## The Life of Kobe Bryant (#272) ```audio-note audio: assets/founders-podcast/272-the-life-of-kobe-bryant-ads.mp3 title: The Life of Kobe Bryant transcript: assets/founders-podcast/272-the-life-of-kobe-bryant-ads.json ``` ```audio-note audio: assets/founders-podcast/272-the-life-of-kobe-bryant-ads.mp3#t=05:58.4,06:08 title: Quote by Jeff Bezos transcript: assets/founders-podcast/272-the-life-of-kobe-bryant-ads.json --- We invent before we have to. These investments are motivated by customer focus rather than by a reaction to competition. That is a genius idea by Jeff Bezos there. ``` --- ```audio-note audio: assets/founders-podcast/272-the-life-of-kobe-bryant-ads.mp3#t=13:00,13:36 title: The Life of Kobe Bryant transcript: assets/founders-podcast/272-the-life-of-kobe-bryant-ads.json --- 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, meaning Italy, which was great because I learned the fundamentals first. Most kids who grew up in America learn all the fancy dribbling. In Italy, they teach you true fundamentals and leave out all that other nonsense. ``` Mastering the [[published/The Fundamentals|fundamentals]] always pays off. --- ```audio-note audio: assets/founders-podcast/272-the-life-of-kobe-bryant-ads.mp3#t=37:28,38:07 title: The Life of Kobe Bryant transcript: assets/founders-podcast/272-the-life-of-kobe-bryant-ads.json --- And so his first few years, his coach is not playing him that much. He's not getting minutes. Kobe's getting depressed. And so he does something very, very smart here. Larry Ellison did this 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 at bay was to focus on others who had faced far more 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 it never compared to what he went through. That just kind of helped put things in perspective. ``` Keeping motivation high is critical for everyone, and I can listen to podcasts like this and read autobiographies when I need a boost. Find the good ones and use their energy to move forward. --- ```audio-note audio: assets/founders-podcast/272-the-life-of-kobe-bryant-ads.mp3#t=39:02,40:28 title: The Life of Kobe Bryant transcript: assets/founders-podcast/272-the-life-of-kobe-bryant-ads.json --- For the next six 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 Fufu 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 Noyce, Edwin Land, Steve Jobs, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Estee Lauder all did this. This is a quote from Estee Lauder's autobiography episode 217. 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. ``` Visualize, visualize, visualize! This is such a common theme. --- ```audio-note audio: assets/founders-podcast/272-the-life-of-kobe-bryant-ads.mp3#t=40:30,41:48 title: The Life of Kobe Bryant transcript: assets/founders-podcast/272-the-life-of-kobe-bryant-ads.json --- There is this well-known event that happens early in Kobe's career, I think this is the first year, his rookie year. They had been eliminated from the playoffs and he is blamed because he shoots a bunch of air balls. And so I want to read his immediate reaction to this unbelievable disappointment that he had 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 three or four in the morning", Scoop Jackson said. "There was no crying, none of that shit. 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 fucking maniac." And then I wrote a quote that I learned from the founder of IKEA, which 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 Michael 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." ``` Focus and drive set Kobe apart from the rest. --- ```audio-note audio: assets/founders-podcast/272-the-life-of-kobe-bryant-ads.mp3#t=41:56,42:41 title: The Life of Kobe Bryant transcript: assets/founders-podcast/272-the-life-of-kobe-bryant-ads.json --- He goes out and he tries to build a relationship 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 earlier 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 advice on posting up. In the fourth quarter of that game, he asked me about my postup 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. ``` Always ask questions. This is one of the main values of [[published/Humility|humility]]. --- ```audio-note audio: assets/founders-podcast/272-the-life-of-kobe-bryant-ads.mp3#t=43:24,43:51 title: The Life of Kobe Bryant transcript: assets/founders-podcast/272-the-life-of-kobe-bryant-ads.json --- This is later on in Kobe's career. This is his teammate Derek Fisher 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 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. ``` "He's just a guy who has an immeasurable amount of confidence in his ability to play the game." ... "We should have been competing with Kobe's spirit." --- ```audio-note audio: assets/founders-podcast/272-the-life-of-kobe-bryant-ads.mp3#t=45:28,45:51 title: The Life of Kobe Bryant transcript: assets/founders-podcast/272-the-life-of-kobe-bryant-ads.json --- Bryant has a giant ego, thinks he's gonna 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 says Gary Payton helped Bryant understand screen and roll defense. I don't think Gary knows how much he helped me. Bryant said, Bryant demonstrated dramatic defense improvement afterward. ``` Here's the [[published/Humility|humility]], and note the paradox of it being coupled with his giant ego. He has a giant ego that he _can_ be the best, but he has the humility to know that there are still others out there who are better, and better at specific things that he can learn from. --- ```audio-note audio: assets/founders-podcast/272-the-life-of-kobe-bryant-ads.mp3#t=46:48,47:41 title: The Life of Kobe Bryant transcript: assets/founders-podcast/272-the-life-of-kobe-bryant-ads.json --- And I think the parallel here is obviously very important that entrepreneurs are going to -- it's inevitable, 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 Jason 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, the very next week, you were 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 say, yep, that's exactly how I feel. So let's go into how they try to like deal with this, right. So this is 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. ``` Ride the rollercoaster. Euphoria and terror. (ref: [[published/Why Omens|Why Omens]]) --- ```audio-note audio: assets/founders-podcast/272-the-life-of-kobe-bryant-ads.mp3#t=48:12,48:36 title: The Life of Kobe Bryant transcript: assets/founders-podcast/272-the-life-of-kobe-bryant-ads.json --- This is more on the inevitable conflict, all great teams, whether business or otherwise, have conflict. In fact, Jeff Bezos prefers it that way. When I read the book, the second biography of him, Amazon Unbound, for Episode 180, there's a line in there that I never 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. ``` The best leaders crave conflict. They prefer it, because they know it results in a better product. --- ```audio-note audio: assets/founders-podcast/272-the-life-of-kobe-bryant-ads.mp3#t=50:10,51:09 title: The Life of Kobe Bryant transcript: assets/founders-podcast/272-the-life-of-kobe-bryant-ads.json --- A huge part of this book is him sacrificing the relationship with his family. 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, this guy named Sonny Vaccaro, he's this famous figure in Nike history and Adidas history, and he's like this interesting backstory. Anyways, eventually he ceases to be useful to Kobe, and this is what Kobe does to him. And I just wrote the word ruthless. And it says in making his exit, he just 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 Sonny 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, Sonny 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 would devote all their time, money, relationships, sense of ethics, everything in sacrifice of that one goal. ``` I don't like this, but it's noteworthy. Kobe's ruthlessness in many of his relationships, and his willingness to drop people and not have qualms about it. --- ```audio-note audio: assets/founders-podcast/272-the-life-of-kobe-bryant-ads.mp3#t=55:02,55:48 title: The Life of Kobe Bryant transcript: assets/founders-podcast/272-the-life-of-kobe-bryant-ads.json --- This is what Kobe told his teams after they missed the playoffs, he'd already won three championships at this time, but Shaq's not in on the team anymore. And it says the Lakers missed the playoffs 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 usual bullshit, 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 motherfuckers don't belong in the same court with me. You're all shit. 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's like, I have one goal, one determinant in whether my career was a success or not. And it's like, how many rings did I get? ``` An example of his ego, ruthlessness, and drive. --- ```audio-note audio: assets/founders-podcast/272-the-life-of-kobe-bryant-ads.mp3#t=56:03,57:18 title: The Life of Kobe Bryant transcript: assets/founders-podcast/272-the-life-of-kobe-bryant-ads.json --- This is important. There's another four ideas on spread out of those pages. 1. Search for your limits, 2. extreme personal practice, 3. resourcefulness - find a way, 4. study the greats. And so it says, if the scoring displays, meaning he's just scoring a ton of points, 40, 50, 60 points game, if the scoring to play showed anything, they revealed that Bryant Bryant was clearly a man in search of his limits. His ability to perform at this high level was solidly based on his years of extreme personal practice. He began with his immaculate footwork, an array of pivots, reverse pivots, jab steps and feints 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 something that's available to everybody else where 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 scores. It would also involve conversations and more film study with tech's winner about footwork and time spent with Jerry West talking about a million important details. ``` Here are the [[published/The Fundamentals|fundamentals]]. ---