 What I do remember in 30, 40 minutes, Kevin is laying on the gym floor. Now, he was 6'10", 180 pounds. So he was coiled up like a snake. I mean, he looked like a cobra. And he was very quiet back then. So he didn't say two words to the whole workout. He's just laying on the floor and he's sweating and his muscles are twitching. So I had no idea if he even liked the workout. So I asked him. You know, I was really confident back then. I still am, but an appropriately confident thing. Hey, what did you think? How'd it go for you? I said, hey man, did you like that workout? And the funniest thing in the world was he said as serious as it can be? No, I didn't. But I know this is the kind of stuff I got to do if I want to play in the NBA. So when can I see you again? Alan Stein Jr. That's today's George Podcast. That's right. If you want to lead it with that, that's totally cool. I tell you what though, that's like my number one goal in professional speaking. Like I want to be the lowest maintenance person they've ever brought in because that's the kind of person they want to work with and they bring back. There's a lot of divas in the speaking world. It's like, why? There's no need to do that. So that's definitely something I want to jump into is these divas because you work with some really high profile athletes. And you could say that in, and it exists in all sports, but certainly in the NBA, there are some of that. There is some really high level, but also high maintenance people in that arena. But before we get into basketball, let's get to your background. Yes. Where'd you study growing up? Would you play sports wise? How'd you get into what you're into now? So basketball was my first love. I fell in love with the game at five or six years old and remember it vividly. So I'm 43 years old. So of course when I'm growing up, this is that the tail end of magic and Kareem and the Showtime Lakers and Bird and kind of when Michael Jordan is coming in to the icon that he was in changing the game. So it was the perfect time for me to love the game of basketball. But I was into everything. I did skateboarding, BMX biking, martial arts, all your conventional team sports, and something about basketball always drew me back to it. And I think, you know, as I look back, I love basketball because it's a game that you can work on individually. If you have a hoop and a ball, you can work on most of the major skills that the game requires. Most other team sports aren't like that, you know, in football, in baseball, in soccer. You're not starting to pass to yourself or pitching yourself. No, you need someone else to throw to and catch with. So, but basketball was something that I could work on myself, but then take it into practice and try to use those skills to make other people better. So it was like the individual mixed with the team, I think was one of the things that always drew me to it. Was a pretty good high school player. And I say that good enough to play in college. And I played at a small school down in North Carolina. It was Elon college at the time. It's now Elon University. And in colleges, when I started to develop an equal affinity for performance, strength and conditioning, fitness, everything that you guys represent here, which of course in the mid-90s was rather non-existent. You know, this is even a little bit pre-internet. It's like Cybex machines and fucking muscle mags. Exactly. Which is where I learned most of it initially was through muscle and fitness because those guys appeared to be the experts. And, you know, so for my basketball training, I'm doing body parts splits and I'm training like I wanna be Mr. Olympia. 21 inch guns. Yes, literally. Yeah, they might've been 13. They weren't that big. But the cool part was I always respected how important it was to do things technically correct. So I've always had good form with my movements, which I'm glad that I laid that foundation. But then I ended up meeting a guy that was at the time, he was an assistant strength coach for the Redskins. And he kind of took me under his wing and started showing me what it meant to actually train athletes, not that bodybuilders aren't athletes, but to train for a sport like basketball. And that was when the light bulb went off that I said, all right, I wanna marry my love for performance and marry my love for basketball and make a career out of that. And that's what I did for almost 20 years was a basketball performance coach, mostly at the youth and high school age, cause I also loved being a role model for younger kids and having an impact on their lives above and beyond running fast and jumping high. But where my career has been very interesting is I've had a chance to have a unique perspective with some great players. I got to work with maybe a dozen guys that are in the NBA now when they were 14 and 15 years old. So I got to see the before picture of what a great player looks like. And then I got some work with Nike and with Jordan Brand and USA basketball. And then I got to see guys after they were already elite. So I got to see the after picture. So I've been able to see both and feel like I have a pretty firm understanding of the traits that it takes to be a lead in anything. And that's when I decided to transfer over to professional speaking. And I now teach businesses how to use those same mindsets and rituals and routines that you guys do here so well. I mean, the culture here is phenomenal. It's palpable. And it's, I think, I mean, every business in Austin should ask to come by here just to be a fly on the wall to see what you guys have created and be able to take some of the recipe that you guys have down and apply it to their own businesses. And they're foolish for not doing that. Yeah, that'd be cool. There's a lot to jump in on there first. I think that was a critical piece for me too was understanding, and this was just personally in my own personal development as a fighter before I wanted to help others was realizing that in sport, you train movement, not muscle. You know what I'm saying? Like it's not bicep stay. It's push, pull, squat, lunge, hinge, twist, rotate, all those different movement patterns. And as you grease the groove, as Pavel says, through those movement patterns, that translates into sport, you know, a proper deadlift or kettlebell swing will translate into jumping better and to being more explosive. Box jumps, things like that. So like really getting away from like the traditional bodybuilding and nothing wrong with that because I think it's important to cycle back through things and certainly recovering from a knee injury. I have them doing more traditional box squats for higher rep ranges and things like that. But for the most part, when you're talking athletes, you wanna train movement. You wanna train differently than what we were taught in the 90s. So it's cool that you were able to have that same transition and have someone take you under your wing. I had an ASU coach, Joe Ken, Big House, and he's the head coach or head strength coach for the Carolina Panthers now, only got to win strength coach of the year in division one football in the NCAA as well as in the NFL. Just a fucking amazing guy. His assistant coach, Marco Iyama, went on to become strength coach of the 49ers and now with the Vikings. So definitely was blessed with who I was surrounded by. And yeah, there's a lot of good stuff there. What are some of the ways, because you talked about, and this reminded me, when you're talking about seeing before picture and then the after picture, it reminded me of a guy that we had on the show, Dr. Isaiah Hankel, who's a PhD, teaches other PhDs, how to not go into academia, how to be entrepreneurs and things. I think it's important. I like that. But he has a TED talk on start with the end in mind. And basically, once you see what you're working towards and you keep that clear picture, you can retrace your steps to make it happen. It's kind of like, I don't know why I was fucking butchered this, but if you know the why, you'll figure out anyhow. Absolutely, you didn't butcher it, you nailed it. It's perfect. So when you get to see this before and after shot, how did you piece together and connect the dots on what it takes to become an elite level athlete and then take that obviously into the business world? Well, obviously in the sports world, you have to have a certain level of natural talent. You have to have at least to play in the NBA, generally speaking. So you've got the raw materials. Once that's off the table, then there's other traits that I can look back and say, yeah, I noticed those things when these kids were 14 and 15 years old. So I'm not surprised that they've been able to matriculate up to the highest levels. Some of those things are a tremendous respect for the basics, like they don't try to skip steps. And that's really rare as you can appreciate with 14 and 15 year old males, that you're watching your idols on TV play the game and they make an amazing move. So of course you want to be able to emulate that, but to have the discipline to actually get in the gym and work on the basic fundamentals that lead up to being able to do that move is one thing that separates those guys. Basketball in particular, they just love to play. One of the hardest parts about my career early was convincing basketball players that they needed to do this stuff. Basketball players, they're usually allergic to weights. Like they don't want to be around that stuff. They want to be in the gym playing five on five or they want to be in the gym putting up shots. They don't want to do this stuff. So part of where I think really helped me as a coach was learning how to speak their language and be able to translate to them that yes, doing this stuff will allow you to be on the court longer for a longer career and it will allow you to do those things at a higher level. You got to teach in the wild. Yes, exactly. And that's where the end in mind comes in. So it's like, hey, where are you trying to get to? You obviously, you want to play major college basketball. You want to end up playing in the NBA. Well, in order to do that, so you want to play for the next 20 years, you got to take care of your machine. You got to take care of your body. And thankfully I could convince them that, hey, doing 15, 20 minutes, most days of the week, that's the only investment I need you to make initially. I'm not telling you you have to be in the weight room for three hours a day. Like let's just inch forward and do small things, but let's take care of the stuff that's most important. And that was also the other tougher sell because most athletes, when they hear weights, they start picturing bench presses, they picture squats. That's the connotation that most kids have. And I'm in there doing barefoot work and ankle work and groin and low back work because I'm like, that's the stuff that's gonna hurt you. You're not gonna tear a peck muscle during the basketball season. So let's not worry about bench. I mean, pushing exercises are vital, but let's not worry about that. You know what you're gonna do? You're gonna sprain your ankle. So if you want to play this season, let's do some ankle and footwork. Let's work on mobility. Let's work on some of these other things. And because those things were, I guess in their eyes, kind of softer and easier, it was an easier sell. And it's how you bulletproof someone. Absolutely. That's really what you're trying to do is make sure it's like, that's what they say about strength and conditioning in the NFL was what it's become now. Obviously, I don't know how many people are super into football the way I've been. And it's just that how it changes from college to the NFL is that in the NFL, they're not doing shit during the season. It's a lot of walkthrough. It's a lot of different stuff. And they're really not trying to hit each other because they don't want to get hurt. And the same goes for the strength conditioning. It's about injury prevention more than anything. How do we stay bulletproof, maintain what we've built in the off season and just stress that out through it? In the off season, that's when you can work on setting a PR, getting a little bigger, doing those kind of things a little faster. During the season, it's all maintenance. It's preventative stuff. Absolutely. And what I found with football players, I think for decades, strength and conditioning and weights have been synonymous with football because it's a brute combat sport. Those things, not so much with basketball. Again, not even that long ago, 70s and 80s, people thought lifting weights would ruin your shot. They thought it would make you muscle bound and tight. And even John Wooden, I mean, arguably the most legendary coach of all time was very anti-weightlifting because he was afraid that's what it was going to do to his players. And clearly that's not the case, but it took a little time to convince those players and coaches that that wasn't it. So it's a harder sell because basketball players never saw strength and conditioning being congruent with what they needed to be good. And now, thankfully, that's changed. It's the easiest sell in the world because the best player right now of LeBron James is so into this. I mean, he would be in heaven walking in here to on it because you guys live and breathe everything that he does on a regular basis now. So it's a much easier sell today to a high school kid because their heroes are doing this stuff. It was much harder when I first started convincing them because really Jordan and Tim Grover were kind of the guys that got it started, thankfully. And, you know, but it was a tough sell initially. Yeah, you look at Jordan's physique compared to the 80, and that was like the turnover from the new era from the old. And obviously, you know, Bird and Magic were just fucking fire in the 80s. But you see Jordan come in just shredded, you know? Not, I mean, just shredded and muscular, you know? And obviously you transition that to LeBron. LeBron's jacked. He's got some meat on him. He's not a little guy. He's the same height as Magic Johnson. They're both six, nine. Look at the difference in body composition. LeBron's like 265, almost no body fat. I mean, he is about the most perfectly created NBA body. One, if you were in a lab designing a human being, you'd probably design LeBron James. Or on the video game, create a player. Yes, exactly. And that's, and you know, but he's also been able to play an incredibly long and healthy career because he invests in his body. And that's been, I think, the best thing that's been helping younger players today. Now it's becoming more of the norm. They know that they need to do this stuff. And they also know that it's a small investment on this end, but the dividends are huge, especially for elite level players. I think that's something that people need to have in mind when you think about finances, you know, and you're just thinking of like a 401K or a savings account or any of these things. It's the small amount that you deposit each month that pays off in the long run, right? Absolutely. So it's just showing up each day. And that's such a great way to get people to come in is to buy into it as it was just 15 minutes a day. It's all I need from you. And then we can build on that, right? I think people starting off in wanting to take care of themselves a little bit better, you know, like start with what you have and do what you can, right? So if that means going for a one mile walk each day at a snail's pace, that's fucking fine, you know? But just working with what you have and working way up and building on top of that, that's what leads to big changes down the road. So let's jump into some of these fucking superstars that you've worked with. I'm a fucking Lakers fan, huge Kobe fan. I want to hear about Kobe. I want to hear about Kevin Durant. Obviously I'm from the Bay Area, so follow the Warriors and definitely into all this. And that's a perfect before after because Kevin was one of the kids I met when he was 15 years old. And I was the performance coach at the high school that Kevin graduated from. So I've known Kevin, you know, for most of his adult life and I'll get to him in a second. But Kobe was one that I got a chance to see a peek behind the curtain after he was already Kobe Bryant. In fact, this was 2007. He was the best player in the game in 2007. I mean, Jordan had already retired a couple of times and LeBron was great, but he was still climbing that mountain. He was still younger and more raw. I mean, Kobe was that dude. And of course I've spent my whole life in basketball. So there'd always been this urban legend of how insanely intense Kobe's individual workouts were. In fact, he would call them blackouts instead of calling them workouts because he claimed he worked so hard he was always on the verge of blacking out. That probably had something to do with the black mamba. Yes, and he has an unparalleled mindset. So I'm certainly not encouraging kids to go to the point of blacking out in their workouts, but Kobe's cut from a different cloth. Well, I got a call to fly out to LA and be the performance coach for the first ever Kobe Bryant Skills Academy. It was held at Matter Day High School out just outside of Los Angeles. And Nike was bringing in the top high school and college players from around the country for a really intense three day mini camp with the best player in the game. And having heard these stories about him, I mean, I was just psyched to meet him and wasn't bashful at all. My first opportunity, I walked right up to him and asked if I could watch one of his private workouts. And he was incredibly gracious. And he said, sure, man, I'm going tomorrow at four. And I got a little confused because I had just got done looking at the camp schedule. And it said that the first workout with the kids was the next day at 3.30. And he noticed the confused look on my face and said, yeah, that's four AM. Well, yeah, as you all know, there's not a legitimate excuse in the world on why you can't be somewhere at four in the morning, at least not one that Kobe's gonna accept. So I pretty much committed to being there. And I figured, hey, man, if I'm gonna be there, let me see if I can impress Kobe. Let me leave my mark on him. I'm gonna beat him to the gym. So I set my alarm for three in the morning. And I'm like a little kid on Christmas Eve. I couldn't sleep a wink. That alarm goes off. I jump up, I get dressed. I hop in a taxi and I head to the gym. And I get out of the cab. It's 3.30 in the morning. So it's pitch black. And yet I can see the damn gym lights already on. And I can hear a ball bouncing and I can hear sneakers squeaking. I walk in the side door. Kobe's already in a full sweat. He was going through an intense warmup with his trainer before his scheduled workout started at four. Damn. Yeah, damn was right. Now, out of professional courtesy and just thankful to be there, I didn't say anything to him or his trainer. I didn't wanna be a nuisance. I just sat down to watch. And for the first 45 minutes, I was actually shocked. For the first 45 minutes, I watched the best player in the world do the most basic footwork and offensive moves. He was doing stuff I had routinely done with middle school age players. Now, this is the Black Mamba. So he's doing everything at an unparalleled level of intensity. And he does everything with surgical precision. But the actual stuff he was doing was really basic. Now, his whole workout lasted a few hours. And when it was over, didn't say anything to him. Didn't say anything to his trainer. I just left. But my young coaching curiosity got the best of me. So later that day, I went up to him and I had to know. And I just said, Kobe, I don't understand. You're the best player in the world. Why do you do such basic drills? And he smiled and was incredibly gracious again. And he said, I think I'm the best player in the world because I never get bored with the basics. The hairs of my neck still stand up from telling that story because of the impact it made on me. Like that, that let me know that just because something is basic, it doesn't mean that it's easy. Those aren't synonyms, but the world treats them like they're synonyms. Most of what it takes for us to be good in anything is incredibly basic. Like you already talked about it. I mean, as far as human performance, movement is fairly basic. Pushing and pulling and lunging and squatting and hinging. Like it's not that complicated, but to do that stuff consistently is not easy to do. And we live in this world that increasingly tells us that it's okay to skip steps and that it's okay to circumvent the process. We're always being told, you need to chase what's hot and what's flashy and what's sexy, just ignore what's basic. That's poison. You know, the basics work. They always have and they always will. And that is always a reminder to me that I have to live in the basics and I have to keep respecting and trusting the process. That if I want any outcome, if I want to reverse engineer that outcome, then I have to live in the basics because there's only one way to the top of any ladder. That's rung by rung. There's no other way to the top of a ladder. Now we've all learned you can fall to the bottom in one misstep. You can make one bone-headed mistake and you can fall to the bottom, but you can't get to the top unless you touch every rung. And a guy like Kobe realizes that and there's no accident that he played 20 years at the highest level and is arguably one of the best players to ever play the game. For sure. For sure, one of the best ever. Oh, without question. Yeah. Fuck, that's so incredible. That was making the hair on my head even though I don't have much. Stand up a little bit. Get the little things out. These tiny ass follicles are going. So let's talk KD. Yeah. Well, I've got a great KD story too. You can tell I'm a storyteller. Yes, brother. Because I believe, even as a professional speaker or as a coach, it's about communicating. It's about being able to convey your message. And I've always found that, whether it's an audience or whether it's an athlete I was training, coaching 101 is it's not about me. It's about you. Doesn't matter what I say. It matters what you hear. That's all that matters. And I found that storytelling is a great way to teach. I can tell kids, guys, the basics are really important. Trust me. I know the basics are important. That'll last three seconds. I tell them that Kobe story, it can last a lifetime. So that's, I believe in the power of story. Fuck yeah. Let me jump in real quick before KD. Do you know the author, Ted Decker? I don't. Okay. He wrote 49th Mystic and Rise of the Mystics, two of Aubrey and my favorite, absolute favorite books. A good friend of ours, one of Aubrey's mentors. And I met him and said, don't I have huge respect for this dude. And he gave me one of the nicest compliments ever. He said, it's not, it's not what you say. It's how you say it. That makes me buy into what you're saying when you communicate with me. And I was like, fuck, I guess that is it, huh? That's it. The people we gravitate towards, it's how they present the material. It's how they deliver that information that makes us want more or want less. It'll make us shy away or make us gravitate towards that magnetism coming out of someone's mouth. Because they say it in a way that keeps the listener in mind. So it's not about how I want to present the information. It's after I get to know you, how's the best for me deliver it to you? You know, one of the things I find hilarious and coaching, this happens all the time in basketball. Let's say I'm the coach, you're one of my players and you're not boxing out. And I say something to the effect, like Kyle, what are you an idiot? I've told you a thousand times that you have to box out. Well, guess what? If you've told someone something a thousand times and they still don't do it, you're the idiot. You're the one that can't communicate a message. That's not your fault. That's my fault. Cause I'm telling you the same way over and over. So clearly if I've told you something a thousand times and it's not registering, I'm the one that needs the change, not you. I need to think, boy, okay, the way I've been telling Kyle, it's not registering cause he's still not boxing out. Hmm, what can I, maybe I'll show him some film. Maybe that'll get it through to him. You know, maybe instead of screaming and throwing F-bombs at him, I'll put my arm around him and ask him, you know, did you know yours, like just come up with something different, but it's always about the listener. That's what's most important and people don't get that. So that, that was the quick diversion of why I love telling story because I think it paints a picture that allows people to remember these things to a greater degree. First time I met Kevin Durant, he was 15. And I watched him play for just a couple of minutes and a few things were obvious to me. One, this kid loves to play basketball. Like he has bust in his butt, but he is smiling the entire time. Two, he has great technique. Like his footwork and his shooting mechanics are as good as any 15 year olds I've ever seen. Three, he has a really high basketball IQ. Like he understands the game at 15 on the cerebral level of most coaches. He can think the game, but four, he was pretty slight of frame. Like Kevin used to get pissed when I called him skinny. Beanpole. Yes, if he would stand sideways, you could see his heartbeat. Like he was super, super skinny. And it was clear to me that the only thing that would prevent this kid from playing at a really high level would be lack of strength and power. Well, you know, I'm a kid in a candy shop. That's what I did. I was a strength coach. So to get a great player that needed what I had, I mean, it was the perfect marriage. But again, as I told you, it was hard then convincing basketball players that they needed this. And his wonderful mom, Wanda, like most mothers was very protective. She was, you know, her little baby bird had never lifted weights before, never done any strength work. So it took a few months of convincing before he finally came in for a workout. And I remember it, he met me. I picked him up from his apartment. We went to this gym in PG County and I absolutely hammered him. I mean, I put him through the ground. I was still at the immaturity of a strength coach where I thought the harder the workout meant the better the workout. I'm making more sore than any other trainer on the planet. In fact, I have the highest vomit rate of any strength coach. My players all vomit. I mean, looking back on it now, it was a fool. But at the time I was doing the best I could with what I had and I thought I was doing what was best. Clearly a future pro who's never touched a weight, you don't throw them off the edge of the cliff the first time they come in. So that was foolish on my end. But what I do remember in 30, 40 minutes, Kevin is laying on the gym floor. Now he was 6'10", 180 pounds. So he was coiled up like a snake. I mean, he looked like a cobra. And he was very quiet back then. So he didn't say two words the whole workout. And he's just laying on the floor and he's sweating and his muscles are twitching. So I had no idea if he even liked the workout. So I asked him, you know, I was really confident back then. I still am, but inappropriately confident. Hey, what'd you think? How'd it go for you? I said, hey man, did you like that workout? And the funniest thing in the world was he said as serious as it can be. No, I didn't. But I know this is the kind of stuff I gotta do if I wanna play in the NBA. So when can I see you again? Damn. I remember being blown away that a 15 year old had the maturity to say, you know what? I'm gonna have to make a sacrifice to get where I wanna go. I have the end in mind. And that sacrifice is gonna come with a tremendous amount of discomfort. Physical, mental, emotional. I know adults now that aren't willing to make sacrifices to get what they want. And this 15 year old kid wanted to be in the NBA so bad that he was willing to take a beating that I never should have given him to get there. And I just remember thinking in that time, this kid's special. Now, if you had me on a lie detector test, I would have never guessed that he would be probably the second best player in the world. But at the same time, I'm not even remotely surprised. Cause when you take his raw materials with that type of mindset, that's when greatness happens. And still to this day, I'm like, I could have ruined that forever. Like he could have had the type of mindset, I'm never gonna lift weights again. This was the worst experience in my life. This guy has no idea what he's doing. I can't, and thankfully he didn't. So sometimes the stars just align and things work out. Cause that could have gone the other way. And that started a very connected and fruitful relationship for the next couple of years. And yeah, I'm so excited and happy for his success. He's a good dude, man. Yeah, it's been awesome to watch him. Especially, you know, right when he gets to league and he's struggling, he's out, not really getting the wins. He doesn't really have the surrounding talent. And then, you know, we see the big three make it out to Miami. And it's like, oh, that's possible. You kind of see the wheels turn. And then obviously what they did with Golden State is just, it's fucking insane. It's absolutely remarkable. They're on a different level. That's new basketball for you. But it's been awesome to watch those guys because they have a cohesiveness most teams don't. Yes. And it's cool to see that. Well, that's the thing, and you just hit it. It's not just the talent they have. They've created a culture that's unparalleled. I mean, the Spurs had it for a while. The Spurs kind of had the recipe for how you build a winning. Well, let me take a step back. The Bulls did first. And it wasn't just because of Jordan. Most people think that just because Jordan, that's an easy default. But what they learned was that you can build a team like a jigsaw puzzle. So of course you have the best player of all time, but he had a pretty darn good sidekick in Scottie Pippen. They always had a sharpshooter, whether it was John Paxton or Steve Kerr. They always had a guy that was willing to just rebound and do the dirty work. Dennis Rodman, Horace Grant. They always had a big lug of a center that was fine, yes, that was fine not getting any shots. Bill Cartwright shot what? Three or four times a game on offensive rebounds. But when you put all of those together, you have a team. And that's what the Spurs ended up learning. And that's what Golden State has taken to a whole new level. And you throw in a great coach like Steve Kerr, you throw in the culture of Golden State. See, what people don't realize, it's not just the talent on the court. Like their ownership and their management, their sales department, everything about them is first class and is championship level. And that's again where I think many people, they fall short. They just think, oh, they've got some good basketball players, that's why they win. No, that's one piece of the puzzle. But to finish the whole mosaic, you have to have everything else. Yeah, one more piece on Golden State before we move on. We just had Dan Chow, who is the CEO of Halo Neuroscience. They make the fucking super cool TDCS device that looks like beats by Dre Headphones. Just had him on the show. I remember Golden State being one of the first teams across the board to use that technology, specifically for training new skills and acquiring new skills with basketball. And it was like, damn, these guys are on the cutting. Obviously they're in the Bayer and they're in the tech capital of the world, but it's really cool to see shit like that when teams are just so invested in all the things. We had a buddy of mine from the Chicago Cubs on who used to play for them. Now he's working in operations and he's brought in float tanks, hyperbaric oxygen, like all sorts of cool tricks. Love it. Keep these guys working on meditation, parasympathetic state. And it's like, that's the full arc of what we're trying to create here, but it's the full arc of what we wanna create in the human experience. Absolutely. Not just with elite level athletes. But with everyone. Yeah. Well, so I had a chance to meet Mark Cuban. He was on my bucket list. I've always had these bucket lists of people I wanted to meet and I've always admired Mark from afar and I had a chance to meet him. This was several years ago. And he was talking about how when he bought the Dallas Mavericks, they were not just the worst team in the NBA, they were voted the worst professional sports franchise of all of the major sports. And people were like, why in the world are you buying the worst? And the competitor in him, and the confidence in him is like, well, I wanna buy the worst because we're gonna go from worst to first. We're gonna win a championship. And what I found remarkable about his story was the very first thing he did when he took over was he upgraded all of the amenities and everything for the players. He upgraded the locker room. He got, he started to treat them like champions before they would become champions. And everyone was like, you're crazy. Like, why are you giving these losers all of this stuff? And he's like, you treat them like losers. They behave like losers. You treat them like champions. They behave like champions. And a handful of years later, they won an NBA championship. And I know that sounds a little over-dramatic like a Hollywood, but it's true. It's totally true. Yeah, and that's what you do. So you have to start. So Golden State, no matter how good they are, continues to invest in their players, continues to search out new technologies and new training methods because everyone else is now doing what they've been doing for the last couple of years. So how do they continue to level up and stay ahead? Obviously, you guys, what you do here, you're not the only people in this space. This is an incredibly crowded space, but you guys are so hungry to continue to grow. And like, I mean, you and I talking at lunch yesterday, just even the creation of your position and what it is that you do here is transformative. I mean, it's, and that's what's gonna keep you guys staying ahead of everybody else. But the moment you get bit with the complacency bug, the moment you say, all right, we're pretty good now is when somebody else catches you. I mean, it's Mike Tyson and Buster Douglas, man. The second you become a finished product, you are finished. You're done. Absolutely. It doesn't matter if you're actually at fucking COVID Bryant level and whatever thing you do, but the second you believe that you're finished, you are finished, you're fucking done. You're not gonna continue to grow. That's, and I know I've said this scenario on a few podcasts before, but I love thinking about this. The elder versus the older. Elders in tribal societies and traditional countries that still have three multi-generational homes where the elderly are cared for and they're sought after for wisdom and life experience and they still have a zest for living and a zest for life and they wanna learn and continue to grow. That's an elder, right? Lots of respect for the elders. Olders, that's what you see here in America for the most part. And there's some good elders still. Everyone has, you know, there's just plenty of great grandparents in America, but there's an awful lot of grumpy old assholes too that don't wanna learn. They're like, they're routine. Yep, yep, I got my shit by the book each day. And it's funny because as you get, you know, you're 43. Yes. I'm 36. There are ways that'll catch myself where I'm like, oh shit, that's like an old-timers idea. Yeah. You know, like me wanting to not do it a certain way or this kind of thing is just like, I can catch the oldness creeping in and then reverse that to, what is this useful, youthful play that I can tap into where everything's fresh, everything's new and I have that hunger, right? Well, we have to be intentional about it. I mean, I can't tell you how invigorating was. So I came here this morning at seven and met one of your trainers, Christian, and Christian took me through a workout and it was amazing. Not just the workout, the workout was phenomenal and he's phenomenal, but to be the student again, to be the trainee, I don't do enough of that. And that woke me up to the fact that I need to do more of that. I need to, instead of always being the teacher and the sharer, which I do enjoy, I've gotta be the student and I've gotta receive. And I mean, it brought me back 20 years to when people were training me to be a good basketball player. I'm not anymore, but man, that was awesome. And I learned something very powerful. We said we share a friend in Frank Shamrock and I told you I got to spend some time with Frank and I don't know if Frank came up with this, but he was the one that shared it with me, so I'll give him credit. He calls it the plus equal minus. And I don't know if you've heard that before, but he said you should always have three people in your life, a plus and equal and a minus. And the plus is someone that you would consider a mentor, someone that's already walked the path that you want to go down and they're gonna send the elevator back down for you and pour into you. And you need to know who that person is. Then you need to have an equal. That's someone who's a peer, someone who's trying to do the same things you are where you guys can exchange challenges and share successes, but you're on the same path. And then you need to have a minus. And he doesn't say that in a diminishing way. You need to have someone that's five, 10 years behind you that is trying to get where you are and you're gonna send the elevator back down for them and you're going to pour into them and you're going to mentor them. And when you keep those three people in your life, it keeps everything in perspective because he said, and I found this to be true in my own life, you'll learn so much in all three positions. Most people think, well, if I'm mentoring you, I'm doing all of the teaching and you're doing all of the learning. No, and I know you know firsthand, when you teach and mentor other people, you learn so much about yourself. And first of all, you got to know your stuff in order to teach it to others. So that in and of itself, it keeps you sharp. And it's not like you sign those three people up for a lifetime contract. They're gonna always revolve and they're gonna change. So maybe so-and-so is your mentor for two months and you're mentoring someone else and then that, you know, the ebbs and flows of life, it'll change. But when he told me that, I was much more intentional about making sure I have those people in my life and it's a game changer. Yeah, that's fucking bananas. Yeah. There's a part of me, because I started training with Frank Shamrock and I told you this yesterday when I was 17 years old. It's so cool. Okay. One of the greatest, easily one of the greatest, you could say top three MMA practitioners of all time. Yeah. And really one of the guys who first bridged the gap from I know one or two things to I'm well-rounded everywhere. You know, and he brought in Maurice Smith to work on his striking and all these different people. Him and his brother had worked with Eric Paulson on foot locks and shit that was way ahead of time before, you know, now we see like Legalucky now and John Danagher and all these heel hooks coming into Jiu-Jitsu. These guys were on point and really paved the way. But you know, when I was 17, he's such a fucking goofy guy. You know, like he would give me wisdom and things like that, but I've never heard something like that come out of Frank's mouth. So I'm definitely gonna have him on the podcast. I'm intrigued as fuck now. You absolutely have to. Well, so here's the thing. Now, I've not a die-hard MMA guy. Of course, I have heard the name Frank Shamrock. I was talking to this guy for an hour before someone else told me who he was. I just knew him as Frank and we're just talking. And now, I mean, he still keeps in great shape and he's, you know, I mean, he's... But he's a specimen. He is, but he's a gentle, well-thought, well, like he's insightful. He's a brilliant dude. And I'm talking to this guy for an hour at a retreat and I'm just thinking, hey, I met this new guy Frank and someone comes over and they're like, do you know who that is? It was probably some fucking MMA fan in an affliction shirt. I was like, yeah, it's Frank. Do you know who you're talking to right now? Yeah. This is the legend, Frank Shamrock. Well, and that's how it was. Yeah, but how crazy is that? I'm like, I'm talking to this guy. He could have killed me in 0.3 seconds and there he is bestowing wisdom beyond wisdom. It was just really neat, but he did share that, you know, he said he was ahead of his time the way he would study his opponents and that he took a scientific approach to if you were a different style fighting me, then I need to learn your style and I need to learn where am I going to be exposed? Like where could you really hurt me with your style and study that? But also with my style, where am I at an advantage for you? And he said he was one of the few... He's watching game film back before, at least according to him, anyone was doing that in the MMA. Yeah, a lot of people in MMA at that point. I mean, even guys like Van der Lee, who fought long after Frank, Van der Lee would say more or less, I'm gonna paraphrase this, but he didn't really care what the opponent was good at. It didn't fucking matter. Well, all that mattered was his game plan going forward, I'm gonna execute, I'm gonna crush you, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, on the axe murder, I'm gonna do everything that I do well and not worry about anything that you do well. And that works to a degree. It worked for him for a very long time. He certainly had a far better career than I ever did, but to see the cerebral approach, you see a guy like John Jones or George St. Pierre, I mean, there's a clear cut difference in their longevity and what they've accomplished. But I do love the concept of playing to your strengths. If you'll allow me another basketball story, I don't know how much of your audience is basketball people, but... All this shit translates, so it doesn't matter. It absolutely does. So Jay Billis, who wrote the forward to my book is a really good friend and he has been someone, he has been a plus in my life for almost a decade. I mean, he doesn't know the impact he's had on me. And he's kind of the face of college basketball. He works for ESPN Game Day. And he was telling me a story. This was several years ago back when Brad Stevens was still the coach at Butler and Butler was just starting to make a real good name for themselves. They were about to go on those two championship level runs. And part of Game Day is the night before the game, Jay goes and watch each practice and kind of get a feel for the players and the personnel. Well, he's a Duke alum, Jay is. So he went to watch Duke. Duke was going to play Butler up in the Meadowlands in New Jersey. And Jay goes and watches Duke first because Coach K says, guy and Coach K says, look, we're going to beat Butler tomorrow because we're bigger, we're stronger and we're more powerful. We are going to pound the ball down low because we have size, we're going to get layups, we're going to get dunks, we're going to get every rebound, we're going to block their shots. We will beat Duke tomorrow because we're bigger, we're stronger and we're more powerful. And Jay leaves and is like, man, this is going to be a bloodbath tomorrow. Duke is bigger, stronger and more powerful. He goes over to Butler's practice and Brad Stevens, an equally brilliant coach says, we're going to beat Duke tomorrow because we're smaller, we're quicker and we're faster than they are. They won't be able to keep up with us. We'll get easy buckets in transition. We'll get open threes because we're smaller, we're quicker and we're faster. And Jay left goes, I don't know who in the hell is going to win this game? Both of them think they have the advantage. Both of them have a clear understanding of what they do and what they do well, but they think that's the key to winning the game. And it ended up being a really close game. Butler ended up having one of their better players get injured, which might have been a deciding factor, but Duke won a close game. But Jay said, man, that's proof in the pudding that you have to figure out what you do well and you have to execute that to the best of your ability. Brad Stevens could have stayed up and crying about, well, their players are bigger than ours and we can't run with, no. He said, this is what we've got. This is the hand I'm going to play. And you know, Coach K and Brad Stevens are two of the best who have ever done it. I love it. Well, let's transition here into how you've pieced together what you've learned through high level athletics and performance into what you take into the business world. And with a lot of major companies that you work with, you worked with some fucking huge players in the game. Pepsi, like giant companies, not like small time pop shops. It's been pretty remarkable. And it's all of this same stuff that gets you and I so fired up, whether we're here in the gym or we've got the mics and the cameras on, it's all of this same type of mindsets and rituals and trying to teach businesses how to use those same things. You know, again, I'm a big believer in culture. I believe culture is the number one determining factor to sustainable results. And the culture on it is palpable the moment you walk in. Like you spend five minutes here and you can quickly realize what your identity is and what the vision of this place is. You can tell what the standards of excellence are and you can tell that everyone holds each other accountable to living those things up, which is why you guys have a great culture. And now your culture doesn't need to be the culture that someone else has. Like you don't need to walk into Pepsi and they don't need to have graffiti on the walls and they don't need to have rap music. But they need to have the same recipe that you all have here. And it's the same recipe of the warriors. It's the same recipe. I mean, you name any successful organization, they know their identity, they've created standards, they hold each other accountable to live up to those standards and that's what their culture is. And that's what I try to share with businesses and try to teach them how to be more effective leaders, kind of piggybacking on what we were talking about about communication. And what I found in the best organizations is accountability is horizontal. It's not just vertical. It's not just I'm the boss, you report to me, I tell you what to do, you do it. It's we're all in this together. You hold me accountable, I hold him accountable, he holds him accountable. And we do that because we have the same shared vision. And what I'm trying to get out of all of this is what the company's trying to get and what the company's trying to get is also important to me. And that's when you know it's a perfect fit. And that's really the stuff that I share with them and it's always through the lens of a former basketball performance coach but the more ingrained I get in business and the more I'm learning from these top companies, it's mind blowing to me how similar they are. Basketball coaches should be hiring the best CEOs to come in and talk to their team, not just CEOs hiring basketball coaches to come in and talk. It should be both ways because there's so much people could learn. And I'm not kidding. I mean, I'm not trying to impose and invite other companies to on it but any business in the Austin area that doesn't try to come get some of what you guys have here is foolish. And let's get Aubrey talking to some NBA teams already. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I know he's got a little hoops background. I look forward to talking to him about that. Yeah, brother, you'll be on his show later today. Yeah. Talk a bit about accountability. This seems to be a major issue in with fucking everyone on the planet Earth. So it's pretty important. Anyone who's ever had a goal and written it down, this applies to you. How you stay accountable. And you talked a bit about the horizontal interface that good companies have versus the vertical interface of, excuse me, I'm your boss. Do as I say, that kind of shit. You know, when everyone's on board, it makes it easier. But for people that are in health and wellness or they're working on any particular part of their life, it could be that they have fitness dialed but they don't have a meditation practice. They don't have breath work. They don't know where to start. They don't know what to read. Once people start getting this information through podcasts like mine and Aubrey's and various fucking awesome ones, Rogan, Ferris, how do they start to piece that together and hold themselves accountable? What are some tips there for people? Well, two, one, you don't do it alone. You need to encourage your inner circle, the people you know care about you to hold you accountable and you need to ask them, you need to beg them and say, hey, this is something I'm trying to do and I want you to hold me accountable. I don't want you to tell me it's all right when I mess up. I want you to hold me to the fire. And then second is you have to realize that holding someone accountable is not something you do to them. It's something you do for them. That's how you show someone you care about them. If I hold you accountable, Kyle, it's because I care about you. It's because I believe you're better than what you're showing me right now and that shouldn't be good enough for you. And because I care about you so much, it's not good enough for me. I'm gonna hold you to a higher standard. Many times we know that intrinsically. You're a father, I'm a father. We hold children accountable because we want them to be the best and that's discipline. Discipline is a form of love. That's how you show someone that you love them is you hold them accountable and you discipline them to what they're capable of. But we tend to get that twisted. Man, why does Kyle always bust in my chops? Okay, that last rep wasn't perfect. Why does he have to call it out? The other 14 were great because you care about me and you know that I'm capable of doing a set of 15 perfect reps. So 14 and a half is not good enough because you know me well enough to know what my goal is and that if I keep cutting it short, I'm not going to get there. So that we have to make sure that we realize accountability is a great thing. And when you've created that atmosphere in your company where I see you not living up to one of the standards that on it has and I call you out on it, but I do it through love and through grace and compassion that you're actually appreciative of that. So human nature is to get defensive, but after you take a beat, you're like, you know what Alan, you're right. I got it, I got you. And when we can do that and we invite others in to hold us accountable, like wherever it is I'm trying to go, I can't get there by myself. I need other people because I'm not going to be at a 10 every day. I'm going to have bad days like everybody else and I need people to support me and help me and encourage me the same way that I hope that I do that for them. Fuck yeah, brother. They knocked it out of the park. Cool. Yeah, man. I had an interesting story with my wife that follows into this. It's funny because when I think of, you know, like, obviously we've seen CrossFit blow up with small group training. We offer small group classes here on it that are not, it's not CrossFit, but it's similar. You know, we're going to put you through a wide variety of things and you get to do it with a small tribe of people that you go into battle with, right? Each day. And that's how you build community, right? I think with the traditional big box model of gyms, it's very hard because you're going to go in there and you're going to train yourself or you're going to pay out the ass for a personal trainer who probably doesn't know much, you know, bench and squats, bicep curls, that kind of shit. And, but really when you think about people that are starting out, you have to look to the inner circle. It has to be a spouse or a loved one or someone that's close to you, a close friend that you can do this with for anything accountable. Sorry, I'm slapping the table like a goddamn rookie. It's all right. You got to do that, right? Yes. So my wife and I had intermittent fasting. She was like, she likes the late night snack and she doesn't eat huge meals. She's a grazer, right? But I had to convince her you need to eat more at dinner because we're going to have a sharp cut out of five PM each night. Then we won't eat anything until nine AM. That way we get our 16 hours fasting, eight hours feeding window. And we had, we had these little apps. I think it's called up. Let me just find it here because people will ask. It's called zero app. And it's awesome. It's just a timer for fasting. So you click it right after your last bite of any, any calories. And then it starts the timer and you can set it to go off and notify you when you've reached 16 hours, 12 hours, 24 hours, whatever, it makes it easy, right? And, but I had to hold her accountable. So anytime we'd finished dinner, you know, I'd encourage her during dinner to eat a little bit more and she'd like a can of stuff. Well, a few hours later, we're hanging out, we're, you know, we're reading, we're doing whatever. And it's, you know, I'm going to have a little collagen, collagen pudding or something else. And it's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, we gotta, we gotta stop that here. We gotta, you know, and like there is resistance initially, you know, like she wasn't, she wasn't all in right out the gate. But as we became good at that, there was gratitude because she was held accountable and she was able to fucking go through with the thing. Well, I love that. And here's what you, this is what I encourage businesses to do. You ask permission ahead of time. Here's literal, and they can change the vernacular if they want. This was the relationship I would have with my athletes. Number one, do you give me permission to coach you? Do you give me permission to do everything that I've learned in my career for your betterment to get where you want to go? And it's a yes or a no. If the answers no, then we're not going to work together, you can leave through the door that you came in. Assuming the answer is yes, the next question is, do you give me permission to hold you accountable to the standards that we've set for you to be and you fill in the blank? And as soon as they've given you that permission, you've got them. And I don't mean you've got them in a bad way. Like you've told me that I don't care what's going on in your life. You've already given me permission to hold you accountable. So when you try to eat some of that college and pudding three hours later, you've already told me that I'm supposed to bust your chops on this and I'm going to do it because you've told me that and that's what you want me to do. And it can be tougher in intimate relationships and family and people that are closest to us. Sometimes it's easier when it can be more sterile that I'm the coach, I'm 20 years older than you, you're my high school athlete. So it can definitely be a challenge, but that permission, and I freely give that permission. So I'll say, Hey, Kyle, I'm trying to get better at intermittent fasting, man. I'm asking you, will you please hold me accountable? I'm telling you, I'm going to try to have something at night. Will you hold me accountable, man? Will you do that for me? And if you're in my inner circle and we're boys, you won't hesitate. Of course you will. And that's the relationship that we need to have. So you get that permission first and then you hold them accountable. And I find that works well. Cause people, one of the things that unites all of us as human beings is we don't like disappointing people. We don't like letting others down, especially if they matter to us and we care about them. So if I've already given you permission and told you what I'm trying to do, I'm more likely to stick to it because I don't want to disappoint you. And I find that's incredibly helpful. And I use that with my children. I use it with Pepsi. I use it with anyone and everyone. It's all, these are human conditions. This is not something that's just for sport or just for old or just for young. This is human behavior. Yeah, that's Paul Selig has, he's been on Aubrey's podcast a couple of times. He talks about this thing. What is true now is always true and has always been true, right? That never changes a real truth with a capital T. It's always true, right? So those things, it doesn't matter if it's with a kid, doesn't matter with a giant corporation. It's always true if it's true, right? And it's the basics. I mean, I didn't, I guarantee you one thing and I know you've got lots and lots of listeners. Nobody's head is exploded during this conversation because everything I've said, they already know in some capacity, they've heard before, they know intuitively, but just because they know doesn't mean they do. And that's what's called a performance gap. It's the gap between what we know and what we do. And that's why on it's so amazing because you guys are helping people close that gap. Almost every functional sane adult on the earth knows what healthy foods are and what they should eat, generally speaking, not to the degree that you know it, but they generally know what's good food and bad food. They generally know how much they're supposed to sleep and they generally know, hey, I'm supposed to exercise and get moving. People know that. Most of our country doesn't do any of that. There's always a gap between knowing and doing. You brought up, if you wanna be financially free, you put a little bit of money away every single day. There's not a human being in the world that doesn't know that. Statistically, most people aren't doing it. So all of this stuff is a matter of closing the gap between what we know and what we do. And that's the first step to improving performance. And that's what you do so brilliantly and Aubrey and everybody here is, you guys have such a narrow gap when it comes to human performance because you guys live this stuff. I mean, I've been listening to you forever. It's been great to spend time with you here and spend time with you in Santa Monica and watching you guys live what it is that you talk about. I mean, that's what it is. And that's what we're trying to get everybody else to do. Fuck yeah, brother. Well, I'll leave people with a quote that follows that. Yes. One of my good buddies, Levent Niazzi, don't talk about it, be about it. And I know he didn't come up with that quote, but he's always said it my entire life. I've known him since I'm 12. Don't talk about it, be about it. Yeah. That's it, right? Or what's that song with Migos? Walk it like I talk it. I throw the kids out there. Yes. We're reaching our younger audience. We got to wrap this one up. You're going to jump on with Aubrey later. Where can people find you online? How can they follow you on the social media and interwebs? Well, you know what's funny is my book came out yesterday. Today we're recording this on January 9th that came out yesterday, January 8th, it's called Raise Your Game. They can go to raiseyourgamebook.com or anything else. You can just go to alansteinjr.com. I'm at alansteinjr on Instagram and all those things. And I love engaging with folks. So if anyone listening to this, if they found something that resonated, please shoot me a message. I love talking shop. I love learning. I love sharing. I love engaging. I know that's what you guys do. So thanks, man.