Brad Johnson: Welcome back to another episode of Do Business, Do Life. Excited to have Tim Grover here with me today. Welcome to the show, Tim.
Tim Grover: Brad, awesome, man. I know we’ve been trying to do this for a while and I’m finally glad we were able to make this happen.
Brad Johnson: Well, it was awesome to spend some time with you out in Palm Springs at our launch experience in January. You spoke obviously to our members out there. I’ve got a page full of notes I’m sure we’re going to dive into a little bit, but I know you run hard. So, thanks for carving out the time to have a conversation here.
Tim Grover: No problem. Before we get started, one of the best events I’ve ever been to. You guys, everybody on staff, very professional. Everything was run extremely well, the accommodations, everything. So, hats off to you guys, your staff, and everyone else for putting real, like really putting something special together on a consistent basis.
Brad Johnson: Well, that means a lot because I know you’ve done your fair share of speaking and been to a lot of really cool events out there. And the cool thing about ours, you got to run into some old friends. Bo was there. Emmett was there.
Tim Grover: Yes.
Brad Johnson: Agassi was there. So, I saw you kind of doing the old catching up. I don’t know how often you run into those guys, but that was cool to see.
Tim Grover: Yeah, it is. We all have history with individuals you don’t get to see too often, but it’s really great to connect with them in person. And this is kind of like what you guys say, do business, do life, you see them doing business and you finally get to catch up with them again. You get to do life for those moments again and relive those moments and talk about what’s next for those because just like us, they always have a next. They’re just not sitting around with all the stories that they were sharing and continuing to move forward.
Brad Johnson: Well, speaking of stories, I’d love to dive into one that I just found super interesting when I was doing some research just to prep for this. The story of Kobe’s hidden notebook, and obviously, you train Jordan, you train Kobe. I would think like of the top 75 NBA players out there, you’ve trained like a third of them, so you’ve got a great history working with very elite athletes. But I know you said your first book Relentless was really diving into that mindset of what was kind of the similar themes you saw. And there was a story about Kobe’s, a little journal he carried around with him, which is brutally honest critiques. And some of them were of his opponents, but a lot of them were of himself. And hey, here’s some stuff I got to work on. And I know you’d been training with him a while and he actually showed you this notebook. So, can you share your side of that story and what you learned from that?
Tim Grover: So, remember back then, you really couldn’t put notes in your phone. I mean, if you could, it was very difficult to find, so you couldn’t store things. And there’s something about when you have to handwrite something and you get to read it again and you get to see the penmanship and you get to see it being put on paper, it has more of a reflection on the mind. It stays with you because it’s kind of like you are being involved in it other than typing away. It’s an art form. And for him, everything was an art form. It was always about being the better Picasso, being the better Rembrandt.
So, people love to critique other individuals, but he also was critiquing himself on a regular basis. And this was a reminder to him, because you would see those opponents again, you would see that coach again, you would see that team again, you’d see that atmosphere again, you see the offense, you see the defense, and sometimes you forget what you did really well and what you didn’t do really well. And instead of him relying on the coaches to constantly critique himself or for him to critique other individuals because he was so detail orientated that he would see things that other people just wouldn’t pay attention to. And this was a way for him to critique himself, to give his own feedback, and then also, to allow other individuals, very select individuals to be a part of what he wrote and say, hey, am I right on this? Am I missing something? Am I being too hard? Am I not being hard enough? Did you see something that I didn’t see? Can we add something? Can we subtract something? Am I just taking this too personally? So, this was a whole way of another level of him preparing for combat, not only against an opponent, but against himself.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. How long had you been connected or trained with Kobe before he kind of let you in to that world of, hey, what do you think about this, Tim?
Tim Grover: Oh, it was very, very soon. Very, very soon. I mean, because one thing I asked my clients to do is I said, listen, I need to be inundated pretty much in everything you do because everything you do, everything you think, every behavior, every thought, every emotion, everything that’s going on in your life outside of your sport with family affects performance. I cannot help you become the best at what you do unless I know pretty much everything that’s going on on a daily basis. And that way, we can understand why certain emotions and certain brain receptors are releasing certain chemicals and others aren’t because with a professional athlete, even with anybody in business, you look at it, you start off a certain way, and then things get added into your life, a girlfriend, a boyfriend, a significant other, children, different circumstances, and they affect performance on a daily basis, literally on a daily basis. Your relationship with your parents before and after you become successful.
So, all these things play a lot with how an individual performs. Even in your own world when you’re dealing with financial people, it’s still a game of numbers and it’s still a game of wins. So, the more you can analyze, the more you understand your environment, that’s going on outside of you and how that’s affecting what’s going on with the environment inside of you.
Brad Johnson: So, going back to your book Relentless, where you’re really diving into that mindset, as you were working with Jordan, with Kobe, some of these other elite athletes, what I’m kind of picking up is a lot of that work was the psychology between the ears, let alone, I mean, obviously, you were training them, their athletic performance, their body, the physicality, but how much of it was just straight upstairs that you were focusing on?
Tim Grover: Well, you know what? If you listen to interviews of these individuals, they never talk about– everyone, other people talk about how hard they work physically, but when they sit down and do interviews or did interviews like this, they always talk about the mental game, how they use that to get the advantage over their opponents and get the advantage over themselves, and then either talk themselves, think themselves into the right mind frame in order to perform at the highest, highest level.
So, it all started with the mental preparation because there would be times where some of the things that we used to use is, everybody always wanted to train with music, everybody wants to train with kind of music stuff. So, I would use the– can you stay as focused? Can you be more focused when the only voice you hear is yourself? Can you concentrate without music? Can you concentrate without having anything else? Well, the only thing you have to listen to is the silence and the environment around you. Would that affect it? Would that take a person’s effectiveness higher or lower?
Because if there’s something going on in your life and you can’t use something to distract it out, do you still have the ability to listen to your own voice that’s going on in your head to elevate yourself? Or is it going to bring your performance level down? Because you’re playing in front of 20,000 people and some people, some of the maestros, meaning the audience, they’re playing the tune you want to hear, and a lot of them are not. And you have to be able to decipher between both and use, both of those voices, both of those sounds to create the energy that you need to get that end result. So, everything always started with some kind of mental game or mindset, something to see where those individuals were.
And a lot of times if they didn’t come in with the right frame of mind, we’d have to wait a little bit and say, hey, listen, you’ve given me your time. I don’t need your time. I need your focus. And there’s a huge difference. A lot of people show up and they go in there, and if you give me your time, I can put you through a workout, I can put you through a physical workout. But if you give me your focus, I can put you not only through a physical workout, but I can also challenge you mentally.
Brad Johnson: Where my head goes with that, Tim, so I’m picturing Kobe or Jordan, they’re at the free throw line. It’s an away game. So, you got the fans just going nuts in the background. They’ve got to be locked in or they just block that out, make the free throw. And comparing that to the world of business, one of the things we say a lot at Triad is leaders are calm and confident. And the entrepreneur version of that, the fan going nuts in the background of the free throw is the chaos of the entrepreneurship, the ups and downs, the personnel issues, all of the stuff that you’re not really sure what you’re walking into on the daily. So, what sort of mindset exercises, turning off the music, listening to the sound of your own body being completely exhausted while you’re training, but what sort of things would you maybe give to entrepreneurs out there that are at a similar version of a practice or exercise like that so they can show up during the heat of the moment how they need to?
Tim Grover: Well, I always say calmness is a skill. It’s a skill that you have to master. And it’s become more difficult for individuals to master that thing because nobody listens. Very few people listen now. They don’t listen to learn. Everyone listens to react. And calmness, when you have that skill, you listen to learn, you understand what the difference between criticism and feedback is. You’re not on an emotional rollercoaster. You don’t get triggered by everything that an individual or somebody says or what’s going on in the world. So, you literally have to find time.
I tell these individuals, you have to find time where you’re alone, but you’re not by yourself. You are with the most important individual that knows you better than anybody else, and that is you, because what happens is everybody wants to have conversations with other individuals. And I always tell these individuals, you have to have a conversation with yourself. You have to be honest with yourself. You have to be truthful with yourself. Well, people say, well, I had a conversation with myself. Well, when was it? Well, three months ago. Well, hopefully, the individual that you had the conversation with three months ago is not the same individual you are now. So, what parts of that conversation are still relevant and what part of those conversations are no longer relevant? Because if the same conversation exists after three months, that means there wasn’t a whole lot of growth. There wasn’t a whole lot of growth in that individual.
And I always say this, we live in a society where a lot of people don’t like to tell the truth, but we lie to ourselves more than anybody else ever lies to us. And I asked for, have those tough conversations with yourself, the conversations you want to have with your employees, your clients, and so forth. Do you have those same conversations with yourself? Do you have those same conversations in yourself? And when things are silent, when things are really, really silent, when you sit down and there’s no TV, there’s no podcast, there’s no sound, there’s no family, it’s just silence, are you controlling that domain or is somebody else controlling the thoughts? Is somebody else controlling what you’re thinking about during that moment? Are you carrying somebody else’s guilt? So, these are all the different exercises we use, kind of depending on what circumstances are going on in their life.
And there’s many times, because everybody’s going to tell you, most individuals will not. You ask them how they’re doing, they’re either going to say I’m doing great or I’m doing good. All right, that’s a standard answer. That’s a standard answer they’re telling everybody else. And you have to really find out as a coach or whatever you want to call it, are they actually just saying that? Or are they really in a– what words do they use? What actions do they take that you know that they’re actually in a good place or they’re actually in a great place, or they’re just saying that?
So, we love to read books. We love to listen to podcasts. Well, we love to gather information, but one of the arts that needs to be taught more is being able to read people, because you can gain so much knowledge by just reading people. And just like one of the things that you talked about earlier with the journal, that was Kobe’s ability, one of his great abilities. Well, it’s actually ability of all top performers, is they have the ability to read people.
Brad Johnson: Let’s, on that note, like one of the things I was thinking about as you were sharing there is the whole mindset thing, and I don’t care if you’re a top performer in athletics or business, the top performers in just about every domain. They have started to be able to become self-aware of kind of what’s going on up here and adjust accordingly, right, to your point, like, are you the same person you were three months ago? One of the stories you shared out in Palm Springs with us is how you and Jordan actually got connected was you wrote 14 letters to the Chicago Bulls, said, “Hey, I’m a trainer in the area. Here are my services if you have interest.” You did not write a letter to Michael Jordan.
Tim Grover: Correct.
Brad Johnson: And he was the one guy that returned your letter, right?
Tim Grover: Exactly. He’s the one. He took the letter out of somebody else’s locker and gave it to the athletic trainer and the team physician at the time and said, “Hey, find out what this kid’s about.” And this goes back to the self-awareness part. He recognized that the training program that the team was using was effective, but it was a program that was designed for 15 individuals. And he said, “I need something that’s designed more for me. This program is, but I know that there’s another. I need somebody who pays attention to my needs, who understands my physiology, who understands my body, who understands my needs, my mental makeup.”
And fortunate enough, after those letters came through three months of intense interviews with the team physician and team athletic trainer to make sure I knew where I was actually, that I actually learned something in school and I wasn’t just having fun, they gave me an address and they never told me who the client was going to be. They gave me the address and they said, meet the client at– here it is. He wants to meet you at, I think it was 1:30 after they had done with their first practice. So, I go to this address, I ring the doorbell, still not knowing who it was, still not knowing who.
Brad Johnson: You just knew it was a Bulls player or you didn’t even know that it…
Tim Grover: I knew it was a Bulls player because the…
Brad Johnson: Okay.
Tim Grover: The athletic trainer and the team physician were part of the organization. So, I definitely knew it was a Bulls player, but I did not know who it is. But I had literally done my research and homework on all 15 individuals. I had different programs for all of them. I knew what their injuries were, what their tendencies were, what they did well, what they could have done better. So, no matter what they were going to throw, and this wasn’t just like going to a roulette table and they spin a thing and hoping it lands on the number. And I rang the doorbell once. No one answered. I rang it again twice. I’m like, okay.
And this was before the big gate, the big gated house, so you can just walk up to the house. I rang it three times and then the door opens and it was Michael. Okay, not expecting. And I’ve never been a starstruck person. So, the only thing I thought about is, and I know you know this part of the story was, he was big Nike Jordan guy, obviously. I was wearing Converse at the time. So, going in my mind, I’m like, all right, do I take my shoes off? Or does he pay– so, what I was like, okay. I said, if all he remembers is the shoes that I have on, I didn’t do my job. I didn’t do my job. So, he gave me an opportunity to sit down with him, talk to him. And he said, he’s talked to a few other individuals and they’ve explained their philosophies to him and they were pretty much agreeing with what he thought was the right protocol. And what he told me was, I was like, listen. I said, with all due respect, I disagree with everything you’ve been told. And he goes, four or five other individuals told me the exact same thing. They all had the same plan. And I said, well, whose plan was it? Was it your plan or was it their plan? He goes, it was my plan. And I said, well, let me tell you about my plan.
And I went through some details with him about some injuries that he had constantly, some nagging stuff that he constantly had going on, dealing with sprained ankles, dealing with groin pulls, dealing with hamstring issues. I said, you want to be a better athlete, you want to be stronger on the court, you want to be faster, you want to be able to jump higher, you want to be able to do all those things. I said, if we just address those three areas without doing anything else, you’re going to be better at all the way across the board. I said, let’s not think about putting all this added muscle on and all this added strength right away. Let’s address these little things.
And then I kind of explained to him how, what my process would be. And he goes, “Well, what do you think is my ideal weight?” I said, “I don’t know. You have to tell me what your ideal weight would be.” I said, from an education standpoint, I said, realistically, we could probably put on about, with your metabolic rate, with the amount of calories you burn, with all the travel, with how intensely you play, I said, we’re lucky if we can put on three to five pounds of muscle a year and maintain it. I said, we’ll do that. You’ll tell me how you feel. If you feel like your body can take more, we’ll add more, then we’ll continue to add until you tell me this is I’m at where I feel like I can perform the highest at. So, I gave him the result that he wanted, but also had to rely on knowing I had more of an expertise in this area than he did and enough confidence to convey that to him and being able to get him to listen and believe and trust me in what I was doing.
Brad Johnson: I’m assuming, what year was this? Was this the era where he was getting beat up by the Pistons physically?
Tim Grover: No, this was in 1989.
Brad Johnson: ‘89. So, this was after he’d been bounced out of the playoffs a couple years in a row by the Pistons, and they were just like literally hammering him. So, he’s like, I got to get bigger, stronger, tougher to go physically perform versus teams like that.
Tim Grover: And he was absolutely right. But there’s a way to do it without– I don’t look at, every time I’ve watched Michael play, I’ve never thought of him the way he moves as a basketball player, all right? I’ve thought of him more as like a performer, more like a dancer, more like, just so graceful. Just so graceful up there, more like somebody you would see, it was like everybody else was playing basketball and he was playing basketball at the highest level, but there was like a dancer/ballerina movement to the way he would move. And I didn’t want to change that. We didn’t want change that. We didn’t want to make him all this bulky and lose that fluidness and kind of with what, how that could translate to individuals in the financial industry is like when you end up getting too much knowledge, like, okay, to me, when you get inundated with everything that’s out there and you get this information from this person, you get this information from here, and you get all this confusion going on in your head, you lose the ability.
Michael didn’t want to lose his ability to flow as an athlete. I don’t want individuals in the business world to lose the ability to flow with their mind of everything, all of the information they’re gathering because there’s too many roadblocks being in there because you’re trying to decipher all this heavy stuff that you can start to carry around because, one, everybody, you go on social media now. There’s a hundred people that tell you this thing is good for you and then there’s another 90 people that tell you the exact thing of how it’s bad for you. And you get, well, who am I supposed to– and they’re very convincing. They are very, very convincing.
Brad Johnson: Well, you know where my head goes, Tim, with that, like all this noise and it’s just grown exponentially with technology. But going back to where your focus was with Jordan, it’s like, hey, here’s three factors that have been holding you back from your potential. You got this nagging ankle injury, you got this groin thing, and you went to like the core, almost the most minimalistic things you needed to focus on to maximize the results. And it wasn’t, hey, we need to put on 20 pounds of muscle and change what makes you an incredible player. We need to just hone in on the little things that are holding you back. And if I apply that to business, a lot of the shiny object syndrome that happens in every business, it’s like chasing all of these things where it’s not honing in and focusing in on the one thing that’s going to make 80%, 90% of the difference. So, like, what, if you look at Kobe and Jordan where both of them, just like they wanted to perform at such a high level that they’re like, tell me the one or two things that I have to just focus on and drill on and just be relentless on to get there, or what were the similarities there and what were the differences there that led to that sort of mindset?
Tim Grover: They were both similar in that aspect. So, what we do is, everybody wants to move from one skill to the other skill. And they’re like, okay, I’m good at this, I’m good at this, I’m good at this, now I can move on to this. I’m good at this, I can move on. No, no. You know what the greats do? They go from good to great to mastery. They master that one thing. And then once they’ve mastered that one thing, then they move on to the next thing. And they start again from good to great until they master. But once they’ve mastered something, now they know that they have to return to the other thing that they still have to pay attention to. The first thing they mastered, otherwise, that’s going to go away. So, every time you master a new skill, and you’re not going to be able to master 30 new skills, right, whether it be physically or mentally. In a career, maybe three to five, you’ll be able to master at the highest level and keep them mastered on a regular basis. They become part of your foundation. They become part of your principles. But every time you have to master something, you have to unlearn something else. And that becomes the most difficult part.
I always say, before you can add mastery into your life, you have to delete an unessential. An unessential, it could be many different things. It could be individuals in your life. It could be your own behavior. It could be your own habits. It could be coworkers that no longer serve their purposes. It could be friends. It could be something that was applicable in the financial world, maybe. People always say, well, this is the way I have always done it. Yeah, well, maybe the way you’ve always done it isn’t the way it’s done now.
Brad Johnson: It’s what’s holding you back, yeah.
Tim Grover: Right. And so, that’s what I’m saying. The people that have these long careers in any industry, they don’t forget about all the skills that they’ve mastered. And they’re willing to master more skills. They are the most coachable individuals out there. Your best clients, your best financial people out there, they are the most coachable individuals. Even that you guys are going on this retreat that’s coming up and it’s more geared towards do life and it’s not geared as much to do business, but there will be individuals out there that while they’re doing life, still want to educate themselves in the part of doing business, but even though that the emphasis is over here, and it could be vice versa. They coexist together because how you do business is how you’re going to do life, how you do life is how you’re going to do business. They’re not separate. They actually work together.
Brad Johnson: Well, it sounds like, just even you explaining that, Tim, like your coaching technique, it was kind of do business, do life because you’re like, I can’t have you performing over here on the basketball court if you’ve got something jacked up with this relationship, a friend that’s dragging you down or distracting you or all that. So, you were kind of doing that integration already. Like, you’ve spent hours and hours with two guys that are definitely on the Mount Rushmore of the NBA, Jordan and Kobe.
I would also say, most would say those are two very fiery, strong personalities. So, what’s interesting is you said they’re also two of the most coachable people that you’ve ever dealt with. So, what was the balance between Tim, the trainer, that’s kind of coming at these guys, pushing them to the edge of what they think is possible and the fieriness that existed in both of them? But the coachability, how did that counterbalance each other? Were there like some of these in the training days where, like how did that coexist?
Tim Grover: All the time, we never took it personally. I mean, in the 15 years with Michael, I must have been fired over a thousand times.
Brad Johnson: Are you serious?
Tim Grover: Yeah. Man, you’re fired. Get out of here. And then I get a call or text, hey, man, I’ll see if I– I knew I was never fired, but it was just like we’d have words, but we knew it would make each other better. I was challenging him. He was challenging me. The thing that was interesting about the days when I trained Michael, whatever workout I put him through, he made me do, whatever training session.
Brad Johnson: He made you do, personally.
Tim Grover: Personally. So, every time he trained, I had to train with him. Now, I was already…
Brad Johnson: Wow.
Tim Grover: I did my training before that, depending on what time we would train. But everything, every time he worked out, I had to. Every time he trained, whether it was home, on the road, wherever, whatever I put him through, if it was conditioning, I had to condition. I had to condition with him. I mean, obviously, when he was doing his basketball thing, that was his thing. There was no way I could have kept up with that, but that was like, he goes, hey, I need you to feel everything that I’m feeling. We’re going to push each other. We’re going to pull each other. Yes. Are we going to clash? Yes, we are going to clash. Just like you clash with your teammates, you clash with your opponents. But once it’s over with, it’s done.
I didn’t mind the fieriness. I always told them, I’m not interested in motivating individuals. I’m interested in elevating them. And there’s a huge difference between motivation and elevation. Motivation is what you require from somebody else. It’s a feeling. And elevation is what you require from yourself, and it’s a state of mind. Literally, it’s a state of mind of you want to get better. You’re going to push yourself. Were there times where they did need motivation? Yeah, everybody needs motivation from time to time. But like I said, motivation is a feeling, and winning and greatness and doing what you want to do is what you do despite how you feel. Winning and success is what you do despite how you feel.
If you wait for only the good days to perform at the highest level or the great days and where everything has to be perfect, those don’t come too often. So, I’ve never felt that clashing as a bad thing. I mean, there were definitely some words exchanged that I’m not going to use on this podcast. With Kobe, it was a little different. With Kobe, I was a little more seasoned as an individual age-wise, and I told him, I said, listen, I know MJ used to have me work out with him. I said, I’m not doing that with you. I said, I’m not doing that with you. I’m here because I wanted to take the principles I needed.
MJ and I were similar from an age standpoint. And a lot of my philosophies in the book, a lot of the things that you read in Relentless, you read in Winning is what we learn from each other. And I take that information and pass it on to the next individual and next individual and the next individual. But yeah, I don’t believe you can have a great relationship with any individual if there isn’t clashing or them questioning you from time to time and you don’t react emotionally to it, because I always tell them, don’t react emotionally on the court. You can’t control what happens to you, but you can always control how you respond.
One of the things that teams used to do with Michael is they would physically, and this wasn’t just Detroit, other teams, because they would hit him and so forth because they knew if they could get Michael to swing back, he’d get thrown out of the game. And obviously, if Michael’s not paying in the game, automatically, the other team gets an advantage. So, he used to be like, hey, we can’t control what they’re going to do to you, but we can control how you’re going to respond. And there’s videos of him pulling his fist back and then deciding to put it down because he knew if he would’ve thrown that punch, they won. They won physically, they won mentally.
And how many times in your business do people throw– they may not throw a punch physically, but they throw a punch verbally at you or mentally at you. And you as being financial experts, if you respond incorrectly, then you kind of lose a little bit of trust. Your client loses a little bit of trust in you because they expect you not to react like them. And in your business, every single day you turn on the news, people are reacting to something and it affects your environment more than it does anybody else’s.
Brad Johnson: It’s really that stoic philosophy of don’t worry about stuff that you can’t control, right? Don’t let bad weather ruin your day. You can’t control that. So, you were kind of infusing a lot of that into the training you were doing with those guys? Like, yeah, the other team’s going to come at you, but…
Tim Grover: And you just brought up an interesting point. I would say people that talk about the weather all the time, and that’s the only part of conversation, you’re going to understand why they’re in the situation they’re in. Like, literally, that is what you just said, because they’re worried about stuff they can’t control. In cities, I always say, listen, no matter where you live, all right, there’s weather, there’s traffic, and things are expensive. Okay? So, you already know that. When you wake up every morning, you already know. So, if it’s a great day, all right, it’s a great day. If it’s a rainy day, if it’s a cloudy day, whatever, be thankful and blessed that you still have that day to enjoy. All right? Every city you go to, everywhere you could drive, there’s going to be traffic. So, oh, man, I hate traffic, I hate this. Anticipate that there is going to be traffic. So, you got yourself in the right frame of mind. And if there isn’t traffic, you’re like, okay, well, I didn’t have any traffic today.
And the same thing with, if you wanted to go to a nice rest– I don’t even care nice, if you eat, if you are a fast-food individual, everything cost way more than it cost before. So, when people go out and just say, oh, man, instead of talking about the atmosphere at a restaurant, the company that they had, the conversation, the type of food, the individuals they were with, if the first thing they leave, man, everything was so expensive. You can pretty much tell a whole person’s what’s going on in their life by just the little comments that they make.
Brad Johnson: I’m actually looking at my notes right in front of me, Tim, from when you presented out at Palm Springs. And I’ve got it in all caps. Nothing worse for the heart and mind than complainers. Complainers will continue to move down the line. Committed people, they move on until they find someone that complains with them. And then, so basically, I’m thinking part of your training is like, I mean, when you’re going through a grueling workout, there’s lots to complain about and sometimes, the complaining is all inside your head. So, you were almost like tamping that down in your training process. You’re like, not allowed here. Let’s focus on the stuff we can control and become a better version of ourselves so that that’s not going to impact us later down the road. Or did you have a different philosophy on that?
Tim Grover: Listen, I can sum it up. Listen, Brad, you nailed it perfectly right there. In a workout, in a training session, your mind will give up before the body will because, obviously, you take excellent care of yourself. All right, if you are using a trainer or you’re using yourself as an individual or in a class or whatever it may be, man, I can’t do this anymore. And the trainer or the self-talk from yourself would, come on, I got more in. And all of a sudden, you can do an extra rep, you can push yourself a little farther. You can do a little bit more distance. Well, what happened? You stop complaining in here. You literally stop complaining in here. Well, you know…
Brad Johnson: Do you think that’s part of why Jordan asked you to work out with him, is just he had a guy beside him to push him a little bit?
Tim Grover: Yeah. Well, and that was never my plan because I wanted to pay attention to his movements and be able to do those things, but by him doing that indirectly, it made me even better because it taught me to be just as focused when I’m tired on an individual than when I was fresh. It’s easy for me to stand there and count reps and point things out, but be able to go from one state to another and being, okay, I just did what I had to do. And he would watch my form to make sure whatever I told him to do, that I was doing it the same way because, obviously, there’s a thousand ways to cheat on exercises. So, he’d be like, well, wait a minute, if you’re telling me to do it this way, well, why are you doing it this way?
Brad Johnson: Yeah. So, you hit something I want to circle back to and you said kind of this thought process around mastery and the true like legends master, the certain things that are going to take them to that most elite level and kind of delete the other stuff. And if I look at both Jordan and Kobe’s game, their young careers, they were the guy that would score 30, 40, 50 points and sometimes the team would still lose the game. Like, they would go off, but they kind of weren’t bringing all of the team with them all the time in their earlier years. So, it’s kind of more the individual performance versus, hey, how do I make this team collectively better?
And if I look at one of the things that gets in the way for a lot of advisors out there, they’re kind of like that young Jordan or Kobe, where it’s like, hey, I’m a great sales guy, I’m making it rain over here. But as they start to transition to business owner and CEO, no longer is it about I and me, it’s about we and team and collectively bringing everybody along. What things did you see in the evolution of both of those players or maybe others that you trained to where that switch, where it’s like, oh, it’s not just Jordan scoring 40 or 50 or Kobe, but now I’ve got to make the whole team better with me? How did that evolve?
Tim Grover: Well, for individuals that can never make that transition, they never fully master themselves. First, you have to master, you have to fully master yourself in as many aspects as you can. And then when I talk about, they continue to add mastery, they continue to add mastery, so the individual’s now, okay, I’ve mastered myself. I know I still have more to do. Now, I have to master this next part of being able to elevate my teammates. And they’ve seen Michael in the last dance, even said this, I never asked anybody to do anything that I didn’t do. What I didn’t do in practice, how I prepared, I didn’t ask anybody else to do those. I mastered those things. Not only do I want– now I want you to master those things. You could see I did it. And I’m going to show you how to do these things. You may not enjoy. You may not like it. All right? But this is how we’re going to get better as a team.
And everyone’s got different types of leader style. I mean, Kobe has come out. Kobe has a saying, he goes, “I don’t accept mediocrity. I don’t accept people that don’t demand excellence from their self. I don’t have tolerance for that.” So, these individuals awfully being alpha, they understood that if, in order to, it’s still a team game, no matter what game you play. Even tennis, individual tennis is directly a team game. You have your coaches, you have your physiotherapist, you have individuals that take care of you. Even the line judges are part of the whole aspect of the team. You have to be able to master how you react to them. In golf, you have your caddy, you have other individuals. So, either though you are the only one out there, I still consider all that a team sport in a different way.
So, once you’ve figured out how to master yourself, then you have to still– can those techniques be applied? Can the techniques you use to master those things be applicable to the team that you’re in? Or do they need other individuals? Like, the methodology that Michael and Kobe used didn’t work for everybody on the team. It worked for a select few. The coaches and other higher level players also came in who had mastered things in a different way, a different skill set, were able to lead other individuals. So, you as an “individual leader,” the way you lead, most leaders come in as bosses. All right? And eventually, you have to transfer those thoughts. Literally, you’re no longer a boss. You become an influence on these, whether it be positive or negative.
And not everybody’s going to buy into that leadership style. Not everybody’s going to buy into your mastery. And you have to know where you have to pass that on to somebody else and say, hey, listen, my style is not going to work well with this individual. It’s being able to pass– knowing when to be an alpha and when not to be an alpha. You look at the championships. Kobe won championships, passing the ball to Pau Gasol and passing it to Shaq. Michael won it by passing it to John Paxson and Steve Kerr and having all these individuals around him.
But the trust, the trust is earned not during the games. It’s earned every single moment that you see those individuals. So, when you talk about your financial individuals who are now trying to lead teams is that trust and growth and being able to having an individual master on the skills is how they show up, how they communicate, how they dress, how they make eye contact, the language that they use, all those things, are those constantly improving every single day? Because most people, I always say this, when a professional athlete, football or basketball player gets drafted, for most individuals, I always say, welcome to the last day of your career because they’re like, I made it. I made it. Okay?
So, when you have these high-end, high influential financial individuals and they bring individuals along with them, are those individuals like, man, I’ve made it, I’ve become a part of this team, I’m part of this partnership over here? Or are you coming in and saying, this is just a beginning? Because when you come in as the attitude of, it’s just the beginning, you’re coming in more at the servant level or a maiden level, and the servant level, servant meetings, I need you to guide me. I’m not beneath you, but I need you to guide me so I can serve myself and I can become better and better, which will give me the ability to serve the next people, the next person, that next person, the next person.
Brad Johnson: Okay. So, I want to go to something here back to kind of leadership and serving a team. You told a story about Kobe when we were together in Palm Springs when he tore his Achilles, and I think this was just a private conversation, you and him. He said, “I don’t know if I can come back from this.” And you kind of said, “Hey, call me back when Kobe’s on the phone,” which is a pretty bold statement, but what I take from that, the lesson, I think even the best of the best, they’re still humans. They still have doubt. They still age. They still have injuries. And in that moment, that was you kind of a little bit of the cheerleader, although it’s tough love of like, no, you do have this, call me when the right guy’s on the phone.
So, if I apply that to business world, the best leaders, the best kind of founders that I see where they bring teams with them, part of it is like that love and truth of like, I’m going to tell you the truth, but I’m going to do it from a place of love where I’ve got your back and I want the best for you. How did you kind of wrestle with those two as somebody that was pushing these guys to the brink, but you had to dial up that love sometimes too and say, “Hey, you got this,” and kind of pull that out of them?
Tim Grover: Well, when I tell them you got this, I would always tell them what they have to go get. Everybody just says they define, they always talk about, let’s go, well, where are you going? Where are you? We have all these terms out here and where these cliches that they really don’t mean anything. Like, let’s go. Okay, well, where are we going? All right, let’s get fired up. What are we getting fired up about? Can we control the fire? Because that’s about to be lit underneath us? Is the flame already burning? Is the flame already burning too hot? So, you have to be careful. When you’re trying to direct these individuals that are such high achievers, they want to know, every word you’re saying to them, it has to serve a purpose.
And yes, there is a part of being tough, being part of it, being tough love, but it’s coming from the right place. They didn’t bring me along to agree with everything that they said. For most individuals, it’s very difficult to say no to people that are on the top of the top. And they want to be told when they do have self-doubt, but it has to be told from an individual who’s been inundated in their lives for a very, very long time that understands and that’s not going to judge them. Most individuals would’ve been like, hey, man, Kobe, you had a great career. We understand, nobody wanted to end it this way. You’ll get over this. He was like, no, man. The only way you’re going to get through this is that, I need the mamba. Literally, I don’t need Kobe talking right now. I need the mamba talking. Have that conversation with that mamba mentality, and then call me back. And it was kind of a test too. There was no doubt in my mind that he was going to call back. There was no doubt. But obviously, if he didn’t, then it would’ve been a completely different conversation. But I knew he was going to call back.
Brad Johnson: And we haven’t gone through the whole list. I’m just going to rattle them off here for those that aren’t as familiar. So, we’ve talked a lot about Jordan, we’ve talked a lot about Kobe, but Dwyane Wade, Charles Barkley, Maxx Crosby, Aaron Donald, Paul Skenes, Jason Heyward, even seven-time Mr. Olympian himself, Phil Heath. So, that’s across a ton of different domains of athletics. Did all of those top performers kind of have– you mentioned Black Mamba, kind of this alternative personality like Jordan, I mean, he just went to another level in games. Like, this just straight-up killer mentality, especially in the playoffs at the end of the game. Did all of them have some of that?
Tim Grover: I’m going to stop you right there. So, Brad, that was their personality. So, it was the other personality that they had to work on.
Brad Johnson: So, they were just the killer all the time. They had to work to be nicer, is that what you’re saying?
Tim Grover: Yes. They had to work on being calm, being that individual. Not totally, fully absorbed with– they had no problem doing business. They had no problem doing business. They had a hard time doing life. Okay?
Brad Johnson: Who had the hardest time with turning it off?
Tim Grover: Yeah. Most individuals can do life and have a hard time doing business. The individual, I probably, well– it’s funny. I would say back then, Kobe had the hardest time turning it off. And I have two individuals now, Maxx Crosby and Paul Skenes are both that way. They have a very, very hard time turning it off. Very, very, very hard. And what’s unique about Paul about this thing, he’s only 23 years old. So, you usually don’t find individuals that– but this is why he is who he is. And does he have the ability to grow in those other things? Absolutely. And you notice I said grow. I don’t want him to change. I want him to grow into those individuals. I don’t want him to change into that individual. I want to see him grow into that individual.
And can you see it in both of them? Absolutely. Just knowing it really taught them how, because they’ve worked. How they’ve gotten to this place is by doing work, doing work, doing work, doing work, doing work. And now, we have to tell them, well, listen, if you add this component in here, it’s actually going to take your career even farther. And it’s difficult to understand right away, but you give them little things and little tasks and little things here and there, and they kind of see, we teach them, listen, you need a release. You need a release. You need a mental release.
And what’s unique about Maxx is he has a daughter. And you’re looking at an individual who’s 6’6, 6’7, 6’8, 260-something pounds, and you see his little girl come in and it’s a different individual. He literally went from this guy that literally wants to rip your neck off to an individual that literally makes that transition. And it was very difficult for him to understand that. I said, hey, I said, she’s your release. I said, she’s your release. And now that he’s more engaged in those little things, and Kobe was the same way. His family was his release.
We protect the individuals that are close to us because we don’t want to hurt them. We don’t want to hurt them, but we don’t understand. Many times, having them close to us, even if it’s just for a moment, if it’s just for a moment, allows us to have a total reset and do. The moment of just doing life as small as it may be allows us to perform even better when we have to do work.
Brad Johnson: Well, I remember you saying the true greats are obsessed, which is exactly what you’re talking about here. Do you think that’s an innate thing? They’re born with it, that’s their DNA. They’ve just got this mamba mentality and then it needs to be harnessed later in life. Or like, how do you think about that? If we apply that to business and somebody just wants to be the upper echelon of an independent financial advisor, business owner, can that be developed, kind of that…
Tim Grover: It can all be developed. When people are talking about Relentless, there’s a thing that people say, either you have it or you don’t, I disagree with that, the ones that have it figured it out. The ones that didn’t are the ones that say either you have it or you don’t. And I always say this, you become that personality of obsession, of wanting something so bad. And this is going to be a little difficult for people to understand is everybody experiences some form of trauma in their life. And it could be at any age. How you handle that dark moment, how you handle that broken moment, how you handle that trauma determines your level of obsession. It literally determines your level of obsession.
You got individuals that will quit. And you got other individuals that will say, this is not going to be my identity. This is not going to be– so they go even more into it. They go even deeper. They go even more into it, and they learn that it’s a healthy obsession versus an unhealthy obsession. A healthy obsession is you win and everybody else around you wins. It comes with a price. An unhealthy obsession is you win, everybody else loses, but eventually, you end up being the biggest loser.
Brad Johnson: Yeah, you shared this concept at launch that the dawn of every new day starts at midnight when it’s completely dark out. I’m kind of piggybacking on that idea and just a sheer coincidence would have it, I just watched the 30 for 30 where Jordan– I think it’s called Jordan Rides the Bus or something. It’s when he three-peated, then his dad, unfortunately, that tragedy occurred and he literally took the time off to go try pro baseball before he came back later and three-peat it again. Do you think for Jordan, because part of what came out of that documentary is he was just so worn out from the grind and like being obsessed with basketball? Was that his release with his losing his dad, like that baseball journey in between? Before he came back a different player later, like, what are your thoughts there?
Tim Grover: Well, this is my opinion, this is something I don’t discuss with him or the part that he has discussed with me, I’m not willing to share it, is that he was the first athlete that literally, everything was scrutinized. Everything he did. I mean, the amount of fans that would show up outside a hotel, they’re like literally used to close the streets down when we used to travel on the road, and he’d be in like, let’s pick and you see, let’s just say Seattle. This is where they had a basketball team, and you’d go down there for a preseason game or whatever it may be. I’m not exaggerating. Outside the hotel, there were 5,000 people waiting to try to get a glimpse of him.
Brad Johnson: Wow.
Tim Grover: All right. And having to be present and perfect and watching everything you do and how you act and how you say, and after every single game, home or away, there’s only a hundred people waiting in front of your locker and they’re not waiting for anybody else. They want to hear your conversation first. So, having to be perfect through almost everything, it’s a heavy burden to carry. It’s a very, very heavy burden to carry on on a regular basis. Now, his decision to go play baseball was obviously his decision. He chose to make that. He chose and made the decision. Nothing pushed him into that decision. I know that. But he felt at that time, that was the best thing for him from a mental standpoint. And he let people know that.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. It was a fascinating story because I’d forgotten that little piece of it because I was a kid back then. Did you guys train together during that era? Did you train him during baseball?
Tim Grover: I was down there with him for baseball. He went down there. This is a little funniest story that it was, after about maybe a month, month and a half being down there, I get a phone call. He goes, “Hey, man, what are you doing?” I said, “Well, I’m not doing a whole lot now.” He goes, “Why don’t you come down for a couple of days?” Yeah, a couple of days turned into, what? A year and a half.
Brad Johnson: Oh, you were a year and a half in Birmingham?
Tim Grover: Yeah.
Brad Johnson: Oh, wow.
Tim Grover: Yeah, a couple of days, started a couple of days, started through a year and a half.
Brad Johnson: Well, you had to switch up the program a bit too, to go from basketball to baseball.
Tim Grover: Yes. Yeah, yeah.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. Well, it’s pretty wild. He actually, in the short amount of time, it just shows the kind of dedication he had. He actually was batting what, .250 as a minor league player that hadn’t played since high school.
Tim Grover: Everyone talks about it. They look at the end result as whether it was a success or a failure. For each individual out there, how often have you let a challenge pass you by because you already dictated the end result in your mind from a negative standpoint? So, you decided not to do that challenge. Being a part of your group, like, I mean, you know what? This isn’t for me. This isn’t, and they let three, four years of indecisiveness of change, indecisiveness of growth, indecisiveness of a partnership. How much time have you lost? Because you already had a preconceived notion of what the negative result was going to be. Michael always said, he goes, “Why should I worry about a shot I’ve never taken?” And you have so many other individuals that like, they’ve already decided what the outcome is going to be without even taking the shot.
Brad Johnson: Yeah. The not being scared to get uncomfortable and kind of waiting to worry. One of the coaches I used to work with, he’s like, “Wait to worry. You don’t even know if that’s going to come to fruition, so why are you even worrying about it right now?” And so many people stop their journey before it even starts, to your point, it’s so true. Well, I know we’re right at time here, Tim. This has flown. I’ve loved every moment.
You closed your conversation in Palm Springs with just something that was incredibly powerful to me. And I’ve seen a lot of keynotes over the years, and that was one of the most powerful moments. And you shared kind of a concept that I’d love if you’re open to it, just kind of sharing with the audience here as we wrap it up of kind of the heartbeat and not taking that for granted. Would you mind just sharing some closing thoughts around that? Because I think it ties in perfectly with what we’re talking about right now.
Tim Grover: Yeah. Everybody always talks about money as a valuable commodity and this and all this different thing. And I said, “The most valuable commodity you own are your heartbeats because we only have a limited amount. Your business is to teach individuals how they can make more money, how they can enjoy their more time, how they can do all this thing. But there’s not a business out there yet that I know of that can give you more heartbeats.” So, the individuals you share them with, how you use them, well, understand how precious they are, understand how really precious they are.
And use them with individuals, use them with experiences that deserve them. And so many times we use our heartbeats for things we don’t want to do that, or other people have told us this is a waste of our time staying too long in a comfortable space. Well, it’s the most valuable commodity. It literally is. And take each heartbeat, don’t take it for granted. I always say every single morning when I get up, if I can open my eyes and I can put my feet on the ground, the first two words I utter is, thank you. The rest is up to me. Literally, the rest is up to me because one day, I’m not going to be able to have that experience. And I never know when the last day of that experience is going to happen.
Brad Johnson: That’s powerful. Well, thank you for sharing that. I remember being in the back of the room when you shared that, it made me– back to thinking about your own thinking, it made me just reevaluate the beauty of the journey that I’ve been on the last five years. And it was a very intentional one where I left a 13-year career that had been quite the run. But without that commitment to change and really putting things in perspective of like, hey, we got one life to live, it probably would’ve never happened. So, it really hit home to me. So, Tim…
Tim Grover: Well, I’ll give you a little more thing, something related to that. I firmly believe we all have two lives. We all have two lives, and then we start living when we actually know we only have one.
Brad Johnson: That’s interesting. Yeah. Well, my man, this was awesome. I’ve enjoyed our time together and look forward to hopefully the next time, we cross paths in person and keep doing awesome things. You’re making a massive impact out there, so I appreciate you.
Tim Grover: Appreciate it, brother. And if there’s anything we can ever do for you guys, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
Brad Johnson: All right, we’ll do. Till next time. See you, Tim.
Tim Grover: Bye.
