Unleashing Mental Resilience: The Entrepreneurial Game Plan with Former Pro Basketball Player Dre Baldwin

Transcript

I really enjoyed this episode. We get the chance to chat with Drey Baldwin. Drey is a former professional basketball player an author. He's published thirty three books. He's a business coach. It this is a very fun and lively and informative conversation. We walk through his story. We don't really focus specifically on one type of adversity necessarily. It's a very practical episode that I think you're gonna be able to relate to. Lots of ups and downs, a lot about team sports and also kind of pivoting and listening to your customer and giving people what they want. He was an international basketball player used some of the downtime when his career slow slowed down a little bit to put out content. He's been way ahead in the content, game. He's been putting out content for probably almost twenty years now. So definitely cutting edge in that space. Drey has a a big YouTube following, if you look up work on your game, he's got a big Instagram following. He's been a public speaker, author, business coach. He's done a lot of things. Talks a lot about mindset, a lot about, discipline, teamwork, consistency showing up early, doing the right thing, and and just, you know, a lot of keys to success in this one. Real I really enjoyed this one, and I know you're gonna get a lot out of it.

Speaker 1

Welcome to the from adversity to abundance podcast. Are you an entrepreneur or aspiring entrepreneur renewer, then this show is for you. Each week, we bring you impactful stories of real people who have overcome painful human adversity to create a life of abundance. A life of abundance. You are not alone in your struggle. Join us and you will experience the power of true stories and gained practical knowledge from founders who have turned poverty into prosperity and weakness into wealth. This podcast will encourage you through your health, relationship, and financial challenges so you can become the hero in your quest for freedom. Take ownership of the life you are destined to live. Turn your adversity into abundance.

Speaker 0

Welcome everybody to another episode of the from adversity to abundance podcast. I am your host, Jamie Bateman, and I'm thrilled today to have with us Dray Baldwin of work on your game. Dray is a business coach and an entrepreneur, and I'm I'm we're gonna we're gonna have a lot of fun today, former professional athlete as well. Drake, how are you doing today?

Speaker 2

I'm doing excellent, Jamie. I'm excited for this conversation. How are you?

Speaker 0

Oh, I'm doing great as well. I also excited. This is gonna be fun. We were briefly chatting beforehand about team sports, and I'm, maybe I'll get to, you know, live some of the relive some of the glory days in this conversation, but it's not about me though, Drey. It's it's about you and the listener. So for the listener, tell us who who you are today and what you're up to today?

Speaker 2

Sure. So, Drake Baldwin, come from the city of Philadelphia. Now based in Miami, Florida, background in sports played. As you said, play sports, basketball was my sport. One year high school ball, walk down and play d three college ball, Nobody was recruiting me to play pro. So I'm, basically, hustled and marketed and sold my way into playing pro basketball. We've had to a nine year career. Excuse me. It wasn't a perfect career because there were times where, no, I wasn't sure when the phone was gonna ring again. And in those gaps, I started putting content on the internet. Doing what I'm gonna do that anyway, but I put constant on internet before we were calling the content before there was a a cool thing to do. Start to build an audience through, putting basketball videos on YouTube There was a point about halfway through my career where the phone wasn't ringing. I started creating, products to sell online, then that's how I became an entrepreneur because I started creating products specifically from my basketball, crazed audience. He just wanted more programs that could teach them how to do the stuff that I was doing in the videos that I was putting on social media that we were now calling at social media. And, that's how it became an entrepreneur. Kept playing ball for the another five years after that started. But at that time, players started asking questions about mindset because they just saw my approach was a little bit different than what they were used to. This guy puts videos out every day when, again, this was before it was cool or normal to put content on the internet every day. Now it was normal. But back then, I was not normal. So they just want to know why I did it, or how do you get the confidence to perform in a game the way you're doing practice, or how do you get the the mindset to keep trying when you face all these setbacks or you come from this very humble background, as I just explained to you here, Jamie. Why'd you even keep the mind that you can make it as a pro athlete? You kept having all these, you know, reality telling you that you weren't gonna make it. And then Well, how do you get started even doing any of this stuff? If you wanna play ball overseas or you wanna be an entrepreneur, you wanna get known on the internet. These are all things that now people were seeing that, hey, there's a way that I could we do this, how do I do it? So they just wanna know how to get started. So I started, basically in answering those questions, I created the framework that became work on your game, which I'm sure we'll talk about a lot here in this conversation. And Yeah. Kept playing ball till twenty fifteen. And by that point, I'd already been as I already said, creating a bunch of stuff online. I had a nice little name online just from putting up basketball stuff. Then I was talking about mindset. I'd already started writing books I was creating courses. So I already had that stuff kind of going by the time I stopped playing. So the normal athlete, you know, when they stopped playing, it's Yeah. They stopped cold turkey and it's starting to zero.

Speaker 0

Absolutely.

Speaker 2

Yeah. So by the time I stopped, I was already doing all the stuff that I still do now. So it was a little bit smoother transition for me because of that, and that's how we got it. Sure.

Speaker 0

That's ex absolutely. That's the one thing I've that that jumped out to me was obviously, you know, you want your phone to ring. You wanna get that next that next job. You're not happy that you're sitting around waiting for the phone to ring, but sounds like in hindsight, and and we'll we'll drill into this more later. But sounds like that adversity that you went through actually propelled you to be more ready for your post basketball career, which is which is awesome. And I know we have had professional athletes on the show, who have done that cold turkey transition, and it can be it can be earth shattering. I mean, it can be that's, you know, if your entire identity is wrapped up in in the sport, which I get. I mean, I I mean, it's it's very easy to do. But then all of a sudden, that's not who you are anymore. Man. Who are you? Right? So sounds like you were I could tell you are a hustler and it sounds like you had You were setting yourself up for success no matter what. So that's awesome. I can't wait to to drill into that, especially the mindset piece. So let's jump back though and further into your backstory, Drey. And again, this is where I kind of leave it up to the guest as far as you know, where you wanna start in your in your story because what we wanna do is kinda walk through from a younger age and walk back up through today and pull out and and focus on some of the the real adversity that you've been through and how you were able to overcome that adversity, how you were able to get through that adversity and get to quote, unquote, abundance. And and the the goal here is for the listener, the entrepreneur out there to learn from your story, take lessons that, you know, that you've learned and, used in your own life. And maybe be able to skip some of the pain that that you've had to go through. But but still learn from your story and apply that in in their life. So let's jump back where do you wanna start, Ray?

Speaker 2

We'll always go to probably around the turn of the century. So this is around, two ninety nine, two thousand. Okay. And that's around that time, this is, graduate high school in the year two thousand. So forty more years of age today, graduate high school in two thousand. And that was where I used to always go to the bookstores, and my mom is a big, she's in education. So she always been into reading, and she would always go to the bookstore, and this is before you buy books online. So you had to go to the store that if you wanted books. And I would always whenever I was with her, I would just wander to the sections that I like. So I'll go to the sports section and also the time they called a human psychology, now they called personal development, but didn't have a personal development section back then. And that's when I stumbled across my favorite book, which is forty eight volts powered by Robert Green. And that's really where I start to get into, that personal development even more because I was always into the psychology stuff, like, how does the brain work and how does it affect our actions, but I didn't know there was a whole genre for it. And then the way that I really got introduced to it was a couple years later. It's about two thousand one, two thousand two. I'm on my college campus. I'm with Penn State University Altuna campus is where I I went for basketball specifically. And there was this, bulletin board posting And for those who don't know what that is, this people had the the one ten out something you had to put on a board. It wasn't digital. You had to actually put it up on a board. People walk past on campus, and they said, make extra money in the in the summer and all of that. And this is before college athletes can make money off their name, image, and likeness. So you really couldn't make any money when you're a college athlete. As you go into school and play in the sport, you have no time. So I responded to this bulletin board posting, and this guy was in network marketing. And I didn't know what network marketing was, but he briefly explained the concept. And when I went back to Philly where I'm from that summer, I went to a couple hotel meetings for this network marketing company. And the reason why this matters is because in that meeting, two things happen. Number one, the man speaking from the stage was speaking about entrepreneurship and money and business in ways that I had never heard explained. And at this point, I'm twenty one, twenty two years of age. And I'm in I'm majored in business. I have a business degree. And things that this guy was talking about in this hotel meeting, they did not teach at the college campus that I went to. And I'm like, the way these people are talking about money is completely different. Nobody's ever talked about it like this before, and I thought I was pretty smart. Right? That was number one. And number two, and what he was doing. A lot of what he was doing was just breaking your false beliefs about how you think money works and how you think business works and how you think are your options for making money. Not just what you think they are. There's a lot of different ways to make money besides what you think you know. And that's what he was doing for half the people in the room. The other half the people in the room were already in the business. So they already heard for there's just no nine minutes. And then the other half of it, the other thing that I got from that meeting was at the end of it. He said, when you all leave, there's a table outside with some nice lady sitting at the table. They're selling personal development books. Make sure you buy those books because in order to build your business, you gotta build yourself as a person. I've never heard anybody say that before. And, again, in that meeting, I it was just these groundbreaking ideas that as soon as I heard them, they made perfect sense to me. And That's how I knew there was a thing called personal development, because he was mentioning these authors, Jim Rome, Brian Tracy, Tony Robbins, zig zigler, Napoleon Hill. I never heard of these people. And but he kept saying their names. And I did not buy the books when I left the meeting because I was a broke college kid.

Speaker 0

I had no money

Speaker 2

to get home from the media. But I went on eBay. And this is before Amazon was the place to buy stuff. I went on eBay. And I bought a couple of, prided copies of a couple of books. Okay. So I bought two. I bought, they were ninety nine cents a piece. It was, they can go risk by Napoleon Hill.

Speaker 0

Mhmm.

Speaker 2

And it was rich dad poor dad by Robert Kiyosaki. And I bought both of those books, and all I got was a word document from the person who sold it to me. And I I read both of those books and what Napoleon Hills book taught me was that there's a way that you could consciously and intentionally also thoughts of your mind that will lead to alteration and the results of your life. And again, new idea to me. Secondly, and that became pretty much what I do for And secondly, it was Robert Kiyosaki. He took it even further than what I heard in that hotel meeting when it came to business and making money. I mean, and reached that port at the first two or three chapters of that book. He's taking everything that most people think they know about how money gets made and he's stepping around the window. Yeah. Breaking it into pieces and saying, okay. You know, there are people who make money in a way different way than this. Right? And when I read that book, I said, okay. When I got out of college, I knew I wanted to play basketball first. I said, I'm gonna play ball. But after basketball, new basketball would not last forever, especially since I was coming from a d three school, who knows how long I'm even gonna get to put. Sure. But after basketball, What this guy's talking about, this is the direction that I'm going. I'm not gonna go and do the normal, get a job, work nine to five, live happily ever after. I'm not gonna do that. I'm gonna do what this guy's talking about. I didn't quite understand it then, but I knew that's what I was gonna do. So those two stories Yeah. That's really what set me on the path for where I'm at today.

Speaker 0

No. That's that's fantastic. And you're absolutely right. I mean, it's I mean, you know, I'm familiar with those concepts now. You know, so so But at the time, when I was twenty one, twenty two, I had no idea. I I had no I yeah. That that would have been all far foreign to me as well. I mean, there's, you know, think you said your mom was in education. My my mother Yes. Was as well. And so this is not a slam on public school teachers or anything like that. The public school system, private school system, anything. But they do in general, it does not prepare you for making money as an entrepreneur or invest or thinking outside the box in any way, shape, or form. So, yeah, I love that. I mean, I do remember Rich Dad, being a a mindset shift for me as well. It it's not so much to the how to, like you said. I mean, it's not really in the nuts and bolts of know, how to make money on investment property or something like that. Right. Cash flow quadrant and some of his other books get a little more detailed, but But it's that mindset shift of the paradigm shift. And I love the fact that at a pretty early age, you were you realize the value of investing in yourself. I mean, that's awesome. And you also were taking the long term view. Because you you like you said, you knew basketball wasn't gonna wasn't gonna last forever. So okay. So so Alright. You get this mindset shift, but you still decide. Okay. This this is what I'm gonna work on kind of in the background. It sounds like, but I'm gonna pursue basketball. So let's so how did that how did your basketball career go at that point?

Speaker 2

Yeah. So, one thing you said that Jamie is that you won't sign the education system. I will slam the educational system now. My mom is my mom is in the system. My sister is a professor as well. I'm a slam the people in the system. I'm slamming the system.

Speaker 0

That's that's fair. I and honestly, I don't think my mom listens to this anyway. So she should, though.

Speaker 2

But but she didn't create the system. She she supports it. Absolutely. Not on her.

Speaker 0

It's the same

Speaker 2

way as not a mom. Right. So Absolutely. Yeah. So, the moving forward, then I kept that in the back of my mind with Kiyosaki. So I get out of school two thousand four. I didn't have a didn't get an offer to play pro immediately. I worked a couple of regular jobs from that first year graduating and worked at FootLocker as an assistant manager. I worked at a gym called Valley total fitness selling memberships. Mhmm. Yeah. Valley's out of business now. No. Not because of me. I sold a lot of memberships. Alright. So I I I got pretty good commission So in the summer of two thousand five, so I've been out of school for a year. I, saved up my money, went to this event called an exposure camp. You familiar with those, Jamie?

Speaker 0

I I've heard of the concept, but but, fill me in.

Speaker 2

Okay. Suppose account's like a job fair, but it's for athletes.

Speaker 0

Speaker 2

Got it. So any athlete who thinks they're good enough at the next level, whatever that may be. Because nowadays, I see. For, like, eighth graders. But, like, it was relatively new. It was usually for people want to play pro. So these are destination events where you pay money. It's not free. You pay to attend this event. And then a bunch of athletes who think they're good enough to play at, program or whatever sport we all come, we all pay, and we all basically play with it against each other for a couple of days to try to prove that we're good enough.

Speaker 0

Sure. We we had we had just real quickly in La Cross. It wasn't for to GoPro, but, you know, coming in in high school, we had a couple camps. You could go to top two zero five top star. That the goal was not to get better. The goal was to show that

Speaker 2

you're good. Exactly. Right. So what's the where's your profile? Yep. Absolutely. The same way they have AAU in high school. It's like that, but for pro and you had to pay for these. So the audience at these events are not just random people. They're some random, but mostly it's, agents, coaches, managers, scouts, team owners from all over the world. They come to these places on purpose looking for their next employees, basically. So I saved up two hundred fifty dollars in cash as someone who calls to go to the event. I had to save this money up just to give it via a a idea where I was at at this point. I'm still living in my parent's house, and I had to call the event ahead of time and ask them, can I pay you cash at the door? Because I didn't have a credit card or a bank account at this point. Twenty three years of age. And they said, yeah, we'll take you can pay us in cash. They wouldn't take anybody's money. I later found out. They they said I'll take no money. And I had to negotiate with my boss to get three days off. I need it off Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And you guys have worked in any kind of retail. Nobody gets the weekend off. Right. So I had negotiated to get the weekend off. We rented a car in Philly. The event was in Orlando. That's about a fifteen to nineteen hour drive. I don't remember the exact amount, but it's a long drive. We hopped out of the car, nine AM Saturday morning was happened to be the exact start time of the the camp. And tell people I could get away with that at Ace twenty three. He couldn't do it now, but we did it.

Speaker 0

Yeah. No no warm up.

Speaker 2

Yeah. Exactly. Jump right out the car and start playing. That was completely fine. And I played pretty well at the event. Got a good scouting report, which is basically that was important because now I had a third party saying that this guy is he can play. And I got the footage from that event. Now I did not get signed to a contract on the spot even though I played well. I had to be back at work Monday morning at Valley Total Fitness. So we hop right back in that car. Drove right back to Philly. I had to be back at work. And here's what I started doing, Jamie. I knew that for me to play pro, I knew I was probably not gonna play for the Knicks or the Lakers immediately. I was probably gonna go overseas, but I never even been overseas, let alone that I know anybody. So how am I gonna make that happen? The internet did exist at the time. It wasn't what it is now, but it existed. I'm on Google, and I started googling basketball agents. So anywhere that I saw a basketball agent, many of them had websites at this point. If they had a phone number, I called them. I was cold calling basketball agents in the summer of two thousand five. And I was just telling him, hey, here's who I am, here's what I have, because at this point, some people may be wondering, why don't you do this bash year when you graduated? Well, now it has some collateral. It has some proof. Now I'm calling them and saying, hey, I got the scouting report. I can send you the link to the scouting report. I got this footage. I called sixty basketball agents out of that sixty twenty of them said, okay. Let me see what you got. Now mind you, the footage that I was sending them was not a link. The footage was on this thing called a VHS tape. You remember VHS?

Speaker 0

Sure do.

Speaker 2

Okay. So you're gonna be able to listen to this ask a parent in Google with. Yes. I had a VHS state, and I had a double decker BCR at home again. And those of you who know that is Google with And I would make copies of my my that Master VHS statement. That was the footage. I couldn't give out the main the Master footage. I made copies of the tape. And I would mail those out to the agents who asked to see it. So twenty agents asked to see the footage. I mailed those out on my own dime. Mind you, I just had to save up two hundred fifty dollars. So I'm mailing out these these tapes and bubble mailers to agents all over the world. Out of those twenty who I mailed it out to, one agent hit me back and said, alright, I'll represent you. He became my agent and in August two thousand five, he called me and said, hey, I got a teammate with Wayne. They're gonna do the deal. And it took about three days. It was done. And then I was on a plane. I was in Conness, Lithuania, and that's how I got my pro basketball career started.

Speaker 0

Wow. That's awesome. And, yeah, you're definitely yeah. I mean, you can tell you hit an obstacle and you figure out a way around it or way over it, that can I can tell that already for sure, which I think goes back to the the mindset investing in yourself, investing in that positive mindset and and, self development? Okay. So you go to Lithuania. You don't know anybody there. I mean, that's I mean, I'm sure it's exciting, but it's probably pretty scary too at the at the same time. What's going through your mind at that at that point?

Speaker 2

No. I was excited. I wasn't nervous at all because Gotcha. You gotta you gotta remember, Jamie. This is two thousand five. So we don't have the internet that we have now didn't exist we didn't have social media. So I had to I was looking up with Wayne, and I was like Google Earthfing, like, with Wayne, whereas that all you don't know anything about what's going on in other parts of the world. So I wasn't nervous at all. I was excited because I'm finally getting to do what I wanna do. And you gotta remember what what was I doing before this? I'm working at Valley total for this living in my parents. I I'm trying to get out of it. Right? And so I just that right there represented, like, all this stuff that I've been doing, it's it's working. Alright. This is this is success Sure. To get out of there. So this will was excited more than anything. Just wanted to go over there and play. And Awesome. That's how I that's how I started. And, again, this is a fall two thousand and five. And what was your question?

Speaker 0

Yeah. Just what's going through your mind at that point, and and, I mean, it sounds like you're just you're just excited to because it's for the new adventure and the new opportunity. Right. And like you said, maybe well, you didn't say this, but ignorance is bliss. You don't know any of the downsides of this Rainier where where you you know, where you're headed and and, it sounds like it's it's all hope and excitement at that point. But, so how does how do things progress career wise from there?

Speaker 2

Well, that was, you know, it was the first place that I played. And then I I was back from there, then I played for a a traveling team in the USA, Then I was in after that, went to Mexico. From there, it was if I'm keeping this in chronological order, then I was in Montenegro, then Germany, we're just going years and years here. So then after Germany, that's when I found myself, my career was stalled out. That was the period where I told you I start creating the products. There's about two thousand between two thousand nine and two thousand eleven. That's when all the things that became who I am today Gotcha. Lotion because

Speaker 0

I see.

Speaker 2

There were period where my phone wasn't ringing and I asked myself, okay. By this point in my mid to late twenties, so I'm like, okay, this isn't this is cute when you're at twenty three is not cute when you're at twenty eight. Right? So now what do you you gotta actually do something. And that's when I started creating what became this whole work on your game brand because now I can make money. I can monetize I was doing on the internet, which again was a relatively new thing for the average person. Now there are some experts out there who've been doing it for decades, but I was a pretty average person when it came to internet knowledge. I was a I've always been a big computer geek, but I didn't know ins and outs of selling stuff online, but I picked it up pretty quickly. I was early adopter. And during that period, that's when the selling products happened. That's when I started using the phrase work on your game. That's when I started talking more mindset. That's when I started creating I started writing books. So all four of those things happen at the same time, and all four of those things are a big part of what I do today.

Speaker 0

It's awesome. And you've written how many books at this point?

Speaker 2

Officially thirty three.

Unleashing Mental Resilience: The Entrepreneurial Game Plan with Former Pro Basketball Player Dre Baldwin

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