell is worn off, and we have to decide who we are going to be. So, as you listen today, I invite you to think about your own third day, and where do you need to raise your standard? Not because someone is watching, but because that is who you have decided to become. Hey, everyone! everyone, and welcome back to The Leadership Project. I have a special treat for you today. Today I'm joined by Dre Baldwin, also known as Dre All Day. Dre is a former professional basketballer who has now converted his work to go beyond basketball and talk about the mental game behind high performance, topics like discipline, around confidence, around mental toughness, around personal initiative, codifying what it takes to be a professional basketballer, but putting that into everyday life, into business, into leadership, into personal goals and helping people to be able to connect the connection between motivation, which is what gets you started, but into building habits, into systems that can create a mindset that can turn that ambition into execution and success. Dre is the founder of Work on Your Game. He's a prolific author of more than 40 books and a four times TEDx speaker on this topic of what it takes to convert ambition into something meaningful. And the answer is not always what we think it is. So I'm dying to know this. I'm dying to apply some of this stuff that Dre is going to share with us myself. And I know you, as the audience, you know, really pay attention to this one. There's going to be some secrets in here that we can all put into our daily lives so that we can convert this motivation and ambition into success. There's going to be leadership lessons, business lessons, and personal lessons for all of us in here. So, Dre, without any further ado, I'd love to hear from you, and I'd love to understand a little bit more about this transition from professional basketballer into work on your game, and what inspires you every day to do what you do, you're prolific with your books. You're prolific with your speaking. You're prolific with helping people. But what inspires you, Dre, to do what you do?

Dre Baldwin: 3:31

Well, first of all, thanks for having me on here, Mick, and hopefully I can live up to that introduction. As far as the question that you're asking, the transition from sports to my company now, how long of a story we talking here? 30 seconds, 90 seconds, 30 minutes.

Mick Spiers: 3:46

Yeah, give us the three minutes. Give us three minutes. How's that sound?

Dre Baldwin: 3:50

Okay, three minute version. So, always played sports growing up. Got around in basketball around age 14, which is pretty late if you're trying to play college ball, let alone pro ball. Played one year in high school, which is not much, didn't really play. Walked on to play college ball at the Division Three level. So, for those who don't know, sports Division three is the third tier of players. Most of the pro players come from the Division one schools. So, needless to say, nobody at the pro level was checking for me to play pro ball when I got out of school. I was not being recruited, or wooed, or offered anything. I had to sell myself to get an opportunity to play pro, which I was able to do by cold calling basketball agents, going to basically what you call they're called exposure camps, but they're basically job fairs for athletes. I was able to get in through that. Started playing pro in 2005 in Europe, that was in Lithuania, where I started my career. At the same time, I started putting content on. Well, at the time, it was just videos. It wasn't calling it content on this new website called YouTube. Now, this was specifically basketball stuff, showing you how to practice basketball. And I quickly learned that the audience that was watching my stuff, not because I was trying to attract one, it was just for me to look at myself. But the audience I was attracting were players who were basically me, but 10 years younger than me. They were coming to the. Internet to crowdsource knowledge about the game, whereas in my era you couldn't go to the internet to crowdsource knowledge. So I could now pay it forward by helping them with the information. So I started to build a brand, a personal brand, an audience. What are you, whatever you want to call it, between 2005 and 2010? At this time, I'm still playing overseas. I'm going back and forth between Europe and the USA, playing on different teams and such, you have a lot of time on your hands when you're an athlete. Long day at work is about four hours. So I was able to build my brand in the spaces of my career. About 2010, players started asking me questions about mindset. I started making videos talking about mindset outside of basketball stuff, but it was directed at the athletes. And what happened is people who didn't play sports. The listeners to this show, people like the listeners to this show started responding to the mindset videos and said, "Dre, I'm not a basketball player, but I still watch your stuff when you talk about mindset because that stuff applies to me." So that was the light bulb moment, Mick, that told me that the mindset pieces that I had extracted from my sports experience, mind you, I was still playing could be utilized for people who didn't play sports. So this told me here's how you can transition from talking to just athletes to talking to everybody. Because I always saw myself as having a bigger message than just sports. I knew when I was done playing Mick, I didn't want to stay in the sports realm. I didn't want to become an analyst or a coach or a trainer. I wanted to move into the wider world of business, but I needed a segue, something that I could take from the previous life that was relevant in the next life, and that was the piece. Once I found that out, so I kept playing pro until 2015 was when I stopped playing. But over that last five years, as I told you, at this point now I started to write books, I was making courses, I was creating coaching content, I was start to coach people, and I was doing all of this while I was still playing. So when I stopped playing, my transition from athlete to entrepreneur was not the normal athlete entrepreneur transition because I was not starting at zero. I already had a momentum, I had an audience, I had a brand, I had a message, I had a framework, I had all these things in place already because I knew that's what I wanted to do next. So for the last 10 plus years, really, that's what I've

been doing: 7:04

helping professionals and entrepreneurs with two main things. Which is one thing we call the power of presence, which is about discipline, confidence, and structure embodied into a person. And the other piece is the execution reliability, which is about having a structure and a system for what needs to get done and making sure that it actually gets done.

Mick Spiers: 7:21

Yeah, really powerful, there's multiple things that are jumping out for me already. I want to share a reflection back. I'm sure most people in the audience picked up on this. The journey from high school basketball through third division to professional-that's a big leap. That must have taken some of your own words here, some discipline, some confidence, some some personal initiative to to get out there and put yourself out there. Really put yourself out there. Like I'm, I'm going to say a a lot of people would look at that and say that's a that's a journey that's not possible. What about it for you made it possible in your mind. I'm not saying just what you did, but in your mind, how did you know it was possible to go from third division college to pro?

Dre Baldwin: 8:11

Well, good thing is I came out of came out of school in 2004, so the internet existed, but we didn't have social media yet. So this was an era where you could utilize the internet for positive benefits, and I'll tell you about that in a second. But at the same time, there wasn't so much information out there to show you just how big the world was. So therefore, I couldn't get discouraged because I didn't know what I didn't know. So I was aided by my ignorance that I didn't know how. Of course, you know when you're growing up, somebody says I want to be a football player or a basketball player, and your teachers and parents say, "Well, only one in a million makes that." You need a plan B. Yeah, you had that, but other than that, you didn't really. There was not that much information out there. So, for me, the thing that made it happen was you do have to have a baseline amount of talent. And I think a lot of people, when they talk about sports, whether athletes or the viewers, they discredit this. They'll say something like,"Well, Kobe Bryant." Or who's your favorite athlete, Mick?

Mick Spiers: 9:05

It's oh, it's probably Michael Jordan, actually, in the basketball realm.

Dre Baldwin: 9:09

So yeah, so or any sport, Tom Brady, Derek Jeter, whatever. They'll say these guys they made it because they just work hard. You hear that all the time. They work hard, or some entertainer they work hard. That's nonsense. That's not really the reason that they made it. It's not that they don't work hard. I work hard. My brand is literally called Work on Your Game, but I'm six feet four inches tall. I'm 193 centimeters. Had I been five seven, like the height of the average human male, all that hard work would not have gotten me eligible to play pro basketball because I would not have met the height requirement. I didn't have. I wouldn't have had the genetics to do it. What makes athletes eligible to make it is, first of all, you have to have a set of genetics that most people just don't have. That's just the reality of the situation. Most people and athletes don't want to say that because it makes them look like less of a superhero when they talk about how hard they work. But it's the reality. Now, once you're above that line. Now you're in a pool of everybody who's eligible, but everybody who's eligible does not make it. So now it comes to actually answering your question here, which is I knew that I needed to have a high level of initiative because if there's 10,000 players who think they can play, and I'm one of those 10,000 but there's only 1000 jobs, or that's being generous, about 200 jobs every year because not every player gets replaced, right? Some players come back. I knew I had to sell myself because just on playing alone, my pedigree was not going to jump off the page. If that makes sense, I'm not LeBron James or Kobe Bryant to where my talent is so obvious that they're like, "We got to get that guy. They would look at me and say, "Okay, this guy is good. If we had him, fine. But what about that guy, that guy, and that guy-they're all pretty much the same guy. What's the difference between him and everybody else? I had to answer that question for them, and that's when I went into selling myself, reaching out to agents, reaching out to teams directly to make sure they noticed me amongst the big pool of all the other fish out there, and that was me going into marketing mode, entrepreneur mode, sellers mode. I had to do that as a player. So by the time I put the basketball down, went into the business world, I had no problem doing that because I had to do it to even get my last career to happen in the first place. And a lot of athletes don't have to do that. So a lot of athletes, when they try to go into, let's say, the space that you or I are in now, it's more difficult for them because they spent their entire lives just being able to show up, do the thing, and people said, "Oh, that guy, he he gets an opportunity. But I wasn't quite that good. I was good enough to be eligible, but not so good that I could just walk in and that was it. I had to actually do some extra stuff. But those very things that I had to develop in order to make my opportunity were the exact tools that I needed for the world that I'm in now.

Mick Spiers: 11:40

Yeah, interesting. So while you're talking, I'll reflect to you now who my actual sporting hero is, but you might not know know who it is, and that's why I went to Michael Jordan. My sporting hero is a guy called Adam Gilchrist, and he's a cricket player in in Australia, and he had everything that you were talking about there. He had natural talent, but then he also put in the work, and he had the self belief that was needed. The reason why he's my hero is actually sportsmanship and his ethics and his morals and just the way he carried himself. Even though he was, in my view, the greatest cricketer that we had, it was also the way he carried himself and his and it was his values and the way he lived his values, the way his identity came through was the reason why he's my sporting hero. The things I want to reflect back to you there, Dre, in terms of what I said, a lot of people walk around with a "what can't be done" attitude, almost like a victim mindset of "I could never do that" or things always go bad for me, etc. What I'm hearing from you is no one told you you can't, so you believe that you could. So one takeaway I want to take from what you're sharing is, if you're going into a situation and your instant thought is it can't be done, who said it can't be done? Is that a story that you've just told yourself in your head? And and if you tell that story often enough that it can't be done, well, guess what? It it can't be done. Makes me think of Henry Ford. Whether you think you can or you can't, you're probably right.

Dre Baldwin: 13:16

Well, Mick, it was no one who I considered needing to listen to who told me I can't be done. Now, of course, as a young man, you're at the park at the playground, and the other kids will say, "Well, you'll never make the high school team, or you won't play in college." You had that, but I wasn't. I didn't really value what they had to say. Even my parents, though, they don't know the sporting world very well. So when I got out of college and said, "I'm going to play pro ball" they started asking questions like, "Do you have job opportunities? Do you have any prospects, or what are you going to do?" I couldn't really answer the question because I didn't really have a plan. They weren't saying you can't do it, but they were no asking regular questions you ask anyone who says they're going to go into an industry. How are you going to get in? I didn't have a way to get in because there's no clear way into playing a sport. So there wasn't any human being that I felt like what they said mattered more than what I said, so I was always going to have a final say.

Mick Spiers: 14:05

Well, there's another powerful lesson there. We spend so much time externalizing this type of stuff, Dre. I can tell you, I'm I'm speaking on behalf of the audience. I think a lot of people walk around worried about what other people think instead of listening to their own voice about what's important to them, they almost feel like they're living up to other people's standards, including what can't be done or what should be done, and they they walk around with this societal expectation instead of taking control of their own destiny. How does that sit with you?

Dre Baldwin: 14:40

So that makes me think of the word authority, and authority is something that leaders usually have. They have to carry themselves a certain air of authority in order to be listened to. Now, the word authority, the root of it is the word author. And what's an author? Author is a person who writes something. They come up with something original, and they state it, and it is said. Now that they said it, remember I was listening to this. Salesman talked once at a conference. He said, "When I go meet with a prospect, well, here's he was talking to the audience.". And he said to the audience, "Said the problem that many of you have is that you go meet with a prospect and you show them your offer, and then you ask them what they think, and that's the wrong frame." What you need to do instead is you show them what you have, and then you tell them what you think, and let them take that with them. And what he was saying there I mean, he wasn't meaning it literally-but what he was saying there is that as a salesperson, you can't-you don't go up to the people and hope that they like what you have. You tell them what you have, and you let them accept the frame that you're setting. You set the frame. You be the author of the frame instead of asking them to author your frame, and that's what I thought of when you were saying that. There is that I was always going to be the author of my story. However, the story goes is going to be because I wrote it, not because somebody else dictated a story to me and then I accepted it and said,"Okay, I'm just going to live out what somebody else said." So I knew I was always going to have a final say, and for me, it was always okay. What's the next thing that I can do? So I get out of college, out of a Division Three. Nobody's calling my phone. What can I do? Okay, they have these things called exposure camps. They're like casting calls, same way an actor or a model goes to a casting call. Anybody can show up. Doesn't mean you want to get picked. You can show up. Okay, I'll go to one of those. I went to one of those, and I knew I had to play well because you don't just talk there. You play. I played well and I got a good review. Now that's a third party saying this guy can play at the pro level. I had footage, which is the real thing you need in the sports world. You need footage, not just talk. You need footage. So I had the video that shows this guy can play at the pro level. Now I have collateral. That was my collateral. Now I can go to an agent who is basically the middleman between the people who want a job and the people with the job. I said I need one of you to represent me. I cold called 60 basketball agents to get my first agent. Now people who don't understand the industry, entertainment industry, agents usually call the talent because they want to represent you because you look like you might get a job, and if you get a job, they get but they get paid, right? So they usually call players because they're like, okay, you you're gonna play pro and you'll make money, so let me represent you. And when you get a contract, I get some money. That's the business. But no agents were calling me because nobody knew who I was. So I was calling them. So this is like the backwards way of doing it. But that was the next step. What's the next thing I can do? Because I don't know anybody in Europe. I don't speak the languages over there, so I can't call them. I can call these agents though. I called called 60 agents. I sent my tape to 20. I talked to one, and one of them ended up signing me, and that's how I was able to get on. That was the next step. Now, next step. Now you got to hurry up and wait. Now you got to wait for your agent to do something. He got me on, got me my first deal, and then once I got in, now I have a resume. I played somewhere. Now I'm legitimized. I'm no longer in this big pool of players who played in college but didn't play pro. I'm in this smaller pool, still big, but a smaller pool of players who have played pro at all. Now I'm in a different category. Now I can use that for the next deal, and the next deal, and the next deal. So that's how I was able to move myself forward by always asking, "What's the next thing that I can execute on, and what's the process that I can execute on that thing over and over and over and over again until I get the result that I want? So that was that's always been the question that I ask myself, even to this day.

Mick Spiers: 18:10

Yeah, really good, Dre. So there's there's two powerful things that I'm hearing there. When you talk about author and being the author of your own story, we have a saying Dre that we use on this show called "You Hold the Pen" we use this story, and we talk about it in two ways. We talk about it for change management in business. If there's a process that you don't like, grab hold of the pen and change it. Like you don't stop waiting for someone else to give you permission. Grab hold of the pen and change the process that you don't like. In this case, it's about you are the author of the story of your life. You hold the pen. You get to decide. You get to decide how you talk about yourself in your own mind, and the story that you tell yourself in your own mind about yourself is very powerful. So you hold the pen is the first thing I'm going to play back to you. Then the second one, when I listen to you, I've got this picture of you looking at a goal and going, okay, here is my ultimate goal is pro ball, and then working backwards. Well, what are the five big moves that are needed to get to that? Well, first thing I need to do is get myself to one of these camps, and that's an open call, so I can do that. Second thing I need is a is a video of me playing. Third thing I need is an agent. Fourth thing I need is my first step on a roster so I can start building a resume. A fifth thing I need is probably put some points on the board or some rebounds or you know whatever it is that you need to get the attention of the next team. So I'm hearing very intentional. What are the five things that need to be true for me to get there, and what's the first thing I need to do to take the first step? How does that reflection sit with you?

Dre Baldwin: 19:50

Yes, it's the deconstruction. So nowadays, what we call that is the roadmap in reverse. But that's exactly what you just described. Let's just get that roadmap, flip it upside down. This is exactly what I need to do. Right now, and it leaves you direct, clear action steps. And it's funny how we're talking about this. Mick sounds so simple, right? So basic.

Mick Spiers: 20:08

Yeah, that sounds a lot simpler than it really is. But yes, yeah.

Dre Baldwin: 20:12

Right, it sounds so simple and basic, and it actually is. The challenge is most human beings, in my experience, you can tell me yours, and listeners can think of theirs. A lot of people don't like when things get broken down this simple because now they're accountable for actually doing something. And in my experience, a lot of people don't want to be accountable to clear steps because now they can't they can't be us because now it's very clear what you have to do. Now we can see are you doing it or are you not?

Mick Spiers: 20:38

Oh, that's powerful. Now tell me, why do you think that is? Why do you think people avoid accountability?

Dre Baldwin: 20:45

Well, when people are held accountable, first of all, they're exposed because if you don't do what you're supposed to do, now you can be called out by whomever. Everybody can see that you didn't do something. Everybody can see you didn't take the step forward. And in our world, especially today, but has always been true. People get more. A lot of people get more satisfaction from talking about, thinking about, feeling that they want to do something, such that it sucks the air out of the balloon, so to speak, of the energy and the pressure necessary to actually do it. And someone talked about this. I think it's a scientific thing. I couldn't explain the phenomenon, but I believe it is that when you talk about reaching a goal that you have not yet reached, it gives you a hit of satisfaction just to talk about it because you're imagining the feeling of doing it. And when you express it to another person and they feel it and they reflect it back to you, is like you feel good a little bit, but you haven't done anything yet. Nothing has actually changed. There's been no consequence, and people like to get that feeling so much, or they get that feeling so much that they forget. Like, okay, now I had to actually do it. I talked about it, but now I still have to actually achieve it. So that void of having not achieved it and also having not talked about it that creates pressure, and that internal pressure must be expressed through action, and in today's world, because now we have these devices that allow us to express whatever is within us as much and as often as we like, immediately with no consequence and at no cost. A lot of people are letting the pressure out by expressing what they want rather than actually doing what they need.

Mick Spiers: 22:22

Okay, all right. So this is going to be a key moment here. If if people are listening to this and and they're going, oh, this sounds like me. I do a lot of talking about my ambitions, etc. But if I'm honest, I stick my hand up and say, yeah, I kind of I do either fear or avoid accountability. How do we convert accountability into a superpower instead of something that's holding us back?

Unknown: 22:48

Great question. So the first thing is we want to depersonalize it, and a lot of people don't like accountability because they either don't like receiving it, and there are leaders out there who don't like giving it because the person receiving it they may feel as if they're being personally attacked because someone is holding them accountable and saying, "Hey, you were supposed to make these 10 calls. You only made six." What's the problem? Supposed to hit this quota? You didn't hit the quota. So then they're taking it as they're being personally attacked, especially if there are others present or other people who are not getting the same accountability. Then when it comes to the leader, many leaders are uncomfortable doling out the credibility because they feel this emotional anxiety over the fact that they are going to have to go to one of their team members and say, "Hey, you're supposed to make 10 calls. You only made five. Hey, what's going on here?" Now you got to talk to them and kind of know put the foot in their behinds to get them to do what they're supposed to do. So, first thing we want to do is we want to make it into a measure of execution rather than accountability from me to you. It's not me holding you accountable. It's we're going to look at the execution that you were supposed to do. Here it is in black and white. Here's how much you did do as opposed to how much you did not do that you were supposed to do.

Dre Baldwin: 23:57

Now let's figure out how do we close the gap here in this score. So if your score was 10 and you did it six, how do we close that gap of four? How can I help you close the gap? Now, what we're doing is making the measurement the accountability instead of me, the person, being the accountability. So, it's not me, the boss, coming to you and breathing down your neck. It's me saying, "Hey, here's your score." As you can see in black and white. Now, let me remind you and everyone listen to this, Mick. I'm an athlete in the sports world. You get judged by the scoreboard. You're not judged by the people. You're not judged by your coach, your teammates, your opponents, or the fans. You're judged by the scoreboard. Scoreboard says the other team has 100 and you have 90. That means you lost. And if somebody tells you that, that's not them being negative. That's not them hating on you. That's them telling you what the scoreboard says. So what we want to do is make a scoreboard. So if the scoreboard is telling you 6 out of 10, and your quota was 10 out of 10, okay, how do we fix this so that the scoreboard is saying what it's supposed to say? That's the way that we're going to look at this. So that again, it's not about me personally. So if I'm not the one showing you the scoreboard, somebody else can show you the scoreboard. You can see the scoreboard. You can log in, see it for yourself. But we are going to go off a scoreboard because I want everyone to objectively know where they stand. And if you're not performing, you know that you're not performing before I come to you every six months with your progress report is right there on the scoreboard. And in the sports world, as opposed to the business world, you can't hide when you underperform. It's obvious, and everybody sees it. So, what one of the things that I'm trying to help do, one person at a time, one conversation at a time, is bring that mindset and that approach to the business world.

Mick Spiers: 25:29

Yeah, really good, Dre. So I'm going to share with you. You're 100 right. There's a lot of science behind why leaders avoid giving feedback, as an example, which is a which is a form of accountability, right? And what's happening in the brain is it's an amygdala hijack where where they're feeling the same pain as if it was physical pain, but they're avoiding the conflict, they're avoiding social rejection. For the receiver, there's this element of if it is if it does feel like a personal attack, if they feel like they're getting attacked, they're actually going to get defensive, not offensive. And what do I mean by that? It's converting it into into action. If the person feels like they're under attack, they feel like it's a boxer coming from the other corner of the ring, coming out to them with a bunch of a flurry of punches. What I'm hearing from you is you're going to depersonalize that, so it's not a personal attack. You're just going to focus on the facts, and you're going to remove judgment. You're going to remove the personal attack and go, okay, what's holding us back here? How are we going to get that from that six to 10? What do we need to do? So now it's not a personal attack, and now the person that's holding you accountable, whether it's yourself, personal accountability, or someone else holding your account. Now it feels like they're their trainer in your corner with the sponge, you know, sponging off the the sweat off your forehead and giving you the drink, and then pushing you back out to go. Okay, let's find that last 40% So it's inspiring action, not a not a personal attack by depersonalizing it. How does that sit with you?

Dre Baldwin: 27:07

Yes, that's correct. And I'll take it a step further. What we want to do is not we're not just looking at the outcome. We don't want to just look at the scoreboard at the end of the game because in business, if you only look at the scoreboard at the end of the game, the problems happened six months ago. You just didn't catch it until now, so that's too late.

Mick Spiers: 27:22

Oh, nice one.

Dre Baldwin: 27:23

So what we what we want to do is we want to measure not only the result but the execution itself. You know, that's why we call it execution reliability. So we want to check what are the steps that would lead to this outcome, and we're going to measure you at every step along the way. So the lag or the drift is caught at the beginning rather than at the end. That's the problem that most companies have: is that they catch the mistakes or the problems after they start showing up on the bottom line. But if they're showing up on the bottom line, that problem has been going on. You just didn't catch it.

Mick Spiers: 27:53

Okay, so here's an interesting one straight into basketball. This one's purely basketball, but you can apply this in any sport. And I don't think we do this in business. So let's talk about this for a moment. If you're out there, let's say you're in Lithuania, you're getting you're getting tailed up by the other team. Does the coach wait until the end of the game to call a timeout and go, "Right, team, we need to reset." Something's something's not working. No, he calls a timeout straight away. It might be might be 90 seconds into the match, and he calls a timeout and go "Okay something's not gelling here we've forgotten this part of our process we've forgotten this or the other team has done this and we need to adjust they're not waiting till the end of the game to call a time out." This is what I'm thinking about in business is how often do we do that in business do we wait until the year end results to do a a year in review, or or are we doing our our check ins every week to go? Okay, what worked this week? What's working? What's not working? What do we need to do differently? I don't know that we do that enough in business.

Dre Baldwin: 28:54

No, it doesn't happen that often, and one of the reasons is because the leaders have bigger picture things they have to deal with. They're working on the business, not necessarily in it, and human beings are naturally going to drift off a process if they're not being held accountable to following the process. Why? Because it's human nature. That's the simple law of what was it called? I forgot the name. Entropy. Law of entropy. That over time, when there are no parameters or standards being enforced, then you get chaos and disorder. That's just the natural response of human beings. So that's the reason why it happens.

Mick Spiers: 29:24

Yeah, good. Yeah. Now I want to throw something else at you. It was it was something that you sparked in me some time ago in our conversation. But I'm going to throw this to you. One of the authors that we reference in the show a lot is a guy called Timothy Galway, and funnily enough, he's a tennis coach. He was the author of a book called"The Inner Game of Tennis" and and I think there's.

Dre Baldwin: 29:49

I've read the book.

Mick Spiers: 29:51

Oh, you've read it. Okay, right. So the equation that I want you to throw at you is is the one that we refer to a lot, which is performance is equal to potential, minus interference. And what you what you said before was really interesting. Is that for you, your potential as a basketballer? You are six foot three, so I'm envious already. By the way, I'm I'm quite a quite a bit.

Unknown: 30:14

6'4, 6'4 If anybody's asking. Oh 6'4 sorry, sorry, you're six four. You had some natural ability, but then through training, the natural ability wasn't enough. Then through training, you practiced your shooting, your defense, etc. That was all building up the up the potential. But to me, the big difference in you is your ability to manage the interference. So yes, the potential was needed, and yes, you needed to work on. I'm exposing my lack of knowledge of basketball here, but you had to work on your dribbling. You had to work on your footwork. You had to work on all of those things that build your potential. But the biggest thing I see in you, Dre, compared to other people, is your ability to manage the interference. And the interference includes any voice that says you can't do it. It's the discipline to turn out every day and do the work. It's the discipline to hold yourself accountable. To me, that's all the interference. And Galway talks about tennis being a game of four inches, and he talks about it being the distance between your ears. That the dis the difference between true champions is is actually between their ears, as long as they've got the potential in the first place. How does that sit with you?

Dre Baldwin: 31:28

Years ago, Serena Williams was playing a tennis match, and I don't follow tennis very close at all. But I was watching that match, and there was a graphic that came up on the screen, and it said they polled all the women's players on the tour, and this is when Serena was number one, dominating. And they said to beat Serena Williams in a match, what's the number one thing you need? And it had four things up there. I'm going to ask you, Mick. From what you just said, I think you would know the answer. What do you think was the number one answer the players gave to beat Serena? You need what?

Mick Spiers: 31:58

I think it's mental toughness, yeah.

Dre Baldwin: 32:00

Confidence. Yes. Oh, confidence. There you go. Okay, yeah. I was on a show with a woman, Clara, here in the USA. She's based in Texas. She used to be a pro tennis player. I asked her the same question, and she answered immediately "Is the confidence? And it's 100% what you said." And the reason I thought of that is because you said the author, he Tim says that performance is potential minus interference, but that formula is a framework also for discipline. That's a framework for confidence because that's having the competence. Confidence is simple competence minus interference. A lot of people think confidence is something that you put on, that you add, that you need to do additional things to be confident. No, confidence is a removal of things. It's a removal of the garbage. It's a removal of anxiety. Removal of stress. Removal of being self-conscious. Removal of negative thoughts about yourself. Removal of you thinking what everybody else is thinking. When you remove all of that and you just have your competence, people read that energy coming off of you and say, "Wow, that person's very confident, but they're not doing anything extra. They're actually doing less." This is the reason why many people try to be confident and they fail because there's no such thing as trying to be confident. It's removing all the extra stuff. You're trying. You're doing something extra, so you're automatically trying to perform. That's not what confidence is. Discipline, the same thing. Discipline is structure minus interference because anybody can follow a structure if you can follow instructions. If you know how to read or you understand the language, and I tell you do step 12345, and you do it, your behavior is disciplined because the structure already is already disciplined. All you have to do is follow it. You can't not be disciplined if you're following the structure consistently with no interference. The interference is I don't feel like it. I'm tired. I'm gonna do it my way. Somebody got in my way. Something else came up. Let me try it a different way. See, all that interference throws you off of the structure, and now the discipline's not there because you're not being consistent. So I like that you brought that up. Even though I read the book, you probably remember more quotes out of out of it than I do. But I remember that book, The Inner Game of Tennis. The guy is just explaining. He's simplifying the game, and the book is not about tennis, right? The book is not about tennis; it's about performance, right? It's about understanding that when you get all the junk out of the way, assuming that you have some baseline level of competence, then the performance is not that hard. We tend to overthink performance by adding extra stuff, and it's the unlearning of the nonsense that actually puts us in position to perform.

Mick Spiers: 34:25

You're making me want to test two things here, and this this is one that I've always had a personal problem with, and but I want to test it with you and see what you think. So when you do talk about confidence, I think that is something that can be misunderstood, and you hear people say things like, "Oh, you got to fake it till you make it, but faking it's not belief, Dre." And faking it till you're making it-that's that's not removing the interference. So, do you have a problem with this"fake it till you make it" or where's your opinion on this one?

Dre Baldwin: 34:58

I have a huge problem with it. I've been trashing the concept for a decade. Fake it till you make it is not-it's an oxymoron. There's no such thing as faking it till you make it. Simply because we got to understand that subconscious mind controls 85% of our thoughts, and when you tell yourself that you're faking something, you are basically doing your own version of Cinderella. So everybody knows the story of Cinderella. She's in house rags. She puts on the glass slipper, and all of a sudden, she's in a beautiful ball gown. But she is warned that when the clock strikes 12, that gown is going to disappear, and you're going back to the rags. No matter where you are, no matter what you're doing at 12, it's over. And that's what fake it till you make it is. Eventually, the clock strikes 12, so no matter what you were So, for example, anyone who's ever been in a any type of rehab faking and pretending, your subconscious mind knows that or 12 step program for any type of addiction, one of the key things that you know I've never been in one, but one of the you're faking, so which you tell yourself in your mind things that I've heard is that let's say you're an alcoholic. When you get out of the program, one of the main things they tell you is you can't go back to that bar anymore. Why? Because in the bar is the temptation for you to do the thing you were doing before. So you're not the type of person who goes to the bar, that you've become that thing, and because you are and you replace that behavior with something different because you change who you are as a person or in a positive way. Let's say somebody says, "I'll use myself as an example. I haven't played a pro sport in over a decade, but I've always told myself it's a principle of mine that I'm always going to be in pro athlete shape. So to this day, Mick, I I'm out with my in do? the evenings when we're done this interview. I'm going to change into casual clothes. I take my kid out to the park, and to this day, every week somebody stops me and asks me if I play for the Miami Heat basketball team here in Miami. I haven't played basketball in 10 years, and I'm not saying that to impress you, but to impress upon you, people see my my physique and they assume that this guy must be an athlete. And the reason is not because of anything that I said or did, but because I never stopped working out, and because I said to myself, "I'm always going to be in pro athlete shape. Well, what's one of the things someone who says that naturally does? They go to gym. They go to gym every day. They don't skip workouts. They watch what they put in their body. They are diligent about recovery and taking care of their physical. Why? Because that's who I said I'm that type of person. So when you get clear on the being, not faking, but being the doing is automatic because this type of person must do this thing.

Mick Spiers: 37:46

Yeah, there's a lot of power in the language that you're using, Dre, and and this is a great one for the audience to listen to. So if you're in the fake it till you make it camp, I've always believed this, Dre, that it doesn't work. But what does work is the power of identity, and the story we tell ourselves about ourselves in our own mind, and it can be anything

from this: 38:08

I am a runner, or I am this, right? Or it could be I'm the kind of person who, and you get to to decide how to end that sentence. So I am the kind of person who generally makes smart choices when I go to a restaurant. Guess what? You'll start making smarter choices. But if you tell yourself I'm the kind of person who can't resist unhealthy food, well, guess what? You're not gonna you're not gonna resist the unhealthy food, right? So so this is really this story that you tell yourself about yourself becomes what you then start doing.

Dre Baldwin: 38:46

That's right. And identity is the foundation. How you see yourself when you look in the mirror determines what you do, and then what you do determines what you have. A lot of people make start off with the doing part, but they never focus on the identity. So they're trying to do things that are out of alignment with how they see themselves, and it is scientifically impossible for a human to behave in a way that is out of alignment with how they see themselves for an extended period of time, and that's where you get the conflict.

Mick Spiers: 39:14

Yeah, very good. Okay, this is really powerful, Dre. I want to get into your work, work on your game, and I want to talk about your four pillars, so you talk about discipline, confidence, mental toughness, personal initiative. How does someone walk into this? Like, what are the steps for us to? What what does discipline? Let's start with discipline. What does discipline really mean? We all think we know what it means, but what does it mean to you, Dre?

Dre Baldwin: 39:38

Well, discipline is a is not a personality trait. It's a byproduct of following a structure, and it's a it's a description of a behavior. So discipline is about showing up consistently and doing your job every single day. That's what discipline is. A professional is a person who does something that's their main paid occupation, and there is no human on this planet. Me, you, no one listening. To this, no one, no matter how beautiful their job looks from the outside, who always feels like being at work. Nobody always feels like going work. We all have days we don't feel like it. But if you are a professional, you must still show up and you must still deliver at a certain level of performance. Why? Because that's the expectation. When you accept a check, that's how it goes. When you're getting paid, there are going to be days you have to come to work, you don't feel like working. So that's where discipline starts. That's what discipline is about. It's the main thing that most people know that they need, but it's not the thing that most people look around wanting. Most people want confidence, but they need discipline.

Mick Spiers: 40:36

Yeah, very good. Okay, so some of the stuff that I've seen in your work is you do talk about the difference between motivation and discipline. So, what's what's the difference for you?

Dre Baldwin: 40:46

you on that. But you can build a career on discipline. So the way motivation and discipline work together is that you can use motivation when it's there, and eventually, in very short form, about 10% of the job can be held by motivation. The other 90 has to hand the job over to discipline because discipline will finish the race. Motivation can do the sprint, but it can't do a marathon. Discipline takes over from there. And also, the thing about motivation is that since you don't know when it's going to show up and it's feeling based, as I mentioned before, you can't build a career on feelings and emotions because feelings and emotions run the gamut. You never know how you're going to feel from day to day, and some days there'll be no motivation at all. So what are you going to do on those days? In the days when I was making basketball content, Mick, I had 1000s of young men between ages of 13 and 24 in my audience reaching out to me, sending me emails, comments, etc. And every week I would get young males and women reaching out and saying,"Dre, I see you in the gym every day, training, practicing, etc." Because I would put out videos every day. They would say, "Dre, I want to do that too. I want to practice every day and get good the way you got good, so I can make the team and I can be better, and all the players in the neighborhood will respect me." All I want to do that. Problem is, Dre, I don't always feel like training. I don't always feel like going to the

Mick Spiers: 42:31

need to build habits where it becomes part of their. It's a habit that they stick to regardless. It's a system or a habit where this becomes just normal for them that that they have to put in the work every day.

Dre Baldwin: 42:44

You're very generous, but I told them no. I Yeah, I said no. And here's the reason why. The reason why I told them no, I said because if I give you said no. I'm not going to give you. I'm not giving you any motivation today, who's going to motivate you next week when you're not you don't feel like it again? And who's going to motivate you six months from now, and you don't feel like it again. I told this is what I would tell them. I say, listen, basketball is not something you have to do. It's not like going to school. It's not like having a job as an adult. If you are not quote unquote motivated to go work on your game, which is necessary to be good at basketball, go do something else. Don't play basket. Watch basketball. Maybe you can just watch it and enjoy it as a fan, but if you want to play, this is the cost of playing. This is the cost of entry to get in if you want to play basketball. You see what I'm doing every day. I'm showing you the drills. I'm telling you the mindset behind it. If you cannot adopt this, that's okay. Doesn't make you a bad person. One 3% of high school players play in college. 1% of college players playing pros. Most people ain't making it that far, so if you don't have the motivation to do it, find something for which you are motivated, that you are excited, or that you're willing to deal with the grind, even when the motivation is not there. Because there are many days I didn't feel like going to that gym, but it became such a deeply ingrained habit that I never thought about. Well, am I going to go or not? It's it was just a matter of okay, let's go. Even though I didn't feel like it, because I cared about the results enough that I was willing to deal with the motivation.

Mick Spiers: 44:08

Oh, okay, okay. Okay. discomfort. But if you don't, that's okay. Find something else to do for which that equation is true. There's two things I want to go with here. One is like you're a prolific author, Dre, but in your latest work, you talk about this concept called the third day, and this this sounds like this embraces that principle. So, share with the audience what you mean by the third day.

Dre Baldwin: 44:30

So, third day came from the basketball players. So, a lot of just rooted in my athletic background. So, it's about 2014, near the end of my career. Nobody knew that, but I knew it. Now, I was putting out the videos every single day on YouTube. Every day, I put a drill out. Now, I was in the same gym every day, and people would see I was in different clothes every drill, so they knew this guy's literally going to the gym every day. And players will say, "Well, Dre, how do you always have that gym to yourself?" Anybody who plays basketball knows you go to a local park to play basketball. Everybody's there. All the kids in the neighborhood are there. How do. Have the gym to yourself. Do you own the gym? Is it attached to your house? Do you rent it out? What's what are you doing? And this is where I explained the third day. I said to them, at the beginning of anything, when people are first starting out, any of you listening to this can think of the the act the gym where you live, the fitness center where you go. First week of January is packed. Everybody's there because everybody joined the gym. New Year's resolution, New Year, New Me, etc. About three to six weeks in, this is the second day. Doesn't have to be two days in a row, but the second day, about three to six weeks into the year, you still got a lot of the new people in there, some new faces that are now becoming consistent, but not as many as the beginning of the year. And by around St. Patrick's Day, Easter, etc. definitely by Memorial Day, it's the same people from last year. That's the third day. The third day is about when you start something new that you decide that you're going to be engaged in. Eventually, the new car smell wears off. The welcome party is over. You realize that this thing that you signed up for is not one big celebration, and there's some actual work that needs to get done. Because as I said, every person who's ever done anything that mattered, there are days that you don't feel like doing the job, and that happens in every space. No matter, again, no matter how sexy the job looks from the outside, guarantee you there's some aspects of that job that you don't really want to do, but you have to do if you're going to keep the job. Third day is not the moment when that happens. Third day is the decision that you make when it happens about how you're going to handle it. Are you going to show up all the way anyway, or are you going to half-ass it, not really show up, or just quit in that moment? Anybody who does anything that lasts, and if they last in any space, they must deal with the third day. So when I started talking about that concept, people really loved that idea, and eventually I went. I did a TEDx talk on it, wrote a book about it, and to this day, when I give keynote speeches, the third day is a concept that everybody remembers.

Mick Spiers: 46:49

It's really powerful. So, so the the part I want to add to this, and and I know I'm on a little bit of dangerous ground here because the guy I'm about to quote is not a fan favorite of a lot of people right now. There's a quote from Bill Gates that says that. So he's he's a bit polarizing at the moment. Let's let's just leave it at let's just leave it at that. But this quote is powerful, Dre. So, so people, and I'm going to convert it into a lesson related to the third day that people overestimate what they can achieve in a day, a week, or a month, but they underestimate what they can achieve in a year, 5 years, or 10 years. And how I play that with the third day is. I think it's very easy for people to get frustrated when they start putting in the work and they're not seeing instant results, like instant gratification, instant results, right? But it's it's that persistence and that consistency that if you let and this can be business, life, or the gym. But let's use the gym. If you go to the gym once, you're not going to build strength or fitness or whatever it is that your goal is at the gym. But if you go more days than you don't go, and it doesn't mean you have to be perfect and go every single day, but if you go consistently more often than you don't go over a month, or sorry, over over a year, 5 years, 10 years, all of a sudden you've got to. It's not all of a sudden, but you've got a you've got a transformation on your on your hands. I've not shared this on the show yet, Dre, but I'm training for a marathon at the moment, and in the last year I've lost 16 kilos. I don't know what that is in pounds for maybe 40 pounds, something like that. Now, if I had given up on the the first run, first of all, the first run I ran, I ran walked ran walked 3.2 kilometers in 31 minutes. Right, terribly slow, and I couldn't run more than 800 meters without stopping and walking. My long run last weekend was 20-two kilometers without stopping. Now I'm not at I'm not at my goal yet. I've still got 17 weeks to go before the Melbourne Marathon, and I've got to get to 42 kilometers. But if I'd given up and going, oh, I'm not getting anywhere, I wouldn't have come as far as I have now in the last year. And if I give up now, I'm not going to get to my goal of finishing the Melbourne Marathon in October. It's the consistency, and and it's the third day that I keep on lacing up my shoes and and getting out there. It's the third day that's working, not not the motivation.

Dre Baldwin: 49:22

That's right. So the first thing is that that quote that you gave. I've seen that quote attributed to like 10 different people. So if you know Bill Gates, you can probably find somebody else. They said said. I heard Tony Robbins said that, and everybody said it allegedly.

Mick Spiers: 49:33

Okay, okay cool.

Dre Baldwin: 49:34

So all right. As far as the marathons, I run a couple marathons myself, and the thing I liked most about it was you get to see the whole city because you're running so many miles every day. Yeah, but I stopped doing these. It was it was too many hours. It was too many hours of running and recovery. But it is very fun to run a marathon. When is yours?

Mick Spiers: 49:51

October.

Dre Baldwin: 49:52

Okay, so it'll be around spring summertime in Australia by then. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So to answering your point here, yes, that is all. The third day. The third day is the day when you separate yourself from your previous version of yourself and from any competition who doesn't show up. That's what connected to the third day is what we call the separation day, and the separation from again the previous version of yourself because now you've gotten over that hump, that hump of that challenge of I don't feel like running or my legs hurt or my knees hurt my back hurts or my feet are bothering me, or I'm just tired, or whatever the situation is. Now you've gotten over that. Your subconscious mind and your body now realize when I feel this way, it doesn't matter because I'm gonna. I can make it through it anyway. So subconsciously you understand something new, physically you understand something new, and you've proven something new to yourself on a conscious level. So now you're at this new level that you have elevated yourself to by showing up on that third day, and that's when you get to what we call the fourth day. So what you're doing now, Mick, is you're slowly accumulating fourth days. Your fourth day started with 801 meters, then it got up to 1500 then 3000 and so you're moving it up. You're at you said 22,000 So you keep going to new fourth days. You're creating new plateaus for yourself at higher levels, and that's really the difference between a high performer and an average performer. Is that the high performer is just used to there? They have normalized performance at a level that others have not yet normalized. It's not that others can't do it most of the time. Now there are some things that some people can do and others can't in sports, for example. But in business, for the most part, business is not a talent thing. There are some super talented people. You could say Steve Jobs is a very talented person. Maybe Elon Musk, but the majority of people in the business world, professionals, it's not that much of a talent gap that's separating one from the other. It's what are you used to. What are your expectations? What are your standards? What do you tolerate? What do you not tolerate? What is enforced and what is corrected? And all of those can help elevate your baseline.

Mick Spiers: 51:52

Yeah, very good. Okay, all right, excellent, great. Now coming back to your four pillars, we you know we've covered discipline, we've covered confidence. Let's quickly touch on the final two just to round it out, and then we'll go to our our rapid round last set of questions. So, where does mental toughness and personal initiative come into your into your work on your game philosophy?

Dre Baldwin: 52:14

Mental toughness is the security system for your mental health. So, mental toughness and mental health are connected, and mental health is just a human condition. How are you doing? How are you feeling? What's going on? Mental toughness is like a security guard walking around with you. So, if anything tries to get in the way of your discipline and your confidence, the mental toughness is what keeps you disciplined and keeps you confident, even though you may not have yet reached the success, even though you may not have yet achieved the goal, even though things may not be going the way that you want them to go, so mental toughness is that willingness to keep going until you get to where you want to get to, despite the fact that things may not be going so great right now. And some people call that grit, perseverance, stick to itiveness. They're all interchangeable in this context.

Mick Spiers: 52:58

Yeah, very good. And then, and then personal initiative.

Dre Baldwin: 53:02

This is what puts it all to work. This is the willingness to go make things happen instead of waiting for things to happen. So that initiative is in the sales world. We say if nobody's ringing your phone, go ring some phones. If nobody's knocking on your door, go knock on some doors. And I am a phone ringer. I'm a door knocker. I've always been, and that's how I all of the things that I've done professionally since college to now, from sports, business, content, where we are here today, having this conversation, none of this was somebody putting me on. Like my parents didn't put me on in business. Nobody put me on as an athlete. Nobody put me on in content. Nobody showed me to be an author. I went and saw the opportunities, and I put myself on, and hopefully that's been in you know an inspiration to other people. I know it has been to other people to understand they can do the same thing, and it's not just getting them inspired or motivated, so to speak, but also showing them the blueprint. Okay, step one, step two, step three. Here's exactly what you do. So personal initiative is about not just sitting around and hoping that something occurs, or hoping that the world discovers you, but going out there and saying, "Hey, here's who I am. Here's what I have. Here's why you should care."

Mick Spiers: 54:09

Yeah, that's really good, Dre. So there's multiple things I'm taking here. If I can add a few things, is like, so stop waiting for someone else to do it for you. Absolutely, but I'm also going to say, listening to you, it's also not, you know. I see some people do things. They'll say, "I'll, I'll do this when, and then the when never comes. It's what I'm hearing from you is doing what you can now, do what you can from where you are with what you have. Just get started, take action.

Dre Baldwin: 54:39

Yes, wherever you are, or as a, I was working a sales job in like 2005 I said, bloom where you're planted. That wherever you are, sometimes in sales they'll move you to a region that maybe is not as hot as the one you were in before, because they want you to make that region get hot. So you got to bloom where you're planted because you're still in commission. So you still got to make sales one way or another to get that paycheck.

Mick Spiers: 55:01

Nice one, sir. Okay, all right. Thank you so much. You've given us a lot to work on here. I love the work on your game concept. I love the third day concept. That one really grabbed me. And just breaking it down into these pillars of discipline. It's not motivation. Motivation might get you started, but it's discipline and how you're going to keep on going on that third day and that fourth day. The confidence, which is not fake it till you make it. It's it's removing the interference, removing the doubts. It's the mental toughness to to be able to have the resilience to keep going and the personal initiative to take action. It's been very powerful, Dre I'd like to now take us to our wraparound. These are the same four questions we ask all of, I guess. So, what's the one thing that you know now, Dre Baldwin, that you wish you knew when you were 20?

Dre Baldwin: 55:48

I wish I knew when I was 20. That you have to understand how to read the room, know who the authority is, know who's actually making the decisions, and know where you stand in the hierarchy, so you don't make a judgment error.

Mick Spiers: 56:02

Yeah, good. Okay, very powerful advice. What's your favorite book?

Dre Baldwin: 56:07

48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene.

Mick Spiers: 56:10

Ah, good one. Oh, yeah. Robert Greene's one of my favorites. Okay, very good. What's your favorite quote?

Dre Baldwin: 56:16

Besides "Work on Your Game" by me, I will get another one. My favorite quote that's not by me. That's an interesting question. I don't know if I have a favorite one that's by anything outside. I've read so many books and so many things. I will say now, Michael Jordan said this in one of his books. He said, "I'll die with no bullets left in my holster." So I'll go with that one.

Mick Spiers: 56:40

Yeah, nice one. Okay, very good. And finally, Dre, there's going to be people that are inspired by everything you've shared with us today, and they want to take action. They want to turn their life around, whether it's in business life. There might be sports people listening to this that want to master their mental game and and to be able to become a high performer. How do people find you if they'd like to know more about your work?

Dre Baldwin: 57:05

Well, I'm on all the social platforms. You're free to find me on any one of them. Just type in my name. I'm very easy to find, all public, or you can just go to my direct website. I got a few of them, but I'll just give you workonyourgame.com, workonyourgame.com.

Mick Spiers: 57:19

All right, brilliant, Dre. Well, thank you so much on behalf of all of us, the audience, and and me personally. Thank you for sharing your gift today-the gift of your experience and wisdom, but also your framework that can help us all take action and become a high performer.

Dre Baldwin: 57:37

Thank you so much, Mick. Happy to have been here. Thank you for sharing the platform, and thanks for the opportunity.

Mick Spiers: 57:44

What a powerful conversation with Dre Baldwin. The line that really stays with me is the distinction between motivation and discipline. Motivation is useful, but it is unreliable. It comes and goes. Some days it is there. Some days it's not, and if we build our goals, our leadership, and our performance around whether we feel motivated today, we are building on unstable ground. Discipline is different. Discipline is what allows us to keep showing up when the feeling is faded. It is the structure that carries us when emotion is no longer enough, that is why Dray's concept of the third day is so powerful. The first day is exciting. The second day may feel, may still feel fresh, but the third day is where the real decision happens. That is the day when the work feels less glamorous. The discomfort is real, the excuses are available, and we have to decide whether we are going to show up anyway. In that moment, we are not just completing a task, we are proving something to ourselves. We are creating a new baseline. That is what Dray called the fourth day. Once we have shown up through the resistance, we're no longer the same person we were before. We have normalized a higher standard, and that is such an important lesson for leadership. Because high performance is not just about talent. In fact, in most workplaces, the gap between people is not usually a massive talent gap; it is often a standards gap. What do we expect? What do we tolerate? What do we correct? What do we reinforce? What do we allow to become normal? Those questions matter for ourselves, and they matter for the teams we lead. So here is my invitation to you, Identify your third day. Where is the place in your life or leadership where the novelty has worn off and the work has become real? Then ask yourself. What structure do I need? What interference do I need to remove? What standard do I need to raise? And what action do I need to take without waiting for someone else to give me permission? Because leadership is not built in the moments when everything feels easy. It is built when we choose to show up with discipline, confidence, mental toughness, and personal initiative, especially on the third day. Thank you for joining me on this episode of The Leadership Project. If this conversation challenged you, please share it with someone who has a big goal, a high standard, or a third day of their own to face. And join us next week when I speak with Robert Kennedy III about the Power of Storytelling in Leadership. We move from standards that help us show up consistently to the stories that help our message land, create connection, and move people to action. You've been listening to The Leadership Project. If today sparked an insight, don't keep it to yourself. Share it with one other person who would benefit from listening to the show. A huge thank you to Gerald Calibo for his tireless work editing every episode, and to my amazing wife Sei, who does all the heavy lifting in the background to make this show possible. None of this happens without them. Around here, we believe leadership is a practice, not a position. That people should feel seen, heard, valued, and that they matter. That the best leaders trade ego for empathy, certainty for curiosity, and control for trust. If that resonates with you, please subscribe on YouTube and on your favorite podcast app. And if you want more, follow me on LinkedIn and explore our archives for conversations that move you from knowing to doing. Until next time, lead with curiosity, courage, and care.