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

could you do me a quick favor if you're listening to this please hit the follow or subscribe button it helps more than you know and we invite subscribers in every month to watch the show in person kobe bryant was not interested in winning championships he was obsessed he was the trainer for dwyane wade kobe bryant michael jordan 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 it doesn't get any darker than that 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 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 so without further ado i'm stephen 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 [Music] 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 wanna i wanna you usually start somewhere else but in chapter 12 you talk about this this concept of the dark side and the darkest side right there huh yeah yeah and the reason i want

to go right there is because i actually think it's the start for many people it's the start so tell me about your dark side and where and what it came from 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 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 a degreaser is an individual doesn't this job does not exist anymore after every quarter or every semester of anatomy class you have cadavers cadavers cadavers dead bodies my dad's job was to dispose of those bodies now this is a man that was called a doctor back in

the old country now when you dispose of these cadavers it's not a garbage truck that comes and picks them up 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 i saw him do that when i was four years old 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 16 hours at

night you go to work with your dad my dad said he goes son never let your pride get in the way of doing what's necessary and providing for the people you love it doesn't get any darker than that 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 never complained went to work every single day as you were telling me that story what was the emotion you know what people talk about sacrifice 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 memories of those things and how not only did they mold him how they molded my brother the effects it had on both of us positive and negative and i understand how to use that darkness in the most positive way just like my dad did because to him that darkness was a new beginning 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 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 i always say this when does a new day start it starts at midnight is it dark outside at midnight yes so if a new day and a new beginning starts in the dark every day that's when your new beginnings start but so many people are afraid to go

to that place and i tell them you have to visit that place because if that place comes visits 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 have better understanding of your purpose but if you don't take that trip and the darkness comes visits you it's a guest that will never leave that dark side you referenced it did good and bad things for you negatives and positives what are the negatives it hardened

me it it it really it hardened me it hardened me to the point where i had a hard time communicating with other individuals and 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 in for those individuals and you talk in the book

that often you're visited at night by a presence in the early hours of the morning every night there's an individual that comes visit you you know everybody has everybody has these grand grandioso dreams and these day dreams about success and money and fame and power and i always say winning never visits you in your daydreams it sees you in your nightmares the things that you 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 got to bring the light you got to bring the dark you got to bring the good you got to bring the bad 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 gonna control you and 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 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 their struggles was there other things that you where that monster would rear its ugly head or take control of you you know what when the monster took over it wasn't for bad things it allowed me to deal with you know how mean kids could be the different

the different bully the bulliness in school that every kid goes to 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 when you talk about and this is what i was trying to gauge when i was listening to your audiobook you talk about

these at 2am realizing you're not alone and i wasn't sure if you were being literal or figurative you were 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 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 sorrowness there's excuses

and they all have their hands out literally 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 when 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 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 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 it attracts 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 and acknowledge things that other people won't acknowledge 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 it makes 100 well you know you look at it it's for a lot of individual you know the physical pain that they put themselves through is actually their pleasure you know my athletes when they the 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 they see people

that run the ultra marathons it's people that take these these ice baths it's you know 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 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 going to

determine how successful you will be in whatever you choose in life you know you have individuals who will become from a broken family and you could have two children that come from the broken family and one individual will will not live up to their potential 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 would 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 the other used it to deny having done this podcast for the amount of amount of time that i've done it what you've articulated there about that broken home scenario um is the thing i've always played around with which is a trauma causes an adverse response typically greatness or despair yes and it's and i've always tried to figure out what a trauma is going to do but it's been impossible to for me but in your case it led you to be 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 yes that was my official title when i was when my main job was to train profession to train professional athletes so i didn't want i never wanted to consider myself and label myself as a trainer because 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 what can i do to make sure this doesn't happen to other individuals and i was like you know what i started to study the body really really closely which goes all the way back to 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 going through the different injuries that i suffered through my years

of working out training playing allowed me to understand what an individual goes to 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 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 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 what happened six months ago nine months ago six weeks ago so when it became sports enhancement the enhancement part the sports was the physical the enhancement part was was the mental 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 a lot of business leaders etc and i asked them what is tim good at what was tim good at for you what would they say to me elevating elevating them to another level holistically holistically just being able because when somebody comes up to me and they said i want to be 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 player i want to be the world's greatest pop pop podcaster what that's already been done 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 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 the process it takes to be number one and stay at number one you have no you have no idea you have an idea because you've been there everybody wants to sit in your seat until they have to sit in your seat very few people understand what winning and success does to an individual's mental health everybody thinks the more you win the more successful you are it just makes everything so much easier and they don't understand the pressures that these individuals put on themselves to continue to perform at the highest level

to have their businesses win over and over again when you reach a million followers on your social media it's a [Music] different level of pressure than an individual who isn't winning all the time who hasn't been successful at the highest level 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 and that's a whole different level of mental health that success brings that a lot of people just don't understand michael i uh i watched the last dance documentary i saw you in

there as well um 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 um very soon after a neon sign in my office in london 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 all time what happened in that gap 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 and 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 80s 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 there was a uh 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 basically movement movement of humans and i took it kind of picked up a book and i started i said you know what this is for me 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 uh health educators and i 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 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 master's degree in master's degree in exercise science all right and i took a job at a local health club the minimum wage back then was and 35 cents 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 clean 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 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 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 crazy so i looked at this exam i

i gave all the answers and i gave it to them and they 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 you 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 is that so i became the trainer over there and in a very short period of time i became the highest grossing trainer they had in the in there but what was great about it is and i talked about this in the book school taught me what to think all the education all the books everything i knew exactly what to 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 as 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 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 he 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 maybe 10 percent of what i've learned in school there's got to be more 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 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 going to write 14 letters the one person i'm not going to 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 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 i have to pause you there just

to highlight the fact that most people would not send those letters i'm not most there's nothing about me that qualifies as most there's nothing that qualifies 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 if i didn't take that initiative i didn't take that action i was in a worse situation in hindsight yeah but it's so it's so interesting because that those moments riddle my story where i sent um the

first one was just sending emails to at nine to eighteen years old to say same people were you invested in my company at 18 after dropping out of university and 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 dice every day to see if they can get a michael jordan the best of the best they're always looking for a competitive edge they're always looking for that that .001 percent thing that can make them better i had a conversation i and this individual i never i'd i've never worked with but he was an event

that i was speaking at also and he spoke but he spoke before me michael phelps oh yeah all right for anybody that doesn't know michael phelps maybe the most accomplished olympic swimmer of all time yes so michaels 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 he goes i train every single day so i can shave 0.001 second 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 .0001 off my time and everybody he surrounded himself with that was their job marginal gains as we call it that one percent that 0.1 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 talk about really trying to find that edge as well um 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 hearing 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 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 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 yes how important are those marginal gains to the athletes that you've worked with and in the work you do with them still today it's everything it's everything and it's in the details you know you just described all these little things and somebody coming on 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 one percenters the 0.01 they sweat every single detail because the one thing they let slips somebody is going to use that to their advantage 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 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 that 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

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 uh 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 him 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 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 kobe was interested in those small details that nobody else was interested in paying attention to what were those small details for him 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 he what shoes he had to wear where where the t where the tickets had to go for friends and 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 because on a basketball court it's made out

of wood all 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 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 he measured 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 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 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 were having a conversation yesterday and i've been thinking about it 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 that's where the separation is the separation is in the details it's in the details the separation and the clothes you wear is in the details the sh 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 universe 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 certain things it's people get comfortable with not having to manage the details i had a few words to say about one of my sponsors on this podcast as the seasons have begun to change so has my diet and um right now i'm going to be completely honest with you i'm starting to think a lot about slimming down a little bit because over the last couple

of probably the last four or five months my diet has been pretty bad um and it started to show a little bit really over the last two months i go to the gym about 80 of the time so i track it with 10 of my friends in a whatsapp group and this tracker online that we all use together we call it fitness blockchain and i'm currently at 81 percent um so 81 of the days i've done a workout in the last 150 days right so i'm going to the gym about six times a week that's

been a little bit impacted by the derivative live tour but i'm trying to stick to it and so one of the things i'm doing now to reduce my calorie intake and trying to get back to being nutritionally complete and all i eat is i'm having the heel protein shake thank you hill for making a product that i actually like the salted caramel is my favorite i've got the banana one here which is the one my girlfriend likes but for me salted caramel is the one 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 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 asked this question is because sometimes i reflect on my own striving and think is there something in hindsight having

lived a life where i achieve those things where i reach 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 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 i always say this the most driven individuals they live a life 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 so if you say something that's that was missing but it was actually a gift was his lack of balance you know there were time now you can't be 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's just this i you know so many individuals talk about that you need more balance you need more balance you need more else 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 cr 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 it was about it was about basketball and winning about basketball and winning and towards the end of it 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 no i guarantee it almost i don't know your whole team 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 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 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 smaller circles when people hear that there'll be young kids that listen and they'll they might stop talking to their family they might stop calling their girlfriend and they might say 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 happiness 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 do sometimes they go too far should happiness be the goal i can't make that decision for those individuals my job if happening happiness could be winning for them all right but you don't find happiness you create it you're not going to find winning you have to create you have to create winning habits i sat here with a lady who became the number one youtuber in the world and she had 15 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 was completely burnt out miserable depressed and she'd been like dragged by this obsession to a place that made her depressed and eventually in 2019 she quits youtube 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 it does you know listen winning does not always equate that winning does not always equate to happiness 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 is 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 that's the first thing i tell individuals 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 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 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 you've created or somebody else has created for you are you writing your story of happiness or did somebody else write your story of happiness and

hand it to you and say here this is how you become happy 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 as we talked about the darkness the pain the trauma or whatever that's actually driving them and i i guess my conclusion has been that you just need to be

conscious of of that when you talked about you know that insecurity that that darkness that need for for to be valid to be validated what's going 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 let he never let that sport control him he he was like the 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 of my brand and then when what happens is when you let external things and you start playing for the for the wrong reason a lot of individuals play always and this is the thing in with 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

outperform individuals they put a better product out there do your job better than anybody else and your brand will build it itself so when people look for that happiness factor is your foundation and your fundamental principles so strong that if this thing was to go away 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 they've gone to do multiple things 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 now he's got other 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 one certain aspect in your in your life 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 beco 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 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 the first thing he told me was you better keep up and what did he mean by that what he meant by that is not

as a trainer keep up in life because this ride we don't know which direction it's going to go on we don't know if it's going up down sideways but be ready for anything this throws at us interestingly that's what you knew he meant one of the reasons i get along so well with all my clients professionally business-wise socially or everybody because 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 r she goes nothing to you is weird nothing

to you and i was 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 and also what are they using that desire what are they going to 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 uh 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

he's stuck in so what i would do is i'd have to be at the basketball games very early make sure everything was prepped and he he was he was ready to go and we were always the last individuals to leave i'd rewatch the game 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 he took left this is how many steps he took right this is how many times he took backwards this is how many times he left landed on his right foot this is how many times he landed on his left 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 use your

you use your left leg 60 more than you use your right leg but you use your right hand more than you use you're like 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 is going to need different training than the other side is going to need so we would have different exercises where he'd have 50 pounds in one hand and 10 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 a certain time spent over here there was no books out 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 so interesting i was thinking about that because really interesting when you said that there was no books out there and 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 yeah and once the books are published it's probably too late yeah people are using math i i stuff we were doing with him 30 years ago people are just now using them like 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 that was proving to him that you cared and you were as obsessed as he was 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 hi 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 that is a big compliment he ultimately introduced you to somebody else when he retired and stepped out of the game after 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 when he introduced you to kobe so he said like i'm not using tim anymore so

no kobe you can uh you can work with him why did he use the word you know what as in to become as individuals become more successful everybody around them becomes yes people nobody wanted to say no to michael jordan oh 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 it'll offend a lot of your listeners but that was the end of the con that was the end of the conversation 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 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 much 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 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 and what does that deterioration in accountability look like what are the signs of it i give you great example when people perform at the highest level in business sometimes a boss or the person above them ceo whatever's allowed you know what man their numbers are so good we're going to let them we're not going to hold

them accountable for this this and this you know they're still performing they might may not be performing at the highest level but they're still performing 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 you talk about the greatest ever play the game he didn't have to have anybody else hold him accountable he was i'm not going

to ask you to do anything that i'm not going to do myself so as individuals once they've reached that pinnacle and they get their arms out and they start looking down and say i finally reached the top of this mountaintop those are all the right things to do don't exhale because the air is so much thinner up on the top than it is on the climb to the top and if you exhale 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 at 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 an uh of a of another company they can't exhale in chapter five of your book you you speak to some of these things that michael would do to to his teammates um 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 yes 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 business world toxic 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 your gifted roses or any types of flowers 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 this thorn is not when that thorn is no longer there so when michael was constantly pushing his players getting them to l 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 and for each individual 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 the 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 and say certain things and he knew when not to say certain things and have another individual talk to that person but when he spoke everybody everybody listens they're if

you watch practices everybody would come into the practice and they'd be laughing and kind of joking and having a having a good time and so forth and as soon as that whistle was blown silence and michael always said i practice so hard and we all need to practice so hard so the games become easier 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 yes were good enough yes i won't say they were good enough as one he that

he could trust in certain situations trust me it was the the thorns were more for trust how how can can i keep poking you oh 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 because there's going to be certain situations that can i trus 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 isn't that interesting it's almost a bit of a paradox the the fact that we trust those most and that's the 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 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 um in my circle are those that are do you have a voice and are willing to give it to me despite my um despite my success yeah those are the ones you want you want to keep around right 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'd it turn out for you 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 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 it at the start right i should have but for some reason

i was for reasons i now clearly understand i was avoiding the decision and letting the person off the hook how many years ago was that um i think now it'd be four years ago all right if that same situation happened now how quickly would you remember oh so fast all right so so quickly and i have subsequently and i when i do respond in that way i recite that story right 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 winning doesn't make you heartless but it teaches you to use your heart less four years ago you were using your heart yeah now you'd use your heart you still have a heart but you'd use it less and my brain more exactly yeah mind over feelings 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 ballot the the wisdom i got from it is you know a 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 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 showing up is none of the battle you showed up i showed up were 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 you're supposed to show up you guys 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 you've already you've already lost the battle you've already lost a 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 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 first 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 got to go show up somewhere else and make this thing all work again and people come back and say oh you know what you showed up don't worry about it you won that battle today no do you know that story so we landed in la and we got to the hotel and the hotel um offered us how to fill us a certain room in the penthouse suite where 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 the uk in my house sure so it needs to feel at home because of the nature of the conversation we're having it needs to be details yeah right so we got to the hotel they're like well you can have you know the penthouse week 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 that 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 so although the podcast was two days away and we had 20 odd guests coming sure 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 inexpensive place as you've seen but uh but we we've always believed in those details we

always believe it really matters and then jack and the team and berta 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've 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 you can't unsee it you just can't you can't i 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 get you can't you can you can 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 that 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

then you know it's time to move on to another endeavor which you've already have in your previous thing you know when you when you 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 from a personal standpoint i will say this winning will cost you everything but we'll reward you with so much more it's going to 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 going to cost this is what it's going to 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 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 it's 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 unpack my bag i'd have grabbed her hand we'd have went out for ice cream 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 want to 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 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 and i just never knew when the right time was and then one day i just said this is the day this is the day she goes you taught me how to

make the toughest decisions in life because not only taught me you showed me you told me how to be independent when to be dependent when to be independent 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 if you think the price of winning is too high wait till you get the bill from regret 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 and the only way that bill gets paid off is you got to be willing to make the hardest decisions the other side of that story is i would often fly my family was in chicago i was doing work 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 45 minutes to an hour and get on the plane that same night and be back for my client the next day 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 it was the only flight to get back those are the parts nobody remembers everybody remembers one event you don't show up for and i guaranteed every individual who's one 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 tim thank you my pleasure honestly uh you've sent me on a you know my job is to sit you're asking questions but my brain has been running 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 thank you we have a closing tradition on this this podcast where we asked guests uh 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 you've been scared to address or reconcile every mistake i've made i've reconciled i've owned up to it 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 apologize for things i should have not apologized for thank you you're welcome we are all looking for ways to live a little bit more sustainably and to make more conscious choices in our day-to-day routines so when a brand like my energy who i've spoken about before offered to sponsor this podcast i felt like and i knew deep down inside that i had to help them share their mission to create an even greener

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they are and what they're doing if you're one of those people that wants to make a sustainable switch myenergy.com is the place for you [Music] bye