Moment 82 - Michael Jordan & Kobe Bryant ALWAYS Won Because Of This: Tim Grover

In these ‘Moment’ episodes of my podcast, I’ll be selecting my favourite moments from previous episodes of The Diary Of A CEO. In this moment, Tim Glover talks about the tiny differences that make the difference between winning and losing. There’s one thing that seperates the very best from the rest, and it is sweating every single tiny detail. Tim Glover is the man who was in charge of performance for both Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. He sums up Kobe Bryant’s attitude to winning the NBA with one phrase: ‘Kobe Bryant was not interested in winning championships, he was obsessed’. For the top 1%, there is no such thing as letting it slide. Listen to the full episode here - https://g2ul0.app.link/myoWFljcFub Tim Grover: https://timgrover.com https://www.instagram.com/timgrover/?hl=en Wait list for The Diary - Add your name here: bit.ly/3fUcF8q Watch the Episodes On Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/c/TheDiaryOfACEO/videos 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.

• 0:03Steven Bartlett?

  Marginal gains, as we call it, that 1%, that 0.1%. And I heard you talk about this with Kobe in the book and your other athletes, that trying to find that edge. And Kobe was one of those people that in the book that you talk about really trying to find that edge as well in his career. I'm really compelled by the concept of marginal gains because I feel like it's been my religion for my life. And my team here, he and 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, all my businesses, but let's just focus on what we see here, 1% 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

• 0:45Steven Bartlett?

  things up, like that is my religion. 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 1% will change our trajectory in an invisible way in the moment, but in a profound way over time.

• 1:00Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:01Steven 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?

• 1:07Speaker 01

  It's everything. It's everything. And it's in the details. You know, you just described all these little things and somebody come in, ah, it doesn't matter. You know, 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 1%ers, the 0.01, they sweat every single detail. Cause the one thing they let slip, somebody is going to use that to their advantage. Somebody

• 1:49Speaker 01

  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, 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.

• 2:27Speaker 01

  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, and this, we'd have a room of thousands and thousands of people stand up. And everybody would stand up and they'd give this big rounding clap and all this other stuff.

• 3:01Steven Bartlett?

  If you're interested in taking it to number one?

• 3:02Speaker 01

  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? 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.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  And obsession comes in the small details that nobody pays attention to. And I have a saying, right? Interested people watch obsessed people change the world.

• 4:01Steven Bartlett?

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

• 4:08Speaker 01

  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.

• 4:28Speaker 01

  The what shoes he 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 bounce as well. Cause on a basketball court, it's made out of wood. Alright, 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 gonna it's not gonna bounce as high, which gives the team

• 5:09Speaker 01

  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 in that area, we know stay away from that area, or if we know we can't dribble on that that that particular spot. And there was one time, there was a game where Kobe was before the game, he was shooting free throws.

• 5:42Speaker 01

  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 pay that much attention to the to the to the details.

• 6:06Speaker 01

  You know, it's no different than what you said about the lighting and the microphones and the team. I've never seen.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  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.

• 6:23Speaker 01

  And this is the first time I've seen this many individuals.

• 6:31Steven 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. 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 where we believe we'll find all the gains.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  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 house, 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. Those are the things that matter. You pay attention to the details 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 certain things.

• 7:51Speaker 01

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