The Man Who Coached Michael Jordan AND Kobe Bryant To WIN!: Tim Grover

Tim Grover is the performance expert who helped to raise the game of Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant to the legendary levels everyone knows them for. Taking over Michael Jordan’s personal performance team when he was in his early twenties, he’s been working with the world’s top athletes for over three decades. No one knows more about winning than Tim. No one knows more about fitness than Tim. No one knows more about mentality than Tim. But Tim also knows about our hidden insecurities, the ones that drive us and we need to use to our advantage. Tim’s new book, Winning, opens the lid on what it was like to work with two of the greatest basketball players of all time. It is every bit as awe-inspiring as you would expect because none of Michael, Kobe, or Tim was interested in being anything except No. 1. Follow Tim: Twitter - https://twitter.com/attackathletics Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/timgrover Tim's book - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Winning-Unforgiving-Greatness-Tim-Grover/dp/1398501905/ Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Kobe Bryant was not interested in winning championships.

• 0:06Speaker 00

  He was obsessed.

• 0:07Steven Bartlett?

  He was the trainer for Dwyane Wade, Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan.

• 0:10Speaker 00

  The book is relentless. Tim Rover. What is your dark side? After every semester of anatomy class, you have dead bodies. My dad's job was to dispose of those bodies. You have to cut off their legs, you have to cut off their head. I saw him do that when I was four years old.

• 0:30Speaker 00

  It doesn't get any darker than that.

• 0:32Steven Bartlett?

  If I spoke to some of your clients and I asked them, what was Tim good at for you? What would they say to me?

• 0:37Speaker 00

  Elevating them to another level. Very few people understand what winning does to an individual's mental health. Winning doesn't make you heartless, but it teaches you to use your heart less. Every decision I've made, I knew what the cost was going to be. If you think the price of winning is too high, wait till you get the bill from regret.

• 1:01Steven Bartlett?

  So without further ado, I'm Steven Bartlett and this is the Diary of a CEO USA edition. I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself.

• 1:19Steven Bartlett?

  Tim, I read in your book, Winning, The Unforgiving Race to Greatness, Chapter 12. And I don't usually start with people's books. I want to, I want to usually start somewhere else, but in chapter 12, you talk about this, this concept of the dark side and the darker side.

• 1:36Speaker 00

  Right there, huh?

• 1:36Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah. And the reason I want to go right there is because I actually think it's the start for many people.

• 1:42Speaker 00

  It is the start.

• 1:44Steven Bartlett?

  So tell me about your dark side and where and what it came from.

• 1:51Speaker 00

  This is a very unique story. So my father, both my parents are Indian descent. So they came over to the States when I was four. My mother came over first. She was a nurse practitioner and my dad was a professor in India. So when he came over from India to the UK, he was still a professor over there. When he came from UK to the United States.

• 2:21Speaker 00

  They said that his education would not transfer. That he could not, he wasn't qualified enough to teach at the university level in the States. So my dad said, okay, well, what job do you have available? So they had a job back then, it was called a degreaser.

• 2:42Speaker 00

  A degreaser is an individual, doesn't, this job does not exist anymore. After every quarter, every semester of anatomy class, you have cadavers. Cadavers? Cadavers, dead bodies.

• 2:59Speaker 00

  My dad's job was to dispose of those bodies.

• 3:06Speaker 00

  Now, this is a man that was called a doctor

• 3:10Speaker 00

  back in the old country.

• 3:15Speaker 00

  Now, when you dispose of these cadavers, it's not a garbage truck that comes and picks them up.

• 3:23Speaker 00

  You have to dismantle them. You have to cut off their legs. You have to cut off their arms. You have to cut off their head. And you throw them in a furnace.

• 3:37Speaker 00

  I saw him do that when I was four years old.

• 3:43Speaker 00

  My parents couldn't afford babysitters. My mom worked at night. My dad worked during the day. So when you were off from school, guess what? You can't disturb mom because she's worked sixteen hours that night. You go to work with your dad.

• 4:03Speaker 00

  My dad said, he goes, "Son,

• 4:07Speaker 00

  never let your pride get in the way of doing what's necessary and providing for the people you love."

• 4:16Speaker 00

  It doesn't get any darker than that.

• 4:20Speaker 00

  You still feel it today? Very. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for him and the things that he did, both of them.

• 4:28Speaker 00

  Never complained.

• 4:31Speaker 00

  Went to work every single day.

• 4:35Speaker 00

  As you were telling me that story, what was the emotion? You know what people talk about sacrifice?

• 4:43Speaker 00

  That others did for them. Very few get to actually witness it and remember. There's certain memories that people have when you go way back in age and they can't even remember. I have vivid

• 4:57Speaker 00

  memories of those things.

• 5:02Speaker 00

  And how not only did they mold him, how they molded my brother, the effects it had on both of us. Positive and negative.

• 5:15Speaker 00

  And I understand how to use

• 5:21Speaker 00

  that darkness in the most positive way, just like my dad did. Because to him,

• 5:30Speaker 00

  that darkness was a new beginning.

• 5:36Speaker 00

  He didn't look at it as an individual who like, I'm so accomplished back over here. He was just grateful and thankful to be in the United States and have a new opportunity and a new beginning

• 5:52Speaker 00

  for his family. And I always say this, and this is why when we talk about the dark and the darkness and the dark side and all that other stuff. People forget this.

• 6:06Speaker 00

  I always say this. When does a new day start?

• 6:13Speaker 00

  It starts at midnight.

• 6:17Speaker 00

  Is it dark outside at midnight? Yes.

• 6:23Speaker 00

  So if a new day and a new beginning

• 6:28Speaker 00

  starts in the dark every day,

• 6:33Speaker 00

  that's when your new beginnings start. But so many people are afraid

• 6:39Speaker 00

  to go to that place.

• 6:42Speaker 00

  And I tell them, you have to visit that place because if that place comes visit you, it will never leave. If you go visit the darkness that you've been running from, you'll have the opportunity to leave a better person. You'll have a better understanding of yourself. You'll have a better understanding of your purpose.

• 7:07Speaker 00

  But if you don't take that trip and the darkness comes visits you, it's a guest that will never leave.

• 7:15Steven Bartlett?

  That dark side, you referenced it, did good and bad things for you, negatives and positives.

• 7:22Steven Bartlett?

  What are the negatives?

• 7:26Speaker 00

  It hardened me.

• 7:29Speaker 00

  It really, it hardened me. It hardened me to the point where

• 7:35Speaker 00

  I had a hard time communicating with other individuals. I had a hard time understanding things that were so easy for me to deal with, the hardships, the trials and tribulations. And I would see other people complain about things and I'm like, what are you complaining about? I don't, I was just like, I couldn't relate to it. I just, I just couldn't relate to it. I didn't have much compassion for that, for those, for those individuals.

• 8:05Steven Bartlett?

  And you talk in the book that often you're visited at night by a presence

• 8:15Steven Bartlett?

  in the early hours of the morning.

• 8:18Speaker 00

  Every night, there's an individual

• 8:21Speaker 00

  that comes visit you.

• 8:24Speaker 00

  You know, everybody has,

• 8:27Speaker 00

  everybody has these grandiose dreams and these daydreams about success and money and fame and power. And I always say,

• 8:38Speaker 00

  winning never visits you in your daydreams. It sees you in your nightmares.

• 8:46Speaker 00

  The things that you've come visit you in your nightmares, those things are real. Those are the things that you have to deal with. Those are the monsters underneath the bed. Those are the skeletons in the closet. Those are the things that you've put away. And some of the stuff that you've put away and you don't want to deal with is some of the best part of you. How many times have you heard this? People always say, you know, always show up positive. You know, always bring your positivity. Well, that means you only bring half of you. That means you're not accepting the other half. You gotta bring the light. You gotta bring the dark. You gotta bring the good. You gotta bring the bad.

• 9:31Speaker 00

  You have to have conversations with those skeletons in your closets. They know you better than you know yourself. In order to stand out, in order to fight. Many times you have to become that monster. But most individuals, when they become that monster, they don't know how to control it. And they let the monster control them. So it's a learning process. And all those years that you run from that monster underneath your bed, you're actually being taught, can you control that monster or is that monster going to control you?

• 10:11Speaker 00

  And then once you recognize that part of that monster or all that monster is you, that's when you can actually start fulfilling your dreams and living the life that you're meant to live.

• 10:25Steven Bartlett?

  How did that monster manifest itself in your behavior? Outside of you said about you struggle to be compassionate with other people. You struggle to have empathy for their struggles. Was there other things that you, where that monster would rear its ugly head or take control of you?

• 10:43Speaker 00

  You know what? When the monster took over, it wasn't for bad things. It allowed me to deal with.

• 10:52Speaker 00

  You know how mean kids could be, the different bullying, the bullyingness in school that every kid goes through, whether it's physical or mental, you know, the teasing, all that other stuff. That monster allowed me to get, gave me that strength to not to lash out back at those individuals and just say, hey, continue, trust yourself, continue on this, continue on this path, all right, and don't worry about trying to prove those individuals wrong. You and I will prove ourselves right.

• 11:25Steven Bartlett?

  When you talk about, and this is what I was trying to gauge when I was listening to your audio book, you talk about these, at 2am realising you're not alone. And I wasn't sure if you were being literal or figurative. I wasn't sure if you literally felt the presence of spirits or someone else in your room, or you meant, or it was a figurative way to talk about the thoughts that were in your mind.

• 11:48Speaker 00

  It's both. It's both. When you get out of bed or you want to get out of bed, there's all these individuals that are lined up next to that bed. There's fear, there's doubt, there's compassion, there's hatred, there's excellence, there's sorority, there's excuses, and they all have their hands out.

• 12:20Steven Bartlett?

  Literally?

• 12:21Speaker 00

  Literally. And then you get to choose every single day who gets a vote. It's your decision. It's your decision. And most times, many individuals make their decisions with their feelings. And you have to make those decisions with your mind. Every single morning, if you can't get out of your beds and you choose not to win, you listen to your feelings. If you chose to get out of bed and you said, there's a win for me, that's

• 13:05Speaker 00

  your mind. And each one of those individuals, you decide who gets a vote. And some days, not all the popular things are going to get a vote. Success may not get a vote. Winning may not get a vote.

• 13:20Speaker 00

  But you've made that decision that now this thing gets a vote. I must be ready to deal with it. Every single day, there's something different. There also has to be something different about yourself. And I said this in winning, different scares people. When you're different, it scares people. When the world is different, it scares people. Everything different scares people. But it attracts the right emotions. It attracts the right feelings.

• 14:05Speaker 00

  It attracts the right thoughts and it attracts the right people. Because the people that are willing to not judge you and understand and know that these things are real. They are real. They will tell you, I understand. With both books that I've written, people were like, I thought I was the only one. Because this is not, it's not accepted to talk about these things. Because people put you in this land of you're crazy. And anytime anybody's told me I'm crazy, I've always thanked them for that. Because it gave me the ability to see and do things that other people can't do

• 14:51Speaker 00

  and acknowledge things that other people won't acknowledge.

• 14:55Steven Bartlett?

  It seems to be a bit of a paradox that sometimes our dark side, whatever that might be. It could be being bullied in school and the consequences that had or, you know, as you say in the book as well, being overweight and being bullied for that or some trauma or whatever you've had in your life. It seems to be a paradox that our dark side can both be the driving force of our life and also the cause of so much pain. So it can be the thing to put us in pain and then also the thing that drives us out of pain. If that makes sense.

• 15:22Speaker 00

  It makes 100%. Well, you know, you look at it, it's for a lot of individual.

• 15:30Speaker 00

  You know, the physical pain that they put themselves through is actually their pleasure. You know, my athletes, when they, at the highest level of their training, it is the most uncomfortable state they put themselves through every single day. And people are just like, I'm just not gonna, I'm not gonna do that. It's the people that run the ultra marathons, it's people that take these, these ice baths, it's, you know, i- i- it's, it's all, it's all out there. Now, that doesn't mean if you do those things, you're gonna, you're gonna excel in other aspects of your life,

• 16:07Speaker 00

  but it does raise your level of understanding that nothing great is going to come without you having to deal with what I call adversity and pain tolerance. You must be able to deal with that. And the more understanding you have of what's causing you the pain and how you've dealt with it, is gonna determine how successful you will be in whatever you choose in life. You know, you have individuals who will become from a broken family.

• 16:46Speaker 00

  And you could have two children that come from the broken family,

• 16:51Speaker 00

  and one individual will, will not live up to their potential.

• 17:01Speaker 00

  And they'll say, "It's because I came from a broken family." And then you have the other individuals, same environment, same household, same everything,

• 17:15Speaker 00

  will do great things, not only for themselves, for humanity, for this world. And what's their answer? "Because I came from a broken family." They both understood how to use the pain. One used it to excel.

• 17:33Speaker 00

  The other used it to deny.

• 17:36Steven Bartlett?

  Having done this podcast for the amount of time that I've done it, what you've articulated there about that broken home scenario

• 17:44Steven Bartlett?

  is the thing I've always played around with, which is a trauma causes an adverse response typically. Greatness or despair.

• 17:52Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 17:53Steven Bartlett?

  And it's, and I've always tried to figure out what a trauma is going to do, but it's been impossible for me. But in your case, it led you to be

• 18:02Steven Bartlett?

  great in what you do and what you achieved in your life and the people you worked with. So tell me about how you went from that traumatic early upbringing that created that dark side in you to being a sports enhancement specialist. That's how you, that's how you prefer to be.

• 18:19Speaker 00

  Yes, that was my official title when I was, when my main job was to train professional, to train professional athletes. So I didn't want, I never wanted to consider myself and label myself as a trainer. Cause I did, I did more, I did more than that. So I actually came up with that, that title myself. So I played college basketball myself. I had these dreams of playing professional basketball. Wasn't, wasn't good enough. Okay. But I was like,

• 18:51Speaker 00

  what can I do to make sure this doesn't happen to other individuals?

• 18:58Speaker 00

  And I was like, you know what? I started to study the body really, really closely, which goes all the way back to

• 19:08Speaker 00

  when I was four years old. So not only did I have to study the body from an external standpoint, I had to learn it from an internal, internal standpoint.

• 19:21Speaker 00

  Going through the different injuries that I suffered through my years of working out, training, playing allowed me to understand what an individual goes through, not only from a physical standpoint. I understood what was going on in their head. If they hurt their ankle, hip, back, all that stuff.

• 19:45Speaker 00

  I knew. So not only was I able to train them from a physical standpoint, I was able to train them from a psychological standpoint. I know what you're going through. I know the barriers that you have to go, that you have to go through because it's so much easier to get an individual back from a physical injury. But it's that mental scar that stays with them.

• 20:08Speaker 00

  How, what do you have to do to make them forget about that mental scar? And that's where my, that's where my niche came in. Like, okay, I need you to go out there and play and play at the highest level and not worry about

• 20:22Speaker 00

  what happened six months ago, nine months ago, six weeks ago.

• 20:30Speaker 00

  So when it became sports enhancement, the enhancement part, the sports was the physical, the enhancement part was,

• 20:41Speaker 00

  was the mental.

• 20:43Steven Bartlett?

  If I spoke to some of your clients that knew you best, Michael Jordan, Kobe, and all these others, and I know you work now with a lot of CEOs and a lot of business leaders, et cetera. And I asked them, what is Tim good at? What was Tim good at for you? What would they say to me?

• 21:01Speaker 00

  Elevating, elevating them to another level.

• 21:05Steven Bartlett?

  Holistically?

• 21:07Speaker 00

  Holistically.

• 21:10Speaker 00

  Just being able, because when somebody comes up to me and they said,

• 21:15Speaker 00

  I want to be

• 21:19Speaker 00

  something. And I look at it, well, somebody's already done that. I need more. You can't come to me and just say, I want to be, everyone says, I want to be the world's best tennis player. I want to be the world's best basketball pod. I want to be the world's greatest podcaster.

• 21:36Speaker 00

  That's already been done.

• 21:39Speaker 00

  There's another level, you're not thinking big enough. My individuals come to me and say, listen, I have these dreams. I have these thoughts. And the first thing I tell them, your dreams and thoughts better be so big that they better scare you.

• 22:00Speaker 00

  They better scare you. Why? Because you're not thinking big enough then. You don't want it. It has to be something that nobody else has thought about before or done before.

• 22:14Speaker 00

  The process it takes to be number one and stay at number one,

• 22:20Speaker 00

  you have no, you have no idea.

• 22:23Speaker 00

  You have an idea because you've been there. Everybody wants to sit in your seat

• 22:30Speaker 00

  until they have to sit in your seat.

• 22:33Speaker 00

  Very few people understand what winning and success does to an individual's mental health.

• 22:44Speaker 00

  Everybody thinks the more you win, the more successful you are. It just makes everything so much easier.

• 22:54Speaker 00

  And they don't understand the pressures that these individuals

• 22:59Speaker 00

  put on themselves

• 23:03Speaker 00

  to continue to perform at the highest level.

• 23:08Speaker 00

  To have their businesses win over and over again.

• 23:15Speaker 00

  When you reach

• 23:19Speaker 00

  a million followers on your social media,

• 23:24Speaker 00

  it's a

• 23:27Speaker 00

  different

• 23:30Speaker 00

  level

• 23:33Speaker 00

  of pressure than an individual who isn't

• 23:40Speaker 00

  winning all the time, who hasn't been successful at the highest, at the highest level. Who's not being critiqued about every decision they make, about what they wear, about what they say, where they go.

• 23:57Speaker 00

  And that's a whole different level of mental health that success brings that a lot of people just don't understand.

• 24:07Steven Bartlett?

  Michael Jordan, I, I watched the Last Dance documentary. I saw you in there as well.

• 24:17Steven Bartlett?

  Really, I've got to be honest, I didn't really know much about MJ before that. And it went from me watching that documentary, getting obsessed with him, to hanging a picture on the wall in my office back in London, very soon after a neon sign in my office in London of just of that silhouette for many, many reasons. But as I read through your story, and a lot of my listeners won't know about this, so I feel obliged, because I know the question they'll be asking is, how on earth did you go from a college graduate that was, you know, earning three dollars an hour as a trainer in a gym to becoming the trainer of all the sports enhancement specialists for Michael Jordan, who many see as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, sporting athletes of

• 25:02Steven Bartlett?

  all time? What happened in that gap?

• 25:06Speaker 00

  Well, when I started to go to college, I didn't know what I wanted to do. And, you know, again, being of Indian descent and having both parents Indian in the medical, in the medical field, you get to choose two options as a career. One being a doctor, and this is back in the eighties, second being a doctor. That's it. And I told my parents, I do not want to go, I don't want to be a doctor. They said, well, what do you want to do? I said, I want to train professional athletes. I knew this very early. I knew this very, very, very, very early, because when I was a freshman in college,

• 25:48Speaker 00

  there was a, a class, it was the first time it was being offered at the school. It was called kinesiology, just movement of the muscles and body and, and basically movement, movement of humans. And I took and kind of picked up a book and I started, I said, you know what? This is for me.

• 26:10Speaker 00

  So when people kept telling me, why are you going to take this class? Why? Everybody said, oh, you know, most people that take these courses end up being in the health industry, whether it be studying science, working in administrations in colleges, or being health educators. And I was just like, no, there's, there's something more out there for me. There's something, there's something more out there for me. And then when we, we'd have our basketball practices in college and so forth, and I was like, all we're doing is just, we're just running, running, we're doing stuff without a purpose. This, this, this can't, this can't be, this can't be right, this can't be right. And we had an individual that would come in and work our team out. I was just like,

• 26:54Speaker 00

  this doesn't just, this doesn't feel right. So I really took study to this. I really wanted to understand this. Later on, I graduated with a master's degree. Parents were like, you know, well, you got this, you can't stay at home, gotta go get a job.

• 27:12Steven Bartlett?

  Master's degree in?

• 27:13Speaker 00

  Master's degree in exercise science. All right. And I took a job at a local health club. The minimum wage back then was $3.35. I took the job. I took the job. They did not allow, I was the most qualified individual they had on their training staff, but they still wouldn't allow me to train because I had to do the six-month probation period. So I said, okay, no problem. So what I did was I worked in the exercise rooms. I basically cleaned the, cleaned the equipment, opened up the gyms, did different, different, different stuff, different stuff like that. And then after six months passed by, they said, okay,

• 27:56Speaker 00

  you have to take this exam. And if you pass the exam, we'll allow you to be a trainer. Well, what the funny part about it is when I looked at the exam, it was the exam I actually wrote as one of my projects for school. And this, and this health club was using the exam I actually wrote to certify their trainers.

• 28:16Steven Bartlett?

  Fucking hell. Crazy.

• 28:19Speaker 00

  So I, I looked at this exam, I, I gave all the answers, and I gave it to them, and they scored, and they said, you got 100%. You're able to qualify as a trainer. I said, thank you. I said, where'd you guys get that from? They said, you know, oh, you know what? We got it from a university. I said, which university? And they said, University of Illinois Chicago. I said, yeah, I said, you should really follow up and see who developed that exam. So they came back later on and said, you wrote this? I said, yes, I'm the one that wrote this exam. I'm the one that wrote this exam. So I became the trainer over there. And in a very short period of time, I became the highest grossing trainer they had in there. But what was great about it is, and I talked about this in the book,

• 29:03Speaker 00

  school taught me what to think. All the education, all the books, everything. I knew exactly what to think. But when you start dealing with humans who are able to communicate and who have their own thoughts and have their own beliefs and have their own feelings, have their own emotions, have their own ideas. I was like, there's a whole part of my education that's missing here. My schooling taught me what to think. Now I need to learn how to think. There's a big difference between the two. And once I started training individuals,

• 29:47Speaker 00

  understanding how different people adapted to the different ways of communicating, different times of working out, different words, different facial expressions, whether different levels of silence. That's when I really started to manifest my trade and understand the results with all the different type of individuals. And these weren't just athletes. There was everybody who wanted to just get into shape, lose weight, get stronger, jump higher, run a little faster, play better tennis, whatever it may be. But I'm sitting here and I'm like, I'm only using.

• 30:28Speaker 00

  Maybe 10% of what I've learned in school, there's gotta be more.

• 30:33Speaker 00

  And there was a small article in the local newspaper that said Michael Jordan was tired of taking the physical abuse from the Detroit Pistons and wanted to get stronger. Like, okay. So I said, you know what?

• 30:48Speaker 00

  Now, back then, remember, there's no cell phones, no emails. You just, uh, there's no way of direct messaging, social media, there's no way of direct messaging anybody. So I said, I'm gonna write letters. There's 15 players on a basketball team, I'm gonna write 14 letters. The one person I'm not gonna write a letter to is Michael Jordan. He's the best. Why would he, why would he work with an individual that's never worked with a professional athlete? So I wrote 14 letters explaining my background, what, what I do, what my training philosophy is. And back then, you put a stamp in it, you go to the post office, you put them in the mail, and they get delivered to the player's training facility and they get thrown in the locker as fan mail. Whether the player decides to open it up or not, that's up to them.

• 31:34Speaker 00

  Well, obviously, somebody opened up one of the letters and Michael saw it in some, in somebody else's locker, pulled the letter out, read it, and gave it to the team physician and the athletic trainer during that time and said, hey, find out what this is about.

• 31:52Steven Bartlett?

  I have to pause you there just to highlight the fact that most people would not send those letters.

• 32:00Speaker 00

  I'm not most.

• 32:02Speaker 00

  There's nothing about me that qualifies as most. There's nothing that qualifies me, me, me as, me as average. Because you know what? What's the worst thing that could have possibly happened? I'd be in the exact same situation I was in. I wasn't gonna be any worse.

• 32:21Speaker 00

  If I didn't take that initiative, I didn't take that action, I was in a worse situation.

• 32:28Steven Bartlett?

  In hindsight?

• 32:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:30Steven Bartlett?

  But it's so, it's so interesting because that, those moments riddle my story where I sent,

• 32:37Steven Bartlett?

  the first one was just sending emails to at night at 18 years old to say, saying, will you invest in my company at 18, after dropping out of university? And I, I, I talk about this, and this is why I paused you because it happened when I was 16, happened when I was 18, happened when I was 24, and those were pivotal moments in my life. And as you say, if I rolled the dice and got a bad hand, I was in the same place. But, but it was free to, it was like free to roll. In your case, it cost you a couple of stamps to roll. And it baffles my mind that, you know, the people, the young people that listen to this podcast that are trapped in the situation they're in, aren't just rolling the fucking dice every day to see if they can get a Michael Jordan.

• 33:12Speaker 00

  The best of the best.

• 33:16Speaker 00

  They're always looking for a competitive edge. They're always looking for that, that point 001% thing that can make them better. I had a conversation, and this individual I never, I've never worked with, but he was at an event that I was speaking at also, and he spoke, he spoke before me, Michael Phelps.

• 33:36Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, yeah. For anybody that doesn't know, Michael Phelps may be the most accomplished Olympic swimmer of all time.

• 33:42Speaker 00

  Yes. So Michael said that he trained every single day. He was, he was, he was at the pinnacle of his career. And he said, it's not like I can go ahead and I can knock off three seconds.

• 34:00Speaker 00

  He goes, I train every single day.

• 34:04Speaker 00

  So I can shave point 001 second.

• 34:11Speaker 00

  He goes, that's my ultimate goal. After three, four months of getting ready for my next race or years, whatever it is, I need to be, I need to shave point oh, oh, oh, one off my time.

• 34:25Speaker 00

  And everybody he surrounded himself with, that was their job.

• 34:30Steven Bartlett?

  Marginal gains, as we call it, that one percent, that zero point one percent. And I, I heard you talk about this with, with Kobe in the book and your other athletes, um, that, that trying to find that edge. And Kobe was one of those people that in the book that you, you talk about really trying to find that edge as well, um, in his career. I'm really compelled by the, the concept of marginal gains because I feel like it's been my religion for my life and my team here know, hear me talk about this so much that they're sick of it, which was, which is like, how do we make what we're doing here or my businesses, but let's just focus on what we see here, one percent better. So whether it means putting these little things up to stop the reflection in there, whether it means, you know, the effort they went to, to put these things up, like that is my religion.

• 35:13Steven Bartlett?

  And when I, when you sat down here, I said, this podcast has been going for about a year and we're number one. And that is purely based on the fact that we believe the one percent will change our trajectory in an invisible way in the moment, but in a profound way over time.

• 35:26Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 35:27Steven Bartlett?

  How important are those marginal gains to the athletes that you've worked with and in the work you do with them still today?

• 35:33Speaker 00

  It's everything. It's everything and it's in the details. You know, you just described all these little things and somebody coming, oh, it doesn't matter. You know, I, a great example was like, you know what? When we handed you the book, you're like, this cover is so much better than the other one. Switch it. It's the little attention to the little things that people, everyone thinks they won't notice. You hear this all the time. Don't sweat the small stuff. The one percenters, the point oh, one, they sweat every single detail. Cause the one thing they let slip, somebody is going to use that to their advantage.

• 36:15Speaker 00

  Somebody is going to make a big deal out of it and they're going to feel like they left something out. You know, everyone says, don't worry about the things that you can't control. Well, these individuals.

• 36:31Speaker 00

  They want to control everything they can control. So the uncontrollable becomes more manageable to them. So if they pay attention to every single detail obsessively over and over and over again. Then when the uncontrollable happens. They can have a better chance of controlling it. There's a big thing that we used to use with Kobe all the time is I used to ask individuals. If you're interested. In taking your business or your basketball game, your football skills, your podcast.

• 37:15Speaker 00

  And this, we'd have a room of thousands and thousands of people stand up. And everybody would stand up and they give this big rounding clap and all this other stuff. If you're interested in taking it to number one? If you're interested, yes. To the next level, for some people, it may not be number one, whatever it is, everybody claps up. And then I say, sit back down. Then I would ask them, I said, all right, if you're obsessed with taking your business. Your sport, whatever it is, to another level, stand up. And everybody would stand up again. Well, I would say, well, which one is it? Which one is it?

• 37:58Speaker 00

  You can't be interested and you can't be obsessed. Interested is a hobby. Kobe Bryant was not interested in winning championships. He was obsessed. And obsession comes in the small details that nobody pays attention to. And I have a saying, all right? Interested people watch obsessed people change the world.

• 38:27Steven Bartlett?

  Kobe was interested in those small details that nobody else was interested in paying attention to. What were those small details for him?

• 38:35Speaker 00

  Everyone talks about maximizing their time. Kobe and I were interested in maximizing his focus. When you maximize your focus, it gave us more, it gave us more time. The, having everything laid out for him so he wouldn't have to worry about the, what shoes, what shoes he had to wear, where, where the, where the tickets had to go for friends, for the friends and family. We would come around and in the different arenas, I would walk the floors while he was getting dressed and I would tell him where the ball doesn't

• 39:16Speaker 00

  bounce as well. Cause on a basketball court, it's made out of wood, right? And they're, they're portable floors and everybody knows in certain arenas, they're dead spots. You force the player into that area, if the ball is going to bounce there, it's not going to, it's not going to bounce as high, which gives the team, team the advantage. And a lot of times when they would move those, they would move those pieces around. So we would walk around, bounce the ball, that spot, that spot, that spot, that spot. So we'd get an advantage of the details that nobody else would pay attention to, that if we went into that area, we know, stay away from that area. Or if we know we can't dribble on that, that,

• 39:59Speaker 00

  that particular spot. And there was one time, there was a game where Kobe was, before the game, he was shooting free throws. And he was like, something isn't, something isn't right. So he called the, one of the maintenance guys over, he goes, are you sure this basket is right? And the guy said, yeah. He goes, well, I want you to check it for me. He measured it. It was an eighth of an inch off. When you're that obsessed, when you're paying that much attention to the, to the, to the details.

• 40:32Speaker 00

  You know, it's no different than what you said about the lighting and the microphones and the team. I've never seen, I've done quite a few podcasts, but I'm very, we're very selective in who, who we want to sit, we want to sit down with. And this is the first time I've seen this many individuals.

• 40:57Steven Bartlett?

  It's funny, we were having a conversation yesterday and I've been thinking about it for the last two days since we had the conversation. The conversation is, should we hire someone full time to look at the data and analytics of the episodes when they go out? So we can, if we put an episode out and the title thumbnail is wrong, we can know within 24 hours if we need to change it. Like we, we know in this conversation, which part in hindsight, from looking at the data, people found most interesting because they pull it back and watch it again. And it's all of these insights which are there, but we want to be the team that is the team that cares enough about that, about those tiny details, because that is our religion, as we say. That is what, where we believe we'll find all the gains.

• 41:33Speaker 00

  That's where the separation is. The separation is in the details. It's in the details. The separation in the clothes you wear is in the details. The shoes, the car that you drive, the, the house, your, your education. It doesn't matter whether you go to the most expensive university or you drop out of the university. It's the details you pay attention to in your studies, in whatever your career choice is. That, those are the things that matter. You pay attention to the details in, in your family. Pay attention to the details in your kids. You pay attention to the details of what makes your significant other happy, how they react to

• 42:16Speaker 00

  certain things. It's people get comfortable with not having to manage the details.

• 42:25Steven Bartlett?

  Having worked with a man like Kobe and seeing what he strived for, his, you know, his focus on legacy, his obsession with his sports and his craft and his obsession, as many have said, of being better than Michael Jordan. He's no longer with us tragically.

• 42:44Steven Bartlett?

  But having seen a man striving for that greatness in his life and for that legacy, and having seen how that story ended, and now being able to look back on the fullness of his life, what was he missing? And the reason I ask this question is because sometimes I reflect on my own striving and think, is there something in hindsight, having lived a life where I achieved those things, where I reached the top in, you know, my industry in business or in podcasting, wherever it might be, or as an investor, that I'm going to realize in hindsight and go, do you know what? Fuck.

• 43:19Steven Bartlett?

  Legacy might not have mattered as much as I thought it did. It might not have mattered as much as relationships or friendships or something else.

• 43:25Speaker 00

  I always say this, the most driven individuals,

• 43:30Speaker 00

  they live a life

• 43:34Speaker 00

  for many years and certain times without balance. Everybody strives for balance, balance, balance. And in order to be that obsessed with something over and over again.

• 43:49Speaker 00

  So if you say something that's that was missing, but it was actually a gift,

• 43:56Speaker 00

  was his lack of balance.

• 44:00Speaker 00

  You know, there were times, now, you can't be

• 44:06Speaker 00

  the best at something and try to balance everything else around your life. There is going to be times where things are going to be out of balance. It just is. I, you know, so many individuals talk about that you need more balance, you need more balance, you need more balance. You don't find balance, you create it. And it's different for every individual out there. What the balance I've created may be completely different than the balance you you've you've created. And there's certain times in your life that the scales are definitely going to be weighing towards one side more than the other. In early part of Kobe's Kobe's career,

• 44:46Speaker 00

  it was about it was about basketball and winning, about basketball and winning. And towards the end of that, towards the end of his career, and you know, he played for 20 years. It became more less about winning. It was still about basketball and it became more focused, became more on spending time with the family. But you have to surround yourself with people. And this is very important to the listeners. You have to surround yourself with people when your life is unbalanced, with individuals that would be selfish for you. They understand your obsession. They understand your drive. They understand your attention to detail.

• 45:31Speaker 00

  No, I guarantee it almost, I don't know your whole team,

• 45:37Speaker 00

  but I guarantee almost everyone on your team at some point, every single day, is they become selfish for another individual so that individual can perform and do their task at the highest level.

• 45:53Speaker 00

  That's how you get closer to balance. You want to get closer to balance? Don't continue to add stuff. Get closer to balance by deleting the unessentials. Delete the unessentials. The most successful people. And the success, when I talk about success, I'm not just talking about from a financial standpoint. Whatever success means to you and whatever success means to you in your, in your life.

• 46:24Speaker 00

  They've learned how to disconnect. They've learned how to delete the unessentials. Because you spend so much time being obsessed and paying attention to the details that you don't have time. You don't have focus for the unessentials. The most successful people have the smallest circles.

• 46:50Steven Bartlett?

  When people hear that,

• 46:53Steven Bartlett?

  there'll be young kids that listen and they'll,

• 46:57Steven Bartlett?

  they might stop talking to their family. They might stop calling their girlfriend and they might say, do you know what? It's because I just need to be obsessed and they might compromise things in their life that lead them to despair and unhappiness and those kinds of things. And I always wonder with these individuals that you've worked with that are at the highest level, that are, that are obsessed. Do they prioritize happiness as the goal, as the ultimate goal? Or is winning the goal at all costs? And in your view? That sometimes they go too far. Should happiness be the goal?

• 47:30Speaker 00

  I can't make that decision for those individuals. My job, i- i- if happiness, happiness could be winning for them. Alright, but you don't find happiness, you create it. You're not gonna find winning, you have to create, you have to create winning habits.

• 47:46Steven Bartlett?

  I sit here, sat here with a lady who became the number one YouTuber in the world and she had fifteen million subscribers. And she was talking about her obsession, she would get these spreadsheets, this was before the analytics. She'd write down how the video done in each like hour, two hours, whatever, she was obsessed. She becomes the biggest in the world and in the process of getting there, she realized that this was, she is completely burnt out, miserable, depressed. And she'd been like dragged by this obsession to a place that made her depressed. And eventually in two thousand nineteen, she's, she quits YouTube. And I, and that's what I think sometimes with our darkness, it drags us in a way that, in a less conscious way to a place that might make us unhappy.

• 48:24Speaker 00

  It does, you know, listen, winning does not always equate, winning does not always equate to happiness. I- i- it just, it just doesn't. For I've had a lot of individuals that have come to me and just said, this is too intense. I'll give you a great example, you know, everyone, Kobe's known for mama mentality. You know, that was, that was his thing, mama mentality. I've seen mama, first of all, mama mentality is not a mentality, it's a lifestyle.

• 48:50Speaker 00

  That's the first thing I tell individual. And once I tell them about the lifestyle, I've seen mama mentality destroy more careers than I've seen it help. Too intense, too hot. People want the flame, but they don't want to touch the fire. Are you willing to put aside

• 49:17Speaker 00

  the things that aren't as important, as, aren't as important to you at this particular moment? And I'm not telling you kids, listen, don't, don't separate yourself from, from your, your family. But there's a lot of times that your family doesn't see the same things that you see and the same things that you believe in. They've had a certain way of do, of doing things. My family, very supportive, very supportive. But to them, success was working for a institution. That you got a paycheck every single two weeks, you got health insurance. You got paid vacation. You got a 401k.

• 50:01Speaker 00

  That was their definition of success and happiness. To me, none of that would have made me happy. So when you talk about creating happiness, are you creating happiness that you've created or somebody else has created for you? Are you writing your story of happiness or does somebody else write your story of happiness and hand it to you and say, here, this is how you become happy?

• 50:32Steven Bartlett?

  One of the things I think I've struggled with in my life is knowing if something is something I want or if it's scratching an insecurity I have. So insecurity, as you know, is one of the greatest motivators in the world. Then it can turn into an obsession. So if you're bullied in school, you might want to become famous because that, in your view, is acceptance, right? So you see face, you strive, and then the minute you get a taste of fame, maybe because you start a YouTube channel, you triple down because people are clapping for you. And this is everything that didn't happen when you were a kid. This is, it's filling that void. But is that happiness or am I just using external validation to cover a wound in me? And I see this in great people all the time. I always try and get to the bottom of the pain or, as we talked about, the darkness,

• 51:15Steven Bartlett?

  the pain, the trauma, or whatever, that's actually driving them. And I guess my conclusion has been that you just need to be conscious of that.

• 51:23Speaker 00

  When you talked about, you know, that insecurity, that darkness, that need for to be validated, what's, is it controlling you or are you controlling it? You know, the one thing that, listen, there was a point where as obsessed as Michael was with basketball, all right, he never let the sport control him.

• 51:50Speaker 00

  He never let that sport control him. He was like, there are certain things within this game. Yes, I have to follow these rules. I have to do things. But there are certain things that I still have to be in charge of my life. I still have to be in charge of who I am. I still have to be in charge of my brand. And then what happens is when you let external things and you start playing for the wrong reason. A lot of individuals play always, and this is thing in sports now. Everyone talks about building their brand, building their brand. All right. And if you follow the people who have had the greatest success building their brand is they just

• 52:33Speaker 00

  outperform individuals. They put a better product out there. Do your job better than anybody else and your brand will build itself. So when people look for that happiness factor,

• 52:46Speaker 00

  is your foundation and your fundamental principles so strong that if this thing was to go away,

• 52:56Speaker 00

  could you still create happiness and success all over again? If your foundation and principles are extremely strong, no matter what endeavor it is, you look at the most successful people in business and everything else.

• 53:10Speaker 00

  They've gone to do multiple things

• 53:15Speaker 00

  that have allowed them to create different levels of happiness within that confined circle. You know, Michael had basketball. Then he had the shoe brand. Now he's got other endeavors. He's involved in, you know, a lot of philanthropy things. The competitive nature doesn't stop and everybody thinks you can only be happy with one certain aspect in your life. You can create happiness in multiple things in your life. And if it gets to the point where it is burning, it is burning you out, that means it's time for you for that you are no longer obsessed with that thing anymore. And it's time for you to be co-

• 54:01Speaker 00

  Become obsessed with something else and it could be this stage in your life where your success and your happiness is now, listen, I just want to create happiness for myself and for the individuals around me.

• 54:13Steven Bartlett?

  And on that point of balance, was Michael ever direct with you about the sacrifice you would have to make to come on that journey with him?

• 54:22Speaker 00

  The first thing he told me was, you better keep up.

• 54:24Steven Bartlett?

  And what did he mean by that?

• 54:28Speaker 00

  What he meant by that is not, as a trainer, keep up in life. Cause this ride, we don't know which direction it's gonna go in, we don't know if it's going up, down, sideways, but be ready for anything this throws at us.

• 54:42Steven Bartlett?

  Interestingly, that's what you knew he meant.

• 54:49Speaker 00

  One of the reasons I get along so well with all my clients professionally, business wise, socially or everybody, cause they know I'm just as messed up as they are. And I don't judge them. My, my daughter always says, she goes, Dad, you have no weird art. She goes, nothing to you is weird. Nothing to you. And I always, when I see something, I just say, interesting. I want to know how that, what that person is doing and why they're doing it. And what's fueling that desire?

• 55:31Speaker 00

  And also, what are they using that desire, what are they gonna fuel it with? With other individuals? One of the stories I tell years when I first started, when I started, first started working with, with MJ, and this is, a lot of your listeners will be too young to remember this, but the recording devices back then was called a Betamax. Videotape you stuck in, so what I would do is I'd have to be at the basketball games very early, where I'd make sure everything was prepped and he was, he was ready to go. And we were always the last individuals to leave. I'd re-watch the game.

• 56:17Speaker 00

  I would count his steps. There was no Fitbit back then. There was no, no tracking measurements or so forth. Well, I needed, in my thought, and this went back to my process of not what to think, how to think, is, well, how can I prepare him for his next workout in the morning? If I don't know how much physical activity and the differences between the right and left side. So I would literally count, this is how many steps you took left, this is how many steps you took right, this is how many times you took backward, this is how many times you landed on his right foot, this is how many times you landed on his left

• 57:00Speaker 00

  foot. So I'd have all this data. So the next morning, when I would get up, I'd be able to plan, okay, you know what, MJ, this side, you used your, you, you used your left leg sixty percent more than you used your right leg, but you used your right hand more than you used your left. Okay, so this is what we're going to do from a workout standpoint. Now, this is what we're going to do from a training standpoint, because one side's going to need different training than the other side is going to need. So we would have different exercises where he'd have fifty pounds in one hand and ten in the other. Or the certain amount of reps on this exercise and certain amount of reps on this exercise, certain time spent over here, certain time spent over here. There was no books out

• 57:41Speaker 00

  there that told me this is, this was the right thing to do. I just knew it was right. I just, I just knew it was right. And now they use this methodology all the time.

• 57:57Steven Bartlett?

  So interesting. I was thinking about that, because it's really interesting when you said that, that there was no books out there, and it tends to be the case with pioneers and innovators and people that think from first principles, that they, they do it before the books are published.

• 58:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 58:08Steven Bartlett?

  And once the books are published, it's probably too late.

• 58:11Speaker 00

  Yeah. People are using meth, I, I, stuff we were doing with him thirty years ago, people are just now using them, like.

• 58:19Steven Bartlett?

  Was that music to his ears when he knew that his sports enhancement specialist was going to such a degree of detail? Could you, did you know that that was proving to him that you cared and you were as obsessed as he was?

• 58:34Speaker 00

  Yes. You know, he gave me one of the best compliments that you can ever get at the highest level. When somebody else would say, hey, I want to hire, I want to hire Tim. He goes, I don't pay Tim to train me. He goes, I pay him not to train anybody else.

• 58:50Steven Bartlett?

  That is a big compliment.

• 58:52Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 58:53Steven Bartlett?

  He ultimately introduced you to somebody else when he retired and stepped out of the game after, you know, 15 years of you working together, which was Kobe. And I found it really intriguing that when he introduced you to Kobe, he lovingly used the word asshole. When he introduced you to Kobe, so he said, like, I'm not using Tim anymore. So, no Kobe, you can, you can work with him. Why did he use the word asshole?

• 59:17Speaker 00

  You know what? As individuals become more successful, everybody around them becomes yes people. Nobody wanted to say no to Michael Jordan. I was that individual. We had many times, we had very heated, short arguments. There were like three words, which I won't say because it'll offend a lot of your listeners. But that was the end of the, that was the end of the conversation.

• 59:56Speaker 00

  I said, MJ, you hired me to do a job at the highest level. I said, you cannot do a job at the highest level without accountability.

• 1:00:10Speaker 00

  I said, once the accountability is broken between us, then it's time for you to find another individual. So he held me accountable, I held him accountable. And when somebody says you better keep up, as a person's star starts to grow, the accountability has a tendency to get less. Because now you don't pay attention to the details as mu- as much because you've, you feel like I've achieved it. I've gotten there. It's a, it's a lot easier. Staying on the top is not the same thing as reaching the top. Many individuals can reach the top,

• 1:00:54Speaker 00

  but very few individuals stay at the top because the accountability among their team and among themselves starts to deteriorate once they've reached the top.

• 1:01:06Steven Bartlett?

  And what does that deterioration in accountability look like? What are the signs of it?

• 1:01:12Speaker 00

  I'll give you a great example. When people perform at the highest level in business, sometimes a boss or the person above them, CEO, whatever, you know what? Man, their numbers are so good. We're gonna let them, we're not gonna hold them accountable for this, this and this. You know, they're still performing. They may not be performing at the highest level, but they're still performing at, at a top level. So now you have that little crack. And that little crack gets a little bigger and a little bigger and a little bigger. Michael in The Last Dance said something. He goes, I never asked any of my teammates to do anything that I didn't do.

• 1:01:54Speaker 00

  You're talking about the greatest to ever play the game. He didn't have to have anybody else hold him accountable. He was, I'm not gonna ask you to do anything that I'm not gonna do myself. So as individuals, once they've reached that pinnacle.

• 1:02:17Speaker 00

  And they get their arms out and they start looking down.

• 1:02:22Speaker 00

  And say, I finally reached the top of this mountaintop.

• 1:02:26Speaker 00

  Those are all the right things to do.

• 1:02:30Speaker 00

  Don't exhale.

• 1:02:34Speaker 00

  Because the air is so much thinner up on the top than it is on the climb to the top. And if you exhale.

• 1:02:46Speaker 00

  The next breath you have to catch. Will not have the same effect. You'll have to catch multiple breaths over and over and over again. That's why you see some of these, some of these individuals that. Retire from a sport, they come back, or you see a CEO of a company, leave a company, take a year off. And now they become a CEO of another, of another company. They can't exhale.

• 1:03:15Steven Bartlett?

  In chapter five of your book, you, you speak to some of these things that Michael would do to his teammates. One of them is he would mock his teammates into dedication, right? You see this in The Last Dance where he's. Cracking jokes at them, but you know that the jokes, there's, these aren't jokes, there's intention behind the jokes.

• 1:03:31Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:03:31Steven Bartlett?

  He's trying to get them to run faster or to train harder or whatever. Can you give me a window into what you saw in terms of the way that Michael would treat his teammates? In order to get the best out of him, that some might consider to be. In the modern day and age where we're very soft, especially in the, the business world, toxic.

• 1:03:50Speaker 00

  It worked for him and it was the only, the only way he knew, he knew how. And it's, a lot of people may consider things. Toxic when they initially start out. But then when you see the end result, or when your career is over with, or when you're with a different organization. You look at it and say, you know what? I really miss that. I give an example of flowers. When you gift roses or you're gifted roses or any types of flowers.

• 1:04:22Speaker 00

  They cut the thorns off. Because the thorns, you know, are prickly and so forth. Well, when you cut the thorns off a rose, you decrease its lifespan. So a lot of individuals that have been thorns in your life have actually allowed you to propel to places that you would never be able to propel before. And you don't miss it until those thorn is not, that thorn is no longer there. So when Michael was constantly pushing his players, getting them to, everybody knew he was not coming down to their level. He didn't expect everybody to come up to his level, but he knew there was another level for each, for each individual.

• 1:05:08Speaker 00

  And he just wanted you to perform at the highest level. And he wanted you to have a taste of winning, not just once, but numerous times, over and over again. And he had to be genuine to who he, who he was.

• 1:05:25Speaker 00

  One of the things that I talk about in my other book, Relentless, one of the 13, I said, you know exactly who you are. He knew exactly who he was. He knew who he can communicate with

• 1:05:39Speaker 00

  and say certain things.

• 1:05:42Speaker 00

  And he knew when not to say certain things and have another individual talk to that person. But when he spoke, everybody, everybody listens. There, if you watch practices, everybody would come into the practice and they'd be laughing and kind of joking and having, having a good time and so forth. And as soon as that whistle was blown,

• 1:06:06Speaker 00

  silence. And Michael always said, I practiced so hard. And we all need to practice so hard so the games become easier.

• 1:06:17Steven Bartlett?

  Do you think he used those thorns as well as a bit of a filter? In terms of filtering out the teammates that he didn't think were

• 1:06:23Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:06:23Steven Bartlett?

  were good enough?

• 1:06:24Speaker 00

  Yes. I won't say they were good enough as one he, that he could trust in certain situations.

• 1:06:29Steven Bartlett?

  Trust, interesting.

• 1:06:30Speaker 00

  It was, the thorns were more for trust. How, how can, can I keep poking you? Or how many times can I keep poking you? And see, are you going to come back? Are you going to come back? What, what, what's your adversity tolerance?

• 1:06:44Speaker 00

  Because there's going to be certain situations that can I trust, can I trust you? Can I trust you in that situation? And if you look throughout his career, there's very few people when the game was on the line that he would trust to pass the ball to and say, hey, this is what's going to happen. Very, very few. And all those individuals that he did that with at some point in their career stood up to him and challenged him.

• 1:07:13Steven Bartlett?

  Isn't that interesting? It's almost a bit of a paradox, the fact that we trust those most. And this sounds from everything I've read, like much of the reason why he trusted you was because he knew you had put truth at the front of everything you do. And to be honest, I think I've probably said this to my team before, but the people that are A, most valuable in my circle are those that are, do you have a voice and are willing to give it to me despite my, despite my success?

• 1:07:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:07:44Steven Bartlett?

  Those are the ones you want, you want to keep around, right?

• 1:07:46Speaker 00

  You look, yeah, I definitely keep those individuals, definitely keep those individuals around. I just, it's too easy. Too many times we let people off the hook. I can't let an individual off the hook because it's too easy. Think about the time that you left, you let somebody off the hook. How did it turn out for you?

• 1:08:12Steven Bartlett?

  Badly. The first example that came to mind was someone who I hired to lead one of our countries for our, for our company. And their behavior was not up to standard and I procrastinated on it for too long, for more than a year. And it cost me every day. When I say cost, I mean, it was a seven figure cost to our company. And eventually I had to make the decision that I should have made at the start, right? I should have. But for some reason, for reasons I now clearly understand, I was avoiding the decision and letting the person off the hook.

• 1:08:45Speaker 00

  How many years ago was that?

• 1:08:47Steven Bartlett?

  Um, I think now it'd be four years ago.

• 1:08:49Speaker 00

  All right. If that same situation happened now, how quickly would you respond?

• 1:08:54Steven Bartlett?

  So fast.

• 1:08:55Speaker 00

  All right.

• 1:08:56Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:56Speaker 00

  So.

• 1:08:56Steven Bartlett?

  So quickly. And I have subsequently. And when I do respond in that way, I recite that story to the people around me. I go, four years ago, this happened. And it's my single biggest regret in business because I procrastinated on making a decision I knew I had to make. I let the person off the hook. So this is why today, four years later, we're making this decision as soon as we possibly can.

• 1:09:15Speaker 00

  Winning doesn't make you heartless.

• 1:09:20Speaker 00

  But it teaches you to use your heart less.

• 1:09:25Speaker 00

  Four years ago,

• 1:09:28Speaker 00

  you were using your heart.

• 1:09:30Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:31Speaker 00

  Now, you'd use your heart. You still have a heart, but you'd use it less.

• 1:09:38Steven Bartlett?

  And my brain more.

• 1:09:40Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 1:09:41Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:42Speaker 00

  Mind over feelings.

• 1:09:44Steven Bartlett?

  Hmm. And when we're faced with those tough decisions, for me, what I learned in hindsight is it felt like difficulty in the moment. That's why, part of the reason I procrastinated on the decision. But in hindsight, it caused so much more difficulty in the long term. So it's really that like, the wisdom I got from it is, you know, tough decision today, or you can make the same decision, but in a year's time, when it becomes, when the cost and the implications of the decision are even greater, and it's had a time to drag you or pull you down, or to make you lose games, whatever it might be, or lose money in business. And so that decisiveness and putting mind over matter is something that I've definitely developed as a CEO. One of the things you said, which I found

• 1:10:27Steven Bartlett?

  really, um, thought provoking, and it kind of bucked the trend in chapter 12 of your book, is when someone says showing up is half the battle, you're looking at an individual who is already losing the battle. People say that all the time, showing up is half the battle.

• 1:10:41Speaker 00

  Showing up is none of the battle.

• 1:10:45Speaker 00

  You showed up. I showed up. What are we supposed to not do the podcast and go have a drink? Showing up is none of the battle. People want accolades and rewards for doing things that they're supposed to do. People want to get acknowledged for things that you're supposed to show up. You're supposed to practice. You're supposed to perform. You're supposed to get results. No, people, people have a hard time understanding now the difference between feedback and criticism. It's exactly the same thing. It's just how you hear it. You, in order to get anything, anything in life and to get anywhere, you must show up. If you think showing up is winning,

• 1:11:31Speaker 00

  you've already, you've already lost the battle. You've already lost the battle. People want to get a medal for doing the, for doing the easy things. People show up every single day. People show up every single day and are dealing with circumstances that are beyond your imagination. They still show up.

• 1:11:51Speaker 00

  I, I, I love to give examples to individuals that just happened. We're sitting in a completely different location of where this podcast was originally supposed to be done in. Showing up and you were congratulating yourself for, hey, showing up is half the battle. You'd have been like, oh, well, we showed up here. We won. He's like, all right, no. We actually showed up. And we got thrown out. Now we gotta go show up somewhere else and make this thing all work again.

• 1:12:27Speaker 00

  And people will come back and says, oh, you know what? You showed up. Don't worry about it. You won that battle today. No.

• 1:12:32Steven Bartlett?

  Do you know that story? So we landed in LA and we got to the hotel and the hotel offered us, had offered us a certain room in the penthouse suite, but we felt we could replicate the aesthetic we need to make the show successful. We're looking for somewhere where it feels like you are in my, because we've recorded in the UK in my house.

• 1:12:50Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 1:12:50Steven Bartlett?

  So it needs to feel at home because of the nature of the conversation we're having. It needs to be dark.

• 1:12:55Speaker 00

  Details.

• 1:12:55Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, right? So we got to the hotel. They're like, well, you can have, you know, the penthouse suite, there's one day it's booked for. So for three of the episodes. The set will change. And I was like, we don't want the set to change. So they said, well, there's a meeting room. We'll give it to you completely free at the back. We can't do it in a meeting room. They showed us six or seven rooms. They took us around every room in the hotel. No.

• 1:13:15Steven Bartlett?

  So although the podcast was two days away and we had 20 odd guests coming.

• 1:13:19Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 1:13:19Steven Bartlett?

  We, as a team, because again, our religion is to care about the details, looked for somewhere else. We went on viewing. So we found this place. Insanely expensive place, as you've seen, but, but we, we've always believed in those details. We always believe it really matters. And then Jack and the team and Bertha, to their credit, have built this whole entire set, which nobody can see in, in the next, in the next 24 hours, running back and forth from Target. We don't have to do that, but we, because we, as you said earlier, we've seen the outcome of that suffering now. And once you've tasted it, you can't unsee it, right?

• 1:13:50Speaker 00

  Can't unsee, you can't unsee it. You just can't. You can't, you know, people always said, you know, you know, you can't, you can't forget what you've seen. You can't unlearn what you've learned. You just, you can't, you can't, you can't, you can't unlearn it. You can learn from it and learn other things on top of it, but you're never going to unlearn those things. You're never going to be able to unsee the things that, that you, that you've seen. And that's when people just don't under, they just don't understand. They, they, they can't, they can't see and understand your level of craziness. They can't see your level of, of obsession. And then once you, those things no longer matter for you,

• 1:14:37Speaker 00

  then you know it's time to move on to another endeavor, which you've already have in your previous thing.

• 1:14:43Steven Bartlett?

  You know, when you, when you, we talked earlier about relationships, we talked about the relationships of those around you and how that can be impacted you. We talked about, at the very start of this conversation, about our dark sides. One of the ways we sometimes see the consequences of our dark sides is in our romantic relationships. One of the ways we see the consequences of our obsession is in our romantic relationships. So tell me, from a both a personal perspective as Tim, the impact that your dark side and obsession and your desire to win and be great has had on your relationships and those that you've coached and you've worked with.

• 1:15:20Speaker 00

  From a personal standpoint, I will say this, winning will cost you everything, but will reward you with so much more. It's gonna cost you everything. And I, every decision I've made, I knew what the consequences was, I knew what the cost was going to be. It may have not been at that particular moment, but I knew down the line, if I go do this decision, if I go work with this individual, or I decide to do this now, somewhere down the line, this is what it's, this is what it's gonna cost, this is what it's gonna cost me. I tell the story in the, in the book, where my daughter came up to me when I was, when she was like, five years old.

• 1:16:05Speaker 00

  And says, Daddy, why do you travel so much? And so I said, sweetheart, this is how I take care of the family, this is how I provide for you, this is how I take care of mom, this is how I put a roof over the head, this is how I put food on the table. She goes, Daddy, if I eat less, will you stay or more? At age five, I was packing for a trip. Now, if this was a fairy tale, I'd have unpacked my bag, I'd have grabbed her hand, we'd have went out for ice cream.

• 1:16:50Speaker 00

  I kept packing. Now, I'm not telling anybody out there, that's a decision they should make. But that was my decision. And then many years later, I sat down my daughter, and I said, Hey, I wanna talk to you. And I wanted to discuss with her why Dad is the way he is. And before I could even start, she goes, Dad, I understand.

• 1:17:24Speaker 00

  She goes, I understand. She was, I could see what you provided for mom and I. I could see the sacrifices you made for us. Was it important for you to hear that? Yes, very important.

• 1:17:41Speaker 00

  And I just never knew when the right time was. And then one day I just said, this is the day.

• 1:17:48Speaker 00

  This is the day. She goes, you taught me how to make the toughest decisions in life.

• 1:17:54Speaker 00

  She goes, not only taught me, you showed me. You told me how to be independent.

• 1:18:00Speaker 00

  When to be dependent, when to be independent.

• 1:18:05Speaker 00

  So sometimes when you think you're making the wrong decision, or you have to making the toughest decision because you're thinking about somebody else and the consequences.

• 1:18:18Speaker 00

  If you think

• 1:18:21Speaker 00

  the price of winning is too high, wait till you get the bill from regret.

• 1:18:31Speaker 00

  And that bill from regret is generational. And there's a lot of people listening to this that that bill has been passed on from generation to generation, and you are holding that bill right now. And somebody in some one of your generations has to pay that bill off in order for the generation to move on.

• 1:18:59Speaker 00

  And the only way that bill gets paid off is you gotta be willing to make the hardest decisions. The other side of that story is I would often fly.

• 1:19:15Speaker 00

  My family was in Chicago. I was doing work

• 1:19:20Speaker 00

  on the West Coast. So when she had a school play, when she had a volleyball game, I would fly from the West Coast, land in Chicago, watch her performance for forty-five minutes to an hour, and get on the plane that same night and be back for my client the next day.

• 1:19:46Speaker 00

  And there was a lot of times where I didn't even get a chance to speak to her. She just knew I was in the audience because I had to, it was the only flight to get back.

• 1:19:56Speaker 00

  Those are the parts nobody remembers. Everybody remembers the one event you don't show up for. And I guaranteed every individual who's won at multiple things, who's been successful at many things over and over again, at some point in your career, some point in your life, you forgot a very important date, you missed an event, you just, you just did. But nobody wants to talk about it because people are going to judge you on that one thing.

• 1:20:33Steven Bartlett?

  Tim, thank you.

• 1:20:35Speaker 00

  My pleasure.

• 1:20:36Steven Bartlett?

  Honestly, you've sent me on a, you know, my job is to sit here asking questions, but my brain has been running for, for many, many reasons. I feel like I need to go and sit down upstairs and just reflect on a lot of things you've said. It's, um, speaking to you today was, it will remain one of the biggest honors I've had on this podcast because you're a very, very, um, special proposition.

• 1:20:56Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 1:20:57Steven Bartlett?

  We have a closing tradition on this, this podcast where we asked guests to leave a question for the next guest and I don't get to see the question until I open the book. So what is one mistake you've made that you've been scared to address or reconcile?

• 1:21:15Speaker 00

  Every mistake I've made, I've reconciled. I've owned up to it.

• 1:21:21Speaker 00

  Whether they accept it or not, people have asked me to apologize for things I shouldn't have apologized for. If people had to make a mistake, I would say that would be one of the, a lot, a few times I apologized for things I should have not apologized for.

• 1:21:38Steven Bartlett?

  Thank you.

• 1:21:39Speaker 00

  You're welcome.