#213 Michael Jordan: Driven From Within

What I learned from reading Driven From Within by Michael Jordan and Mark Vancil. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- [4:55] Players who practice hard when no one is paying attention play well when everyone is watching.[9:47] It's hard, but it's fair. I live by those words. [12:49] To this day, I don't enjoy working. I enjoy playing, and figuring out how to connect playing with business. To me, that's my niche. People talk about my work ethic as a player, but they don't understand. What appeared to be hard work to others was simply playing for me. [24:00] You have to be uncompromised in your level of commitment to whatever you are doing, or it can disappear as fast as it appeared. [24:26] Look around, just about any person or entity achieving at a high level has the same focus. The morning after Tiger Woods rallied to beat Phil Mickelson at the Ford Championship in 2005, he was in the gym by 6:30 to work out. No lights. No cameras. No glitz or glamour. Uncompromised. [37:01] I knew going against the grain was just part of the process. [53:20] The mind will play tricks on you. The mind was telling you that you couldn't go any further. The mind was telling you how much it hurt. The mind was telling you these things to keep you from reaching your goal. But you have to see past that, turn it all off if you are going to get where you want to be.[57:41] I would wake up in the morning thinking: How am I going to attack today?[1:06:04] I’m not so dominant that I can’t listen to creative ideas coming from other people. Successful people listen. Those who don’t listen, don’t survive long.[1:06:22] In all honesty, I don't know what's ahead. If you ask me what I'm going to do in five years, I can't tell you. This moment? Now that's a different story. I know what I'm doing moment to moment, but I have no idea what's ahead. I'm so connected to this moment that I don't make assumptions about what might come next, because I don't want to lose touch with the present. Once you make assumptions about something that might happen, or might not happen, you start limiting the potential outcomes. ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work. Get access to Founders Notes here. ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00David Senra?

  His relentless determination produced six NBA championships and some of the most spectacular performances in sports history. While his enduring grace and unique sense of style made him equally famous in the worlds of fashion, business, and marketing. In Driven From Within, Michael makes it clear that the basis for his phenomenal success came from the inside out, thanks in part to those who guided him along the way. His skill, work ethic, philosophy, personal style, competitiveness, and presence have flowed from the basketball court and into every facet of his life. Nearly three years removed from his last turn as an athlete, Michael's 20th Air Jordan shoe has helped push Nike's Brand Jordan Division to nearly $500 million in sales.

• 0:45David Senra?

  This is a book about the power of collaboration and teamwork, the awe-inspiring energy generated when people combine their creativity and passion and a fearless desire to lead. Whether it's waking up at 6:00 a.m. to work on fundamentals as a high school junior or spending hours with legendary designer Tinker Hatfield on the intricacies of state-of-the-art shoe design, Michael Jordan has never wavered in his desire to be the best. Everyone knows the results. In Driven From Within, Michael Jordan and those in his inner circle reveal the philosophy that made it all happen. So that is from the inside cover of the book that I'm going to talk to you about today, which is Driven From Within, and it was written by Michael Jordan and Mark Vancil. So I was not expecting to do this book right now.

• 1:30David Senra?

  It's actually 200 pages into another book that hopefully will come in the next few days. But ever since I read that almost 700-page biography of Michael Jordan, I couldn't stop thinking about it. Just the ability to look into Michael Jordan's mindset and operating system really motivated me, it really fired me up, actually. And so I had read briefly the introduction to this book, and I was like, you know what? I need to do this right now. I feel compelled to. I can't put this book down. So in the last few days, not only did I finish reading, I read this entire book, but I also would go on YouTube and every free moment, whether I'm washing the dishes, I'm in the car, I'm going for a walk, whatever I've been doing, I've been looking up videos.

• 2:14David Senra?

  And listening to Michael Jordan speak, not videos about Michael Jordan, but literally downloading into my mind as much as I could, just him talking. And that is what also this book, because most of it, there's a couple like little, he calls them vignette, little stories from people like his mom, some of his oldest friends, the shoe designer, Tinker Hatfield, that he's worked with for 20 years on the Jordan shoe and his main business. But the vast majority of what I'm going to share with you today is just straight from the words of Michael Jordan, and then you and I will have the ability to download his mindset straight from him. And there's some ideas that I've learned from both these books that I don't think I'm going to forget. And I'll make sure I'll point them out to you as we run over them today.

• 2:59David Senra?

  So this is Michael talking like, why does this book exist and what it's about? And when I'm about to read to you, remember, he's not talking about his playing career. He's talking about his business. And what's fascinating, so this book is almost, what, 20 years old, something like that? And I think it's a great illustration of what a lot of these other great minds that you and I have been studying, they always tell us to never interrupt the compounding, that it's hard for our minds to grasp that all the profits are far into the future. So 20 years ago, it's already a Jordan Brand, which he refers to as Brand. So in the book, he'll call it Brand Jordan. In modern day, he says it's a Jordan Brand. So I don't want you to get confused about that, but I'm going to read it as it appears in the book, which is Brand Jordan.

• 3:43David Senra?

  But the Jordan Brand, you know, over 20 years ago was doing $500 million in sales. Fantastic business, right? You fast forward 20 years in the future, he did not interrupt that compounding, and now they're doing seven times that amount, 3.6 billion a year. So let's go to this. He says, no one, and remember, he's talking about the business. "No one could have predicted the outcome because I was never following someone's lead or operating off an existing model. There were no models for what happened at Nike." As you remember, if you listened to the podcast I just, the previous podcast, when he signs at Nike, they're doing $25 million a year in revenue. And a large endorsement contract for an athlete at the time would be like $100,000. So he says, "There was no models for what happened at Nike and certainly nothing close to what we have created with Brand Jordan.

• 4:26David Senra?

  Looking back," so again, this is why the book exists and what it's about. "Looking back isn't about celebrating the results as much as it is about understanding the process that produced those results. It's been about leading and staying true, authentic to those fundamental values that flowed downstream from my parents and later Coach Dean Smith." That's his college coach at UNC. "Moving through the business world full-time, I recognize that the structure of success is no different there than it was on the basketball court. Great companies have a lot in common with great teams. Players who practice hard when no one is paying attention will play well when everyone is watching." And so, right there, his, what really surprised me is his complete dedication to practice,

• 5:11David Senra?

  how much he talks about it over and over again. And that is one of the main ideas I learned from Jordan that I don't think I'll ever forget. It was so surprising to me. And it's something he's going to repeat over and over again. You know what? It just struck me when I was reading the inside cover to you a few minutes ago. And I didn't make the connection until, for whatever reason, it just popped in my mind there. But if you go back, like, you'll see, you know, I've done an extensive amount of reading and studying of people like Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, or the three that popped in my mind, over decades of their career, right? And what is fascinating to me is how much they have a handful of ideas that they repeat over decades. Jordan shares that trait with them.

• 5:54David Senra?

  There's a lot of things that he's saying when he's 35, when he's 40, that he's still repeating when he's almost six years old today. So let's go back to this. "There's no shortcuts. I've always believed in leading with action, not words. And I learned very early to follow my instincts." This is, again, these ideas he's going to repeat over and over again. "My standards have always been mine alone. I've never tried to live up to the expectations of others, and everybody knows the results. This book is about the process. The values that formed the foundation of my playing career are the same values that define Brand Jordan. I truly believe those values never go out of style." So then he says at the very beginning of the book, saying, asking a question, "Will there be another Michael Jordan?"

• 6:36David Senra?

  "Sure. There is no doubt a player will come along who will be able to build on what I've accomplished, just as I built on the example of great players before me." And then he talks a little bit about like the growth of the NBA and the game since he's retired, and that there's a, obviously it's a way more successful as a business in general, a lot more fans, and so the rewards to the players are not only larger, but they come quicker, and he's not sure that's actually beneficial. So he's saying, "There wasn't a lot of corporations looking to invest in young NBA players in 1984. It's often the other way around today, meaning that you could have, he had to prove that he had the ability to play, and then he got the rewards."

• 7:18David Senra?

  He's saying that they're being, players today are being rewarded on future potential, and that, this is his, his opinion on why that could be potentially detrimental. "It's often the other way around today, which makes it a lot harder for young NBA players to realize the depth of their potential. It's hard to spend all summer working on one aspect of your game when you've already received the payoff." "I never had that problem." And so now he's going to go into like what motivated him. "I wanted to prove what I could do." This is something he repeats over and over again, too. "When my place started providing me with rewards, then I wanted to prove I deserved them. I never felt the desire to rest on what I had accomplished. I never felt like I deserved to drive a Bentley when I got my first contract, or live in a mansion."

• 8:02David Senra?

  There's actually a story I'm going to share with you later in the book, which, which talks about his, really surprised me how financially conservative he was. I was not expecting that from him. And it's actually kind of funny what motivates him to be so conservative, too, because he just, he was terrified at the idea of ever having to get an actual job. Those things might be symbols of success to some people, but there are a lot of people who confuse symbols with actual success. What's left after you got all the money and buy the best car? There's no way to go from there. There's nowhere to go from there. And to his point, he's like, "I just focused on achievement, and I knew that the financial rewards would come from that achievement." "When we won one championship, I wanted to win two in a row. When we won two, I wanted

• 8:43David Senra?

  to win three in a row because Larry Bird and Magic Johnson had never won three straight." Nothing of value comes without being earned. So I guess I should pause here. All, everything I'm reading to you right now is coming right after, one right after another. There's not really a narrative to the book. What I really feel is like, so it goes in order of like the design of the shoes, goes through all like their thought process, the growth of the business as a result of all this. But really, a way to think about this book is just Jordan just speaking freely, like off the cuff, like if you're having a conversation with a friend, just downloading into your brain, everything he learned from his, not only his playing career, but building the brand, and giving you his mindset and operating system himself. So he's saying, "Nothing of value comes without being earned."

• 9:25David Senra?

  We're going to get into his motto, which he, which he got from his high school coach, which I think is fantastic. But he talks a lot about the, you know, the fact that he looked at himself as a leader. He says, "That's why great leaders are those who lead by example first. You can't demand respect because of a title or a position and then expect people to follow you. That might work for a little while, but in the long run, people respond to what they see. I practiced hard every day because I wanted every one of my teammates to know what I expected out of myself. If I took a day off, then I know they would too. Just like my high school coach used to say, 'It's hard, but it's fair.' I live by those words." And then a few pages later, he's just got this great sentence, which really is just

• 10:08David Senra?

  an echo of this idea that you and I have talked about over and over again, that the score takes care of itself. Another rather surprising thing I learned about Jordan. He just focused on being as good as, as great at his craft as possible, and he knew if he did that, then he'd get the rewards he deserved. "I figured if I was good as I could be at playing sports, eventually it would pay dividends. I didn't know how, but my main focus, or excuse me, my focus was to be the best player in whatever sport I played. That's all I ever thought about." So at this point in the book, he's still reflecting on his early life. This is about what his dad, like, we talked in the last podcast, that, you know, the fact that his dad told him, "You're not, you're not good at anything.

• 10:50David Senra?

  Go in the house with the women, get out of here," like really burned, like an extreme sense of like motivation in him. And so there's two main ideas. He's gonna, I'm gonna start this page on him talking about his father's opinion of him when he was a kid. But really, the thing about Jordan that I think is too- He's got two really good ideas on this page that he shares with other people. I'm going to, the shorthand on a note I left myself was have one speed, go. That is something I learned from Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari and Chuck E. Cheese. He was a mentor of Steve Jobs, hired a 19-year-old Steve Jobs. And he said, he's like, when I gave Steve Jobs a job at Atari, like he did, there was no, he had one speed. He was all out, all the time.

• 11:32David Senra?

  And then this really, the second idea, really surprised me, not because of the idea behind it, but because he was, he said it explicitly, and this is an idea you and I have talked about over and over again, that if you want to be truly great at something, find work that feels like play. So this is Jordan and his dad. He didn't think I'd amount to anything because I had no hand skills, no mechanical skills. The way my father looked at it, there was no guarantee I'd be able to make a living. Remember, they're just like a normal, you know, maybe lower middle-class family, country family in Wilmington, North Carolina. So his idea, his dad's idea is like, you have to be able to, if you're a mechanic, you can always, you know, fix things for other people, then at least you're guaranteed some kind of way to make a living and to support yourself and your family, right?

• 12:15David Senra?

  So he's like, that's, that's what I did, that's what you should do. Because I had no hand skills, no mechanical skills. That's the way my father looked at it. There was no guarantee I'd be able to make a living. So if you, if you didn't have those skills, there's no guarantee I'd be able to make a living, but I never thought about that. All my energy was focused on getting where I had to go. And Jordan talks about one of the motivations of that. I wanted the freedom to do what I wanted to do, and I wanted to do it my way. To this day, and this is shocking because Jordan is widely known for one of the greatest work ethics of any sports, any player in sports, in any sport ever, right? And so, but he's saying, to this day, I don't enjoy working. I enjoy playing and figuring out how to connect playing with business. To me, that's my niche.

• 12:58David Senra?

  People talk about my work ethics as a player, but they don't understand. What appeared to be hard work to others was simply playing for me. We were playing a game. Why not play as hard as you can? And so it's on this page, his mom is talking about stories from his childhood that this, this sentence might be surprising, right? Michael wouldn't have done anything if we didn't remind him, not, not when it came to sports, but just in doing chores, going to look for a job. He would have laid around and looked at the TV all day. And so I think a lot of people have that problem like, oh, I don't feel motivated. You're probably a driven individual in general. You just picked the wrong profession. If there's somebody out there that has to, you know, dragging themselves out of bed like, oh crap,

• 13:41David Senra?

  I don't want to go do what I'm about to do, then find something else to do. If you told Jordan, hey, I gotta go work as a mechanic. I gotta go sit in an office from nine to five and answer emails. These are examples he's actually used in conversations. And I think they're also appear in this book. You know, he's like, to me, that's torture. I'd have to force myself to do those things. I wouldn't work very hard at them. But if you say, hey, I have an opportunity to be a pro athlete, then I will work from the time my eyes open in the morning till I go to bed at night and no one will have to push me from behind. But what's interesting is it wasn't always this way. So that leads me into the next section where this is about his first mentor and a constant desire to improve his skills. And this is, this is, excuse me, his high school coach. So it's a guy named Coach Herring. Coach Herring is the guy that gave him that life motto. It's hard, but it's fair.

• 14:27David Senra?

  Coach Herring was the first one to see in me what I saw in myself. He picked me up every morning my junior year, took me to the gym before school and worked me out. He was my pusher. He was one of the coaches who would just talk to you. You have to stay focused, MJ. You can't do this, MJ. Get your grades up, man. Get your grades up. Most days I enjoyed it. Some days I didn't feel like going. Remember this whole idea about I didn't feel like doing it because he explicitly talks about your feelings don't matter. Business is about service to others. When he is playing, he feels it's his obligation. Somebody paid their hard, they worked all week. They paid their hard earned money to buy a ticket to watch me and to play, to entertain them. And to that degree, I think it's smart to have a motivation that's bigger than yourself. Right?

• 15:09David Senra?

  But his point is it doesn't matter if my knee hurts, my ankle hurts, I don't feel good. I have an obligation because I'm serving other people to go out and give my best effort. So most days I enjoyed it. Some days I didn't feel like going. But those were the days that Coach Herring would push me. Eventually, Michael's able to play that role for himself. Right? He made this big old poster with all the drills listed and we went through them every single day. That's how it got started. I wasn't a great athlete at the time, but I wanted to be. I wanted to be admired. I wanted to be respected. I wanted the girls to respect me too. All of that drove me a lot more than most people think. I didn't have any status at the time. If that's what you saw, meaning, you know, I wasn't the best player,

• 15:54David Senra?

  wasn't excelling, I was going to prove you wrong. Just watch me. That was my mentality. And then he has an idea that I think is very, again, surprising, that he starts with low expectations, and then he'll tell you over and over again, you should be concentrating on the fundamentals. But what I found interesting is like, he started with low expectations, but once he reached that low expectation, he didn't rest on his laurels, right? He picks the next target, but as he's moving up that progression, he's building confidence. So let's go into this, you'll see what I mean. My expectations were very low. I wanted to be the best player at the park in Wilmington. Then I wanted to be better than my brothers, or the guys in my neighborhood. These were my expectations. Then, he's talking about

• 16:38David Senra?

  the progression. Make the varsity team in high school. Impress the coach. Get a four year scholarship to a major college. With each, and then he ends that sentence there, but if you think about it, he's like, go to college, win a championship in college, try again to win a championship, go to the NBA, spend seven years trying to win one, then I'll win two, then I'll win three. And I was watching this other interview with him, and it was like, real quick with a reporter, but they're like, hey, you've just won three, isn't that enough? He's like, enough for who? Might be enough for you, but he's like, no, there's always something else, something that's coming next. So he says, with each progression, I gained confidence. And he talks about what he learned from his college coach. Coach Dean Smith's system wasn't about excelling at one phase of the game.

• 17:23David Senra?

  He was about excellence in every phase of the game, scoring, rebounding, passing, playing defense. And so part of the progression that had to occur to get him to the next level was the fact that his coach lies, his high school coach lies to get him into a five-star basketball camp. And before, Jordan's just isolated in North Carolina. He doesn't know how good he is, but his coach sees other people playing. He's like, you can play with these guys. So he winds up lying, gets him into the basketball camp. I'm not going to repeat stuff I already covered in the last podcast, but this was new information, was the fact that the guy running the coach, or excuse me, running the camp was so impressed that originally, Michael was only supposed to stay for one week. And so the guy running the camp, his name is Mr.

• 18:07David Senra?

  Garfinkel, calls his parents and like, don't pick up Michael. And so this is his mom, Michael's mom, relaying the memory. Each week, we would sit there talking about, you know, they, their finances were tight. They had to stick to a budget, stick to figure out which bills we can pay this week, which ones we can't. So we got this guy calling, saying, hey, you know, come, Michael needs to stay for a second week. We don't have the money for it. And this blew my mind. Each week, we would sit down and figure out what bills we were going to pay. We had paid for one week of basketball camp when Mr. Garfinkel called. We told him we only had one week, one called to say, hey, Michael needs to stay for another week. This guy's like, you don't understand, your son's going crazy.

• 18:49David Senra?

  So it says, he called, we told him we only had money in the budget for that one week. Mr. Garfinkel just let us have it. He told us we didn't know the skills of our son. I said, sir, that's okay. We paid for one week and we're coming to get him. He said, I'll give him the money. And then Michael jumps in and talks about what this camp gave to like his confidence and his ability, hey, I can play with the best people around. I'm as good as they can, or excuse me, I'm as good as they are. I was full of energy after that second week. I thought I must be doing something right. All I wanted to do was to improve, to keep getting better. I became a sponge. I got a glimpse of what success looked like. So I'm going to fast forward in the book. He's in Chicago rookie year, right away.

• 19:34David Senra?

  He's like, OK, this guy's not playing. And so there's going to be some stories from friends. Two different stories from two different people in here. Let me give you the first one. You couldn't help but notice this guy was different from all of us who were already there with the Bulls. His practice habits were unmatched. And so that's an easy, you know, that's the idea that he repeats over and over. And it's an easy idea for you and I to use in whatever field that we're in. We're just make the commitment. No one is going to prepare more than me. No one is going to practice more than me. His level of effort, his level of competing stood out. He always wanted to take it to the next level. If the other guys didn't take their effort, their effort up, then Michael had no problem embarrassing them. And so then we have another story on the same page from a different person. Really, the note I left myself on this page is practice, combined practice, effort and education.

• 20:19David Senra?

  You ever see Star Wars? Yoda's this little ugly thing, but he's the Jedi Master. He's the guy who taught everybody. Everybody went to Yoda for knowledge. When you sit around talking to any older person who's lived their life to the fullest, they have great stories to tell because they've had great experiences. Michael is Yoda. He's always been an old soul. That's probably attributable attributable to the education that he got from his parents, the education he got from Dean Smith in college, and then the education that he got in the Olympics with Bobby Knight. He was more mature than the average 21-year-old kid coming into the NBA. And you see that maturity too, if you watch The Last Dance, because his rookie season, you know, think about it. You're a kid from a small town.

• 21:04David Senra?

  Now you're dropped into Chicago. You have a nice contract, you know, not nearly like comparable to what athletes today make, but you're making a lot more money than you've ever made in your life. You have more freedom. You're playing, you have people, even though, you know, at the time, I think they were like, they didn't even sell half the arena in Chicago. But, you know, you have, you probably feel good about yourself. He goes looking for his teammates one day, knocks on the hotel room, goes in, and he sees most of the Bulls. Remember, the Bulls is a crappy team, bunch of, you know, average players, not really serious about their craft. Goes in there, there's a bunch of girls, there's a bunch of alcohol, there's a bunch of people doing cocaine. And he just turns around and he's like, all right, well, I'm leaving. I'm out.

• 21:46David Senra?

  And so this, the maturity for a 21-year-old person to not give in to the temptations because those temptations would get in the way of what his goal in life was. That is very rare. So this next section is called uncompromised. And I want to pull, before I read this to you, I want to pull out, I have a bunch of notes from these talks that I was listening to the last few days. One of them comes, there's like this long, it's like an hour long talk that's on YouTube, where Michael's just sitting down and being interviewed by the magazine Cigar Aficionado. And they're talking about, this is like two years before The Last Dance is released, and they hear the rumor, and they're like, well, it's not out yet. But he says, Michael said something that was very interesting, I think ties into this

• 22:31David Senra?

  section of the book, where he's like, listen, if you're going to watch The Last Dance, it's going to show my unwavering dedication to the game. And really think that, I think unwavering and uncompromised are similar ideas, what he's talking about here. "Some players look at me for all the wrong reasons. Marketing, admiration, money made off the court. They don't understand the foundation I had to create to support everything that came afterward. They don't know about lifting weights at 7:00 a.m., practicing hard every day, finding ways to motivate myself for every game, sitting up half the night with an ankle and a bucket of ice, or hooked up to an electronic stimulation machine. They don't know about any of those things. In a sense, my experience created a vision that obscured the hard work and commitment.

• 23:16David Senra?

  With all the attention on the surface, it's easy to become confused about the source of the money and glamour." And the great maxim that I think would condense or distill what he's telling us here is the fact that the public praises people for what they practice in private. The public praises people for what they practice in private. They're seeing the money, they're seeing the private jet, they're seeing the commercials, they're seeing the championships. They don't see the hours of practice, the fact that I'm getting my knee drained, my ankle's messed up. I woke up at 7:00 a.m. this morning, I lifted weights before practice. I worked on jurials after practice." And so he gets to his punchline here. "You have to be uncompromised in your level of commitment to whatever you are doing,

• 24:00David Senra?

  or it can disappear as fast as it appeared." And so he continues this theme, "Don't pay attention to the wrong things. Pay attention to the way I play the game. Pay attention to my passion. Pay attention to the idea of focusing on improvement every day. Pay attention to my commitment. Commitment cannot be compromised by rewards. Excellence isn't a one-week or one-year ideal. It's a constant. There will be days when you don't feel on top of your game, but your commitment remains constant. No compromises. Look around, and just about any person or entity achieving at a high level has the same focus. The morning after Tiger Woods rallied to beat Phil Mickelson at the Ford Championship in 2005, he was in the gym by 6:30 to work out.

• 24:44David Senra?

  No lights, no cameras, no glitz or glamour. Uncompromised." So something I learned that was surprising in this book is the fact that Jordan almost left Nike to set up another company. And this is just a few years into his career, so this is Jordan talking about it, then I want to talk about, then we have his agent, David Falk, talking about this time. And I love comparing, comparing, you know, the same diehard competitive spirit that Michael Jordan applied to his game. Phil Knight had that same competitive spirit in building Nike. And so it says, "So when my contract was coming up, he came to us and said," so he's talking about, "there's two executives at Nike, Peter and Rob, that were really like Jordan's liaisons to Nike. And so they wound up dipping out and saying, "Hey, you know, why don't we start our own company?

• 25:29David Senra?

  You own equity, you can build the business." And so Jordan's talking about this. "So when my contract was coming up, they came to us and said, 'Let's go out on the edge. Let's do something different. Let's start our own shoe company.'" Peter was our lead designer, and I had worked very closely with him. And Rob was a very good friend of the family. And so Jordan's really about loyalty and personal relationships, so he was contemplating this. And so this is his agent talking about that. "But Michael was at Nike, and he was becoming the most successful endorsement in the history of professional sports. To say that I was in shock would be an understatement of the century. First, I thought Rob was a really close friend, and to think that he would have done all this behind my back amazed me." Second, starting your own company seems, at this point, seems the kind of thing, it is the kind of thing that seems really sexy, rather, and exciting to a client because

• 26:13David Senra?

  they're not seeing the downside. I had a meeting with Michael's parents, who were very, very competitive. And I said, "You don't understand. This is going to be like World War III for Phil Knight. And Phil is a very competitive guy. This is his number one talent leaving, and he's not going to say, 'No problem. You have my blessing. Take my number one endorser. Good luck.'" Phil is a competitive guy. Nike wanted to take over the world. Michael wanted to take over the world of basketball. So that drive was mirrored from one another. They are parallel stories. And I love that that's stated explicitly, because if you read, I've read, I've done, I've read, reread Phil Knight's book, I don't know, like, probably like 30 podcasts back or something like that. I did another episode on Shoe Dog.

• 26:57David Senra?

  Now I've read two books on Michael. I've spent a long time studying him. I do believe that, like, that is, that is my understanding as well. And I'm glad it's stated explicitly here. They are parallel stories. It's the same idea manifested in two different personalities in two different industries. So what they wind up doing here that's smart is they're using the other offer as a leverage. So David and his parents talked Jordan out of doing this, but then they use that offer as a way to get equity and to actually get brand Jordan. Nike put a big deal on the table that expanded our line, gave me more creative control. This is, uh, Jordan's speaking here. Gave me more creative control and approval rights. Within Nike, it appeared we were expanding the line, when in essence, we were starting another company beneath the Nike umbrella.

• 27:41David Senra?

  Rob and Peter understood my feeling. They told us to use what they were trying to do and to get what we wanted from Nike. And that's what we did. So then there's this great story about when Michael Jordan gets to meet Warren Buffett and gets to hang out with and spend some time with him, and they really realize, like, this is a different animal, same beast. And it has to do with how they come about making their decisions. I've always wanted to know what successful people used when they were evaluating deal or making a decision. I was with Coca-Cola earlier in my career, and they would put me on a dog and pony show all over the country to meet bottlers. It would take almost eight days. I'd go into supermarkets everywhere shaking hands. On one of those trips, I was in Omaha, Nebraska, and I had the opportunity to meet Warren Buffett. He invited me out on his boat.

• 28:26David Senra?

  First of all, I don't like boats. Now, this is the richest guy in the world at the time, and he's the largest shareholder of Coke. I said, "Mr. Buffett, I don't mean to offend you, but I'm afraid of boats." He said, "Don't worry, we have life jackets." I told him, "You're gonna have to give me two to get me on that boat." And so then they have this decision, or, excuse me, this discussion. I asked him about his decision-making process. What do you think about when you're making your decisions? What is your thought process? And he says, "Whatever my gut tells me, that's what I do." And so Michael's like, "Oh, I'm the same way." I thought that was pretty wild, because up until that point, I was just, when he's talking about making decisions, I was just asking myself, "What do you feel?" Once I made a decision, I didn't think about it again. It was strictly off gut. That's how I made a decision to go with David Falk.

• 29:11David Senra?

  That's how I evaluated deals before I signed my contracts. I don't think about it again from that point forward. It's still amazing to me that, given the decisions Warren Buffett makes and the money that transfers with those decisions, that he still goes with his gut. It just felt good hearing that from a guy like him. Or, excuse me, I just felt good hearing that from a guy like him. And so now we got to the part where I mentioned earlier how it's kind of surprising how financially conservative he was. And so Tinker Hatfield, main designer, like he calls him, his right-hand man in the Jordan Brand for the design of the shoes, goes to visit Michael, so a few years into his career, and he goes to his house, and he says his first house after he got married was a normal place. It wasn't anything special whatsoever. And he was a major superstar by then.

• 29:56David Senra?

  That was an interesting aspect to Michael. That reminded me, because there's this great story. Bill Gates goes to visit Steve Jobs, and they're working on a deal. And he goes to his house, and Bill goes, he sees like his house, he sees his family, and you know, Bill at the time had been living in, I think it's called like Xanadu or whatever his-- His, he's got like a 60,000 square foot house on the lake in Washington, right? That, you know, got a lot of like attention because there's like leading technology of its day and all this other stuff that he built into it. But he asked Steve Jobs, he goes, do all of you live here? He couldn't believe he's like how modest, relatively modest for the amount of wealth that Steve Jobs had, that he didn't need to feel to do the same, you know, what Bill was doing.

• 30:41David Senra?

  So this is Michael talking about that. It's always been very conservative financially. That came from my advisors and I listened to them because I was scared. You don't want to be like some of the guys at the end of, end of their career with nothing to show, looking for work. That was scary to me. The idea that at some point in time, I'd have to go get a job. I've seen a lot of people who had opportunities to be successful and wealthy, but they made critical mistakes. I pay attention to those things. Money never drove me. Sure, I wanted to be successful. I wanted the nicest things that success brings, but my passion was pure. The way I played and the way I go about things has never had anything to do with money. And part of this that motivated him was the fact that even when he was in his early days of his career, his mom would, would repeat the story of Joe Louis.

• 31:26David Senra?

  I didn't know that. I've heard the name Joe Louis. I didn't know what, what she's about to tell us. I often told him about Joe Louis, the boxer. He died homeless. He didn't even have money to bury himself. He had no discipline and no direction. And then just a quick paragraph, two ideas that he repeats that I think are worth reiterating. One, blinders on focus. So just like when the horses, they put the horses on the blind, the blinders on the horses. So they don't look left and right. They just look forward to whatever their goal is. I think a lot of successful people in life have that mentality. And then the Steve Jobs quote that I repeat over and over again, that remind me of, reminds me of, there's a lot of parallels between Steve Jobs and Michael Jordan. So you'd be a yardstick for quality. People are not used to an environment where excellence is demanded. So he's saying, I'm very secure in my ability

• 32:10David Senra?

  to focus on what I want. If I have a goal, no one is going to deter me from what I want to do. I'm going to get up and work out in the morning and do all the necessary things I have to. I am not going to be talked into looking the other way. When I got to the point where I was a senior partner on the Bulls, the guys, the guy who had been there, the guy who had been there the longest, I started to exert my leadership vocally. I guess you could say I became a tyrant, or at least that's how some people chose to interpret those actions. That's not how I viewed it. I knew what it took to come from where we were in 1984. I had put it on the line and I had earned the right to let my teammates know what I expected of them. And it was no more than I expected of myself. I played in front of 8,000 people night in the beginning.

• 32:55David Senra?

  That never determined how hard I played. It's easy when 18,000 people show up to watch you to play and every game is sold out. It's not hard to find your motivation in that environment. I was playing when Chicago Stadium was half-empty and my effort was exactly the same. And a lot of what Jordan has to say, and he says this in interviews too, I need to start reading some of my notes to you because I'm going to get towards the end of the book and not include the notes which I think are very valuable in just hearing him talk as well. But it's about managing your mind and this mindset. So in addition to practice and just saying, hey, no one is going to out-prepare me. No one's going to practice more than I do at my craft, right? That's another idea that I'm going to take from Jordan. The other idea is, another main idea that I think,

• 33:40David Senra?

  at least I definitely struggle with is like, I'm constantly worried about what's going to happen in the future. Or like, hey, I'll be happy, I'll be satisfied when I get to X. You know, and then you get to X and you like play that game with you. And it's one thing I learned about Jordan that is just shocking to me, is he just lives and thinks about this moment. He did it when he was playing in the Bulls. He did it when he became an NBA owner. He talks about it when he's building Brand Jordan. He talks about it now as almost a 60-year-old person. And actually, let me just read this to you now because this is when he's 58. And he says, "I want to go through, I want to go through a day or a week not worrying about what I have to do on Wednesday or Thursday because I won't then enjoy Monday." It's just this more living in the moment.

• 34:24David Senra?

  He has different ways to say that same idea. All is now, all you can focus on is this moment. And the example I used in the last podcast was the fact that, you know, he just won his sixth championship. He's playing the piano, throwing champagne everywhere, or smoking cigars. And the guy's like, hey, you got another one in you. He's like, it's the moment, man. Live in the moment. We're enjoying this now. We'll worry about that in October. That discipline it takes. And I think you'll be a lot happier. I think that's also why, if you have little kids, like, you know, they're just usually happy. And even if they're upset, they get over it really fast. Because it's all for, you know, an 18-month-old, like my son is now, it's like, everything is just whatever's happening at that moment. And I think everybody, like, every human struggles with that. But especially driven, motivated people struggle more. And I think we have to learn to live

• 35:09David Senra?

  in the moment. Because if not, you're compromising the present. Like you just said, if I'm worried about what's happening on Wednesday and Thursday, it means I can't enjoy Monday. And I have limited Mondays left. He talks about, you know, I'm, he might be 54. I said 58. Now, coming to mind, I think he said, I'm 54. At this point in the interview, he's like, I'm 54 years old. You know, I have a limited time left. Whatever, he's 54, 58, same difference, you know. But his point is like, I have limited Mondays left. I'm not going to ruin them by worrying about something. I'll worry about Wednesday when I get to Wednesday. I'll worry about Thursday when I get to Thursday. So anyways, let's go into this page. This is know what you want and don't rely, oh, don't really pay attention to other people's expectations of you. Another thing I learned from Kobe Bryant, too, because he was giving

• 35:52David Senra?

  this interview with Ahmad Rashad. And you talk about, you know, when you go through struggles, like, what about the fans' expectations of you? This question Ahmad Rashad is asking Kobe. And I love it, because Kobe has like, the stanky face. The stinky, like, ugh. Like, if you're, you taste it, or you smell something really gross, you can just hit him with the stanky face. And he's like, and he shook his head immediately. He's like, the expectations will never be higher than my own. And I think that the idea there is like, you've really messed up. If there's people that have, that are able, that are capable of putting external expectations on you that are higher than your own. Back to this note, focus on the present moment. And then it's all you can control. Oh, focus on the present moment, it's all you can control. And then why not me? So let's see what Jordan's saying here.

• 36:34David Senra?

  All I knew was that I never wanted to be average. I just wanted to follow what I felt. My father put a challenge in for me, in front of me. I knew what he expected. So back to, you know, be a mechanic, be whatever. The expectations I had for myself were beyond my father's expectations. My thoughts were way beyond the idea of preparing myself for a job so I could be like the guy down the street. I had dreams. They were my dreams and I had no fear of them. And this is an important sentence. I knew going against a grain was part of the process. I wasn't limited by someone else's view of how my dreams should look, or whether they were reasonable or not. So then he talks about like, what do you do after you identify the goal?

• 37:16David Senra?

  Put all the work in and then let the future emerge. That is a lot different than forcing the issue because you're worried about an outcome that hasn't been determined yet. Anything can happen if you're willing to put in the work and remain open to possibilities. Dreams are realized by effort, determination, passion, and staying connected to that sense of who you are. Why me? Why not me? And he's not saying, oh, don't worry about the future, whatever will happen will happen. He's saying the point is like, if you did everything possible, if you know, you put all the work in possible, then let the results land where they are. That's not the same thing as just being, oh, whatever may be will be. No, it's like, I'm going to do my level best and then if I know I do that, I will be okay with whatever happens.

• 38:01David Senra?

  And so let me give you a quote from another interview. I never feared about my skills because I put in the work. If you put forth the work, then what are you afraid of? And then this is a line from his Hall of Fame speech. Limits, like fears, are often just an illusion. So then another idea that's going to pop up in this book over and over again, it's really an introduction and why he's worthy of study is his extreme mindset. This is the extreme mindset of Michael Jordan. So he says, if you want to win, you have to pay the price. It's not complicated. If somebody didn't want to hear that from me, fine, go play somewhere else. Come on, man. You might be sick, but you can still play. I remember when we were playing Detroit and one of our guys was bent over after getting

• 38:46David Senra?

  hit. I said, don't let them see you in pain. You know why? Because they're going to do it again and that's going to take your mind off what you need to be doing. Show that you can stand up to whatever they have to give. Let them know it's not affecting you and they won't do it again. But every time you wimp out, you bitch about it, you cry to the ref, all that, all I'm going to say is shut up and play. You know what they're trying to do, don't let it happen, play right on through that stuff. And so that is one of his main criticisms about the players that came after him. The fact that they don't look at it, they look at like, it's almost like there's an echo to what we learned from the great advertisers of the past. The fact that a lot of people are saying, hey, I made, I made some tires, buy my tires.

• 39:31David Senra?

  It's like, no, you think the best ads is service first. It's like, what can I offer you? But Jordan's point was like, they paid money for you to, to play, like you should show up and play, right? And what he's saying right here about you gotta learn how to play through the pain, don't let people see you struggle, whatever the case is. For some reason, when I got to this section, it made me think of a, of a paragraph that takes place in Henry Ford's autobiography, My Life and Work. Because Henry Ford had the same mentality about service first. You're serving your customer first and your feelings and desires come second. And so he's writing these words almost 100 years ago, but it echoes exactly what Jordan's mentality was when he was playing basketball.

• 40:13David Senra?

  "I pity the poor fellow who is so soft and flabby that he must always have an atmosphere of good feeling around him before he can do his work. There are such men, and in the end, unless they obtain enough mental and moral hardiness to lift them out of their soft reliance on feeling, they are failures. Not only are they business failures, they are character failures also. It is as if their bones never attained a sufficient degree of hardness to enable them to stand on their own feet. There is altogether too much reliance on good feeling in our business organizations." And Michael's not just preaching this, like he actually lived this. So that's what gives his words, I feel more weight. This is a continuation of this extreme mindset of Michael Jordan.

• 40:58David Senra?

  A leader has to be willing to sacrifice to help everyone else get to where they need to go, where the team needs to go, by the way. No one could take days off with the Bulls because I never took a day off. Horace Grant and I had a falling out because he wanted the day off here and there, and I would chastise him for it. That's what leaders do. They set a standard and everyone has to live up to that standard. It is the same in every great organization. You have to rise to our level. We are not going to drop down to yours. I apply that standard to whatever I do. And this is his mom on the same page reflecting on this. Michael earned every bit of this. I tell people, do you know how many ice packs? Do you know about the ice packs on his knees? How he hobbled out of Chicago Stadium sun nights, barely unable to make it home.

• 41:42David Senra?

  I remember that day in Utah, they call it the flu game, which we learned is the food poisoning game. I'll never forget that day. I told him, don't play tonight. You were too sick. And what did he do? The best came out because you find that little bit of strength where you keep going, when you keep going. That's determination and focus. The idea that he wasn't going to give up until he had given his last. That is life. Give it your best and all other good things will come to you. Then a few pages later, there's just two sentences, two ideas that are conveyed in two sentences that I want to bring to your attention. And this is Tinker Hatfield describing what it's like to work with Jordan. He's just deadly, coolly efficient. And then Jordan talking about how he approaches everything, which I love.

• 42:27David Senra?

  I focus on the little things. Little things add up to big things. And for some reason, when I was reading this page in the book, it made me think of, I did this two-part, it's like one of the longest episodes of Founders. It's the Peter Thiel episode. I think it's back in the 30s, something like that. I read Ryan Holiday's book Conspiracy, which I thought the storytelling in that book was fantastic, and then Peter's book, Zero to One. And there's something, I heard Ryan on a podcast one time, he was doing like the book tour, doing these interviews to publicize that release of that book. I think that's probably how I found the book. Anyways, he said something about Peter Thiel's approach to the conspiracy, to get revenge against somebody that he felt wronged him.

• 43:11David Senra?

  And he's describing the whole arc of that book and all the different decisions that had to go into, from Peter's perspective, the successful outcome. And the sentence was, "It was ruthless efficiency and hyper competence." That's the same description of Michael Jordan as well. Now, remember, the point of studying Michael Jordan and people like him is because it's not like the person walking around, the average person, has anywhere close to this extreme mindset that Jordan does. This is an example of that. This guy telling a story has been Michael's friend for 25 years. And this is Michael Jordan's "you can't ride the fence" story. This is crazy. "I was really close to Ralph Sampson.

• 43:55David Senra?

  Ralph had a big Puma contract. When I would go out to Boston with Ralph, we'd go to the Puma warehouse. I would do the same thing when I'd go out to Nike with Michael. They'd say, 'Whatever you want, pick it out and we'll ship it to you.' I had my closet separated out, half Puma, half Nike. Michael comes to my apartment. We're getting ready to go out and he says, 'Man, it's kind of cold. Can I borrow one of your jackets?'" I said, "Sure, go in the closet." He went in there and saw everything separated out. He's in there a little longer than necessary and he comes out of my room. He has taken all of my Puma stuff out, brought it to the living room, and laid it on the floor. He goes into the kitchen, gets a butcher knife, and literally cuts up everything. This was like his second or third year in the league. He literally took a butcher knife to it all.

• 44:40David Senra?

  When he's done, he picks up every little scrap and walks it down to the dumpster. He then says, "Hey dude, call Howard tomorrow and tell him to replace all of this. But don't ever let me see you in anything other than Nike. You can't ride the fence." That's how Michael thinks. Now, we're going to fast forward in the timeline. This is Jordan talking about his time on the Dream Team. And so, one of the sentences that stuck out from last week's book, or a couple, the book, the last book, rather, was that Jordan had been surprised to learn how lazy many of his Olympic teammates were about practice. And then he says something, or the author says something that just gives me goosebumps, gives me chills. They were deceiving themselves about what the game required. Think about the extreme mindset

• 45:23David Senra?

  of Michael Jordan. This is not only like, you have multiple levels, like, it's extremely hard, you know, what, 400 players, something like that, 400 people, I forgot the exact number, can get to the NBA. Then, even smaller number gets to be an All-Star. An even smaller number gets to be chosen for the Olympic team. This is who Jordan is talking about. And then he's saying, even when you got to that level, they didn't understand the importance of practice. They were deceiving themselves about what the game required. But they already got to the Olympics. What are you talking about? And I was thinking about that. I was like, well, how many of those players, yeah, they got to Olympics, they had individual accolades, they got deep in the playoffs. None of, a lot of them, none of them won

• 46:03David Senra?

  six championships on that team. And a lot of them never won a single championship. So I think that really ties into like, this extreme outlier mindset that Jordan possesses. So I'm just gonna read nearly this whole section to you, because I thought it was very interesting. He says, "In 1992 Barcelona Olympics was one of the best times of my life." You're talking about the greatest players in the world. Guys who had every story written about how great they were. All the things they could do and had done on the basketball court. "All I thought about was, I want to see this for myself. I want to see what those, these guys are all about. That was my motivation going to the Olympic Games in 1992. We were coming off back-to-back titles. I was exhausted, but I had to see

• 46:45David Senra?

  these guys for myself. I had played against them, but I wanted to see how they practiced. The best part of the whole thing turned out to be the practices. All we did was line up and play. Chuck Daly, the coach of the Olympics, he'd just say, 'Come on, guys, let's go hard for an hour or two. Let's get loose.'" That's all he did. He didn't coach, he didn't call fouls, he just threw the ball out there. "The games were competitive as hell. It was up and down the court. We had 12 players, but John Stockton had broken his leg, and Christian Laettner was on the team, but he was still in college, and no one would let him in the games. We played five-on-five. If Magic got off to a good start, or anyone else, the talking would start."

• 47:27David Senra?

  These were the teams. Me and Scotty, Chris Mullen, Larry Bird, and Patrick Ewing. That was our five. They had Magic, Drexler, Malone, Charles Barkley, and Robinson. Think about this. He beat Magic in the finals, beat Drexler in the finals, beat Malone in the finals, and beat Charles Barkley in the finals. That is crazy. I didn't realize that time I read this sentence. We whipped their ass every day. In Monte Carlo, we got into the most heated match of all time. Magic was telling us how great the Lakers were and how Showtime was the best basketball. Me and Pippen are listening to this on the way to practice, and we say, OK, we're going to show you what the new kids are all about. Me and Magic talked trash back and forth all day. I was guarding him, and I'm saying, you don't have Kareem now. You've got to do it all yourself. At the other end, he was guarding me, and I blew right by him. I'd be trash talking. This isn't your old

• 48:11David Senra?

  team. We beat them so bad, then when the game was over, Magic said, we ain't leaving. We've got to keep playing. Scotty and I looked at Bird, and we said, we're ready to go. Magic said, why are you ready to go? And we said, because there isn't any competition here. Magic didn't speak to us for two days. So another thing that Jordan says in this book, I've also heard him in interviews multiple times, is that it's important, like, if you're being authentic to yourself, if you're making decisions from your instinct, that's the only way you're going to have long-term success. Because you can't, if you're just following fads, you're trying to fake something, like, you can only do that for a short amount of time. And then he combines this with the idea is like, skip the shortcut. Like, it's supposed to be hard. It's hard, but it's fair. Remember

• 48:54David Senra?

  his motto. This is going to remind me of, there's a quote in that book, The Hour of Fate. I forgot which Founders episode it is, but you'll see it in the archive if you're interested, because it's about the partnership, like, the, I guess, the feud and then the unlikely partnership between Theodore Roosevelt and J. P. Morgan. But Theodore Roosevelt's somebody I'm going to read multiple books on in the future. I've already done, I think, what, two or three podcasts on him at least? Because he's just a very fascinating individual, and he lived, I feel, multiple lifetimes. Because he dies relatively early, when he's 60. The River of Doubt is a great book about, like, towards the end of his life and just the crazy things that he would do. And that's also in the archive. But in The Hour of Fate, it said, Roosevelt was forever at it. He was a curiosity, always pushing and straining

• 49:36David Senra?

  and admonishing friends around him to do the same. Theodore loved to row in the hottest sun, over the roughest water, in the smallest boat. He is not one for shortcuts, Jordan isn't either, so he says, "We have become a shortcut culture. To a certain degree, we define success on the basis of fictional attributes. If a guy has commercials, a lot of money, the girls, the car, then he's considered successful, whether his performance matches all those things or not. Success, to me, has nothing to do with how much money you have, or what kind of car you drive. I always wanted to know where I fit in with the best. Authenticity is about being true to who you are, even when everyone else wants you to be someone else. It is a lot harder to become the best you can be when you're focused on

• 50:18David Senra?

  trying to be the best version of someone else. There's nothing authentic in that. And if it's not authentic, then it's not going to last." And so that reminds me of something he said in this interview, this cigar aficionado interview, because it's like, you know, you own an NBA team, you got businesses going everywhere, like, what is most important to you? And so Jordan says, "Of all the things I'm involved in, my strongest passion is the Jordan Brand, because I can impact that in a much greater sense than owning an NBA team. To be able to continually talk to that consumer, to interact with that consumer, it's not dependent on how the season ends. This is the most important part. If I had to pick, if I had to pick of all the things I'm involved in, the most important is the Jordan Brand, because it's my DNA. It's in my DNA. It is who I

• 51:02David Senra?

  am." This is a story coming from the preparation and his work ethic, that he was previously applying to basketball, now he's applying it when he's in the minor leagues, trying to be a baseball player. And really, this is the Jordan doesn't have an off button story. "What Michael did to get himself ready to play baseball was grueling. He would get up every morning and go to the complex way ahead of the other players. He'd get into the batting cage, swing the bat, and knock around the ball. He would do this for an hour to 90 minutes. Then the team would show up, and Michael would go through the regular practice, which ran about three hours. Then he would go back out for another hour. His hands were so raw that the calluses would rip open every day. The trainers would wrap his hands in gauze and tape. He looked like a prizefighter. The next morning, Michael was back in the

• 51:46David Senra?

  cage, swinging a baseball bat for hours. He never missed a day. Not only did he not miss a day, he never said a word about his hands. That's how you get ready. Once the on button is pushed, there isn't an off button." So another idea, I love the fact that Michael was always talking about something he learned from his parents, something he applied for the rest of his life, is that you've got to take negatives and turn them into positives. So he's got this really famous commercial, Nike commercial. It's the Nike commercial about failure. And I'm just going to read to you real quick because I pulled up the transcript. "I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games 26 times. I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed.

• 52:30David Senra?

  I've failed over and over and over again in my life, and that is why I succeed." So he's asked, I'm going to combine this with something else I heard him talk in this interview, he's like, "What's your biggest regret?" "I don't have regrets. To win, you have to lose. To be successful, you have to have something that wasn't successful. To be happy, you have to have disappointment." And to me, that's the idea he's expressing. I just have one sentence for you here. He's talking about the commercial that I just read to you. "The idea of not being afraid to make mistakes or using negative outcomes to create positive ones was great." And so let's go back to this mindset. The reason I'm talking about, hey, you get close to Jordan, you hear his words, you

• 53:13David Senra?

  read books about him, you watch his interviews, you're really downloading his operating system and the mindset that he approached his craft. And he talks about the mind over and over again. And he says, "The mind will play tricks on you. The mind was telling you that you couldn't go any further. The mind was telling you how much it hurt. The mind was telling you these things to keep you from reaching your goal." How weird and twisted and crazy this is. You have a goal, your own mind is trying to play tricks so you don't accomplish that goal. "The mind was telling you these things to keep you from reaching your goal, but you have to see past that. Turn it all off if you're going to get where you want to be." I'm going to read this again. The mind will play tricks on you.

• 53:56David Senra?

  The mind was telling you that you couldn't go any further. The mind was telling you how much it hurt. This is Michael Jordan. This is not a soft, weak person. And he's telling you, "My mind tried to do the same thing to me." This is extremely important. "The mind was telling you how much it hurt. The mind was telling you these things to keep you from reaching your goal. But you have to see past that. Turn it all off if you're going to get where you want to be." So there's a couple quotes, before I go to the next page, from my notes on all these talks I've been watching. So one of this, I think, that will help. And Michael says, "Work ethic eliminates fear." And actually, you know what? Before I go back to my notes, what he's talking about, the mind playing tricks on you, that you're going to be fearful.

• 54:39David Senra?

  Work ethic eliminates that. Jeff Bezos, in the next page, Jeff Bezos, what Michael's about to tell us reminded me of what Jeff Bezos said. He says, "Stress primarily comes from not taking action over something that you can have some control over." So Michael's saying, "I was as prepared as I could possibly have been for that moment. I couldn't go back and practice a little harder. I knew I had done the right things to prepare myself for that situation. One way or another, I knew I was prepared to be successful." Now, if you know you haven't prepared correctly, which is what Jeff is just saying, is the root cause of stress, or you haven't worked, and that you haven't worked hard enough, that's when other thoughts and emotions creep into your mind. That is stress. That is fear. Pause here. Go back to this.

• 55:24David Senra?

  "Work ethic eliminates fear." Right? Back to Jordan's paragraph. "It is the same process for doing anything, anywhere in life, no matter how big or small. Whether it's running a corporation, taking a test in the second grade, or taking a shot to win the game. At that moment," and I double underline this sentence, this is fantastic. "at that moment, you are the sum total of all the work you have put in. Nothing more and nothing less. If you are confident that you have done everything possible to prepare yourself, then there is nothing to fear." Back to my notes on the talks. "I have total confidence in my skill, so I am not afraid." It's the same idea. He's expressing, I think, like 15-year gap between those two ideas.

• 56:07David Senra?

  So it's obviously very fundamental if he's still talking about it. More notes. "I know I can play this game, and I know I can play it at the highest level. You've got a lot of guys with the ability, but they don't have control of their mind." I'm not making this up. How many times is Jordan saying the same idea over and over again? The importance of having control over your mind. A lot of people can run and jump and shoot, but they don't have the killer instinct and the confidence in themselves to perform those skills. Let's go back to this Zen. You know, he's having influence by what he learned from Phil Jackson, from the psychologist, the meditation, the living in the moment, like the Zen Buddhism idea. I want to allow whatever is going to happen to happen at its own rhythm. That is just, there's a single quote on an entire page.

• 56:52David Senra?

  I want to allow whatever is going to happen to happen at its own rhythm. Something he told Oprah that's kind of similar to that thought. If you chase something, you might not get it. If you put forth the work, the next thing you know, it's bestowed upon you. Okay, so now he's got a bunch of ideas on this page. So my note is, my driving force was to show people what I could do. Wake up and go on the attack. We are on the offense all the time. So there's a, you can find these principles of Nike in the early days. I think their first marketing manager was one that wrote it out. But they said that, we're on the offense all the time. Jordan was the same thing. And then find ways to trick yourself. So let's see what this is about. My driving force, my passion was to impress people with what I could do. It was the idea, somebody might be sitting in the stands who had never seen Michael

• 57:37David Senra?

  Jordan play before. I thought about that person who had never experienced the excitement or the entertainment I could provide. I would wake up in the morning thinking, how am I going to attack today? And then the idea of, you know, even, how do you, how do you have that motivation every day? Even after you, now he's got the accolades. He's All-Star, gold medals, MVPs, championships. You've got to trick your mind. You've got to play games with yourself. I never knew what my motivation would be until something during that day. It wasn't easy as I went along because I had accomplished so much. I had to trick myself. I had to find a test within the test. I look at these kids today and they don't know how to trick themselves. They don't even understand the need to find a way to get yourself ready to play at that

• 58:22David Senra?

  high level every night.

• 58:25David Senra?

  And now we're going to see that again, he's holding everybody else to a high standard, but not a higher standard than he held himself. And so this section reminded me of that quote I say to you all the time because I think it's extremely important to know. Comes from founder Four Seasons, Izzy Sharp, "Excellence is the capacity to take pains." Before I read this section to you, let me read some more quotes from these interviews that I think are echoing what I'm about to read to you. Remember earlier, he's saying, "I'm not going to fall down to your level," right? "My competitive drive is far greater than anyone else I've ever met. We have a goal, a vision to obtain. Sometimes you have to do it when you're tired. It's a test of your will to succeed." So how does this relate to what's happening? He's talking about when he's playing on the

• 59:06David Senra?

  Wizards, goes from being GM to going down, trying to get the players. At Washington, Kwame Brown said, "I was hard on him, and I was, because I never believed he had ever tried to push himself. He had developed bad habits, and I don't believe in bad habits." Tomorrow's kids are going to have to see someone playing hurt, see someone practicing the day after winning a championship. We have to provide examples so they can relate to that ideal. Otherwise, we'll lose the gap, that it starts to fade away. And 20 years from now, you'll never see someone play sick or get out on the floor with a sore ankle." So on the same section, we have a friend of his, like, add to what Michael's saying here. "I saw a guy sitting on the training table for two weeks with a sprained ankle.

• 59:51David Senra?

  Michael had a back spasm one day, and we literally had to carry him off the floor and drive him home in the bed of a truck because he couldn't move. They gave him treatments, they gave him heat treatments and cold treatments all night long, and he played the next night. He had fluid drained off his knee, I don't know how many times. One night, he had 22 cc's of fluid drain. Do you know how much that is? And that was before the game." So again, I think Michael's words resonate because they're not just words. He's not telling you, "Hey, you know, Scott, you have a migraine, get in here. Hey, your back's hurting," you know, because in The Last Dance, Michael and Kurt Crampe play, he's like, "Just go out there and be a decor." That wouldn't work if he didn't do it himself. And so what did he say? "You have a goal,

• 1:00:36David Senra?

  don't you? You have a vision to obtain. Well, sometimes you're going to have to do it when you're tired, and sometimes you're not going to feel well. You have to do it anyways. It's a test of your will to succeed."

• 1:00:46David Senra?

  Let me go back to my notes. There's another thing he says in this other interview. If you love something and your goal is to be successful, there's a certain price you have to pay. There's a certain accountability you have to hold. Later in that same interview, he says, everything comes with a price. And I'm going to read the last note I have on this and then I'll just finish with the book. Because really, this is something he said about his dad and he's saying it 25 years after his dad was murdered. And part of the reason founders exist is, of course, we want to learn how they thought about work, the ideas they had. They spent 40, 50 years over their career. They've obviously picked up useful information that is useful for future generations.

• 1:01:30David Senra?

  But work is just a smaller part of life. It's really to learn how you have a great life. And so outside of the work relationships, I think about the personal relationships a lot because these are life stories. They're not just work stories. And really, something that I feel like I've benefited greatly from reading these books is understanding the profound impact that the relationships, how your relationships with other people affect their journey in life. It could be your close friends, obviously your kids, your life partners, your spouses, whatever it is. But there's two, he just has a few sentences here. There's just two ideas that jumped out at me. It's the fact that he's having this discussion 25 years after his dad died.

• 1:02:15David Senra?

  So the impact that you're going to have, if you have kids now or maybe you have kids in the future, like how important that relationship is to your kid. And know that's going to affect what you do with them. Your actions are going to affect their lives long after you don't exist anymore. And then Jordan's ability to process and to get control of his mind and to take one of the most negative things that could ever happen to a person and say, hey, I didn't have control over it. I didn't want it to happen. But moving forward, it's going to have a positive impact on my life, he says. So this is when he's asked about his father 25 years after he died. I had him for 32 years. I never look at it from a negative sense. So he's talking about, I'm not, yes, I wish he was still here, but I had him for 32 years.

• 1:02:59David Senra?

  Obviously, he was murdered. I think about him practically every day.

• 1:03:05David Senra?

  So those two ideas, like, yes, I didn't want that to happen, but I had him for 32 years. I got a relish in the fact that I did have him for that long, for that period of time. I wanted more, but I didn't, I don't get to control that. I had him for 32 years, and even almost three decades after, he's no longer with me. I'm still thinking about him every day. So let's go back to the book. This, I almost ended on this because I thought it was so, such a great thought. Like, it doesn't have to be someone else. It could be you. And so he says, "For the 20th anniversary shoot, we asked, who's going to be next? Who's going to come along and take Michael Jordan's spot? In one way or another, just about everyone is going to go through that kind of search. The idea that it could be you is something

• 1:03:46David Senra?

  all of us can relate to when we think about our goals. It doesn't have to be someone else getting all the accolades. It could be you." And then we have Michael explicitly talking about the fact that building a team on a business is extremely similar to building a team in a sport. Difference is, one is negative sum and one is positive sum. There's only one NBA champion. There could be many, many successful businesses. And really, he's going to touch on one of his, another main idea. The ones that, at least I'm going to take away is the idea, okay, practice, right? The importance of practice. Believe in practice is the, is the way I would distill that idea down to its essence. Believe in practice, live in the moment, and then the importance that listening is a superpower.

• 1:04:31David Senra?

  How shocked were you when you, if you listened to the podcast, like, the fact that everybody around him talked about Michael's one of the greatest listeners? That is not, from the outside, does not look that way, right? So let's go to what he says here. "We bring our personalities, our visions, and our creativity to discussion." He's talking about the team at Jordan Brand. "And we don't give a damn about getting credit. We are there to create something beautiful, something representative of what the brand is all about. What I think they like about me is I can admit when I'm wrong, and I can accept criticism, and I can accept creative insight coming from someone other than myself. There are a lot of people who can't do that, or won't allow themselves to do that. They all feel like it's an attack on their intelligence, or a negative comment on their ideas. They want

• 1:05:11David Senra?

  so much credit that they can't share the credit. But that dynamic is just as destructive inside a creative team, or a corporate setting, as it is on the basketball court." In its highest form, business is a team game. The teams that can accept that philosophy are the teams that get the best chance, long-term, to be successful. Team sports are no different. Give me five guys who want to work hard and play together, and I'll take those guys every time over more talented players who can't come together for the good of the group. For years, people viewed me as an individual and not a team player because I scored so much. But I was a team player. I was just filling my role in it at that time. Brand Jordan is no different. Even though my name is on the product, it's a collaborative effort.

• 1:05:54David Senra?

  I have the same kind of commitment to the brand that I had to basketball. I have an intense focus and desire to make the brand successful. But I'm not so dominant that I can't listen to the creative ideas coming. Remember, "listen," he said that word. But I'm not so dominant that I can't listen to creative ideas coming from other people. Successful people, listen. Those who don't listen, don't survive.

• 1:06:21David Senra?

  And then Jordan closes with just a reminder that you just have to focus on the moment. All is now. In all honesty, I don't know what's ahead. If you ask me what I'm going to do in five years, I can't tell you. This moment, now that's a different story. I know what I'm doing moment to moment, but I have no idea what's ahead. I'm so connected to this moment that I don't make assumptions about what might come next because I don't want to lose touch with the present. Once you make assumptions about something that might happen or might not happen, then you open up the possibility of making mistakes. You start limiting the potential outcomes. I don't make assumptions. I know what I know, and I deal with my life based on what's happening right now.

• 1:07:05David Senra?

  And that is where I'll leave it. To get the full story, buy the book. If you buy the book using the link that's in the show notes, you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time. If you want to support a friend and the podcast at the same time, and you want to buy them in the description, I will leave a link below if you want to do that. That is 213 books down, 1,000 to go, and I'll talk to you again soon.