Dre Baldwin is the host of the popular daily podcast Work On Your Game, which has garnered more than 3 million followers.
Before becoming a podcast host, Dre Baldwin used to play basketball professionally in international leagues.
His pro basketball career began in high school. However, at the time, Dre Baldwin rode his team’s bench. For 5 years, he hustled and worked hard to reach the pros, where he played for 9 years.
In 2005, Dre Baldwin started blogging, and in 2006, he branched out to uploading videos on YouTube. Since then, he has “published over 7,000 videos,” with the number of views reaching “over 73 million.”
Likewise, Dre Baldwin has written 27 books, and he has also given 4 TEDxTalks.
According to Dre Baldwin, his business stands out because “we help people develop their game from the inside out.”
Dre Baldwin adds that this “game” can mean “anything that the person is involved in: sports, business, professional development, advancing to a new position, growing in your current position, student, or a person looking for their place in life.”
The company’s philosophy “applies to anyone who is looking to either get better, get better at showing their abilities, or get better at drawing attention to their abilities.” Dre Baldwin says that he needed to do this as an athlete himself.
Check out more interviews with content leaders here. You can also grab Dre Baldwin’s book here.
What makes our company stand out is the fact that we help people develop their game from the inside out. Dre Baldwin, Work On Your Game
Jerome Knyszewski: What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
Dre Baldwin: What makes our company stand out is the fact that we help people develop their game from the inside out.
And that “game” is anything that the person is involved in: sports, business, professional development, advancing to a new position, growing in your current position, student, or a person who is looking for their place in life.
Our philosophy applies to anyone who is looking to either get better, get better at showing their abilities, or get better at drawing attention to their abilities.
Those are the same things that I needed to do as an athlete and as an entrepreneur, and now we help people solve the same problems that I needed to solve myself.
Jerome Knyszewski: Which tips would you recommend to your colleagues in your industry to help them to thrive and not “burn out”?
Dre Baldwin: Number one would be to stop trying to do everything by yourself.
When we first get started, we all have to do everything on our own; the challenge is that many of us get to a certain point where we could offload some work, yet we keep doing everything by ourselves.
Outsourcing work and delegating tasks can be hard, and actually takes more time and effort at the beginning then it would take to just do everything on your own — which is the reason why many people continue doing everything by themselves forever. This is probably the number one thing that burns out entrepreneurs.
Another tip: create a strategy for yourself and for your business.
While your strategy or plan will probably be faulty and far from accurate at first, the time and attention that you give to even making a plan is well worth the investment.
Many business people, myself included, just head into business doing random things, and hope that something works.
The gift and the curse of that is that if you are talented enough, and the market and timing are on your side, you will actually create success — it’s only when that luck and talent has taken you as far as it can that you realize your mistake.
Jerome Knyszewski: None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
Dre Baldwin: I would have to credit the many virtual mentors I have had over the years, mostly through books and videos that I have consumed.
I understood the power of having a team and utilizing the knowledge and strength of other people, and not doing everything by myself, even when I was still doing everything by myself.
I knew I would eventually need to build a team and have always been open to offloading work from me to others so I could focus on what I do best, my zone of genius.
As for specific people, I would cite Napoleon Hill, Jack Canfield, Jim Rohn, Tony Robbins, Sean Combs, Shawn Carter, and Curtis Jackson.
Jerome Knyszewski: Ok thank you for all that. Now let’s shift to the main focus of this interview. The title of this series is “How to take your company from good to great”.
Let’s start with defining our terms.
How would you define a “good” company, what does that look like? How would you define a “great” company, what does that look like?
Dre Baldwin: Great question.
I would say a good company is one that is earning enough revenue to stay afloat, serve its clients, and pay its staff. At the same time, a good company is not necessarily growing from its current position.
A great company is one that is doing all of the above, save for one difference: it is growing, advancing, and taking on more and bigger problems to help even more people.
In the process, the people within that company are enjoying even more and better rewards as a result of the more people they are able to serve and help.
Jerome Knyszewski: What would you advise to a business leader who initially went through years of successive growth, but has now reached a standstill.
From your experience do you have any general advice about how to boost growth and “restart their engines”?
Dre Baldwin:
- Reconnect with your purpose. Why did you get into business in the first place? What is it that you want to bring to the world? Are you still connected to this purpose?
These questions will probably take you back to when you first started, or the spark that first led to the idea that led to your business.
What I’ve found is that many entrepreneurs get too far away from this purpose the further they go in business, distracted by their everyday needs.
It’s a good idea to remind ourselves from time to time why we even began. - Reconnect with your audience. Who is the person that you ideally want to help? And why?
Where are they now, as opposed to where they were when you first started — is it the same place? Maybe not!
Make sure you are staying in touch with, and are accessible to, your core audience.
If you allow your ideal audience to drift apart, you may not actually notice this until it is too late. - Get active. Both of the above require you to get active — both mentally and physically.
Do not just sit around feeling sorry for yourself, or mad at yourself for not being as motivated or inspired as you used to be.
Your company is at a standstill because you are at a standstill. Get moving and get active, and your business will follow.
Jerome Knyszewski: Generating new business, increasing your profits, or at least maintaining your financial stability can be challenging during good times, even more so during turbulent times.
Can you share some of the strategies you use to keep forging ahead and not lose growth traction during a difficult economy?
Dre Baldwin: When the economy is difficult for a business owner, the economy may also be difficult for its clients.
What that means: you should find out what challenges your audience is having, and see what you can do to help face down those challenges.
While there is never a guarantee that you will be able to continue growing during a difficult economy, you can always keep your eyes and ears open for new opportunities to better serve your audience.
I think that is the best that you can ask of yourself as a business since we cannot always predict what will happen with the rest of the world, and none of us ever stays on a continuous winning streak; life happens.
A great company is one that is doing all of the above, save for one difference: it is growing, advancing, and taking on more and bigger problems to help even more people.
Jerome Knyszewski: In your experience, which aspect of running a company tends to be most underestimated? Can you explain or give an example?
Dre Baldwin: Yes — having a plan for where you’re going, what you’re doing, and what needs to be done next.
In starting my company, one of my biggest challenges was that I had a lot of ideas, a lot of energy, and only two hands, two eyes, and one brain.
I couldn’t do it all at once! One of my biggest challenges was deciding what to do first, what to do next, and what the priorities were.
Figuring that out has helped settle things down in my business a lot. And I know for a fact that many companies still have not addressed this challenge.
Jerome Knyszewski: Great customer service and great customer experience are essential to build a beloved brand and essential to be successful in general. In your experience what are a few of the most important things a business leader should know in order to create a Wow! Customer Experience?
Dre Baldwin: Have a staff of people who actually care about the job and care about the clients they serve in the company they represent, and are not there only for the paycheck!
All of us have gone into businesses where we dealt with employees who were there just to get paid.
They didn’t really care about the job, the company, nor did they care about the clients that the company was serving.
This is a failure of the company and management, since they hired mercenaries who weren’t True Believers.
Employers who get lazy in hiring end up with these subpar individuals representing them, who are not perfect matches for their company nor for the company’s clients.
That laziness ends up hurting the business in the long run, because the company indirectly turns away many of their ideal clients through interactions with these mediocre staff members.
Jerome Knyszewski: What are your thoughts about how a company should be engaged on Social Media?
For example, the advisory firm EisnerAmper conducted 6 yearly surveys of United States corporate boards, and directors reported that one of their most pressing concerns was reputational risk as a result of social media.
Do you share this concern? We’d love to hear your thoughts about this.
Dre Baldwin: Everyone, especially our ideal clients, is on social media these days.
And when they have a question, concern, or comments, they will probably look to social media first to see if you’re present, before they use any other means of connecting with you.
It’s easiest, and it’s where people already are.
Therefore, every company should have a presence on social media, and be responsive to clients and or prospects on social media.
The only way a company can hurt its reputation on social media is by being on social media, yet not unresponsive, or something that the company does that happens to make its way to social media.
But social media itself doesn’t hurt any company without the company’s participation.
Your company is at a standstill because you are at a standstill. Get moving and get active, and your business will follow. Dre Baldwin
Jerome Knyszewski: What are the most common mistakes you have seen CEOs & founders make when they start a business? What can be done to avoid those errors?
Dre Baldwin:
- Not knowing who you wish to serve. Some people start businesses by creating a product or service offer, but they don’t really know who it’s for, or exactly what it will do for those people.
These offers don’t really land with anyone, even though the offer or product may be great in itself. Know who exactly you are making your materials for. - Having a weak idea (or no idea at all) about the wants and needs of your ideal clients. To further the first point, here I refer to CEOs and Founders who don’t fully understand the mentality of the people they want to serve — they are more focused on what they want to give their clients, rather than asking their clients what the client actually wants.
This seems like a tall task, but is not really as hard as it sounds. Have conversations with your ideal clients and ask them what their biggest challenges, needs, and frustrations are — one thing you will learn very quickly is that people are very willing to talk about their challenges in life, simply because very few people are willing to listen!
You can fill that need by then the person who is going to listen, and you will know exactly what is going on in the minds of your ideal clients.
This will put you ahead of 98% of your competition.
Jerome Knyszewski: Thank you for all of that. We are nearly done. You are a person of great influence.
If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
Dre Baldwin: The Work On Your Game movement, which is all about helping people develop their game, show their game to the world, and get paid for their game. Which is exactly what we all do in business.
Jerome Knyszewski: How can our readers further follow you online?
Dre Baldwin: Here are my social media:
Jerome Knyszewski: This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this!
Dre Baldwin: I appreciate the opportunity!
