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

Coach George Raveling (@GeorgeRaveling https://twitter.com/GeorgeRaveling/) is an 80-year-old living legend and Nike's former Director of International Basketball. Coach Raveling was the first African American head basketball coach in the PAC-8 (now PAC-12), and he is often referred to as the "Human Google." Coach Raveling has held head coaching jobs at Washington State, The University of Iowa, and USC. Following a prolific basketball coaching career, he joined Nike at the request of Phil Knight, where he played an integral role in signing a reluctant Michael Jordan. He's also been inducted in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame http://www.hoophall.com/ as well as the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame https://collegebasketballexperience.com/hall-of-fame/. In this episode we cover a lot of things including how he came to possess the original copy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream https://www.archives.gov/files/press/exhibits/dream-speech.pdf" speech, how his practice team ended up beating the 1984 US Olympic Dream Team in basketball, and much, much more! I hope you'll emerge from this conversation walking on air as I did! Enjoy! This podcast is brought to you by Audible http://audible.com/tim. I have used Audible http://audible.com/tim for years, and I love audiobooks. 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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Speaker 01

  Now would seem an appropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 00

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 0:24Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I do get asked a lot, what I would take if I could only take one supplement. And the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road. So what is AG1? AG1 is a science driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole food sourced nutrients. In a single scoop, AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut, and immune system. So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first

• 1:04Tim Ferriss?

  subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out. Go to drinkag1.com/tim. That's drink AG1, the number one, drinkag1.com/tim. Last time, drinkag1.com/tim. Check it out.

• 1:24Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to interview and deconstruct world-class performers of all different types to tease out the lessons, habits, routines, and much more that you can apply in your own lives. And my guest today really blew me away. I implore you, I beg you to listen to this entire conversation. I was so impressed from start to finish. His name is George Ravelling. And I do owe a debt of gratitude to Ryan Holiday for making this introduction. George Raveling on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram @georgeravelling, R-A-V-E-L-I-N-G.

• 2:06Tim Ferriss?

  Coachgeorgeravelling.com is an 80-year-old living legend and Nike's former director of international basketball. Coach Rav, as he's often called, was the first African-American basketball coach in the Pac-8, Pac-12, and is often referred to as the "human Google" for reasons that become abundantly clear in this interview. He has held head coaching jobs at Washington State, the University of Iowa, and USC. Following a prolific basketball coaching career, he joined Nike at the request of Phil Knight, where he played an integral role in signing a reluctant, not many people know that story, Michael Jordan. He's also been inducted in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, as well as the College Basketball

• 2:48Tim Ferriss?

  Hall of Fame. We cover a lot in this wide-ranging conversation. In Austin, Texas, we cover how he was given the original copy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, which was not the name, by the way, originally, how his practice team ended up beating the 1984 U.S. Olympic Dream Team in basketball, what, the story of getting Michael Jordan to sign with Nike, why Coach Rav has been nicknamed the "human Google", his voracious reading habit, and how he picks books and takes notes. We had a huge nerd out over how to take notes in books, the wisdom of his grandmother and other mentors,

• 3:27Tim Ferriss?

  and much, much, much more. I really walked out of this conversation floating on there and reflecting on and thinking about so much of what he shared. He's an incredibly impressive human being. I hope you enjoy this even half as much as I did, which would mean it's probably going to be one of your favorite episodes that I've done. So without further ado, please enjoy the ever impressive George Raveling.

• 3:58Tim Ferriss?

  Coach, welcome to the show.

• 4:00Speaker 01

  Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be part of your world.

• 4:03Tim Ferriss?

  I have been looking forward to this conversation ever since our mutual friend Ryan Holiday gave me a teaser of your life story. And when I started doing homework and prep, I started thinking to myself, I should try to get Coach to spend the next two days with me. I should cancel my flights because we're going to barely scratch the surface in the time that we have today. And I struggled with where to start because I have pages and pages of notes of my own. And you also sent me, I will give you credit where credit is due, the absolute best exploratory bullets that any guest out of 300-plus guests has sent me.

• 4:45Tim Ferriss?

  And we're going to start somewhere that I think may surprise people, and that is the "I have a dream" speech. So could you tell us about your relationship with that, please?

• 5:00Speaker 01

  Well, it's one of those stories about being in the right place at the right time. It was a Thursday night in Claymont, Delaware, and I was having dinner at my best friend's home, and his doctor's a very, his dad was a very prominent dentist in Wilmington. And so, in the background as we ate dinner, in those days, everyone ate dinner as a family. And so, in the background, the television was on, and the news commentary was about the forthcoming March on Washington. And so, my friend, his name Warren Wilson, his dad was Dr. Woodrow Wilson.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  And so, he asked a question of us, are you boys going to go to the March on Washington? And we said, "No." And he asked us, "Why not?" And we gave him some youthful excuse that we didn't have the money or way to get there. And so, he said, "Well, I have a feeling this is going to be a historic event. It could be the largest gathering of black people in the history of America." in one place and so he said and I think the two of you should be there he said so what I'm gonna do he had two cars he said I'm gonna give you one of the cars and and money and you guys should attend and so the next day we we took off for Washington DC

• 6:23Speaker 01

  on Friday and at that time there was one main thoroughfare into Washington DC was Route One and so when you come in you come in off of New York Avenue and so there were a lot of what we call motels in those days along there and we found one that was suitable to our economics and we got a room and so we decided that we would go down to the monument grounds just to to get a feel for the best way to get there and what it was gonna look like and so as we were walking around we encountered a gentleman and he asked us I'm six-four and Warren's six-four so he asked us if we were coming to the march the next day and we said absolutely and so he said would you want to volunteer and so we said

• 7:07Speaker 01

  for what and he said to be security guard so we said sure we'll volunteer and he said well we're expecting twice the attendance that the papers are predicting and so we we have to add additional security so he said we'll meet you down there the next morning at eight fifteen and so we got there early we woke up we're all excited so we get down there and we find him and he said wow you guys are really early and so he looks at how tall we are and he says well we've decided we're gonna put extra security up on the podium and so we're gonna sign you guys to the podium and and so they they had these little white

• 7:47Speaker 01

  hats which maybe like a sailor hat but they're cardboard to wear for identification so we were stationed at the podium where all the speakers were gonna so to give you some backdrop on it that all the speakers and they start at nine o'clock in the morning if I remember correctly John Lewis was the first speaker and then there was a series of speakers throughout the day concluding with Martin Luther King as the last speaker some people would suggest that it was he was a keynote speaker but he really wasn't they put King last because they knew he would hold the crowd So, part of the stipulation was each speaker had to submit in writing his speech

• 8:30Speaker 01

  that he was gonna give, and it could not exceed five minutes. There was a hard and fast rule on this. And what was interesting about it was that James Baldwin submitted his speech and they felt it was too exclamatory. They were worried about getting the crowd too excited and maybe having a demonstration. And Baldwin's speech was over five minutes, and so they wouldn't accept it, so Baldwin refused to speak. But he was originally to be one of the speakers. So, as the day goes on, it's a hot and humid day, and as you look out from the Lincoln Memorial, you look out to what they call a reflecting pool,

• 9:13Speaker 01

  all the way back to the Washington Monument. And as the longer the day went, the hotter it became, the more energized people were. And so, we finally get to that point of the end of the day, and Martin Luther King comes on to speak. And so, as history will show, King speaks, he's speaking from prepared notes, and he gets about one paragraph left. And as he's speaking, the crowd is just mesmerized by him. He has captured every single ounce

• 9:55Speaker 01

  of attention in each human being. And he had a cadence about the way he spoke that he would say, "How long..." He had these, what I call drum beats, and he had a way of raising and lowering his voice to manipulate you as a listener. And so, he's just about toward the end of this, going to the last paragraph, and you hear a voice, and today with technology, you could certainly do it, but a female voice seated behind the podium says, "Tell them about the dream, Martin. Tell them about the dream." Well, the voice

• 10:36Speaker 01

  was that of Mahalia Jackson, who most people would say is the greatest gospel, black gospel singer of all time, maybe the greatest gospel singer of all time. She had worked on previous...

• 10:50Speaker 01

  demonstrations and gatherings with Martin Luther King. So she had heard Martin Luther King tell the "I have a dream" part in Selma and Detroit. And so if you look at the original speech, it was not part of the original speech. And second, he's the only speaker who exceeded five minutes. And so at that point, the crowd is just mesmerized by him. And so then he ad libs in the "I have a dream" speech. And then at the conclusion, he goes back and closes out with the prepared closing. So when it's over, we were told to form a V around the

• 11:32Speaker 01

  podium and help to usher him out. So just as he finishes, the most frequently asked question is, "Why did you ask him for the speech?" I have no idea. It was just impulse. So I say to Dr. King, as he's folding his speech, I said, "Dr. King, could I have that copy of the speech?" And just as he's folding it, he instinctively hands it to me. And then the rabbi who's doing the benediction says, "Dr. King, that's a great speech. I'm so inspired." So his attention shifted away from me to the rabbi. And so when the rabbi

• 12:12Speaker 01

  finished the benediction, I actually CBS went through the archives of Johnson & Johnson, Ebony magazine, and they found the picture of me standing right beside him at the podium. So I actually have a picture that verifies that I was there. And CBS was able to find some footage where he was folding the speech, and they can see him handing it, but didn't show my hand in it. And so at any rate, when it's over, they go over to the White House. And as they walk into the Oval Office, President Kennedy says, "Dr. King, I loved your 'I have a dream' speech." Well, so the media took that and ran with it, because if you see

• 12:52Speaker 01

  the original speech, the speech had no title. And so little did I know at that That this was going to take on the historic significance that it did. It actually took 50 years for it to really find its rightful place in history. It's makes me mindful of something I heard Malcolm X say one time that history's best situated to record all man's deeds. So my interpretation of that is history and historians ultimately will put things in their rightful place. And so it took 50 years. Well, so, um, I had no idea at that point when I had the speech that it that it was

• 13:33Speaker 01

  going to become a valuable historic document. So when I got back home, I put it inside of a book that I had from that President Harry Truman gave me. So my senior year at Villanova, I played in the East West All-Star game and it was in Kansas City. And one of the things that they did is they took us out to Independence, Missouri to meet President Truman. So and when we went out to meet him, his office at his home was a replica of the Oval Office. And so as we walked in, each of us noticed there was two huge tables to the right with books stacked up on them.

• 14:17Speaker 01

  Well, at the end, after President Truman had talked with the with all the team and the coaching staff and trainers, he on the way out, he gave each of us a two-volume book of that he wrote on his presidency. And so in the book, and which I still have both of them now, both books say, to George traveling from Harry S Truman, best wishes, and it has the date. So I put the speech inside of one of those for a couple of reasons. I would remember where it was and two, I knew I'd never throw those books away because how many people can say they have an autographed book by the President of the United States personally to you. So it stayed there for years and years and I never thought about it.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  I actually, uh, my wife didn't even know I had it because, and so I go to the University of Iowa as head basketball coach and of course I'm the first black coach there and first in the Big Ten. And so there's, there's much to do about this. At that time, all the local newspapers, big newspapers, had a Sunday magazine section on, uh, and so the cover story on the Cedar Rapids Gazette paper was gonna, and this magazine section was gonna be about me taking the, the, uh, University of Iowa head basketball coaching job. So as he was asking questions, he, what I call a throwaway question, he said, "Coach, were you ever involved in the civil rights movement?" And I said, "Well, kind of."

• 15:47Speaker 01

  And he said, "What does that mean?" And I said, "Well, I went, I attended the march on Washington. I was a security guard and, uh, and I was able to secure the, the speech." And at that point, if I've ever seen a person just physically decompose, it was him, I mean, he was, he just, he, he didn't know, he was so much more, I couldn't figure out why he was so excited. And so he says, "Oh my God, are you, you have it?" He said, "Where is it?" I, I had only been there about six weeks, so I hadn't unpacked all the boxes down in the basement. So I said, "It's in the box down in the basement." He said, "Can we go look for it?" And so we go down and I figured out which box it was and I pulled it out. And he was literally shaking and, and so he said, "Oh my God." He said, "Can I call my editor? Can we take a picture of this?"

• 16:32Speaker 01

  And so I said, "Sure." So little did I, that was the first public notice that I had this speech. So, so the story kinda now starts to split between Raveling being the head basketball coach and Raveling having this speech. And so from that point on, it took on a little, a different significance, but it's still, time had not placed it in its rightful place. And so, over the years, it became more, I, I literally, one of the miracles, Tim, is that for 50 years, I had this, and nothing,

• 17:13Speaker 01

  no flood, no, no, a house doesn't catch on fire, somebody doesn't steal the book, whatever. And if you saw the actual speech, now I have it in the vault in LA, for the speech to survive this, this long, and, and, and the quality of the paper, it's typewritten, you can see little, little typos in there and so forth. And I had a friend of mine who graduated with me from Villanova, who was with the FBI, and, and so one time we were talking about it, and he said, "Well, if you ever get in a situation where someone doubts that, that you really have the speech," or that, it was, he said, "We can lift the fingerprints

• 17:56Speaker 01

  off of there." He said, "Your fingerprints are on there, and so's King's." So, it, it was an interesting circumstance, that what became the focal part of the speech was something that he never really intended to use. And only through the motivation of Mahalia Jackson did he ad lib the, the "I have a dream" piece in. So, as the years went on, it, it took on a, a unique value. And so, at one point, my, Turner Sports does a documentary on it, and so, like, my wife goes to work, people are talking, "Oh, I didn't know about your husband having the speech." So my wife comes home one evening, she says, "Hey, we gotta

• 18:41Speaker 01

  have a talk." I said, "Okay." She says, "The speech has got to get out of this house right away." She said, "You travel too much, somebody's gonna break in the house, and, and, and I might get killed over the speech." So she said, "You gotta get it out of here." So we put it in the vault. And as naturally would happen,

• 19:00Speaker 01

  Various people tried to buy it from me, but I never felt that I had total ownership of it. I kind of felt like I was the guardian of something historic. And I became so sensitive about it that I stopped. I would, on Black History Month, I'd get many invitations to come, bring the speech, talk about it. But I was so self-conscious that I stopped doing it because I never wanted anybody to think I was profiting off of this. And I never entertained any offers to sell it. And when I was growing up as a little boy in DC, my grandma used to always say that money's the root of all evil, don't build your life around money.

• 19:44Speaker 01

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

• 20:27Tim Ferriss?

  What an incredible story. What an incredible experience. You think about how the stars aligned for that to happen.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  And from that point on, I learned a good lesson that you don't have to have a relationship with a person for them to become your mentor. And so in those days, I don't even know if I knew the connotation mentor. But I looked at King more as someone, as a teacher, someone I could learn from. So as we fast forward, and I'm now working at Nike. And in my office, I had this picture in my office. And it was a headshot of Martin Luther King, James Baldwin, and Malcolm X.

• 21:17Speaker 01

  And so when people would come into my office, they would look at the things on the wall. And they would always be drawn to that portrait. And so they... What was interesting, most people, I would say 99% of people could not tell you all three of them. A lot of people would get King, some would get James Baldwin, very few Malcolm X, but it was rare that anyone got all three of them. So they would ask me why I had it up there, and I said, "They're my mentors, they're my inspiration. They're the people that I, whose lives I look to when I'm trying to figure out something complex."

• 21:57Speaker 01

  And so while I didn't have a day-to-day relationship with Dr. King, I had a mental day-to-day relationship, month-to-month, week-to-week, year-to-year, because there was so much that I wanted to learn from him. And one thing, while it's in my mind, I'd like to share with you, and I don't know if the vast majority of people that follow King knew this. I just found out this past week in reading a book review in the New York Times Book Review section, that when Dr. King was in the seminary at Crozier, which is in Chester, Pennsylvania, that's where

• 22:35Speaker 01

  he took his practice to become a preacher, that Doc, they had a basketball team, and Dr. King was on the team. And so that delighted me to know and to discover that he played basketball during the time. And the person who wrote the book actually found in the archives a box score from one of their games, and unfortunately, they got waxed 124 to 41. So, but I was so pleased to find out that there was an athletic side to him. And I don't know, in all I've read about King over the years, I'd never known that he participated in athletics.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  So I was, there was an immediate joy to find out that he, and particularly that he played basketball.

• 23:22Tim Ferriss?

  And when you say you had a relationship with, say, Dr. King in the sense that you viewed him as a mentor or a role model, and you revisited that, would you find yourself in specific situations and ask yourself, you know, what would Dr. King do? Or how did how did that fit in your life from a mentorship standpoint? Was it just putting yourself in their shoes to make hard decisions? Or how did you think?

• 23:47Speaker 01

  I think one thing that that became quickly apparent to me was that the value and of words and and and the spoken word is such a powerful tool, perhaps maybe more powerful than the atom bomb in many ways. The fact that that he had a vision, the whole I have a dream. So all great leaders, I believe, share a vision and then they then they have a journey. And so he talked about the vision, the journey, the completion

• 24:29Speaker 01

  of the dream and the conquering of injustice. But to me, King was was so many things. He was a preacher, he was a messenger, a visionary, he was a precursor, a leader. He was a man for all seasons and all reasons in many ways. And so what many times I reflect back on something that he said that when I'm in a tough spot and I think about giving up, you say to yourself, what kind of sacrifice is this going to be? And one thing I remember Dr. King saying is if a man or a woman hasn't found something in life that they're willing

• 25:13Speaker 01

  to die for, then perhaps they're not fit to live. And so he lives out that that that reality that

• 25:23Speaker 01

  He became so deeply immersed in this mission that he ultimately had to give his life for it. And I've watched a number of documentaries over the years and on the sit-ins and during the depth of segregation. And one was the night before they were going to sit at the lunch counters and the person who was leading the demonstration as they were planning out it strategically, at the end, he said to them, he said, "I want everybody in the room to look around at each other and shake hands because tomorrow night when we have this meeting, some of you are not going to be here."

• 26:07Speaker 01

  And I thought to myself, "Oh, my God, would I have the courage of commitment to know that if I were part of this demonstration tomorrow night, I might get, I have to put my life on the line. I might not be back if I'm sitting in that room." I have to say to myself, "Are you willing to sacrifice your life for this cause?" And to me, a lot of the untold stories about segregation and the injustices that black people have faced most of our lives is those people who died so that we can enjoy the things that we enjoy in society today.

• 26:52Speaker 01

  And so to me, whenever I have any questions about the depth of commitment, I go back and I say to myself, "Do you feel so strong about this that you'd be willing to give your life for it? Do you feel this strong about it that you would be willing to risk getting fired?" And over the years, especially when I was at Nike, sometimes I had a depth of belief and conviction that what I was suggesting was right and I was willing to fight right down to the end. And if it meant I got fired, then I got fired. But I never allowed the position or to threaten me to be less than what I should be as a person.

• 27:37Tim Ferriss?

  You mentioned your grandmother in passing, and she seems to have been a very important figure in your life.

• 27:47Tim Ferriss?

  How did that come to be the case?

• 27:49Speaker 01

  Well, my grandma was, was basically, if I can borrow a religious concept, my grandmother was the pope. Her word was infallible. And what was interesting, my grandma was a product of a Blackfoot Indian tribe. And on both sides of our family, we really are descendants of, of, of American Indian tribes. And, which I find interesting sometime because of that we now, I've gone through these, these connotations that when I was, when I was first born, which you'll find interesting, I was born in a segregated hospital in Washington DC, Garfield Hospital.

• 28:34Speaker 01

  And there were, there were four floors for whites and one floor for blacks. So I, so I came into the world, in a, in a segregated world. But, so, as, as, as I was growing up, when I was nine, my dad died. And when I was 13, my mom had a nervous breakdown. And she was institutionalized the rest of her life. In those days, the, the, the economy was, was in poor shape. So you got rations from the government. You got like flour, sugar, so, milk, so forth. And so I come home one day, and my mom's standing at the sink, and she's got the water

• 29:16Speaker 01

  running, and she's pouring this big bag of sugar into the sink and just letting the sugar go down. And so I, I grabbed it and turned it off and I, and I said, "Mom, what's going on?" She, and she just, she was incoherent. So anyway, my mom ended up being institutionalized. So now here, here's George at 13 years old, and, uh, no, 12. And, and so what do you do with George? He has no, he has, he has no parental supervision. Dad's dead, mom's in a mental institution, and she spent most of the rest of her life there.

• 29:53Speaker 01

  And so my grandma worked for this white family in Georgetown. And so she was sharing with the lady at the house this dilemma. And so she was saying, I don't know, I don't know what I'm gonna do, but I have to do something for him. And so the lady said, her daughter was a head of Catholic charities in DC. And she would mention it to her, maybe her daughter could do something. So lo and behold, the daughter decides what she's gonna help. And so she found a school, a boarding school for me, a Catholic boarding school in Pennsylvania. It was called St. Michael's School for Boys. It was, and so she was able to get me into the school there.

• 30:38Speaker 01

  You stayed there year round as a resident. And so I went off to St. Michael's. And the structure where priests were, ran the institution and the teaching and the service part were done all by nuns. And so, over the course of the time I was there, I did everything from bale hay to pick apples, to clean chicken coops, to work in the kitchen, to scrub the floors in the chapel, to make beds. You had to do a chore to help offset your presence there. And so the classes were very strict and rigorous.

• 31:21Speaker 01

  The classes were small, so we got a lot of individual attention. And it was, it was just a stroke of, of, of, of, a miracle that my grandma was able to get me into this situation. And she, my grandma never graduated from high school. In fact, no one in my family, my mom and dad finished high school. But she knew that there had to be a better way for me. And she did everything that she could to to help me grow as a person. I remember one one time, Tim, my grandma took myself and my brother out.

• 32:06Speaker 01

  And and she said, uh, we're gonna go outside. I want to teach you some some manners and lessons. And so my my my grandma takes my brother and I out on the street. And she says, and I'm gonna start to teach you how to treat women. Women are to be respected. And so she's she says, when you walk down the street, you always walk on the outside. A woman always walks on the inside. When you, when you, when you, uh, get to the corner, you make sure you check the traffic in both ways before. And then you walk as more as a guard. Uh, if if a woman's getting in the car, you always open the door for them first. If you sit down at the table for the meal, the the you you hold the chair and help them.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  And so long before feminist, uh, uh, movement was was even thought of, my grandmother was teaching us social graces. Um, yes, sir, no, sir. I I I go on a flight now. And and I it's just part of my DNA. Uh, when people say something, if a stewardess says something, I say, yes, ma'am, no, no, ma'am, yes, sir, no, sir. And I'm I'm eighty years old and I still do that. But so invariably, what will happen on the flight is either during the flight or at the end, the the stewardess will say to me, can I ask you a question? And I'll say, yes, and I know it's coming. And they'll say, are you, uh, are you, uh, from the military?

• 33:34Speaker 01

  And I say, well, I was in the military, but but no, I'm not in the military now. And and they say, well, are you from the South? And I said, no. And so I said, why do you ask? And they say, well, because you're so polite. No one says, yes, ma'am, and no's. And I have a lot of people now who who find it uncomfortable if I say, yes, sir, at eighty years old and they're younger than me. But it's just the the way I I was born. Grandma was was huge on manners and if we went somewhere and and there were adults there in those days, if you were a child, kids were to be seen and not heard. And so i- if if there was a conversation going on aga- with adults, you just listen. And but

• 34:15Speaker 01

  if if someone asked me a question and I didn't say, yes, ma'am, and no, ma'am, when I got home, my grandma would say, I heard Mrs. Jenkins asked you that and you you just said, yeah. And she said, bend over. And she would she whipped me. And so and my greatest quote for my grandma was, she told me one time, she said, there's more horses asses in the world than there are horses. Now, that's all that's been my favorite grandma quote.

• 34:40Tim Ferriss?

  She's a good teacher and a good enforcer, it sounds like. Well, were there any other mentors during that or teachers or people who had a strong impact on you over that stay in that Catholic school?

• 34:59Speaker 01

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

• 35:44Speaker 01

  be anything other than than average. But she she constantly preached that to me. And she would watch the basketball games and and and after she would come up or the next day in class, she would say, Well, you know, in the third quarter, you, you, you, you really, you really were loafing out there. I was embarrassed. But she always found a way to, to, uh, uh, I'd write a paper and she'd read it and she'd say, "This is really good, but this is not your best stuff. You can do better than..." And so she always kinda created this contest of, uh, having me compete, compete against myself. It was never competing against the other students. It was always me competing against myself.

• 36:29Speaker 01

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

• 37:14Speaker 01

  Really? Yeah. I, I, I know you were, you're Chinese footboxing, so you can probably identify with that. I wouldn't wanna deal with your reach. No. And so, I, I actually, somewhere in one of my high school scrapbooks, I have a picture of me in the ring. In those days, you wore the headgear and you had the big gla-, big gloves. And so, I fought in, in my weight class, which at that time, I wish I was, uh, under 200 pounds now. But, uh, so I, I actually won my, my senior year, I won a Golden Glove event. And so, uh, and then I played, uh, baseball, I played first base and pitched. And in football, I played in all, except the last year.

• 37:56Speaker 01

  And then, uh, we didn't have a good quarterback, so my coach put me at quarterback. But I was, uh, uh, believe me, uh, uh, they, uh, my talents were, I wouldn't even have gotten a walk-on. Offer, but I was the quarterback and then what happened was basketball between my eighth grade year and ninth grade year, I grew four inches. So I went from six foot to six four in one year. And so obviously the height advantage proved beneficial to me early on in basketball. And so over the course of the four years, I got better and better. And when I look back on it now, a lot of it was Sister Delorec encouraging me,

• 38:36Speaker 01

  kept telling me, oh, you're getting better. And, and you, and so she kept me motivated all the time. So my senior year, I ended up being the second leading scorer in the state of Pennsylvania. And, um, so at this point, uh, let's just step back real quick. So at the end of my junior year, I'm wait, I'm going, waiting for to take the Greyhound bus back to DC for, uh, I got a week vacation back in DC. So I'm sitting there waiting for the bus to come by and Tim, I can remember it was like yesterday, I thought to myself, God, if I can just graduate and become a pilot in the air force, I'll have it made. I had no idea anything about basketball was going to take me and get me a scholarship. So the

• 39:21Speaker 01

  following year, I end up the second leading scorer in the state. And so we're playing at St. Rose in Carbondale. And after the game, when I come out of locker room, a gentleman comes up to me and he says, hi, my name's Jack Ramsey. I'm the coach at, at St. Joe College. And he hands me a, a, a card. Of course, Jack Ramsey is in the basketball Hall of Fame, great coach. And so he said that I like the way you play. We'd like to offer you a scholarship. And I said, yes, sir. And every time he'd say something, I'd just say, yes, sir, because I didn't know what else to say. And so on the school bus ride back to the, uh, school, my, uh, coach says, who was that man you were talking to

• 40:05Speaker 01

  outside the locker room? And I said, he was a coach and I handed him the card. And so my coach says, well, what did he tell you? And I said, he said that, uh, he, he wanted to offer me a scholarship. And so I said, Coach, what's a scholarship? Because I had no idea what that you could that they would pay for your education in return you participated in basketball. So then by over the course of the remainder of the season, I had an offer from Michigan State, Villanova and and Gettysburg and a bunch of other schools. But I had Gettysburg because their coach did the best job of recruiting me. He'd write me handwritten letters, four and five pages on what it was going to mean

• 40:46Speaker 01

  to go to Gettysburg and so forth. He'd drive up to games. He was so persistent. But at the end of the day, the reality was this, as far as the nuns and the priests were concerned, it would it would it would have been heresy to go to to a state institution. I was going to a Catholic school. So then it basically came down to St. Joe's in Villanova and I went down for the visit in Villanova. And while I was there, they gave me admissions exam. He didn't have PSAT and ACT then. And so I took the admissions exam the first day I was there. And once again, amazing insight by Sister Dolores. She when she found

• 41:27Speaker 01

  out I was going to get scholarship offers, she started to make me stay after school every day and work on on the entrance exams. So so I was prepared and and and so the Sunday before we left to drive back up to Hoben Heights, the coach Al Severance offered me a scholarship and and they wanted a decision while we were there. So basically, my my high school coach made the decision. He thought that that's where I should go. And and little did I know that that basketball is going to be this transformative force in my life that was going to take me someplace I never thought that I could go. Tim, never in my

• 42:08Speaker 01

  life, and I don't mean this in a mean spirited way, did anyone in my family ever say to me, George, when you grow up, you I want you to go to college. It was there was no reason for them to think that at that time, it was it wasn't it wasn't even a dream or or thought because nobody had had received that type of education. And go back to my grandma. So.

• 42:37Speaker 01

  I call my grandma and I tell her what's going on and then I'm gonna get this scholarship. And so I I tell her, uh, well, how does it work? I said, okay, so if if I agree to play on the basketball team for the four years, they'll they'll pay for my education. So my so all of a sudden, there's utter silence on the phone. And I said, Grandma, are you still there? And she said, yes. And I said, why are you so quiet? She says, oh, I just feel like a failure. I said, what do you mean? And she said, I thought I raised you better than that. And I said, well, Grandma, what did I do wrong? And she said, stupid.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  Don't white people gonna gonna give you a a a free education to play basketball? You how can you go? How could you be so stupid to believe? She could not comprehend that that because of the the racial situation, that someone would pay for your education and all you had to do was play basketball. And she she just it it took her over a year before she fully was able to even trust that this was. When I finally got on campus at Villanova and and went to the first class, then then she she kind of started to to to be a lot more trustful of of the process. But uh, it it it was a I look back on it now and it just shows you

• 44:03Speaker 01

  the depth and of a stain of of racism and and how things are are are implanted in your mind that you you just can't they're incomprehensible.

• 44:16Tim Ferriss?

  So on that on that note, when I was doing homework, I read somewhere that you have a collection of racist mementos.

• 44:24Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 44:24Tim Ferriss?

  In your house.

• 44:25Speaker 01

  Wow, you did do some research.

• 44:26Tim Ferriss?

  Could you? I I beyond that, I don't know the details, but that just stuck in my mind. And because that's something I think that a lot of people would actively avoid. So why do you have this collection?

• 44:37Speaker 01

  Well, first of all, I, you know, no one's ever asked me that question, but I spent, I probably have over a hundred thousand dollars worth of black collectibles for about eight or nine years. It became an obsession with me. And so I would go to antique shows and go to stores and hunt down old black memorabilia. I have things that date back before. I actually have a first edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin. So I started to collect books, figurines, and postcards. Postcards, I started with figurines. And so I, a friend

• 45:19Speaker 01

  of mine told me about an antique store that was closing and the gentleman had a huge collection of black collectibles. And so it was in San Pedro, so I went down and I paid him thirty-five thousand dollars for the collectibles. He had over a hundred pieces. And part of the deal was that he had to mark them and write a little card so I would understand the historic significance of them. Postcards, Tim, I have them back before you had, which this might surprise you, originally you didn't have to put a stamp on the postcard to send it out to mail. So I have them back in, the earliest one I have is eighteen ninety-one. Wow.

• 46:02Speaker 01

  But what was interesting about the black postcards was they always made blacks, they pictured them in a derogatory term. One of the more frequent ones you see is a black person with eaten watermelon with a smile on his face. But they were all derogatory. Now, here's what's Further interesting on we've now you put stamps on them. So I was able to read the messages on some of them. And and and so the one that I remember the most is a lady's writing to one of her girlfriends. And we'll just make up the name.

• 46:44Speaker 01

  She says Helen, we have a nigger that works at a house that smiles just like him. And so in those days to use the word nigger was commonplace. Uh, it in you you just learn. I don't know that you ever learned to accept it, but it was it was something that was said commonplace. So I started to build this historic collection of of of memorabilia. So that I could have a legacy for my children and their children. And I could I have them on display at my home to remind me of how of of where we were

• 47:26Speaker 01

  and where we are today and and trials and tribulations that we've gone through. So I I I easily have postcards. I I probably have over three hundred of the postcards and I probably have about five hundred of the uh, uh, figurines. I was just thinking because I have some I have some the original Aunt Jemima uh, uh, flower part uh, uh, packs in that I it it. Once I got going, it was amazing the things that I was able to to collect. And so I had so many of them that I couldn't put them all on display. So I have probably three quarters of them are boxed up in storage.

• 48:09Speaker 01

  But and then the others are are around my house.

• 48:13Tim Ferriss?

  Do you collect anything else or have you collected anything else?

• 48:16Speaker 01

  Uh, books and friends.

• 48:20Speaker 01

  In my library at home, I have well over twenty-five-hundred books and probably I have another six or seven-hundred that are in storage because it just ran out of space. But I just continue to buy books to read them. I have, as you probably researched, I have an unusual way of going about reading books. But in friends, I don't have a strategy or anything for friends. Most times, people, when I meet them, are not who they ended up being, whether it was Phil Knight, Bob Knight, John Thompson, Sonny Baker. I could

• 49:05Speaker 01

  tell you, tons of people, when I met them, they were not who they ended up being. But for some reason, we were able to build an authentic and sustainable relationship. And I've always looked upon relationships as a privilege that you have. And at the end of the day, at the core of all relationships in my mind, is trust and respect. And so, both of those have to be earned. And so, over the years, I've met people, and unintentionally, we've stayed in touch, and there's been this level of trust that's allowed the relationship

• 49:47Speaker 01

  to endure. But it's something, it's a lot like marriage. You have to work at it. You have to understand that there's a balance in relationships. And with me, the number one thing that I ask myself continually is, what can I do for you? And your good friend, Ryan Holiday, and I had dinner last night, and one of the very last things I said to him, I said, Ryan, is there anything I can be doing for you in the next thirty days? I've always had this theory that if you help enough people get what they want, you'll always get what you want. And

• 50:28Speaker 01

  So I've never tried to enter a relationship based on selfish motives. That if I know this person, I'm gonna get these benefits. I, I, I, so I try to find out, what do we have in common as people? What is it that we can share? How can I help this person? No matter how famous they are, how successful they are, everyone has certain needs, even if they're just psychological needs. Or, or we all need truth tellers in our life. And so, um, in building relationships, I try to make sure that I surround myself with people who, who wanna see me become better and can help me become better,

• 51:10Speaker 01

  that I can learn from them and, and that I can contribute to their lives. And so, um, most of the, the friendships I have in life, they, they all started by, by mistake. Uh, one of the young men that, that's here today, uh, that has taught me almost all I know about technology. I spoke at a clinic in, in, in Orlando. And I, so, uh, a friend of mine, Kevin Eastman, was running the clinic. And, uh, I said to him, I said, who's gonna, who's gonna put my presentation up on the screen? And that, do you have a, a IT guy? And he said, yes. And so, so I said, well, introduce him to me, 'cause I wanna put my presentation up.

• 51:54Speaker 01

  I wanna walk to the back of the room and, and make sure it's clear and so forth. So, so, um, I met Alex Lavassier. And, and, uh, during the time I was there, uh, we just hit it off. And so, when he, I'm, I'm pretty sure he was taking me back to the airport. And I asked him if, if he would be interested in doing a website for me. And he said, yes. And so, that's how it started and it's turned into a lifelong friendship. And, um...

• 52:24Speaker 01

  I think that was the start of me recognizing that I needed to be around more young people. And so I don't associate, and maybe it's bad to say this, but I don't hang out with many people my own age. Most of the people that I associate with are younger people because I think they're the future, they're smart, they're naive enough that they'll tell you the truth and they're not afraid to tell you if they think you're wrong. And when I hang around people my own age, it tends to always revert back to the past. And so, and I don't want to talk about coaching at Washington State or being the first black this or the

• 53:06Speaker 01

  first black that. What I want to do is figure out at 80 years old, what is it that I don't know but need to know, and how is this going to help me stay relevant in this ever-changing world? And so I tend to spend most of my time with younger people who inspire me, who I can have a partnership with. That's the other thing about relationships. I think relationships at their most authentic stage, it's a partnership. We share common vision, common goals, common objectives, common strategy, common execution plan. It's a we mentality.

• 53:50Speaker 01

  It's not a me mentality. And it's a win-win mentality. It's not I win, you lose, or you lose, I win. It's not about that. We were in this thing together, we're in the boat together, we're going to row in the same direction and we're going to get the boat ashore.

• 54:09Tim Ferriss?

  You mentioned books, and I want to make sure we give...

• 54:14Tim Ferriss?

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

• 54:53Speaker 01

  Well, as I look back on it now, Tim, and with a point of reference to so many times as we speak, it's always going to be my grandma. Well, my grandma told me one time, and she used to, when she'd be in the kitchen cooking, she'd tell me stories. And one time my grandma told me, she said, "George, you know, back in the days of slavery, the plantation owners used to put their money in books and hide them up on the, put them up on the bookshelves as, because the banking system wasn't as sophisticated as it is today." And so I said, "Well, Grandma, why, why did they do that?" And she said, "Because they, they didn't have to worry about the slaves stealing the money, because the slaves

• 55:35Speaker 01

  would never take the books off the shelf because they couldn't read." And so from that, I began to understand that as long as someone can control your mind, they can control who you are in your body. And so I, I decided that I was never going to allow myself to be in a position where someone could control my mind and control my body because of my lack of information and knowledge. And, and so I, I decided that I was going to try to read and learn as much as I possibly could on a continual basis.

• 56:17Speaker 01

  Because I, I, I believe that, uh, people will, will have a greater respect for you if, if they respect you intellectually. And I've often felt in life, if, if, if I had the choice between Tim liking me or, or Tim respecting me, I'd far more hope that, that you respect me than like me. And I figure the byproduct of you respecting me will be that you'll, you'll learn to like me. So I don't work at trying to get people to, to like me. So I've, I've been on this mission for, for, for reading for years and years and years. And it's, it's become an obsession now with me.

• 57:02Speaker 01

  I, I, I, I don't go anywhere without a book and, and, and a notebook. Uh, so I, if I'm, if I'm in line, if I go to the doctor's office, I take a book with me. If I'm in the, I, I have a new system now. If I go to a bookstore, and I'm in Barnes and Noble, and the line has got eight or nine people in it, rather than stand there, uh, for 10 minutes waiting, I start, I'll start reading the book right there in line and start underlining things. And, uh, so I have a, all, all these quirks that I've, uh, acquired over the years with reading books. First of all, um, um, I divide the book into messages.

• 57:44Speaker 01

  I don't think, I don't spend any time now trying to read a whole book 'cause there, there's probably, in most books, there's probably maybe eight to 10 chapters that are really powerful and influential, uh, and, and the others I skim through. So I never start a book from the front and, and, and go to the back. I just go, I'll open the index and I'll find what I believe is an interesting chapter, and I start there. And that's actually how I purchase a book. When I'm in the bookstore, I have this, a routine that I go through that, and, and, and if it passes, I buy the book, and if it doesn't, I don't buy the book, and, uh... What's your routine? So, so if I, let's say, I'm, I'm gonna envision this one.

• 58:29Speaker 01

  So, uh, uh, our office is in El Segundo, which is, uh, outside of Los Angeles. And, and so I go to Barnes and Noble there. One thing I found out that because there's so many corporate offices within a, a, a two-mile radius, that they tend to house, uh, really excellent, uh, business books. So I'll go in, and soon as I go in, I go, I look at the books that are on reduction sale to see if there's some, something there that might be a, a, a good buy. Then I go to the new re- new releases, nonfiction. And, uh, by the way, I go to, I go to a bookstore four to five days out of the week. I, I'm constantly going in, and I just call it search and discovery.

• 59:14Speaker 01

  So I'll go to the new releases in a nonfiction, and I'll look through the books. There's usually twenty books on the table. I'd say eight out of ten times, I'm gonna find a book that, that I, I'd never heard of before. And so, I'll pick the book up, I, I, I, I, I go to the back, I read about the author, then I go to the front part, and I read the, the promos down the side. And then the next thing I do is I go to the, uh, the chapters, and, and I, I'll find a chapter, and I'll open it up, and I'll see, uh, i- i- i- the writer's style. I, I look at the style. Is this someone that's, that's a book filled with a lot of statistics or stories?

• 59:57Speaker 01

  Because I know what I'm looking for. The books that have, have had the most impact are the ones that make me change the way I think, or act, or behave, uh, or, and, uh, those are the books that ultimately end up being the best for me. So I'll go through the book. And then, once I find this one chapter, I start to read some of it. And I can tell if this is gonna be me or not. And at that point, I'll purchase the book. But I just don't go in and buy a book based on the top ten. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just that I've had better success.

• 1:00:37Speaker 01

  And then, so now, here at eighty years old, two of my favorite authors are Ryan Holiday and Walter Isaacson. They've both taken me on interesting intellectual journeys. The first book I read by Walter Isaacson was Steve Jobs. And, oh, I was so blown away, I had underlined about three-quarters of the book, I was quoting, writing down quotes. And, as you know, the Steve Jobs book can be anything you want it to be, it can be a thesis on leadership. It was just utterly fascinating, I loved Walter Isaacson's writing style. So, when I finished the book, I looked, I went back, I said, "Damn, I like the way he writes."

• 1:01:22Speaker 01

  So I go back and I looked to see what else he had written. And so, then I see he's done a book on Benjamin Franklin, he's done a book on Einstein, and subsequently Kissinger and others. So, I go to the bookstore and I buy the Benjamin Franklin book. And I am blown away, and a little sad, because I feel like, "God damn, I went through all this education, no one ever taught me any of this stuff, other than the kite." And so, before that, I think if you'd have asked me, "Who was the most important American of all time?", I think I would have probably tended to say Abraham Lincoln.

• 1:02:02Speaker 01

  But after I read Isaacson's book on Benjamin Franklin, it was, I would now feel, I mean, you know, the lottery system, the banking, schools, streets, the guy, he did so many unbelievable things. And then, from there, I went to Einstein. And anybody who can write a book on Einstein that an idiot like me can understand the physics, and it was absolutely...

• 1:02:39Speaker 01

  It was a miracle. So in the book, Tim, I read that Einstein was very active in what they would capture in those times as the Negro movement. And it says that he wrote a book on Einstein and the Negro movement. Well, I had never heard of this. So I immediately stopped reading and go Google Einstein on the Negro problem. And lo and behold, it comes up. So I chased the book down. And so what I find that a lot of times in reading books is in your book, Tools of the Titan, I'm reading, and I see this, you mentioned

• 1:03:21Speaker 01

  in there about masterminds. And I had never heard of masterminds. So I circle it and I write Google behind it. So I go back and I go online and I find out, wow. So I'm thinking to myself, oh, my God, I didn't ever knew about this. So how do I become part of it? So I sent some information to Ryan Holiday about this mastermind. So he gets back to me, he says, oh, I'm surprised you didn't know about that. He says, you want to go, I'll get you in. So the next thing I know, I get this invite to go to masterminds in Carmel Valley. And in my 80 years on Earth, that was the greatest collection of intellects

• 1:04:06Speaker 01

  that I've ever been around in my life. I was so intimidated. And what was marvelous, that was when I knew I was on the right path. Because I'm 80 years old, the next oldest person there is probably 49. They're all young, energetic people. And I was, I readily admit, I was so intimidated. I didn't think, I was thinking to myself, God, how am I going to fit in? And every night, I went to bed with the worst headaches that I ever had, because I couldn't process all this stuff. By the second day, I've already filled up a notebook of notes. And it was one of those life-changing experiences. So you helped

• 1:04:49Speaker 01

  me grow as a person just by what you mentioned in Tools of the Titan.

• 1:04:56Tim Ferriss?

  Well, thank you for reading it, first of all. And this is, I'm I'm sure that with all my notes here today, I'm gonna have to figure out a way to have another conversation with you for sure. So hopefully I won't blow it between now and the end of the interview. But books that you've reread the most yourself or gifted to other people the most, are there any books that come to mind?

• 1:05:23Speaker 01

  Well, you know, being 80 years old, it's a long span of reading. The books that I've given out the most, rarely do I go to meet anyone and I don't, I can't tell you the last time I met someone and I didn't bring them a book. It's just become a habit now to bring, to give them a book. In most cases, I give them two or three books. But the books that I've given away the most lately are Ryan's two books, Obstacles and Ego is the Enemy and 12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson, who I actually, this is one where I happen

• 1:06:08Speaker 01

  to go into Barnes and Noble the day the book arrives and I go through it and it gets, passes my test. And so I get back to the hotel and I start reading the book. And before I know it's 2:00 a.m. in the morning and I'm still, the guy's got me hooked already. And so I start telling people, oh, you gotta get this book out. And no one's ever heard this guy, although in Canada, I understand he's quite controversial. He's a professor at the University of Toronto. So then about three weeks go by and all of a sudden there's an explosion.

• 1:06:47Speaker 01

  It's now number two on the bestsellers and so forth. So I would say I probably have given away somewhere between 20 and 30 copies of that to friends. I'll get a note from someone every now and then saying, hey, tell me a good book to read. That's the one I recommend the most. I give Tim's I mean Ryan's books outweigh a lot. One thing that I like about Ryan's book is it's easier to carry because it's smaller.

• 1:07:17Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:17Speaker 01

  So I can, I can get a little uh, bag and I can put 12 of them in there.

• 1:07:22Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, mine are, mine are not as user friendly from carrying perspective.

• 1:07:26Speaker 01

  No, but, but that's the, that's the, one thing I found with your two books is it's, I take them on as a personal challenge. I said, if he, if he spent this much time with this many pages, I am not going to allow the, the length of the book to intimidate me. I'm going to see this as, as an opportunity. And so, uh, you, you, what, what I did with Tools of the Titan was I, I, I call that my China book. So, uh, it's, it's 13 hours to Shanghai or 13 hours to Hong Kong and 13 coming back. That's 26 hours, man. So I could, I could, I could knock, knock that sucker out. I just, and some books you just have

• 1:08:09Speaker 01

  to find the right environment in which to read them.

• 1:08:13Tim Ferriss?

  Totally. So I'm going to actually just pause for a minute. We'll keep the recording going. I'm going to go grab the books that you brought for me. Cause I'd love to talk about those. I'll be right back. Okay. So here we have five books and I'll just read off the titles quickly and then, uh, I'd love to hear you explain your reasons for choosing a few of these perhaps. So the first is Life is So Good, George Dawson and Richard Glaubman. The next is The True Believer, subtitle Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements by Eric Hofer. Next we have Blue Highways by William Least Heat Moon. That's quite a name. Then we have Whiplash, How to Survive Our Faster Future, Joy Ito and Jeff Howe. Actually, no Joy, I have not read this book though.

• 1:08:59Tim Ferriss?

  久々だね, Joy.

• 1:09:02Tim Ferriss?

  Uh, Truth, Hector McDonald. Uh, I would love to hear you, uh, explain.

• 1:09:11Tim Ferriss?

  Why you like or why you chose perhaps a few of these?

• 1:09:14Speaker 01

  I, I, I think, well, my first goal was, as I said to you when I first entered the room, is that, uh, that what I learned from the three wise men was they always came bearing gifts. And so I felt that, uh, that I wanted to share something with you as you were, of values, as you were sharing something with me of value and allow me to be on your program. So I thought long and hard about the types of books that, uh, a Princeton graduate would find interesting. And so I went back through and I, and I, uh, the, the first one is Life is So Good is

• 1:09:55Speaker 01

  about a, about a, a black young man who, who, who was a slave. And at 98 years old, he decides that he's gonna teach himself to write.

• 1:10:05Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 1:10:06Speaker 01

  And then he subsequently goes back and gets his GED. And, uh, it's a fascinating story about that he never allowed his environment to, to, to, uh, imprison him. He, it, it, it took him a while to realize that, that he had the capabilities to still read. But what was more important was that he wanted to do it. And so he, he taught himself to read. He ended up going back to school. And, uh, and one of the things in here was, uh, uh, they have a couple of letters that young kids who read the book. And, and so here's a cute one. It says, Dear Mr. Dawson, I'm in second grade. I live in Wisconsin.

• 1:10:51Speaker 01

  I'm glad that your brain still works. Happy, uh, 10th anniversary. And then, uh, the one other one, it says, I'm happy that you can read now. I'm glad you like school. I do too. I'm in the fourth grade. Your friend, Alex. So it just, and this is, to me, is one of the true classics of all time. This is The True Believer by Eric Hoffer. Eric Hoffer was a longshoreman in San Francisco. He's self-educated, and this book is about fanatics and how the people become so engrossed in mass movements.

• 1:11:32Speaker 01

  A lot of the backdrop for his rationale has to do with Hitler's rise to power in Germany. And, and, uh, this, this, I just want to remember, I'm, I'm pretty sure the book came out in, in 1951, he wrote this, and so it's every bit as contemporary as, in fact, if there was one of these books that I would say that you, someone should pick up and read right now, I would say it's so applicable, even though it was written in 51, on, uh, is this The True Believer by Eric Hoffer. I don't think you can get it in hardback now, but it's a marvelous book.

• 1:12:12Speaker 01

  Blue Highways is, uh, was one that I read twice, and, and William Lees Heat Moon was a professor at, uh, in, in English at the University of Missouri, and he arrived at a point where he was totally bored at being a professor, and he makes a, a, a, a, a unique decision to abandon his career, sell everything he has. He, he has a, a credit card, he sells everything he has, and he decides that he's gonna, he's gonna travel the blue highways of life, and he's gonna go all around the, the, the America, and all he's gonna do is, is go into small towns off of blue highways and, and, and

• 1:12:56Speaker 01

  take up residence there for a day, two, a week, and just talk to the local inhabitants, and go into restaurants, and, and learn other people's stories, and, and, and, and their challenges and successes. And so, the, the blue highway connotation, uh, and I noticed because I taught map reading when I was in the army, is the, the, the... On a map, the blue highways are secondary therapy. And the major highways that are drawn in red. And so, he decided that I don't want to travel around America on the main highways of life. Because the real stories are off the blue highways.

• 1:13:37Speaker 01

  And it's just an incredible story of his journey. And it gives you a look at America from a perspective that you wouldn't normally. And what you find out, even in these little towns around America, there's not a whole lot of difference. People, they have their anxiety, they have their joys, they have their visions. But one thing I noticed was that people in the smaller towns tend to lead a much simpler life. And their values are a lot more sustainable. And what I mean by that, they have fixed values that they've grown up with from a

• 1:14:22Speaker 01

  child, and they've never compromised. This is a great book. Once again, I spent a good bit of time trying to figure out which ones I thought you would like. The actual next one is, I bought at the University of Penn bookstore about five months ago. I never go to Philadelphia and don't go to the Penn bookstore. And they have an incredible collection of books. So at that time, I was thinking to myself, you know, you need to change the subjects matter a little bit. The dominant conversation is America is the future, the future. Get to the future first, what's the future going to be, look like?

• 1:15:03Speaker 01

  And so I started to realize, you know, you need to understand more about what the future and what it is and what the potential are. So as I'm going through, going to the bookstore, I decided only books I'm going to buy are books that talk about the future. So I ended up buying about six books. And so I came across this. As the good Lord helped me discover this book and it's called Whiplash, How to Survive Our Faster Future. And it's written by two professors at MIT. And the book is incredible. And as you can see, I destroy books.

• 1:15:43Tim Ferriss?

  You have a lot of underlines. Do you mind if I take a quick look at that? I'm a bit of a note-taking fanatic. So always fascinated to see how people take notes. So you have underlines. You have things that are circled. And I see Google here. Then you have something that is circled and looks like it has spines around it. It's like, almost like a cactus. So is that, what do you reserve that for?

• 1:16:13Speaker 01

  So the ones which circle are, I'm always looking for way, new ways to explain things and to teach. So those are words that I'll go back and I'll transfer into one of my journals. Cause I'm looking for new ways to explain things. Sometimes a person will be mentioned and so I'll circle that. I'll write those down. So every day I take about a half an hour on and Google. I Google people's names. I Google, as I said, with masterminds. And then I'll have where you see the markings on the side of a paragraph. That means when I go back, that I want to reread that in its entirety. And it's really important.

• 1:16:59Tim Ferriss?

  This mark right here. What it looks like, just for people who are listening to this. It's basically a bunch of horizontal lines stacked in the margin from the beginning of, say, this paragraph to the bottom of the paragraph. So that's something that you will reread.

• 1:17:14Speaker 01

  Yes. And I make comments like on this paragraph, I wrote unbelievable. This was a quote that I wanted to put in my journal on quotes. And so this was a person that was mentioned that I want to Googles. A lot of times what'll happen, Tim, I go back and I Google a person. And and and I'll and then immediately I go to see if they have a Twitter account. Yes. And if they do, then I then I sign up for their Twitter account. And so to me, the handheld device has become my own personal library and and my source of information. But where where I I've discovered a growing problem is is there's this huge proliferation of information today.

• 1:17:59Speaker 01

  We're overwhelmed with information. Uh, and so what I find out is that it for me, I have to ha- I have to segment the information. So I I have this little formula. Information equals knowledge, knowledge equals wisdom, wisdom and equals growth. Growth growth allows me to share. So so I take the the the the information and I segment it into magazine reading, blogs, articles and books. And what I found out uh is that I was devoting uh an inordinate amount of time to blogs, articles

• 1:18:43Speaker 01

  and magazines and newspapers and and and it was it was compromising my book reading. So what I had to do was to start to plan out my week. And so I'll have I'll have a day where I say uh uh uh blogs, magazines and and newspapers. And then I'll have a day where it's book day. So I'm that day, I'm I I'm I'm not doing anything but reading reading my books. The other way thing I have to do is try to figure out other ways to get book reading in. So if I if I uh hop on a flight from LA to uh to Austin,

• 1:19:25Speaker 01

  I I I I put four books in in in my bookbag that I carry on the plane. And I I read four books at a time. I have a lot of crazy things I do. Is this what you're reading now? Uh, this is one of them, yes.

• 1:19:39Tim Ferriss?

  So just for people wondering, I love how wide-ranging this is. "The Mind" is the title. It's "Projections in Multiple Facets" by Yogi Bhajan, PhD, Master of Kundalini Yoga, with Guru Charan Escalsa, PhD. Amazing.

• 1:19:56Speaker 01

  So what I do is, if I get bored when I'm reading, I'll just switch to another book or until I get one that really captures my attention. So when I get on the plane, I'm gonna, I usually start off, I read the Wall Street and New York Times and the local paper, and then by the second half, I'll go to my books. And so, like I said, I just have all these crazy things. So for example, I've trained myself to understand that the blank pages, I've made all the blank pages in a book valuable, because I take every

• 1:20:37Speaker 01

  blank page and I write, and I write notes in there. So I don't have to switch to my notebook real, it's more handy. So as you can see on a lot of the blank pages.

• 1:20:47Tim Ferriss?

  And you're writing on every blank page?

• 1:20:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I write, and as I go, I skip around a lot.

• 1:20:53Tim Ferriss?

  Wow, so hold on. So in this spread, you have three different highlighters. You have, I suppose, pink, yellow, and green, and you have some red emphasis at the top of that particular page.

• 1:21:07Speaker 01

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

• 1:21:48Speaker 01

  I tend to go back, once I read this book, I go back now, and I'll reread the book and go with the underlining again. And sometimes, if it's really powerful enough, I just do it right then.

• 1:22:03Tim Ferriss?

  So on the, the key phrases or words that you circle. So my system is I put PH in the margin next to it, which stands for phrase. And then on the very beginning of the book, I create an index of phrases. So I'll have PH and then I'll put in the, the book numbers. And similarly, you do these multiple passes. So when I'll go through a book and I'll underline or highlight, and then I'll go through it a second time, in the margin, I'll put T2 and a circle around it, just for Tim too, like second pass, for things I find really interesting. Then if I read it a third time, I'll go through and I'll do T3. And so I can, I can not only see what was interesting me, interesting to me at different

• 1:22:48Tim Ferriss?

  times, but also sometimes I'll get so excited reading a book, I don't know if you do this, but I'll, I'll highlight so much of like, okay, well, I might as well have not highlighted anything, because I highlighted everything. And then the second time around, I'll be a little bit more precise, maybe. And so then I can go back and I have my own table of contents, which it looks like is similar to what you do.

• 1:23:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. What I, what I've found out is, in reading books now, is when I go back on the second passage of the book, of reading it, I find some pages that, where, where I didn't have anything underlined. And, and so just my inquisitive self, I'll go back and, and read that page. And there'll be three or four things that, that, that I want to underline or I want to ponder on. And, and I can't understand, wow, how did I miss this? So the second reading for me is, is, is revealing, because I always find something that I missed,

• 1:23:48Speaker 01

  that, that maybe my brain just was, was, was functioning too fast, or I was being distracted. And so I've learned that a second reading is, is vitally important. And so then the last thing I would do is, I would end up transferring these to journals. And I actually have book notes back to 1972 is when I

• 1:24:13Speaker 01

  Started to, to, to keep them in three ring binders. And what I would do is when I was done with a book, I would just give the book to my, at those days it was secretary, so I'd give it to my secretary. And she would type out everything that I had underlined in the book. And then she create a cover page for it. And so I, I have, uh, uh, three ring binders. I probably have 12 or 15 from Washington State. And I probably have, I, I only stayed at Iowa four years, but I'd say I probably have about eight from, uh, uh, Iowa and, and probably maybe 15 or 20 from USC. So I actually have them, uh, the, my, my, I saved my notes over the years.

• 1:24:58Speaker 01

  And one thing that I, that they've been a great source of, of not only learning and reflection, but I, I can, I find information that I can utilize in, in, in, in speeches. And it's, it's interesting also, when you look back in the, I, I think people, uh, 50 years ago placed a greater, uh, importance on, on, on writing skills and word usages. And it was, it was an art form now and, and, and, uh, and how people go about explaining themselves is, uh, but most of the books I read, I, I, I, uh, there are very few of

• 1:25:41Speaker 01

  them that I don't come away and feel that I'm a better person. One of the things I like to ask myself at the close of every day is what did I do to make myself a better person than I was yesterday? What did I learn today? And, and, and so, um, from a talk that I do, I say that every day is composed of 86,400 seconds of, of opportunities. And how shameful is it for me to, at the close of my day to say that I didn't do anything today to make myself a better person than I was yesterday? And that's shame on me because I had 86,400 seconds of opportunities to do something, even if it's no

• 1:26:23Speaker 01

  More than than than a thank you, a random smile, a pat on the back. Think about this, Tim, there are a lot of people in in this country who go through 24 hours and never have anyone say anything to them positive. You might be the only person that day who said something to that person that was positive. Or I I know we're in a a different culture now and and I always think I'm running a little risk, but if I'm in a restaurant or somewhere and I and and a person's waiting on me and he or she has a great smile, I I invariably say, hey, you have a great smile.

• 1:27:04Speaker 01

  I I sometimes I feel a little uneasy when I say it to a a female because I don't want, you know, someone might think you're trying to come on to them. But at the same time, I'm willing to take that risk. So earlier when we were leaving breakfast, uh, as we were leaving, the two waitresses said, thanks for coming, and they had a big smile on their face. So I said to both of them, both you, the two of you have a great smile. Well, to me, I like practicing random acts of kindness because so much today we're we're cruel and unintentionally cruel, but we we we we don't think, uh, what how valuable

• 1:27:45Speaker 01

  the little things are, the thank yous, the smiles, the taking time to listen. I had a situation that I still grapple with this when people ask, stop you on the street and ask for money. So we were we were having lunch yesterday and a lady came up and she asked for if we could spare some money. She wanted to get something to eat or drink. So I gave her $5 and I said, now, I hope you use the $5 on what you said you you're gonna do. So she points and there's a little grocery store a few store doors down. She comes back, shows me the drink and the $3 change. Wow. And so so we it was a win for both of us.

• 1:28:29Speaker 01

  But I I grapple with this thing about, do I Give them some money or do I not? But in this case, I mean, I really felt good that I was able to do something for her and she did something for me because she made me feel good that I could trust. What she really did is help fortify my mind that I should probably be giving more instead of less.

• 1:29:00Tim Ferriss?

  Well, you've given a lot in a lot of ways in many years of your life and certainly one capacity is that of coach or educator or teacher. And we could spend days and hopefully we will, hopefully we'll get to know each other even better and spend more time together. But for now, I thought we might jump forward, at least from your childhood stories, to the Olympics, 1984. And there are many different angles we could take to get into this.

• 1:29:38Tim Ferriss?

  But I suppose where I want to start, there's so many different things that I want to touch on. But since we were talking about communicating and phrasing and words, could you share the motivational quote that you came up with at that time? And I think it's, each one of us has a relative who gave his life for this country, the least we can do is give 40 minutes of ourselves.

• 1:30:05Speaker 01

  Yes, that's actually a Bob Knight quote. And it was a motivating force because when you stop and think about it, very seldom in our lifetime does our country ever come to us and say, "We need you." It's always the exact opposite, that we're looking for something from the government. But I felt that this was a unique opportunity, that the country was basically saying to the team and the coaches that, "We need you.

• 1:30:49Speaker 01

  We need you to bring back a gold medal for us." And so, this was a unique opportunity for us to serve our country. And...

• 1:30:59Speaker 01

  I can remember vividly in the months leading up to the eighty-four Olympics in Los Angeles, I would envision that we were gonna win the gold medal and we were gonna be standing there and, and, and to hear the National Anthem play and to be at attention and, and look at the American flag. I know that we're in a different era now and a different time, but the, the reality was, this is how I felt. And so, I've, I grew up in an era where, where my grandma taught, "America, right or wrong, America. Whatever the problems are, we'll work them out, but, but at the end of the day, we're an American." And so, I,

• 1:31:41Speaker 01

  I envisioned what was it gonna be like when we stood there and received a gold medal and, and, and, um, heard the National Anthem played and you, and you had the satisfaction of saying to yourself, "Uh, mission accomplished." And it was, it was one of the most unique experiences I've ever had in my life to, to, to be in a position where you could represent your country and, and you could, uh, uh, feel, uh, uh, have a good feeling about it. I, I am sure there'll be a lot of people who will question why I felt that way, but that's the truth of the matter.

• 1:32:24Tim Ferriss?

  And I was, I was chatting with Ryan, or texting with Ryan last night after he had dinner with you. And, uh, he was, he was peppering me with suggested topics, which, of course, we have an overabundance of. But one of, one of the bullets here in the notes in front of me is that refers to you leading the practice team to beating the dream team.

• 1:32:50Speaker 01

  Can you elaborate on this, please? What happened was, for the first time in the history of the Olympics, the United States decided not to use college players anymore, but to use professional players. And so, that year, the Olympics were in Barcelona, and Chuck Daly was the head coach of the US team. And of course, you had, I think, the only player on that Dream Team that's not in the Basketball Hall of Fame right now is Christian Laettner. He was the only college player on the roster. And of course, you had Magic, Bird, Barkley, Jordan, you name it. And so Chuck and I had been lifelong friends,

• 1:33:34Speaker 01

  back from when he was an assistant at Duke, and I was an assistant at Villanova. And he was a Pennsylvanian, grew up in Punxsutawney. So we had a longstanding authentic relationship. So Chuck decided that they wanted to put together a group of college players that would scrimmage the Dream Team twice a day in practice. And so, he suggested that I be the coach. And so, CM Newton, who was head of USA Basketball at the time, called me and asked if I would be the coach of the team. And I said, "I'd love to do it." So they picked the players, and Bobby Hurley, and Chris Webber, and a bunch of guys.

• 1:34:19Speaker 01

  We only had eight players. And Roy Williams and I coached the team together. And so, the first night that we had the scrimmage, I think the NBA guys basically looked at us, "This is just a scrimmage of college guys." And so, they didn't really take it as serious as we did the college guys. They were, we were all fired up, this is a great opportunity. So we scrimmaged for 37 minutes, and we actually beat them in the scrimmage. And so, the word got out, and they were livid. So, one thing that happened... I picked one of my managers from USC to be a manager for our team.

• 1:35:00Speaker 01

  And so when the practice ended, Larry Bird came up to me and he said, Coach, he said, can you do me a favor? I said, sure, what? He says, can you leave a van and a driver here or have somebody come back and pick me up? And so I said, I'll leave one of the managers with a van. So Larry hadn't shot the ball that well in the scrimmage, so he stayed and shot for an hour and 15 minutes straight. And so I told him, Dennis Johnson, who was the manager, I said, when you get back, let me know you're back. And so when he came to my room, I said, how'd it go? He said, Coach, he said, unbelievable. He said, he just continually shot.

• 1:35:44Speaker 01

  He said, he only took one water break. And he said, he was drenched and head to toe. And he looked at me and he said, Coach, if Larry Bird is doing this, what should the average guy be doing? And it was just a great experience. So the next time we scrimmaged, they were fired up. So we, I'm embarrassed to say this, we didn't score a field goal for the first nine minutes. I mean, they were on us like white on rice, man. They were, they said, you guys think you're hot ass, you know, we're going to show you. And Jordan was leading the pack. And so they would determine, okay, you guys think you're good? We're going to show you what good is.

• 1:36:29Tim Ferriss?

  So I want to talk about coaching a team. And I think the way I'd like to get into this is by asking if you could maybe mention just one coach that you have been impressed by, alive or dead, past, present, doesn't matter, and what impressed you about them?

• 1:36:56Speaker 01

  Oh, I would say two coaches who, or I'd actually have to say three. Three coaches who have had an immense impact on me as a person, as a coach, my life, would be Bob Knight, John Thompson, and Lefty Gersell. Lefty Gersell, I was his assistant at the University of Maryland. He was the one who taught me, who fueled my passion for reading. He was the one who taught me that you don't just read the sports section. He actually got me into a system that I still use. When I go to a newspaper now, the last section of the newspaper I read is sports.

• 1:37:41Speaker 01

  And that's something that started back with him. He also told me the importance of reading the editorial page every day. And then the other thing was, he wanted us to be the best dressed staff in the ACC. So I picked up a lot of habits from Lefty that I have to this day. John Thompson and I grew up in the same neighborhood in Washington DC. He's had so much influence on the way I think, the way I act, what I believe. The one thing I learned with John is when you're around John, your talk to listen ratio,

• 1:38:26Speaker 01

  the listen ratio should be 90% and the talk should be 10%. Because if it's any other way, you've lost a great opportunity to learn and to be taught. Because he's, John is a maverick thinker. And he was a maverick thinker before the connotation even existed. And the other person, Bob Knight.

• 1:38:52Speaker 01

  Just had an absolutely amazing impact on me. I was at a summer league game as an assistant coach at Villanova and at halftime I go down to look at the scoreboard and the guy taps me on the back and I turn and he says, "Hi, my name's Bob Knight, assistant at West Point." And I say, "Hi, George Raveling, assistant at Villanova." And from that moment on, we had a lifelong friendship. And that's how I ended up being the assistant coach on the 84 Olympic team. But maybe Bob's greatest gift to me was that he saw something in me that I never saw in myself and he was relentless to make sure that I achieved it.

• 1:39:35Speaker 01

  He said to me, "George, if we're going to survive in this profession, we have to become an expert in some phase of the game. And you need to make yourself an expert in some phase of the game." Bob's was defense and so he said to me, he said, "I know you speak a lot at clinics on rebounding. That's your niche. You've got to make yourself the foremost authority on the globe on rebounding." And he stayed after me on the phone. He called me one night. He said, "Hey, I looked it up in the Library of Congress. There's no book in the Library of Congress on rebounding, so you've got a unique opportunity." And so I still didn't believe that I could actually write a book. And so Bob just stayed after

• 1:40:19Speaker 01

  me. So finally he said, "Write an outline and send it to me." And of course, we didn't have the technology. So I wrote an outline and sent it to him. So little did I know, he was setting me up for us to walk me through this. And so the moral of the story is, I end up writing a book called, one night was Rebounders Workshop and the other one's called War on the Boards. That was the thesis and the manuscript for The Art of Rebounding. And I've probably sold 100,000 copies over the years of the book.

• 1:40:59Speaker 01

  But without Bob staying on me and being relentless and never accepting, no, he helped me find something inside of me that I would have never in my life ever thought I would have written a book or even had the talent to do. But he saw something in me that other people didn't see in me. And that's been a lot of the relevance for this magical carpet ride I've had in life. People seeing something in me that I didn't see in myself. My grandma's seeing something in me. Sister Dolores seeing something in me. My high school coach seeing something in me. My college coach, Al Severance, he said something, Tim, that I'll never, ever forget.

• 1:41:44Speaker 01

  One time he was talking to us and he said, "The first sign of intelligence is to admit that you don't know something." And here I am, 80 years old, and I still remember him telling me this. And so I've learned so much. Everyone that, including yourself, have touched my life in a productive way. If I don't read Tools to the Titan, I don't learn about Mastermind. If I don't learn about Mastermind, I kill myself in 20 different relationships. I learned things about people that I didn't know.

• 1:42:24Speaker 01

  So it's just been a blessed journey that you meet people who are willing to help you continue to grow, especially at 80 years old. Well, now, you think, Tim, from at 60 years old, the thought process in America was you retire, you get a gold watch, and you live happily ever after. But between 60 and 80, it might be the most productive years of my life. I've grown so much. I was 63 years old, and I get appointed Global Director of Sports Marketing at Nike at 63 years old. So how does you defy the odds?

• 1:43:08Speaker 01

  Ex-basketball coach, black, no business background, and you're running a Fortune 500 category. And...

• 1:43:19Speaker 01

  And I can remember many times thinking that all of the four years I spent at Villanova, I was an econ major, an economics major, and at that time, they didn't call it this business school, called the School of Commerce and Finance. So, I graduated with a degree in economics and I used to think, God, this is a waste of time. I learned all this, I'm never gonna use it. And little did I know that at 63 years old, all this was gonna come back to fruition and it was gonna be necessary. And so, it did pay off.

• 1:43:54Tim Ferriss?

  And as I understand it, the job offer, or at least you're beginning with Nike, came through what seemed like a prank call from Phil Knight. At least, that's what I read.

• 1:44:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, actually, it started long before that. When I went to work full-time for them, I get this call, and then we'll go back to the origin. I get a call one night and I answer the phone and the voice says, "This is Philip Knight." And that's basically how Phil always addresses it. To this day, if he calls, he's gonna say, "This is Philip Knight." And so, I, momentarily, I thought, "Oh, did somebody put me on?" So then I said,

• 1:44:41Speaker 01

  "Is it really?" He said, "Yeah, it's Philip Knight." And I said, "What's going on?" And he said, "I just called to see if you'd be interested in coming to work for Nike full-time." And so, we talked it through. And I said, "Well, what do you want me to do?" And he said, "I want you to come." And at that time, Nike had this camp called the All-American Camp. And he said, "I want you to upgrade it, but I want to figure out how we can reach younger kids." And so, I still have somewhere in storage the original presentation that I made to him to start a grassroots program. At that time, there was no such thing as a grassroots program. And so, that was the start of me working full-time. But I actually started at Nike in 1978.

• 1:45:28Speaker 01

  Nike decides they're gonna get college coaches to endorse their product. And they fly eleven of us to Las Vegas and Jerry Tarkanyi was one, Jimmy Valvano and so forth. And so John Slushy Senior and Phil came and made the presentation to us. And essentially, they would give you a compensation in all the product for you and your team. And this is in seventy-eight. And so I was sitting beside Bill Foster, who was coaching at Clemson at the time. And so the second day, we had to make a decision. And so part of it was they give you the compensation.

• 1:46:09Speaker 01

  The compensation was five thousand in cash or five thousand in stock. The impediment, it really wasn't, as it turned out, was if you took the stock, you couldn't cash the stock for five years. And at that time, the stock was about six bucks. And so Bill Foster leans over to me and he says, George, take the stock, take the stock. I'll explain to you later. He said, all these other idiots are gonna take the cash. And so the five-year thing ended up being a disciplinary factor because even if you wanted to, you couldn't cash it. So then when the five years passed, Bill called me about six months before the due date and he said, listen to me again, don't cash the stock, don't cash the stock, just let it roll over.

• 1:46:54Speaker 01

  You got this far without, you can get the rest of the way. So anyway, by the time I finally sold the stock, it was up to forty-six bucks. And it is split and so. But to go back, so that year in seventy-eight, Nike sends Bill Foster, myself and Eddie Sutton to China for a month to do clinics. And so we went to Peking, Shanghai and Guangzhou. So at that time, Beijing did not exist. Subsequently, Beijing was, Peking was replaced with Beijing. But at that time, it was called Peking. And so we went and did these clinics in China.

• 1:47:39Speaker 01

  And at that time, it was highly communist. Everybody dressed the same. The women dressed with white blouse and olive green slacks. And the men had these little Nehru jackets of olive green. And they had a cap with the red star on it. They could speak no English. And so, one day, we're in Tiananmen Square. And Bill Foster's wife had a Polaroid camera. And she was taking pictures. And so, she took a picture of a group of Chinese people standing together, conversating. And so, when it developed, she showed it to him. And they were, it was like, we might as well have been for the moon. They were so, we couldn't tell what they were saying. But they were, they were so excited, pointing. And then more people came.

• 1:48:23Speaker 01

  And they, they had no idea of how this was transpiring. So, here's, here's an interesting story, Tim. So, a Chinese gentleman steps out of the crowd. And he comes up to me. And he, and he, and he picks my hand up. And he rubs my hand, looks at his fingers. And so, it was apparent, he'd never seen a black person before in his life. And he thought it was paint. Wow. And so, he was rubbing to see if the paint, because he couldn't figure out. He'd never seen a black person before. And it's this, it's this story that's left an indelible mark on my, my stay. But that was maybe one of the great trips of all time. I'll tell you one other quick story. We're doing a clinic in Shanghai.

• 1:49:08Speaker 01

  And the interpreter comes up to me at the end of my lecture. And he says, "Coach." He says, "This coach would like to borrow your rebounding book. And he'll bring it back in the morning." So, I thought he just wanted to take it home and read it. So, the next morning, he comes back. Sure enough, he gives me the book. And he's got 25 copies of it. He's overnight, he printed 25 copies of the book and gave me mine back. Welcome to China.

• 1:49:34Tim Ferriss?

  So you started working full-time at Nike at age 63, is that right?

• 1:49:39Speaker 01

  Well, no, I actually, I took the global sports marketing job at 63. I actually had put in about eight years in developing this grassroots program at Nike. And then subsequently, I got this opportunity to be the global director.

• 1:50:00Tim Ferriss?

  And you mentioned a familiar name to a lot of people, Michael Jordan, earlier from the Dream Team, and I've seen a photograph of you as a very young Michael Jordan. So I've read that you were the one who actually convinced Michael Jordan to sign with Nike, or certainly were one of the driving factors there. Could you share that story?

• 1:50:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know if I would go that far, but I was a con doing that. So, early at the Olympic trials, Sonny Vaccaro, who was then heading up Nike basketball, and Phil had came to me and they said, "Hey, can you see if you can get Michael to visit with us?" And so, we were still training in Bloomington, so I brought the subject up with Michael. What happened was, I don't know exactly how this happened, but Vern Fleming, who was on a team from Georgia, Patrick Ewing, myself and Michael, we were inseparable the whole Olympic experience. We went everywhere together, and we were

• 1:51:04Speaker 01

  like the four amigos. We'd go to McDonald's, we'd go to the movies, the shopping mall, wherever we did, it was always the four of us. And so, I developed a really unique relationship with Michael. So from time to time, I would bring it up to him about the Nike thing without being overbearing. And in the very beginning, he said, "Coach," he says, "I have no interest in Nike. I'm an Adidas guy. I'm gonna go to Adidas. I don't even like their product." And so... Every now and then I would bring it up and he would say, "Coach, I'm telling you, man, it's a waste of time. I'm gonna be an Adidas guy." So now we get through the, uh, we're at the Olympics and we get through pool play and we have a day off.

• 1:51:47Speaker 01

  And so Sonny Vaccaro calls and he says, "Hey, can you bring Michael, get him to come over and meet me at Tony Romer's in Santa Monica?" So I bring it up to Michael and I think just out of frustration to get rid of me, he just said, "Okay, I'll go." So we're going over in the car and then he said, "Coach, I'm only doing this for you." He said that, uh, "It's a waste of time. Whatever Nike offers me, I'm gonna take it to Adidas and if Adidas matches it, that's it. That's who I wanna be." So to fast forward, he ends up, him and his mom and dad and David Falk come up to Nike for a visit and the meeting is successful, but it didn't move the needle because Michael

• 1:52:31Speaker 01

  was still convinced that he should go with, uh, Under Armour. For Adidas. I mean, I'm sorry, with Adidas. And so part of the deal was, at that time, there was no such thing as a signature shoe. And so David Falk came up with this idea of Air Jordan. And so, uh, and Nike would make a signature shoe that would be marketed under this logo of Air Jordan. And so when the meeting goes well, we think we got a shot. And so, true to his word, Michael took the deal back, or David took the deal back to Adidas.

• 1:53:12Speaker 01

  And Adidas passed on it because of the signature shoe thing, because they didn't feel there was any market for it and, uh, and they still made him an offer, but they wouldn't go on the signature shoe thing. And if I remember correctly, Michael was getting five cents, uh, royalty on the shoe. So at any rate, uh, Michael ended up accepting the, uh, the offer from Nike and as they say on television, the rest was history. But here we are today. And and Jordan Brand is is a business of so and so. So like there's Nike Inc. And then you have these subsets Hurley, Converse, Jordan Brand.

• 1:53:54Speaker 01

  So Jordan Brand is the second biggest seller of basketball shoes in the world. Basketball shoes other than Nike Inc. And they sell more basketball shoes than Under Armour or Adidas. And so here you you go back to 84 and here today. He sits at the head of one of the most profitable sport footwear companies in the world. And what's interesting, which historians will put in their rightful place one day, is Nike was the first Fortune 500 company to take a black male and make them the face of their company. And then you I'm sure you're familiar with the Spike Lee ads and all those things like

• 1:54:39Speaker 01

  that. And so there was a huge risk in some ways. But one time I mentioned to Michael about Nike taking a risk. And so he quickly came back to me. He says Nike took a risk. Hey, I took a risk too.

• 1:54:57Tim Ferriss?

  So you've you've spent so much time teaching and guiding and cultivating players and people who work for you and the people around you. I had read, and please feel free to to correct this, but that you've said the most important conversation is the one you have with yourself.

• 1:55:23Speaker 01

  Life.

• 1:55:23Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah. So could you could you elaborate on that, please? Because I I I I I think that self-talk is, and I'm not sure that's what you're referring to, but so, so terribly important. So I'd love to hear you just elaborate on that.

• 1:55:38Speaker 01

  The older I've gotten, the more I've come to to to.

• 1:55:45Speaker 01

  The conclusion that the, the, that the conversation that you have every day with yourself, as you characterize it, self-talk, is so vital, it's far more important than the conversations you have with those around you. And the best part about the conversation with yourself is you're in total control of that conversation. You can craft the conversation any way you want to. And so, I try to, to have at least ninety percent of the conversations that I have with myself, which I have two or three times a day, that it's positive self-talk.

• 1:56:26Speaker 01

  If I start to linger on to something, uh, negative, then what I'll do is I'll immediately deal with it and discount it. Uh, for example, uh, uh, since I'm Catholic, I'll make this confession. So this morning when I got up. Your reputation is so impeccable, that I was, I was, uh, you know, I got up at five, I'm really nervous, I'm thinking to myself, "God, what if I, if I do a bad job, I'll be so embarrassed." And so, the minute I started thinking that, I said, "Nope, that's not it. Get fired up, man. You're gonna do it." And I'm so, I'm in, I'm in, I'm in the bathroom, and I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm doing this motivational talk for myself, to eradicate any doubt that I have.

• 1:57:11Speaker 01

  And, and, and, and I keep saying to myself, "You gotta go in there, you gotta give them your best shot, you can do it." So I'm, I'm getting myself fired up for it. And this is out loud? Yeah, yeah, I mean, because, uh, uh, I really spend, uh, as much time as, probably, at least, well, I wouldn't say probably, once a day, I'll find an hour to just go someplace and sit by myself, and all I'll do is take a, a, a notebook, and, and just put it in a pen in front of me, and I'll just sit there and think. Whatever comes into my mind, and then, then I start to fixate on those things, and, or I'll write down notes as a result of something that I think, or I'll write out a strategy.

• 1:57:55Speaker 01

  For example, the way I govern my day, Tim, is, is I get up in the morning and I put my two feet beside the bed and I say to myself, "Okay, George, you only have two choices today. These are the only two choices that you have, and you gotta make one." And the two choices are to be happy or to be very happy, and there's no other choice. And so, then I start to plan out my day, and I'm all, and so I have these, these points of focus. Energy, uh, time, energy management, time management, environmental management, productivity. And to me, productivity is a byproduct of the other three.

• 1:58:38Speaker 01

  So, how do I manage my, my energy every day so that I can, I can be at maximum efficiency? So, one of the things I try to do is declutter my mind. I won't do any more than four things a day, and it, it, it reverts back to something one of the presidents at Nike, Charlie Denson, said one time in a leadership meeting. He said, "Let me ask you guys this. Would we be better off doing 25 things good, or will we be better off doing six things great?" And so, to me, to make, simplify my day, I, I will not do more than four things.

• 1:59:17Speaker 01

  I, I, I, I try to limit the meetings to two, and if it's two, one of them is usually a breakfast meeting. I, when I go into the office, I have, I, I, I have a total commitment, once I get into the office, to be totally focused on, on, on business matters, try to be as disciplined as I can not to get on the telephone. And, and also to meet with, with the two people that work with me. We meet every single day, and we talk as a team, because I, I want us to function as a team. I want each person's opinion to be valued. If one person happens to be 50 years younger than me, so what?

• 2:00:02Speaker 01

  Their, their, their opinion is valuable to me. I respect every- Everyone's knowledge and I think to myself, they know something that I don't know. And so I, I want to value their opinions. So, uh, we meet every day as a staff. We talk about things and, and, uh, it helps me grow and, and it keeps my day simplified. I try to clean, I try to, once a week have a, a, a, a, a personal audit. I, I, I go back through the week and I audit my week and, and, and, and, and make course corrections along the way. So that's when I really get into the self-talk part is having these little mental audits that my life's just not going on and on and on. I, I, I

• 2:00:46Speaker 01

  try to evaluate, am I making progress? What am I doing that's good? What am I doing that's, that's not working? And then make those course corrections. And at 80 years old, I try to hold myself to the most severe standards, uh, and, and I, I, I just despise the idea of retirement. And I think that it's the, it's the biggest force that's ever been predicated on us is this idea of retirement. Because the first thing that happens, you, you, you retire, you're physically and then you retire mentally and then you're, you're, you're just taking up residence in, in, in, in, in society. And I don't ever want to be a, a, a resident of society. I want to be a contributor to society.

• 2:01:31Tim Ferriss?

  Well, you, you seem like you're just getting warmed up. Uh, you certainly have lots of energy. Uh, what are you most excited about, uh, these days and working on?

• 2:01:43Speaker 01

  Well, what I get most excited about is just wait, when you're 80 years old, you get, you damn sure better be excited that you wake up the next morning and you have, and you have a growth oppor- opportunity. I'm still trying to understand, like most of us, what the, what the future is going to be like and how can I get to the future first? And what's the future going to be like? But I read a lot of books and talk to a lot of people, but, uh, I don't know if anybody can really tell you what the world's going to be like five years from now. Not, not 10 years from now, but five years from

• 2:02:20Speaker 01

  now. Uh, we're, we're, we're in a, a society where it behooves all of us to be comfortable with, with change and to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.

• 2:02:33Tim Ferriss?

  If you could, metaphorically speaking, put anything on a billboard, not commercial, but a message, a quote, a word, a question, somebody else's quote, could be anything, to get out to millions or billions of people, what type of message, or word, or quote, or anything, might you put on that billboard?

• 2:02:56Speaker 01

  I would say, if I could put up a billboard, and a message to people, the quote would be, "If it is to be, it's up to me." Because at the end of the day, each of us have an individual responsibility to ourselves and to our society, to figure out ways to be positive difference makers. And it all starts in life. I'm fond of reminding myself that nobody's gonna row your boat for you, but you. You gotta get in, and you gotta row your boat to the other side of the lake.

• 2:03:35Speaker 01

  And so, I would remind people, as I said, "If it is to be, it's up to me." And that's something that I had on my office door, I had a big sign at Washington State, I had it on my office door. It's something that I've tried to make an indelible mark on my brain, that it's up to me. If change is about, the best, the most authentic change takes place within yourself. And so, and oftentimes in life, Tim, as you know, the most important person you ever get to lead is yourself. And if you can't lead yourself, how are you gonna lead other people?

• 2:04:16Speaker 01

  And so, I would like to challenge people to start to look within, before they look out, is to look within. And what are the things that I can do to be a positive change maker in my life, and in the life of others? And when we talk about being a positive change maker, the thought process is, this is about trying to change society. But when, I hear people always say, "Do something that'll change the world." Well, if you wanna do something that's gonna change the world, you change first. And that's gonna, and if everybody started to feel that way, we'd have this huge movement of change that would be authentic.

• 2:05:01Tim Ferriss?

  Here, here.

• 2:05:03Speaker 01

  I'm getting all fired up.

• 2:05:05Tim Ferriss?

  You're good at that, Coach. I want to be respectful of your time. So I think we're gonna wrap up shortly here. But is there anything else you'd like to share? Any other parting words? Certainly, people can find you @georgeravelling on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, website, coachgeorgeravelling.com. I encourage everybody to check it out. But is there, is there anything else that you'd like to recommend to people?

• 2:05:28Speaker 01

  You just got me off the hook. Cause all my, all my youthful advisors said, "Coach, make sure you tell people how to, how to stay in touch with you." But it's, it's, all, technology has helped me be, uh, create a platform of sharing, to try to share. One thing my grandma said to me one time, she was correcting me, and I was a little smart alecky. And so she looked at me in a stern way and she said, she said, "Boy, let me tell you something. I know where the potholes are in life. And maybe if you listen to me, I can help you avoid stepping into them." So at 80 years old, I, I think of my grandma and I say, "Hey, I, I know where a lot of the potholes are in life

• 2:06:13Speaker 01

  and maybe I can tell you where they are and share my life experiences with you so that you don't have to step into those potholes." And so that's what I try to do is, is to, to share. An old guy told me one time, "Nothing in life is of any value unless you can share it with other people." And so that is the essence of me at 80 years old. What is it that I have that I can share with others? And what can I give away? I, I don't even know if I said this to my wife yet, so you're gonna be the beneficiary of, of, of a movement. I now have committed that I'm gonna try to give away most of my personal belongings. I'm gonna give away my clothes and my books, I won't.

• 2:06:56Speaker 01

  I'm trying to give away as much stuff as I can to simplify my life. I can only wear one pair of shoes. I can only wear one pair of underwear. I don't need all these things. And so I'm gonna rid myself of all these, these material things that I thought were important at At eighty years old, the money's not that, I learned money's not that important. Uh, collecting things are not that important. Uh, how you dress, all those things become uh, uh, what I call surrender. Someone tells you what time to get up in the morning, what time to go to bed, what to eat, what to dress, or how to act. And so we end up being prisoners

• 2:07:36Speaker 01

  of someone else's expectations. So, I want to live to whatever time I have left, and I want to, as Martin Luther King said, "Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we're free at last." I, I just want to be free of, of all these, these, these fences that society has put up around me. And, and I want to try to find out, where are my outer limits? And, and once you take down the fences, you allow a person to seek their outer limits. And that's what I'm trying to do at eighty years old, is to figure out where my outer limits are, and to keep reaching for them.

• 2:08:12Tim Ferriss?

  Well, Coach, I hope to have many more conversations with you. So, uh, thank you so much, sir.

• 2:08:20Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 2:08:21Tim Ferriss?

  And, uh, may you, may you be around for at least another eighty. And, what a gift of a conversation. Thank you.

• 2:08:30Speaker 01

  Thank you. I appreciate you giving me the time.

• 2:08:32Tim Ferriss?

  And, uh, for everybody listening, for links to everything we talked about, certainly where you can find Coach Raveling online and learn what he's up to, in addition to the books that we discussed and everything else, you can find all of that linked in the show notes at tim.blog/podcast. What a ride. And, uh, to everybody out there, until next time, thank you for listening.

• 2:09:07Tim Ferriss?

  Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I have read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short.

• 2:09:49Tim Ferriss?

  It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by FreshBooks. FreshBooks has become the go-to cloud accounting software for literally millions of small business owners who found a faster, more efficient, and much less stressful way to deal with their numbers. And ultimately, this helps you to focus on what you are best at. It is used by many of the fastest-growing startups I've invested in or advise, and it's equally used by many of the best freelancers I work with on a daily or weekly basis.

• 2:10:32Tim Ferriss?

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• 2:11:17Tim Ferriss?

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• 2:12:02Tim Ferriss?

  and I have several audiobooks to recommend right off the bat if you're looking for a new one. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, you may have heard of it. The Tao of Seneca by Seneca, if you want to hear my favorite collection of letters of all time, as well as The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, which is a fiction book I use to reintroduce nonfiction purists to the beauty and truth and enjoyment of fiction. Graveyard Book, it is incredible. And I like the version that Neil reads himself, but the entire ensemble cast is also fun. Audible members get a credit every month good for any audiobook in the store, regardless of price, and unused credits roll over to the next month. So if you didn't like your audiobook, no problem. You can exchange it, no questions asked. Plus, your books are yours to keep.

• 2:12:47Tim Ferriss?

  With Audible, you can go back and re-listen anytime, even if you cancel your membership. And for some books, again, Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, I've listened many, many times. You may even just start over as soon as you finish it the first time. Audible also helps you to listen to more books by letting you switch seamlessly between devices, picking up exactly where you left off, whether it's on your phone, through your car, from a tablet, or at home on an Amazon Echo, whatever. You can get through tons of books, hands and eyes free, while doing almost anything. So that is part of the beauty of audio. It is a secondary activity when you're walking the dog, cooking, whatever it might be. Audible content includes an unmatched selection of audiobooks, original audio shows, news, comedy, and much more from leading audiobook publishers,

• 2:13:29Tim Ferriss?

  broadcasters, entertainers, magazine and newspaper publishers, and business information providers. Maybe that's what I am, a business information provider. And right now, Audible is offering listeners of this podcast a free audiobook with a 30-day trial membership. Check it out. Go to audible.com/tim and browse the unmatched selection of audio programs. Download a title free and start listening. It's super simple. Go to audible.com/tim or text TIM to 500500 on your telephone to get started today. Check it out.