in the midst of the chaos of his third season Bryant was a very lost lonely frustrated 20-year-old I just want to be the man he told me reaffirming his goal of making himself into the NBA's top player I don't know how I'm going to get there I just have to find a way and he
would despite how unlikely such a goal seemed at that time as he closed in on the end of his career Bryant could look back at the numbers he racked up in 20 seasons and declare that he had earned a seat at the table with the game's greatest players though that night he
said he didn't know how he would get to the top he had settled in on an answer that he had known all along he was going to grind his way there implacably relentlessly grind away at the challenges of the game night after night game after game until he found a
dominance born of his ability to outwork everyone else he is easily the most driven competitor in the history of the game one who over the seasons quietly gained a reputation among the Insiders of the sport as an absolute master of study and intense
preparation with a singular focus on detail that astonished those around him in turn his life also proved to be a machine that churned out immense conflict just about all of it the byproduct of his push to dominate the sport night after night day after day
for two decades through injury and turmoil through the rupture of one key relationship after another there would be no price he would not pay to have his greatness what follows in this book is my effort to capture his fascinating story in many ways a cautionary
tale that was an excerpt from the book that we talked about today which is this giant 600 page biography that I'm holding in my hand it's called Showboat the life of Kobe Bryant and it was written by Roland Len so in addition to reading this book
I also watched and then took notes on this new documentary on the redeem team which is the 2008 Olympic basketball team that Kobe was on and I think I'll quote some notes from the podcast but I'm also going to put all the notes that I took while watching the documentary in
the show notes so I want to start in introduction with a few themes that you and I have discussed a few times and the first thing is that belief comes before ability and I think most people mistakenly reverse the order and we see
this demonstrated because way before he even gets to the NBA Kobe believed that he was going to be one of the greatest basketball players to ever live from his teen years Kobe Bryant had been shockingly bold in his prediction that he's going to make himself the greatest
basketball player ever at every turn this is going to be a second theme that you and I have discussed over and over again when you have a giant goal for your life other people around you are not going to be able to understand that that is an extremely rare trait and so
as a result they're going to be extremely dismissive and many kind they'll call you crazy the word Kobe is crazy the phrase Co Kobe is crazy is repeated over and over and over again in this book so it says at every turn his Declarations of future greatness have
been met with head shaking and raised eyebrows because such dreams are ludicrous they're impossible to fulfill Kobe is crazy the people around him concluded time and time again with a laugh and this next paragraph is happening I think Kobe's around 12 years
old so his dad played in the NBA in many cases we're going to talk a lot about that actually the fact that you can always understand the son by the story of his father and that the story of the father is embedded in his son his dad in many ways is the anti- Kobe he made it
to the NBA but lacked discipline started doing a bunch of drugs had problems with alcohol had problems with gambling and soon no team in the NBA wanted him so he winds up having to uh play in Italy and it says since a young age when he rode
on bus trips with his father's second tier Italian league team he promised the old man and his father's teamate mates that he was going to be far better than either of them Bryant's existence has been a singular almost inhuman pursuit of that greatness so basketball was a
lifelong obsession with Kobe starts even at a very early age at four years old his dad is taking him to NBA games because he's still playing in the NBA at this time and he said this is a quote from his dad I've taken Kobe to Lakers games and introduced him to the players
he's a huge Magic Johnson fan and this is the first hint that his father is the anti- Kobe and really this is just disgusting level of irresponsibility from coming from a father I think at this point he's got two daughters and I think Kobe is the youngest and look what
he does so his father's playing for the Houston Rockets at the time and it says in his last season uh he played 81 games the one game he missed made headlines when he went bust in an allight poker game and didn't have money for a cab to
make the team bust after that season it became clear that absolutely no one in the NBA wanted the Jelly Bean anymore the Jelly Bean was uh his dad's nickname he was just 28 and in his prime years as a player looking back much later Jerry West would observe he threw away his
career and so there's several stories in this book about how irresponsible and like the bad decisions that his father makes if you put Kobe and his father on a spectrum all the way on the left you would have his father like uh doing
cocaine in one case he gets pulled over by the cops I think he's he's also drinking and driving and he he takes off they stop him and then he like leads them on a highspeed chase then winds up crashing his car gets arrested and in the car they find not only another woman
but several vials of cocaine and so on one end of the spectrum you have that level of behavior and then on the far other end of the spectrum it's almost like Kobe's insane level of dedication was like overcompensation for the bad decision making of his father so let's
go to a description of Kobe when he's 8 years old he's playing at a basketball camp the family's already moved to Italy at this point and this is how his teammates were describing him no Smiles very determined he was always so serious about everything he did as far as Sports
always so intense he was 8 years old the rest of the kids just wanted to play and he was like I want to win and so later in life Kobe talks about the benefit of learning how to play basketball in Italy and the fact that he thought it gave him
an edge and so this part was especially great because spread out over two pages is a bunch of different ideas and the note I left myself here is he's laying out a blueprint and there's four parts to it Master the fundamentals improve your weaknesses study the greats and
concentrate and so he says I started playing basketball over there meeting Italy which was great because I learned the fundamentals first most kids who grow up in America learn all the fancy dribbling in Italy they teach you true fundamentals and leave out all that other
nonsense and so I've told this story before on past episodes but I think it's worth repeating here shortly before he died one of the last conversations he had with Michael Jordan and we're going to get to Jordan today a lot because he's a a main character in this book as
well Jordan and Kobe are on the phone because this idea about just forget the fancy stuff Master the fundamentals at a deep deep level Something Kobe repeated a bunch it's in the book it's in interviews with him and so he calls up
Michael Jordan and he's talking about the way they're teaching his daughter how to play basketball and he thought that they were prioritizing like fancy stuff over fundamentals so he calls up Jordan he's like hey I'm trying to figure like I'm trying to I'm having a
hard time remember remembering what I was learning when I was 12 on how to play basketball but I'm pretty sure it's not all this stuff and Jordan's response was dude at 12 I was playing baseball and so the point Kobe was making in this interview is like think about that the
greatest player to ever live hadn't even picked up a basketball yet your 12-year-old doesn't need all this other fancy stuff just focus on the fundamentals so back to the book it says throughout his career if he was deficient in something Bryant would
display the work ethic to build every element of his competitive portfolio with an almost manic insistence so that's the second part Master the fundamentals number one number two improve your weaknesses he never seemed to stop working at the game even at that
very young age if he wasn't playing the game then he was watching videotape of NBA stars that's number three study the greats and then finally number four he would show that he had already grasped the powers of of concentration and then we skip ahead and that third part study
the greats is repeated I'm not kidding like a dozen times in this book and when they were about to describe it it's exactly what you and I are doing on Founders listening to Founders is like watching game tape of History's Greatest entrpreneurs so it said soon Joe which
is his dad was subscribing to a service that delivered video of games directly they're still in Italy at this point Joe and Kobe would pour over them together taking notes of all the key subtleties the footwork the various offensive and
defensive styles of NBA teams and their Stars I used to watch everybody from Magic to bird to Michael Jordan to Dominique Wilt Wilkins Bryant recalled I used to watch their moves and then i' add them to my game it was the beginning
of a career-long focus on studying game recordings he would invest long hours each day in breaking down his own performances and those of opponents far more than what any other NBA player would ever contemplate undertaking so there's this guy named Tim Grover who
trained both Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant and I heard him in an interview talk about this and Tim said everybody watch film of the current players Kobe would get film of players going way back he would say Jerry he would watch Jerry West Oscar Robinson he'd say I want to
see what those guys did to be successful so during the offseason they'd come home from Italy to Philadelphia where they're from and Kobe would play in the summer league and one of the counselors of the summer league tries to give Kobe terrible advice which
is advice a lot of people say and it's they say be realistic so it says one of the counselors was looking over the applications and noticed that under career plans Kobe had listed NBA so the councilor made it a point to admonish Kobe only one in a million make it to
the NBA the counselor said so you have to plan on a future other than basketball I'm going to be that one in a million Kobe replied he was 11 and that kind of self-belief and desire to be quote unquote unreal realistic is very common in these stories that you and I
study when when I got to this part the first thing that came to mind was actually one of my favorite quotes from Jay-Z's autobiography which I covered back on episode 238 and he's describing like think about like how quote unquote unrealistic Jay-Z's life is if you were
describing it it sounds like Fiction it's like okay well you're the the youngest of four children uh you don't have a dad you're being raised by a single mom you live in the projects if you could picture Jay-Z at maybe 15 or 16 years old at this point in his life
the idea that he's going to get to the top of his profession in an industry that's just beginning which is the hip-hop industry that he's going to found and sell multiple companies for hundreds of millions of dollars eventually become a billionaire and
marry one of the most beautiful women on the planet there's no way anybody would have predicted that at that point in his life but that actually happened and so JZ understands it's all the same Journey right whether you're playing basketball
you're trying to start a company you're trying to climb a mountain he called calls it the dream of being the exception it's perfect this is what Jay-Z wrote there's no way to quantify all that on a spreadsheet but it's the dream of being the exception and we see
that with Kobe right there it's like that's nice that all these other people failed at getting to the NBA maybe one in a million that's fine I'm that one in a million so then we skip ahead now they're living in Philadelphia full-time Kobe is in high school and we see this
legendary work ethic is already present that fall in high school his coach discovered that Brian had a startling work ethic he pushed himself through a grueling self-improvement schedule that included road work weights and seemingly non-stop basketball in Team practices he
was determined to never lose a team drill or contest for almost four years he would maintain a perfect record in that regard and then we see that he matches a fierce work ethic with a Relentless learning machine like mentality this is his coach saying you
know the work ethic is one thing but he also had a spongelike mentality to be the best that he could and to do so he would absorb information I always thought his brain was a sponge the coach said and obviously if you've ever coached you know that you just can't say
that about all of your players and then the coach continues to talk about the fact that his level of intensity raised the bar for everybody else and so this part made me think about one of my all-time favorite Steve Jobs quotes
where he says be a yard stick of quality some people aren't used to an environment where Excellence is expected and so this is his high school coach describing that once the they meaning his other teammates saw how hard he worked and how passionate he was about
the game it was hard for them not to get on board with what we were trying to do and so if you watch that redeemed team documentary that's on Netflix they tell a story and this story went viral I saw it on a b a bunch of different platforms
and it talks about hey they're they're in Vegas they're doing like a training camp for the Olympic basketball team all the other players go out to a club and they say hey we're we had a great time we come back at 5:30 in the morning back to the team hotel and we see that Kobe
is already working out and this is what this is a direct quote from LeBron James who's very young at this point in his career and he says this Kobe was already drenched in sweat yeah he's different and this was the end result by the end of the week the whole
team was on Kobe's schedule so what is ex exactly what is happening at this point in the book right he's in high school he sets the tone with an increased intensity level his high school teammates match it that exact same thing happens on the Olympic team
and then back to this section of the book there's three this the third idea that's on this page I thought was really important and it's the importance of maintaining a singular Focus his Singularity the focus was just in they're still describing him in high
school but he had this this trait his entire career his Singularity the focus was just incredible I don't know if crazy there's that word again is the right word but he was certainly unique next page still in high school then know I left myself on this page
this will happen you can help me or you get out of my way Kobe Bryant had a clear destination in mind and if you weren't on board he had clearly conveyed the idea that he was the sort who wouldn't hesitate to grab you by the collar and throw you right off the train
and if you think about it it's that's the same idea expressed in a different way we saw this idea before if you have ever read Jeff bezos's biography the everything store somebody working with Jeff described him the same way he said
if you're not good Jeff will chew you up and spit you out and if you are good he's going to jump on your back and ride you into the ground so let's go back to another description of Kobe he's still in high school we're still here now keep in mind he's doing all these crazy
workouts he's dedicated to winning and when he's not working he's studying the greats so it says he worked harder than any other kid that I've ever seen this is the guy that's running the actual summer camp and he wanted it more than anybody else and it says if you're
breaking down tape of Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan which which Kobe's doing as a 14 15 16 and 17y old kid right if you're breaking down tape of Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan and so many other greats you come to consider them your teachers so one of the things that makes
Kobe's story unique is the fact he jumped right from high school to the NBA in fact when he was drafted his parents had to sign the contract because he was 17 and so this book spends quite a bit of time talking the fact that hey you have all these shoe companies like Nike
and Adidas they're playing a huge role in the basketball industry because they're making just so much money and so Kobe's going to sign with Adidas and they're going to put a lot of resources behind him making him obviously extremely well known and making sure
that people buy the shoes but I'm skipping over that part because really what I found so interesting and what personally interesting to me is if you read Phil Knight's autobiography shoe dog which I covered for the second time on episode 186 it's a fantastic it's one
of the best autobiographies of an entrepreneur you can ever get but you have an indication that he's really competitive in his own words but what I always find interesting is how people say no no he's even more competitive Phil Knight is even more competitive
than you could possibly imagine and so I just want to pull out one paragraph cuz I thought this was interesting Jordan and Knight certainly shared a competitive nature that boarded on insanity if you think Jordan and Kobe are competitive go meet Phil Knight he's
a no competitor it's you play for me or I can't stand you and I will kill you that's Phil night full stop and he is not shy about it and so if you wind up buying this book and reading it read the chapter the called the rising there's a lot more detail about the it's
the early days of Nike how it how they're competing with Adidas the amount of money that's involved here it's actually really fascinating um because if you think about it like they they bet their entire marketing Budget on Jordan
when he was he was somewhat known but not nearly as world famous as he was obviously going to be but just this idea where you can even think about like Jordan the influencers getting Equity 40 year 40 years ago and that was a real important turning point in early Nike
history because they gave him a deal that no one El like Adidas and Converse recording Jordan as well but Nike eventually gave him a royalty so it says neither neither Adidas nor Converse could come close to matching the Nike deal which offered an unprecedented
royalty on shoes sold no endorser up until that point had gotten a percentage of profits as Nike had offered Jordan and so then you fast forward I think that's happening in 1984 if I'm not mistaken and so you fast forward you know 40 years and that deal makes Jordan
you know 100 somewhere around like 150 million a year today which sounds crazy and is obviously fantastic for Jordan but it wind up being an even better deal the the main point of me telling the story is like it sounded crazy at the
time but it wind up being a even better deal for Nike okay so we're still not to the NBA in the story yet Kobe's still in high school I wanted to pull this part out because it made me laugh Kobe's known for playing engaging in he believed in engaging in psychological
warfare he thought you should play mind games with your opponents and so he's doing this in high school uh so he's going to call up one of his opponents the voice on the line said Don what's up who's this Carr said it's Kobe what's up man I was just thinking I'm looking
forward to the game Bryant had heard a rumor that Catholic which which is the team going to be his opponent it's the team that Carr the guy he's playing uh calling plays for us okay so it says Brian had heard a rumor that Catholic was losing Arthur Davis who was a top 50
player who partnered with Carr so Bryant was calling and wanted to know if Davis would still be playing in the upcoming game Carr already knew that Davis was leaving the school but he replied that he didn't know and then this is where this the psychological warfare jumps out
I just wanted to see if he's going to be at the game Bryant told him because if it's just you I don't even know if it's worth me coming Carr was stunned he was letting me know Carr said I'm coming to kill you I'm coming to rip your heart
out when you get on the court with me so something important happens that was outside of Kobe's control and is the fact that when he was a senior in high school he's able to play pickup games against NBA players because the NBA is in a lockout and this experience boosts
his already excessive amount of confidence so he plays these pickup games against NBA players and this is what he says I'm telling you man whenever you get a chance to play against these guys don't be afraid man just play your game you'll be surprised
they go for all the moves that High School guys go for and this is important because at the time he's like okay maybe I should go to the NBA he's likeing maybe I should go to Duke maybe should play in college like he's not entirely sure what to do and this really pushed
him over the edge it says it remained difficult to draw too many conclusions from Bryant's experience working out with Pros that summer except for one impression that really mattered Bryant's own he came away think that he could do it that he could play
against NBA players right away and so when I got to this part of the book it made me think of this I've told you before that I have like the these folders on my phone and I save like quotes and videos just as a way like hype myself up and and and really
brainwash myself and so one of these things is this video of Larry Bird a young Larry Bird specifically talking about this experience which is very very similar to what is happening in Bryant's it's just always amazes me how these things connect together it's like the
same story over and over again he's like the book says he came away thinking that he could do it he could play against NBA players right away therefore he could skip college and go right to the NBA right so there's this fantastic video
I've watched I don't know a thousand times and Larry Bird is talking he's like you know they the he's talking essentially about the doubters right they're like you you went to a tiny School uh and so that's the background to what I'm about to quote him here he
says uh they said you never played against a uccla or NRE Dame or an IU they said he meaning Larry uh he's talking about himself they said he won't be able to get his jump sh off in the pros he won't be quick enough he won't be able to rebound it took me three days
after rookie Camp I found out hey this league is nothing I can play in this league and I will dominate in this league and that is so important because he's like wait every Everybody all what the critics were telling me this is a critics don't know that you and I
have talked about over and over again right the critics are saying I can't do this I get to the NBA I'm playing against other NBA players like no I can do this and I'm actually way better than them too I absolutely love love that video and then we go back into Kobe's
work ethic again it's not just saying hey I'm I'm good enough no it's like you have to back that up and you should be putting in the work to do so he says man let me tell you something that's when I first saw it this is one of uh his high
school teammates uh or in the other high school players in this camp that he's in uh he he's a Kobe's a senior in high school we worked out twice a day we would start at 10:00 in the morning Kobe was there at 8: we'd get done at 12: Kobe would stay till 2: we'd start again
at 700 at night Kobe would be there at 5:00 we'd finish at 9: he'd stay to 11 every day none of the pros were doing that and so when I got to that part I thought about another video that I save and this is Kobe actually talking about how to get an edge which can be applied
to any domain right he says your job is to be the best you can be you want to train as much as you can as often as you can imagine you wake up at 3:00 you train 4 to 6 relax now you're back at it again 9 to 11: relax now you're back at it again 2 to 4 relax now you're back at
it 7 to 9 look at how much more training I have done done just by starting at 4: as the years go on the separation that you have with your competitors and peers just grows larger and larger by year five or six it doesn't matter what work
they do in the summer which is when most other players do like their their training and try to focus on improving their game right so he says by your five or six it doesn't matter what work they do in the summer they'll never catch up and this is just a quote from his aaou
coach at this time Kobe's a genius in basketball he studied the game harder than anyone else has ever studied the game the note I left myself on this page how many high school seniors are this focused part one being talking about the girl he's dating in high school being
Kobe Bryant's girlfriend at that age meant lots of evenings at Bryant's house watching basketball videos few pages later how many high school seniors are this focused part two one day just before uh practice the team was informed that it couldn't use the gym because
there was flooding 14 guys practice had to be called off 14 guys just sprinted out of there high-fiving each other excited about no practice this is Bryant screamed slamming a ball on the floor this is we've got to practice I want to practice this is
ridiculous okay so now we get to the point where Kobe is going to the NBA he's already made a decision and this part is really important to understand is that imitation precedes creation this is something I learned from Stephen King
that it is perfectly normal for you to imitate other people before you create something unique that is fundamental to The Human Experience and we're seeing that here because Kobe is spending so much time he's idolizing Michael Jordan he's watching his game tape he's
studying over and over again and so it says they were struck by how much Bryant was beginning to play the part of the next Jordan his head was shaved just like Jordan he talked just like Jordan he had adopted many of Jordan's mannerisms he's 17 and later on in the
book I'm pretty sure I have a highlight where Jordan is just like stop this nonsense like this is perfectly normal Kobe copied me just like I copied the people before me he's like and Jordan even says that's how human beings learn and so one of the promoters that's I
think working at Adidas if I'm not mistaken is is talking about this it says his name's Michael Harris so he says uh um he's talking to Kobe about this he says Kobe had a closet at home filled with critical research it held all these VHS tapes of Michael's games I
wrote Founders and then exclamation points because essentially like you're walking around in your pocket with a podcast that does this for you right Kobe had a closet at home filled with critical research it held all these VHS
tapes of M games he'd pull them out and study them and do the moves look at what I added Bryant would say and then he would do a move I think that's important to sit here and pause on this because this is not unique to Kobe right if you've seen the Last Dance which is a
fantastic documentary you should watch over and over again the the the episode where Kobe appears in the last dance right before he tragically dies right he says something and it gives me goosebumps like I'm not I'm not kidding and he says I truly hate having
discussions on who would win one or one or fans coming up to me saying hey Kobe you'd beat him Kobe and he says I'm like yo and he puts his hands up like hey stop what you get from me I'm getting Goosebumps now what you get from me is
from him I don't get five championships without him because he guided me so much and gave me so much great advice that happens in entrepreneurship too if you listen to episode 107 which is the biography of Soul price everybody knows the business Costco the founder of
Costco was this guy named Jim Sagle Jim snagle started working for soul price when he was like I think he was a teenager and later on I think this is after Soul price passes away Jim had known him for like 50 years at that point and a reporter is talking to him
he's like oh you've known soul for a long time you must have learned a lot from him and he's like no I didn't learn a lot everything everything I know came from him it's the same idea when Kobe says stop what you get from me is from him I don't get five championships without him
because he guided me so much and gave me such great advice it's the same role that Soul played in Jim's life everything I know I learned from him that knowledge passed on from one generation to the next made Jim a billionaire that is incredible how could
this not excite you so a couple Pages later more uh more observations by this promoter this Harris guy that's working with them they're doing all kinds of like Media stuff they they arranged for Kobe to take the the singer Brandy to his high school prom which I'll get to
in a minute so in the coming weeks Harris got a view of just how ambitious young Bryant was he would stay out until 1:00 a.m. but no matter how late Bryant stayed out he was up early and going through unbelievably demanding workouts each day are you crazy there's that word
again I think this is the third or fourth time I've mentioned it it's all over the book I'm telling you just expect for people around you not to understand you people that do not have founder mentality cannot and will not not understand it are you crazy Harris
thought to himself he believed mean Kobe in himself far more than I or anybody else did so they rrange all this media obligations they're going to have like they're make this like big media spectacle about his high school prom and him taking Brandy say People magazine
was there a bunch of dozens of other reporters are there but Bryant almost disappointed them he and a teammate were watching basketball videos think about that he almost missed his prom because he was watching game tape this made me
think about when I did the biography of Rick Rubin on episode 245 Rick Rubin missed picking up his Grammy because he was working so before the Lakers agree to figure out a way to draft Kobe they're doing workouts and Jerry West is a legendary like he's the logo like when
you look at the NBA logo that's Jerry West this is also the guy that uh Kobe had been watching videos of and winds up being a really close Mentor uh throughout like his entire life and so Wes says something interesting here that I think this is why I'm bringing this to
your attention but it says before the workout Bryant got his first opportunity to talk at length with West and this is what Bryant said after that he just knows so much about the game and according to this the workout that Wes put him through was very short and he
says within a few minutes Wes told Bryant that the franchise was going to do everything within its power to draft him and then he describes why and then this is just me being selfish where I wrote on this page like I'm trying to be
like this I want it to be obvious to other people how much work I'm putting into what I'm doing I'm not Lolly gagging I'm taking this very seriously says West had long held to the belief that as a scout you could see what a player could do on the floor but it was
much harder and almost impossible to read a player's heart which is where real greatness lay but Bryant's workout had been so impressive that for Jerry West it had revealed his heart it was there in his skill set alone just the amount of work that a player would have
had to do to possess such Immaculate moves the footworks and fakes and execution the hours that must have been put into to get that kind of perfection so now he's playing on the Lakers he's a still a massive Magic Johnson fan and he's going to copy something that magic
believed as well and it says magic was the kind of player that didn't let his teammates get out of focus it was all about the Ultimate Prize and there were no exceptions you either won the NBA Championship or you did not there was no second place
just one line on this page for you Bryant was an intense introvert famously there was a clause in Michael Jordan's contract called for the love of the G game Clause meaning he could play basketball anytime and anywhere he wanted which I guess was rare because uh from my understanding
NBA teams were trying to restrict when they could play basketball because they didn't want you get injured Kobe actually injures himself playing a pickup game in Venice Beach and so I'm going to tell you about that but then I thought Jerry West's response to this
considering he just drafted Kobe was very interesting all right so it says Kobe had injured his wrist playing at Venice Beach I just couldn't believe that a guy would be playing uh pickup ball there NBA guy would playing pick ball year that was my first experience
with how excited and enthusiastic he was just about playing the game he truly had a passion for playing regardless of where it was what time of day he was going to play Wes didn't seem worried this is what he said this guy will play in the little league tournament
tournament it doesn't bother me he loves to play basketball he's one of the most dedicated players I've ever seen and so his first few years his coach is not playing him that much he not getting minutes Kobe's getting depressed and so
he dides something very very smart here Larry Ellison did the exact same thing when Oracle was going through rough times he'd read biographies of great figures as a way to motivate himself and convince himself that things will get better Kobe does the exact same thing
part of his strategy for keeping his disappointment a bay was to focus on others who had faced far more diffic difficult circumstances I read the autobiography of Jackie Robinson Brian said I was thinking about all the hard times that I'd go through this year and
that itd never compare to what he went through that just kind of helped put things in perspective he would also read fiction and do this as well he actually not myself on this page is build your own world and then we got to talk about all the founders that use this idea of
visualization so it says Kobe always loved Disney and Star Wars and Jedi Knights when Tex winner so Tex winner is this coach he coach Jordan and Kobe I think he's the one that came up with or maybe he was the greatest expert on the Tri angle offense and he's like this
Wise Old Man and Kobe essentially uses an idea from Star Wars he's like oh Texas is going to be my yoda so it says when Tex winner showed up to help coach the Lakers Bryant immediately dubbed him his Yoda he had this very symbolic Kobe
that is Kobe had this very symbolic metaphorical way of seeing things he viewed the world through the lens of a fabulous narrative his favorite book had been the sci-fi fantasy Enders game about a protagonist trained from a young age to face increasingly difficult
challenges in order to save the world for the next 6 years Brian had lived his life as if going on a mythical Quest the only way he could keep the whole dream going was to work harder and harder and harder to spin his fantasies around and
around until they wrapped him tight in a new reality visualization was immense for that it drove his many hours of solitary practice time so this idea of visualization seeing something in your mind before you see it in reality sounds like Willy fuu to a lot of people I
understand that all I'm telling you is pops up over and over and over again in these books Kobe Bryant Bob noise Edwin Lan Steve Jobs Arnold Schwarzenegger Estee Lauder all did this this is a quote from sa Law's autobiography episode 2117 if you have not heard that
podcast you got to listen to it right after you're done with this visualize she says in your mind's eye you see a successful Venture a deal made a profit accomplished it has a superb chance of actually happening projecting your mind into a successful situation is the most
powerful means to achieve goals if you spend time with pictures of failure in your mind you will orchestrate failure countless times before the event I have pictured a heroic sale to a large department store every step of the way and the picture in my mind became a
reality I have visualized success then created the reality from that image great athletes business people inventors and Achievers from all walks of life seem to know this Secret so there is this well-known event that happens early in Kobe's career I think
this is the first year his rookie year they get eliminated from the playoffs and he is blamed because he shoots a bunch of airballs and so I want to read his immediate reaction to this unbelievable disappointment that he had to endure and how it compares to Michael
Jordan and the founder of Ikea and so it says that evening after the loss Bryant went straight to a gym at a neighborhood school as soon as he got home to La he went in the gym that night and shot until 3:00 or 4 in the morning scoop Jackson said there was no crying none of
that he went straight to the damn gym I think that game was vital to how good he became that level of embarrassment to happen to somebody like him the next year he came out like a maniac and then I wrote a quote that I learned from the founder of Ikea
which is I think is absolutely fantastic he says only those who are asleep make no mistakes making mistakes is the privilege of the active and so Kobe's response was the perfect correct response let's go to my Jordan's autobiography driven from within he says
look around and just about any person or entity achieving at a high level has that same Focus the morning after Tiger Woods rallied to beat Phil Mickelson in the Ford championship in 2005 he was in the gym by 6:30 to work out no lights no
cameras no Glitz or glamour uncompromised and very soon after this he does something smart this is also advice that Estee Lauder said that you should embrace peer relationships in your field he goes out and he tries to build a relationship ship with Michael
Jordan he's like what 21 at the time I think Michael Jordan's 35 and this is a perfect illustration of Steve Jobs point that asking for help is a superpower and he's and it's a superpower Steve Jobs says that most people don't use he's like if I needed help I would just pick
up the phone and call and ask for help and almost everybody would always help me even early in my career this is Steve talking even early in my career and most people just won't even pick up the phone so they're playing against each other and Bryant does something smart he says
during a pause in the play in the fourth period Bryant brazenly went up to Jordan asking his his advice on posting up in the fourth quarter of that game he asked me about my post up move in terms of do you keep your legs wide or do you keep
your legs tight Jordan said later I told him I always use my legs to feel where the defense is playing so I can react to the defense his bigger challenge now this is Jordan talking about Kobe his bigger Challen his biggest challenge
will be harnessing what he knows and utilizing what he's got and implementing it on the floor that's tough that's experience that's the things that Larry Bird and Magic Johnson all taught me and so Kobe also said that when they're having the conversation on the court in
the fourth quarter he's like if you ever need anything call me and so you tell a learning machine like that and what do you think Kobe's going to do we know what he's going to do because earlier I was quoting from the Last Dance documentary and Kobe said I don't get
five championships without him because he guided me so much and gave me so much great advice this won't be the last time that we talk about the relationship between Michael Jordan and Kobe it is a main theme and a really important part of the book this is later on in Kobe's
career this is his teammate Derrick fiser talking about the importance of self-confidence the more you experience time around him and get to see him in different situations the more you understand that that's all it is it's confidence he's just a guy who has an
immeasurable amount of confidence in his ability to play the game that really was he's talking about the the level of intensity he brings to practices that really was the way we all should have been competing we should have been competing with Kobe's spirit and Kobe
was always standoffish they talk about that in the redeem team documentary too he's a little older in his career so he was you know some somewhat open but he is a lone wolf very much and in many cases he had a hard time uh essentially like if you wanted to develop a
professional relationship with Kobe he would view it through the lens of basically one thing and the reason that he was as close as he could be to another player that would be with Derrick Fischer is because he saw Fisher's work ethic he's like fiser may
not be a superstar like I am but he works his damn ass off and so therefore I respect him work ethic was the one standard by by which Bryant measured another player one of Steve Jobs favorite quotes was that Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication this is an
example of that the great basketball players and really great at anything right the great basketball players try to take complicated things and find simple ways to do them another example of Bryant talking about how Jordan was in the development of his own career
Bryant said that getting advice from Jordan is like getting advice from the Buddha that sits on top of the mountain who has everything figured out and passes on some of his knowledge to the next guy who's trying to climb that mountain we also see that Kobe's willing
to ask anybody for advice if he feels you have talent that He lacks or information he lacks he's going to go straight to you even if you're a competitor at this time he's like I have I'm making progress on offense but my defense is lacking so he goes up there's
a this takes place during all-star weekend and it says another important moment happened uh when Seattle's Gary P Payton helped Bryant understand screen and roll defense so again go back to what Steve Jobs said most people are never even going to do that Bryant has a
giant ego thinks he's going to be the best ever and he's still willing he's like hey Gary like help me with this man I don't know how you do what you do this is huge and I try to copy this as well in my own life so it says Gary Peyton
help Brian understand screen and World defense I don't think Gary knows how much he helped me Bryant said Bryant demonstrated dramatic defense Improvement afterward so something that jumps out in this book but also jumped out because oh I forgot to tell you this is the same so
I told you I said this a few times now the book that I did on 212 the the biography it's like a 700 page biography of Michael Jordan it's written by the same guy Roland Lassie that book changed my mind or not my mind that book changed my life
I think about it all the time so what was interesting to me is how much and it shouldn't have been interesting really it shouldn't even be surprising uh is how much of the Jordan biography is about the importance of mental strength and a lot of lessons Jordan learned
about the importance of taking care of like being in the moment like the Zen training the taking care of like the the mental anguish and and stress you're under he learned from Phil Jackson and so we see in this book that Phil Jackson
is doing the same thing with Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant and so I'm gonna this is going to happen over a few pages but I got a couple things I want to pull out here because I thought it was interesting where they call this guy their secret weapon and I think the the
parallel here is obviously very important that entrepreneurs are going to it's inevitable if you're building a company you will have times of mental anguish depression that you want to give up episode 200 on James Dyson is the best like thing I could point you to on
how to get through it but it's what Mark and Jon said like there's only two emotions that entrepreneurs experience and it's either Euphoria or Terror you feel at the top of the world and then the very next day or the very next week you you are convinced that you're doomed
anytime I put that quote out on social media or I talk about on a podcast I get a ton of messages so yep that's exactly how I feel so let's go into how they try to like deal with this right so it says George Mumford had been brought in to
lead the Lakers in meditation and mindfulness training just as he had for Jordan and the Bulls he offered specific mental training much of it in the Zen mold for reducing the stress of competition he's our secret weapon O'Neal would say of Mumford Bryant was
content to discuss the mental elements of competition with Mumford as were his teammates it was good because it gave people a chance to talk about the things they that might be on their mind the hype the pressure Brian explained I think it's it's good for them to talk
about those things it's increased our performance a lot I'm surprised other teams don't do this kind of stuff working with George helps us get to the issues or helps us get issues out of the way before they even start this is more on the inevitable
conflict all great teams whether business or otherwise have conflict in fact Jeff Bezos prefers it that way uh when I read the book uh the second biography of him Amazon Unbound uh for episode 180 uh there's a line in there that forgot where Jeff says if I have to
choose between agreement and conflict I'll take conflict every time it always yields a better result and so we see that here Jerry West had reportedly told Shaquille O'Neal I played with two of the alltime greets Wilt Chamberlain and elen B Baylor you don't think we had
personal rivalries going on back then you've got to stop being a baby put all this personal stuff aside and do what's important put the team's success first so at the beginning the book the author says hey you might want to look at this story as like a cautionary Tale the fact
that he would sacrifice anything in service of this goal there's a fantastic quote uh by my friend Sam hinky he was on um inves like the best with my friend Patrick and he brought this up because something that uh he really enjoyed was
Robert Caro's multiple part biography of lynon Johnson and I thought Sam one of Sam's takeaway takeaways was very similar to Kobe Bryant and it talks about like how ruthless a person can be and understanding this is just part of human nature these personalities appear
over and over again like you're you have to understand that there's people out there that literally don't care and if you get in their way or if you're naive to the fact that this personality appears over and over again like they can cause incredible amount of damage in
your own life and so Sam says if you want something like the presidency or being a billionaire I think that that was my uh quote not his uh like the presidency you should presume there is someone out there who will devote all their time money relationships sense of
Ethics everything in sacrifice of that one goal of course that kind of person would win that race now he's clearly not saying you should be a person that has no sense of Ethics he's just telling you this is part of life and we see that with Kobe a
huge part of this book is him sacrificing the relationship with his family I I left it out because I don't actually understand it that much they have like these falling outs a lot of it had to do with money but he didn't just do it to his family members the guy that
brought him to Adidas that made him famous that uh this guy named Sunny vakaro he's this like famous figure and Nike history and Adidas history and all he's like this interesting backstory anyways eventually he ceases to be useful to Kobe and this is what Kobe
does to him and it just wrote the word ruthless it says in making his exit just cut basically cut him out of his life but never even bothered to tell him and so it says in making his exit Bryant never even bothered to phone sunny and thank him for the experience which had
included money for his parents and guaranteed Millions for Bryant before he ever played an NBA game more than a Dozen Years Later Sunny still has never heard a word from Bryant ruthless if you want something like the presidency you should presume
there is someone out there who will devote all their time money relationship sense of Ethics everything in sacrifice to that one goal another main theme of the book that you and I have talked about a few times now don't expect people to understand you so this is just
somebody that knows both Kobe and Michael Jordan he wind up working with both Jordan and Bryant his name Schaefer and it so as a result of these experiences has had made a study of competitive personalities this is about Jordan's Hall of Fame speech and so
again main theme is expect to be misunderstood I saw Jordan's Hall of Fame speech The public's General reaction took me by surprise where it's going to take schaer by surprise too it says whereas the public seemed infuriated by Jordan's emotional Hall of
Fame speech in 2009 Schaefer deeply admired it I remember sitting there on my couch with my wife watching it he said and I turned to her about halfway through and I said this is the most real he's ever been with cameras on before it was authentic it was him it was
everything about him that I love personally I thought it was great it was far from easy for such competitors to be real he said adding that Jordan got crushed for doing so he is just this person who I think is unparalleled as the greatest player in the history of
the game telling us what he thought it was a privilege for everyone to hear what he thought and so going back to that theme that this is maybe a cautionary tale be careful what you wish for these are very old ideas that are passed throughout human history there's
like an entire chapter it goes on and on I I don't have to pull out anything like any specific quotes what I was struck by is how similar this was to what you learn if you watch the Last Dance documentary how Jord like Jordan in the Last Dance a lot of Kobe with the more
famous you get right it's like they can't go anywhere and the crazy thing is like by the time in Jordan's career that we seen the Last Dance it's what happening to Kobe here at this point in the book it's like a lot of their time is spent in isolation
in hotel rooms and so let's go back to this idea that they have the secret weapon they have the psychologist they're working on like the mental part the maybe even like the personal relation Parts you can think of really the the the there's two paragraphs here
I'm going to I'm going to quote from this is the main theme I think it's Founders 265 of becoming Steve Jobs and why I think that Steve Jobs book biography if you're going to read one I'd read that one because it talks about to transition the fact that he evolved
you the subtitle is evolution of a reckless upart into a visionary like the Steve Jobs at 25 or 29 could not be lead the the quality of an organization that Apple became when Apple when Steve came back when you know he's in the late 40s and so I put Steve
Jobs way of interacting with people as very similar to Michael the young Steve Jobs and older Steve Jobs really uh is the same way that Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant reacted to people that didn't meet their very high almost ridiculously high standards and so I
think this is actually an important part for Founders as they think about managing other people that are not Founders right it would become mumford's goal to help supremely competitive players find a means of contending with what made them different so that they'd
be able to not just compete at the highest level but also to find a means of channeling compassion into their everyday lives despite their astronomical competitive instincts highly competitive personalities like Jordan and Bryant could absolutely kill
a team atmosphere with displays of ruthlessness or selfishness that that sentence right there you put take out Brian and Jordan and put in Steve Jobs are really a ton of the people that you and I talk about and it's still true they could absolutely kill a team
atmosphere with displays of ruthlessness or selfishness so therefore you have to learn to skill right from the beginning Kobe was not Adept with social skills he did not realize how to get through relationships and interactions with other people he was a young guy and it
took the course of his career just like Steve Jobs to figure out how to deal with people on a one-on-one basis and in a team atmosphere and he was not perfect in this regard even if he improved right he they're never going to be perfect at
it they're just so different than anybody else and so we see example of this this is what Kobe told his teams after they missed the playoffs he had already won three championships at this time but Shaq's not in on the team anymore and it says the Lakers missed
the playoffs it had been 11 years since the last time they had missed and this is what somebody in the locker room said happened so after the last game in the locker room the coach goes to the user you know you guys played hard blah blah blah trying to be positive I
appreciate your effort Kobe says I've got to say something he stands up points around the room and says you don't belong in the same court with me you're all and he walked out of the locker room and so the rest of the book is on Kobe's drive to get back to the
championship that's all he he's like I have one goal one determinate in whether my career was a success or not and it's like how many rings did I get and so there's many pages where I don't have any highlights and then I get to a page like this where there's two or three
pages in a row where I highlight almost the ENT entire thing and so I'm going to read my note first uh and and I'll leave this in the show notes as well this is important there's another four ideas on spread out on his Pages search for your
limits extreme personal practice resourcefulness find a way that's number three and number four study the greats and so it says if the scoring displays meaning he's just scoring a ton of points 40 50 60 points a game if the scoring to play showed anything they
revealed that Bri Bryant was clearly a man in search of his limits his ability to perform at this high level was Solly based on his years of extreme personal practice he began with his Immaculate footwork an array of pivots reverse pivots jab steps and
faints that allowed him to create the room to rise up in a tight space and make seemingly impossible shots under impossible circumstances this is really the way I think about this is all really resourcefulness right taking something that other people could do yet finding
an opportunity in and something that's available to everybody elsewhere like you see opportunity where other people see nothing right this unique skill was the perfectly formed product of his study of Untold hours of videotape of every single one of the game's great
scorers it was also involved conversations and More film study with Tex winner about footwork and time spent with Jerry West talking about a million important details and this is the end result of putting all this together Bryan was building respect among his
among his peers every time we played them and the game was tight we guarded him well said San Antonio spores coach Greg papovich but he'd still knocked down the shot papovich had a full understanding of what allowed a singular player like Bryant to stand far above so
many others he was one of the rare few who simply cared far more about the game than anyone else so now we go back to this guy schaer who I was referencing that had worked with both Bryant and Jordan uh chip schaer became Bryant's
goto Aid as far as workouts which meant that schaer was on call Around the Clock schaer had an endless supply of Jordan stories to share with Bryant uh to share when Bryant wanted to take a break in between his workouts Schaefer recalled Kobe would ask me specific questions
about how how Jordan would handle situations Kobe was often curious about how not just basketball specific stuff but even some of the peripheral things like if a team was going through something how would Michael react toward a teammate he was interested in what
kind of leader and what kind of leadership and management Michael would have and so on the next page schaer continues to tell us like give an inside look into Kobe Bryant the note I left this is a note a personal note to myself I'm asking myself as I get to this page
well like what would your equivalent level of dedication look like and so this is what Schaefer said uh a game would end and we would fly to the next city we'd get in at 3 in the morning and he'd want me to come and do a stretch with him instead of just going to bed he
couldn't switch it off on the flight while his teammates were sleeping Brian would watch the game he just played to review his and the team's performance then he'd watch a scouting video of his next opponent and then we get to the point
where I mentioned earlier how Jordan actually sticks up for Kobe he like this is actually how humans learn so it says Jordan talked about how hard Bryan had worked to be great he and Bryant were were obviously close and Jordan spoke up to defend Brian against critics that
claimed he was merely copying Jordan Jordan said he didn't see what all the big fuss was about after all human behavior was mimetic That's How Humans learned they copied and aped another one another Jordan acknowledged that Bryant was the best of a generation of players
who had sought to be like Mike quote unquote but how many play people lighted the path for me Jordan said that's the evolution of basketball there's no way I could have played the way I played if I didn't watch David Thompson or guys
prior to me there's no way Kobe could have played the way he played Without watching me play that's the evolution of basketball you cannot change that Bryant was the one who had done the work in the face of the example he presented Jordan said and it
says his retirement was announced in a love letter he wrote to the game citing his obsessive passion for the sport and it's that letter that I want to close on dear basketball from the moment I started rolling my dad's tube socks and shooting imaginary game-winning shots in
the Great Western form I knew one thing was real I fell in love with you a love so deep I gave you my all from my mind and body to my spirit and soul as a six-year-old boy deeply in love with you I never saw the end of the tunnel I only saw myself running out of one and so I
ran I ran up and down every Court after every loose ball for you you asked for my hustle I gave you my heart because it came with so much more I played through the sweat and the hurt not because challenge called me but because you called me I did everything
for you because that's what you do when someone makes you feel as alive as you made me feel you gave a six-year-old boy his Laker dream and I'll always love you for it but I can't love you obsessively for much longer this season is all I
have left to give my heart can take the pounding my mind can handle the grind but my body knows it's time to say goodbye and that's okay I'm ready to let you go I want you to know now so we can both savor every moment we have left together the good and the bad we have
given each other all that we have and we both know no matter what I do next I'll always be that kid with the rolled up socks garbage can in the corner 5 seconds on the clock ball in my hands five 4 3 2 1 love you always Kobe and that is where I'll leave it as
you can imagine it is a 600 page book there is so much more in this book if you want the full story buy the book using the link that's in the show notes and you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time if you don't get this book make sure you order and read Kobe's book
M mentality I'm doing a bonus episode very soon it'll be the next upload that you see from me I'm rereading that book for the second time and making a new episode on it and as you read more and more it's important to remember what you read if you want to use the same app
that I use that stores all of my highlights and all of my notes on everything that I read it's readwise I'll leave the link down in the show notes but if you go to read wise. i/f Founders you could try it for 60 days free that is 272 books down 1,000 to go
and I'll talk to you again soon okay so real quick in case that you want to get access to my version of read wise which is called Founders notes.com you go to Founders notes.com to sign up that's founders with an S just like the podcast so Founders notes.com so when you sign
up and you get access I'm going to tell you how what what are the features that I use the most and so at the very top is the main feature the one I use but every day and it says search highlights and there's a search bar and very simply I
just search by whatever keyword I'm thinking about so it could be about hiring about marketing about Obsession uh could be about a specific entrepreneur like Rockefeller whatever happened to be thinking about or whatever problem I need to solve at the
at the time so like the greatest example and I actually made like a 30 minute like short AMA about this it was asked like how do History's Greatest Founders think about hiring and so if you type hiring in that box you'll see what what did Jeff Bezos say about it what did
Thomas Edison say about it what did the people that founded Paypal say about it what did Estee Lauder say about it and on and on and on and so I think that's pretty self-explanatory again this is a product for people already rning successful companies I think I don't
have to elaborate you already know what the value of that would be so the highlights feed is uh the searching excuse me searching the highlights is what I use the most now the thing I use the second most is called the Highlights feed and the highlights feed I'm loading
it right now essentially it's just like these little almost like twet sized highlights from all different books and so it is completely randomized and it's almost like you have History's Greatest entrepreneurs speaking to and then just
read through them and see what thoughts respond so like the first thing that came up was actually uh it's actually a highlight from one of Warren Buffett shareholder letters he's talking about diversification and its relation to risk the next highlight is quote from Ed CML
the founder of Pixar talking about he didn't even realize at the beginning of his company how poor the communication was and that there was things going on in his company that that his the people his employees were not telling him and his thoughts on how to fix that then
there's a quote from a book that I read like six years ago and it's actually the the biography of Alibaba and he's talking about the importance of listening and that poor listeners actually have second rate negotiation skills and so that is the second most
used feature for me personally this might be different for you third feature books did you have a list of all the books that are in there I think right now says I have 37 seven books in here I still have a bunch I need to put in and then that that's very simple like I just
went through the reason I reposted the Mike Bloomberg episode for example is cu I've been rereading the highlights and so I went back if I don't have time to reread the book which I will in the future but I just read through I think I
have like 44 uh highlights of Bloomberg's autobiography here and you read through them and there's just so many ideas and this is happening like 15 minutes it's absolutely incredible so that's self-explanatory you can search my book The Last feature that I use the
most is the favorites feature you know I have 20,000 highlights it's you there's a ton of information in here and so what I'll do is as I go back through the highlights and I've done this forever and that's why this number will always go up I have 839 favorites now but you
know if you're listening to this months from now it's it's going to be higher and whether it's through searching whether it's through rereading the the highlights on a specific book or through the highlights feed which is the random um just showing me like the random
highlights that I've done if there's something like damn that's a good one I really want to remember that and so I I highlight it right I should I favored it and then now that goes into the favorites feed so then I have an even more like specialized feed of ideas and
highlights from different books all on one page so again need to re reiterate I think if you are like me and there's a good chance that you're if you're listening to this you're like me if you're like me you're already running a
successful company I think it's a it's a no-brainer I would at least test it out for a year there's a chance that you don't like it I not g to share that opinion with you because like I said before I listen to it or not listen to it I use it every day and I think what I
what this is going to be good for and what I hope to do is like man like for a Founder to just have a browser this this notebook sitting in a browser that they can tap into anytime I think that's going to be very valuable and I can say that because it's been very valuable for
me so hopefully that makes sense if you want to test it out it is Founders notes.com again Founders notes.com and I also leave a link down in the show notes if you want to grab the link from the podcast the show notes on your podcast player founders notes.com