- We took a lot of pride in trailblazing,
and how the game was played.
I knew at that time, when I was eight,
I wanted to be an entertainer.
And I loved the idea of that.
It wasn't me, personally, that they didn't like.
It was that I wasn't being me.
Life brings drama,
and you've got to deal with this person,
and maintain a healthy relationship.
Yes, I get up at crazy hours,
whether it's three o'clock in the morning.
By the way, when we were talking in London,
I was getting up at three
'cause I had to be on set at four.
It is the worst mistake you will ever make.
He said, "You're ruining your career."
I love action, and I love kickin' ass.
But the goal is to become a better actor.
Get your ass kicked, get back up,
and put the gloves back on, and you swing away.
When I was 16 years old,
that was the last time that I was arrested.
I don't know how it happened,
but my cousin, who was on tour with us,
actually just got busted with prostitutes,
and my name is attached to it now.
- He's a Canadian-American actor, producer,
and semi-retired wrestler.
The Rock is considered by many to be the biggest superstar
in WWE history.
His autobiography debuted at #1 on the New York Times
Bestseller List.
He's Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson,
and here are his top 10 rules for success.
- We were bad.
We intimidated, we dominated,
but we took a lot of pride in that!
We took a lot of pride in trailblazing,
and how the game was played back at that time.
We would intimidate teams,
and we would want to dominate teams.
But also, too, we also had the thought process
that a team was never going to outwork us.
We were going to be the hardest working team in the country.
And check this out.
What we would do, for example,
we would have a big game that has a lot at stake.
So we would go into the Doak Campbell Stadium,
and instead of going through your general practice,
what we would do is do things a little bit different,
just to intimidate them.
So as a team, we would kind of all line up,
we're in their stadium, we've got their staff,
we've got some players who are watching us.
Instead of going through our plays,
we would just start to give cadence calls.
So, for example, the whole team,
we would say things like--
- I don't know, maybe you scared them!
(Dwayne laughs)
Don't hold back, Dwayne!
- We would say, "All us Canes, we got an itch!
"Florida State's going to be our bitch!"
(audience laughs and cheers)
Like that!
I wanted to entertain.
When I was eight years old, I thought I was a combination
of these guys.
I thought I was a combination of Chuck Norris,
Richard Pryor, Harrison Ford, and Rocky Balboa.
And Harrison Ford from Indiana Jones.
So I was like all these guys, and Elvis Presley, too.
Yeah, eight, right? (laughs)
- [Announcer] Lofty ambitions, right? (laughs)
- So I knew at that time, when I was eight,
I wanted to be an entertainer,
and I loved the idea of that,
and what it meant.
And when I was eight,
I saw Indiana Jones for the first time,
and I love that character.
I'm like, wow, that guy was so heroic, he kicked ass.
I remember I had great angst every night
before I went out, because I was not able to be myself.
(announcers shouting)
(audience cheering loudly)
My very first Wrestlemania, the biggest show of the year,
the Superbowl of wrestling.
That night, 20,000 fans started chanting, "Rocky sucks!"
(laughs) It was a sobering moment.
And that was the beginning of the end
of my initial run in the WWE.
A few weeks later, I tore a tendon in my knee,
and I was out for the rest of the summer.
I came to the realization before I went back
that it wasn't me, personally, that they didn't like.
It was that I wasn't being me.
I wasn't being real, wasn't being authentic.
Who is this guy, in wrestling, who's smiling
when he's getting beat?
A few weeks later, I got a call from the WWE,
and I spoke to Vince McMahon.
He said, "When you come back, we could continue
"to shove you down people's throats,
"or we could your heel because they want to boo you anyway."
I said, "It's a great idea."
And I said, "Before we get off the phone,
"I have one request."
I said, "When I come back, and we go live,
"I just need two minutes live.
"Me, talking to the audience, live.
"Two minutes is all I'm asking."
He said, "Okay, you got it."
Couple weeks later, I came back, we were on live TV,
I grabbed the microphone, fans were already booing.
They started chanting, "Rocky sucks".
In arenas across the country,
I heard chants of "Rocky sucks".
(audience cheers)
I said, "I may be a lot of things,
"The Rocky might seem like a lot of things,
"But 'sucks' isn't one of them."
But 'sucks' isn't one of 'em!
In that moment, The Rock was born.
And about a month later,
I was the hottest deal in the company.
(pensive music)
And things were on fire.
And the greatest lesson about that is, be you.
Be yourself, whether it's in entertainment,
whether it's out in public,
whether you're a celebrity or not, whatever.
The most powerful thing you could be is yourself.
Yes, I get up super early, generally.
I have this thing where I like beating the sun up.
If the sun is down, I have to get up.
And how do I do it?
It's just important to find balance,
and I try to do things that I really enjoy doing.
And a lot of the times, it's like in life,
life brings drama and you have to deal with this person,
and then have a healthy relationship here,
and all these things.
You try just to kind of balance them out as best as I can.
I have a great team around me, by the way,
who really, really helps me, allows for me to come in
and work 12 hours a day, 14 hours a day.
Get up at three o'clock in the morning,
send out an Instagram video where I'm talking
to my cardio machine like a crazy maniac.
(audience laughs)
Yeah, requires a lot of people around.
Yes, I get up at crazy hours,
whether it's three o'clock in the morning.
By the way, when we were talking in London,
I was getting up at three 'cause I had to be on set by four.
I'm sorry, by seven.
So whatever time my call-time is, and I tell this
to studios and directors and producers.
So my call-time is at seven, then you back your clock up
four hours and then that's when I get up,
and I train twice.
I get my cardio in, breakfast,
and then I'll go hit the weights.
Clangin' and bangin', we call it. Jackin' iron!
- But like, what time do you go to bed?
You might shoot really late at night.
- On a movie, I probably average about five hours of sleep.
I found that with depression,
one of the most important things you could realize
is that you're not alone.
You're not the first to go through it,
you're not going to be the last to go through it.
And oftentimes, it happens.
You feel like you're alone, and you feel like it's only you,
and you're in your bubble, and I wish I had someone
at that time who could just pull me aside, and,
"Hey, it's going to be okay. It'll be okay."
I wish I knew that, you've just got to remember,
hold on to that fundamental quality of faith.
Have faith, and on the other side of your pain
is something good.
After about a month and a half of staying
in that little apartment and cleaning,
I got a phone call from the head coach of the team
who cut me.
Head coach of the Calgary Stampeders.
He called me and he said, "Hey, I know we cut you,
"but I'd like you to come back."
I said, "Okay, I appreciate that, Coach.
"Thank you very much, I'll think about it."
And he said, "Okay, great."
I hung up the phone, and my dad said,
"You're going to do it, right?"
I said, "No, I don't think so.
"I think I'm done with that."
And he goes, "What?"
I said, "My gut tells me I'm done."
He said, "What are you going to do?"
I took a deep breath,
I said that I'd like to get into the business.
He said, "What business?"
I said, "The wrestling business."
He said, "You are throwing it all away.
"It is the worst mistake you will ever make."
He said, "You're ruining your career."
I said, "Maybe I'll be no good, but I feel like
"in my heart, I have to do this,
"and I either need you to train me
"or I need you to not train me."
My dad rose to the occasion, so I trained.
And it wound up being one of the greatest chapters
in my life.
The goal, and this is my 10th year of acting,
the goal is always to work,
and I started in the action genre.
I love action, and I love kickin' ass.
But the goal is to become a better actor,
and so, for me, in order for me to do that,
I had to work in all different genres.
I wanted to explore family movies, comedies,
action-comedies, family comedies, mix drama into it as well.
So that was important to me, just to get better.
I knew I wanted to be something,
and it was important to me to be something.
It was important to me that I didn't fail.
By the way, if I did fail, what was also important
was the lesson.
And I didn't realize that until I got older.
'Cause when you're in it, you're in the grind,
you don't really recognize those things
when you're younger, but I can recognize them now,
and the importance of them now.
And in terms of the drive and the determination,
a lot of it was experience, too.
Get your ass kicked, get back up,
put the gloves back on, and you swing away.
When I was 16 years old,
that was the last time that I was arrested,
and at that time, we were at an all-time low,
I think, with our family.
At that time, we were living in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
And I am already a pretty big boy, 6'4", 200,
maybe 225 pounds, I had a very bad mustache.
I had a chip on my shoulder.
Fresh into this high school in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania,
Freedom High School.
I wanted to use the bathroom,
but I didn't want to use the regular boys' bathroom,
because the boys' bathroom smelled like smoke,
and all the other fun stuff that boys' bathrooms smell like.
So I ended up going into the teacher's lounge,
and a teacher comes in, his name is Jody Swick, tough guy.
He says, "Hey, you can't be in here!"
I kind of pause, look over my shoulder,
"Okay, I'll leave when I'm done."
And I continued to wash my hands.
I slowly dried my hands, and I walked by him,
and I kind of just looked at 'em as I walked by,
he looked at me, didn't say a word, but he was fuming.
I went home that night and I felt bad.
I just felt bad.
The very next day, I found him,
and I went to see him in his class, and I said,
"I just want to apologize for how I acted yesterday,
"and I'm sorry."
And I stuck my hand out.
And he looked at my hand, and looked at me,
and he looked at my hand again.
And he shook my hand. I'll never forget that shake.
He wouldn't let go.
He said, "I want you to do something for me."
I said, "Yes?"
And he said, "Why don't you come out
"and play football for me?"
I said, "Okay."
He said, "Alright, I have your word?"
"Yeah, sure, you've got my word."
I didn't think much of it,
I thought, okay, I'll play some football.
I like playing football, it's cool.
And I went out, and I played football for Jody Swick,
and he was our head football coach,
and he became a father figure to me, and a mentor.
I fell in love with the game of football.
My grades got better, and I started getting recruited
from every college across the country.
College coaches would come in and say,
"There he is, Dwayne Johnson, 6'4", 250.
"Plays both sides of the ball, very aggressive."
My thought process started to change.
That's when I started thinking about goals,
and what I wanted to accomplish.
And I love that man.
I'll never forget the impact that he had in my life,
and the reminder that I might take away
from that amazing relationship that I had
was the empathy that he had for a punk kid
who treated him so rudely and disrespectfully.
He looked past that B.S., and said,
"I believe in you, and I want to turn you around."
Oftentimes, when I see kids,
and they have been labeled, "Oh, they're punk kids."
True, but there's good in 'em,
and we've got to see that potential.
And I enjoy that today, seeing the potential in kids,
just like he did.
Especially kids who are kind of wayward.
And they've been going through it.
I know what it's like, so thank you, Jody.
Thank you, buddy.
I love April Fool's, but the thing about it is,
my April Fool's runs the entire year.
Because it's like, April Fool's, everyone's expecting it.
So there's past around Christmastime,
when we're getting ready to make a big announcement
for a movie, and I called my agent, I was overseas,
and I called my agent, Brad Slater.
I woke him up in the middle of the night,
and I was like, "Hey man, I got to talk to you."
He was like, "What's going on, what's wrong?"
I said, "I don't know how it happened,
"but my cousin, who's on tour with us,
"just got busted with prostitutes,
"and my name is attached to it now,
"and it's all getting ready to hit the press."
He started freaking out.
I was like, "Brad, are you okay?"
He's getting emotional.
"Oh my god, what are we going to do?"
And he goes, "I'm going to be calm in the pocket,
"I'm thinkin' about this, hold on."
And I was like, "I don't know what to do.
"There's like, multiple prostitutes with this thing."
(audience laughs)
"There's a whole ring over here, and it's unbelievable!"
I had him going and going, and finally, I was like,
"Oh, Brad!" And he was like, "What?"
"December Fools'!"
(audience laughs and applauds)
(Dwayne laughs)
- [Announcer] That's ridiculous!
- And that's the thing, I'm like, "December Fools'!"
You've got to say it like that,
and there was a long pause.
- Thank you so much for watching,
I made this video because David Uyan asked me to,
so if there's a famous entrepreneur
that you want me to profile next,
leave it in the comments below and I'll see what I can do.
I also love to know which of The Rock's top 10 tips
meant the most to you,
is going to have the biggest impact on your life and business?
Leave it in the comments, and join the discussion.
Thank you so much for watching, continue to believe,
and I'll see you soon.
(swooping)