you know what I want young people to get
i want them to get confidence and I want
to think like I think I think there's nothing in the world that I could
absolutely be when we were in Atlanta we did the Laffapalooza we do it every
every year this was our best year because we're coming off of that Oscar
and we're coming right into this african-american community where these
kids are looking and we had the teens of comedy these young guys with confidence
and swagger and Bravo I said to all you kids in here I want you to be able to
think that every option is open my grandmother taught me every option is
open because when you on the other side of those tracks and when you feel like
you're not you know not you're not pretty or that you're not this or
whatever that that mentality is going on in the neighborhood you know you can
stay stagnant in that you can just stay like well I could never but you really
can and so most important thing is confidence
LeBron shows up this dude comes in 15 minutes before practice and Lebron
gives him that look like hey dude what's going on here
he's like what do you mean im 15 minutes early
he's like you should have been here an hour ago and when he
says that to this dude the guy knows LeBron's been there for two hours so all
I ask you to do like here's a guy probably the best that's ever walked out
on a basketball court short of Michael Jordan both of them
have one thing in common they worked okay wasn't about their just their
talent was about their work ethic people knew them for their work ethic so just
ask yourself this week do people know you for your work ethic
are people like men you work hard are people actually commenting about you showing up
early and staying late because if they're not then you're just you're just
blending in with everybody else's work ethic at the end of the day talent will
not win the game it is work ethic that will win the game so when I saw this I'm
like here's a guy top of his game got all the money you could possibly he
could never spend all his money impossible he'll be a billionaire okay
and he's showing up two hours early to make sure he
plays the game to make sure he's in physical condition to make sure that he can stay
in the game long pass he doesn't even need it
he's got all his ranks I got to tell you I was so inspired by it because I got a
bunch of partners I got guys that I do business with I got one of them in
particular that I'm having some problems with he told me man if I had your money
dude I would retire he said it to me over and over and I hadn't been
listening to it enough to understand he wants to go lay it out okay you cannot
run what's that thing called you did can't do an Iron Man with that attitude
don't know why you'd want to do an Ironman
you could do an Iron Man and then take that and add it to your
career to the longevity of your career you know because look it's gonna be five
years from now ten years from now it's gonna be 20 years you're gonna look back
and say and the marketplace is gonna reward whatever you do every day well I
heard this quote when I was 15 back in the lean days and the quote was it's
nice to be important but it's more important to be nice just like it
happened yesterday I thought if I'm ever important one day I'll be nice to people
if I'm ever important because I always just wanted to apply that i just loved hearing that
and honestly brother being nice I always say this to people being nice and
kind is literally the easiest thing we can do it's the easiest to compared to
being an asshole to people and not only that but then also you have an
opportunity to make somebody's day I had to learn Drive that's why I have my
managers to teach me drive or to you know push me because you can't relax you
just could say i could to do that or i could do that but are you gonna be that person I know
this person this person who calls me up man did you see what Denzel did in that
movie man that was and you're like he said I could have and maybe he could
have but he doesn't have the drive that denzel has and so therefore if you don't have
Drive then you never you quit cultivating your talent because once you
rest and once you say it's over I've gotten to the mountaintop
then your talent starts to dwindle - that's why the minute
the war season's over I was at Willie's in Miami doing jokes for people
just on the street like just to see what would work
you know jokes either about the Oscars or jokes about whatever and then you go to
Atlanta and work on your jokes there so that hustle what I call hustle it's very
important because at some point you're gonna be able to pull the hustle back
just a little bit and then you pick your spots the time right now is to hustle
to set things up so that in the future you're able to cut back just a little
bit and just pick your spot if your job is to try to be the best basketball
player you can be to do that you have to practice you have to train you want
to train as much as you can as often as you can so if you get up at 10:00 in the
morning train at 11:00, 12:00 train at
12:00 train for two hours 12:00 to 2:00
you have to let your body recover so you eat
get back out your train start training
at 6:00 train from 6:00 to 8:00 right and now go home shower you eat dinner you go
to bed you wake up do it again right those are two sessions now imagine you
wake up at 3:00 you train at 4:00, 4:00 - 6:00
come home breakfast relax oh so now you're
back at it again 9:00 to 11:00 relax and now all of a sudden you're back at it again
2:00 and 4:00 now you're back at it again 7:00 to 9:00 look how much more
training I have done by simply starting at 4:00 right and so now you do that and
as the years go on the separation that you have with competitors, your peers
just grows larger, and larger, and larger, and larger by year five or six doesn't
matter what kind of work they're doing in the summer they're never going to catch up
because they're five years behind so it makes sense to get up and start your day
early because you can get more work done
for me it was common sense like I can
if I start earlier I can train more hours and I know the other guys aren't
doing it because I know what their training schedule is right so I know if
I do this consistently over time the gaps is just gonna widen, and widen and widen
widen and they won't be able to get that back so to me it was
just common sense am like thinking how can I get an advantage start earlier
yeah let's do that
how do you develop that or what do you
what do you learn that from well I think it's just you know it's just a matter of
what's important to you what's important to you for whatever reason you
know I felt like I didn't feel good about myself if I wasn't doing
everything I could to be the best version of myself if I felt like I left
anything on the table it would eat away at me I wouldn't be
able to look myself in the mirror right so the reason why I can retire now
and be completely comfortable about it because I know that I've done everything
I could to be the best basketball player I could be and so that's where it comes
from for me you can't leave any stone unturned
I'm not Mr. mentor I'm not the
one who says let's sit down tell me how it's going I'm gonna tell you exactly
how I am "get off your ass and get out there and sell something" that's right
I mean I've never been the okay I need a mentor you know a lot of people look for
mentors thinking they're gonna tell me the shortcut mark you be my mentor you
know the way and they think I'm gonna go convey some magics here's the dust go go
go it doesn't work that way I still grind
I love the grind if you're competing on one of my businesses I'm gonna kick your
ass cuz I'm gonna out grind you right you've got to get out there and do the
work so when it comes to how do you learn right because that's the question
how do I learn this stuff everybody everybody has got to go through that process
I read for hours I'm in a tech business I'm a
media business the entertainment business I've got to try to prepare
myself for all the Shark Tank businesses I read three hours plus a day right what
everybody else is getting a suntan or even when I'm getting a sun tan
I'm online or I've got books I'm reading
all I can