Transcript of Why You Keep Stopping at 90% | Arturo Nuñez

I did not appreciate Kobe Bryant enough when he was alive.

I got the privilege of spending 4 and a half years working with that guy directly, and we became friends. So I got to know the man, not the legend, not the legendary basketball player. I got to know the man. His objective, his legacy project was he wanted to do what he called bottling better. Kobe used to say it like this: greatness is a choice, not some far-flung one day I'm gonna be great choice, a daily choice.

What is one of the unwritten rules that you think most people who either haven't lived the life or read your book run into the most often.

The quality of your life is the quality of your relationships. Full stop. Point blank.

I did not appreciate Kobe Bryant enough when he was alive. And I think some of that was because I don't think he talked as much about this stuff while he was playing. He was just so focused on the work. But man, and it's, I mean, obviously it's just a tragedy upon tragedies, what happened to him and his family and, and, and et cetera. But the work that he did from retirement until his unfortunate passing, I mean, there is just mountains of value and insight that like, it was like he had been storing up and I feel like we were almost robbed of, 'cause it, 'cause it couldn't have been everything he had. You know what I mean? Like, But just being able to get out there, you know, once he stopped playing and do these interviews and create this stuff and share these stories, I just, I like, I look at him like, I did not appreciate who this man was and his mentality and mindset enough when he was here with us.

Man, you know, I got the, I got the privilege of spending 4 and a half years working with that guy directly, and we became friends in that process. So I got to know the man, not the legend, not the legendary basketball player, not the, incredible athlete, not the, you know, uh, uh, uh, uh, perfection-obsessed athlete. I got to know the man and man, I learned so much. I learned so much. And a lot of the stuff is in my book. Well, some of the stuff's in my book, but I could tell you stories for days about this guy and what he meant to me and what he meant to young people. Uh, just a visionary guy. And it all started with, you know, when I first met Kobe Bryant, the first thing that strikes you about him is just how damn curious he is. He's curious about everything. Everything. Hey, the gas prices went up. Get me the guy from Chevron on the phone. What do you mean the guy from Chevron? Give me the CEO. I wanna talk to him about the gas prices. I don't understand what's going on. He was that guy.

And the guy, the CEO of Chevron would get on the call cuz it's Kobe Bryant, right? Like Kobe Bryant's calling me. Let me get on the call. He would do that about anything he was curious about. Give me the world's foremost expert on that on the phone. I wanna hear, I wanna understand that. I don't understand that. What's going on there? Wait, what's happening in Brazil? Yo, gimme somebody. Gimme. He would do that all the time. So incredible curiosity, incredible curiosity. And I think that was a superpower for him that allowed him to become great at what he was doing. But I would, but I'll say this, his objective, his legacy project was he wanted to do what he called bottling better. I wanna bottle better. Kobe, what do you mean bottle better? What does that mean? I want to show young people that you can achieve the standard of excellence that I achieved in basketball. at anything that you should desire to do. If you just use the qualities of curiosity, obsession of detail, honing the craft of what you're doing, watching the masters do what, what you, what you wanna do, anything that you wanna do, you can achieve that level of greatness just by following the, the, the formula.

And that's what he called bottling better. And that's what he wanted to leave behind for young people. Wasn't about playing basketball. You don't need to be a basketball player. You wanna be a poet? Here's how you do it. He's like, here's how you do poetry. You obsess the dictionary. You obsess Maya Angelou. You obsess, you know, that's how you get into it. And that's what he wanted to leave behind for folks, which I thought was really amazing.

Do you think we culturally have lost our respect or appreciation for excellence the way we used to? Like, and not just to take like a basketball example, but like, you look at Jordan, you look at Kobe. Let's just take those 2. Obviously incredibly successful from a championship perspective. But when we think about them, like, I don't think Michael Jordan, 6 titles. I think someone who literally, like the example, my son, my son's a basketball player. He loves Jordan. He's like, dad, he goes, dad, I think the most incredible thing about Michael Jordan is that when the Detroit Pistons beat the crap outta him, he went out and went to the gym and put on £40 of muscle and came back. the next year. You know what I mean? He's like, you know what I mean? And he's like, when we think about these guys, we think about the fact that they were unyieldingly committed to excellence. And it seems like today, not that there aren't people, yeah, it's not like there aren't people who are excellent, but I feel like we don't put that on the pedestal that we used to. Do you think that's fair?

I think that's a fair assessment. I want to say 2 things about that. One, One time I was with Kobe and he said, you know, Michael and I, Michael Jackson and I are good friends. Michael Jackson? I said, Kobe, what are you talking about? What do you and Michael Jackson have in common? He said, oh, we talk all the time. We're both obsessed with craft. Obsessed with it. Obsessed with the idea of getting better today than we were yesterday at our craft. And it's cost us everything. We've sacrificed everything. To be able to do this. And we talk about that sacrifice and we talk about that obsession with craft. And then one thing that he said, which relates directly to the question which you asked me is, you know, one day he said, Arturo, are you curious or are you committed? So what do you mean, Coke? He's like, you know, the curious, right? When they see potholes, landmines, obstacles, challenges, roadblocks, they turn back. The committed not only expected the landmines, roadblocks, obstacles, and challenges, They were prepared to trudge through them towards greatness and success. They were committed to greatness and success. A lot of people today are curious about a lot of stuff.

We've got a lot of access to information. We get real curious about stuff, and you can reach anything, which is amazing. Technology's allowed us to find out about things at our fingertips. We get curious a lot. What I fail to see a lot is commitment. You're curious, but are you committed? Are you prepared to go the distance? Are you prepared to trudge through The unpleasantries, the uncomfortable bits to get to greatness. You gotta be prepared to go through the uncomfortable part. Greatness is not comfortable. It's the uncomfortable. And by the way, our Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok culture has us wanting to take the picture at the top of Mount Everest. I use this as an example all the time when I do public speaking. If I could magically transport you to the top of Mount Everest to take the picture, a lot of people would choose that over taking the journey. The greatness is in the journey. The greatness is in the trying and the altitude and the altitude sickness and pitching a tent and your colleagues and the camaraderie and the teamwork and can I make it and the storm is coming and damn, it's cold.

That's the greatness. That's where the greatness is. The greatness is not in the snapshot shot at the top. Kobe said, I don't do this for championships. I don't do this for records. I don't do it for trophies. I do this because I get the privilege of playing basketball for a living. A game that I love. I get the privilege of every day getting up in the morning and deciding how I work on my body, how I work on my game, what I did yesterday, getting better for tomorrow, what that guy did, how I come back up. He would say crazy things to me like, oh, I'm playing against such and such. I won't name names. Playing against such and such. Yeah, I've studied his game. I got him. Oh, you studied his game? Yeah. When his left heel goes down, I'm blowing right by. Wait, what? I've looked at the film. He drops his left heel. Once he does that, there's no way he can stop me going left. I'm blowing by him. Who's studying the game like that? He's studying the game. He's studying the angles to the game. You know? And I, and I think that there is a certain level about, I know this is, this is a long-winded answer, but you know, I think we have a narrow definition of genius.

I'm going someplace else for a second. Now, when I was a kid growing up, Garry Kasparov was the chess champion. Garry Kasparov, Russian guy, chess champion. And he could beat anybody. Nobody could beat the guy. Eventually a machine could beat him, but first he beat the machines too. And then he started losing 1 out of 1,000 with the machines and the machines finally beat him. But he was the guy. And I was like, man, that's genius. Nobody can beat this guy. That is absolute genius. He's literally on that chessboard. He knows all the dimensions of the board. He's moving fast. You know, you got the little clock, you gotta move with the clock. He's moving fast. That's genius. But I never thought about for a second that Allen Iverson at a 5'11, maybe 10 on a good day, 11, would drive through the paint, jump up, and there'd be like Olajuwon and other 7-foot people in front of him, giants that also jumped. And in midair, he has to make a decision to get under this arm and around this one and across the other one, and then put the ball up against the glass at the perfect angle.

For it to go in. And nobody ever told me that was genius. How is that not genius? You know what? There's not a clock. There's not, it's not timed. There's not a clock. He does that instantaneously in midair. How is that not genius? To me, that's genius. And to your point, not enough people are trying to reach the maximum expression of genius by going through the pitfalls, the challenges, the obstacles, the roadblocks, right? To get there. We're curious today. About a lot of things. Jack of all trades even, but not committed. And I think that makes a huge difference.

How do you go from curious to committed?

Making a decision that you wanna be a master at something, striving for success, striving, by the way, striving for perfection. And anyone who's ever strived for perfection knows that it is and will always be around the corner, 'cause there is no perfection. Not even Michael Jordan himself was perfect, right? There is no perfection. Are you willing to take that journey knowing you'll never reach it? Knowing it's always around the corner, knowing it's always another workout away. Are you willing to take that journey? Many people are not willing to take that journey. Commitment, sacrifice, consistency. Kobe Bryant said, what have you done today to be better than you were yesterday? And if you stack enough days in a row like that, you end up at greatness.

One of my favorite Kobe stories is they had just lost, I can't remember if it was the Western Conference Championship or the Finals, but they had just lost. Season's over. And he's on the bench and his legs are out and he's got the ice on his knees and he's got a towel over his face. Game ends, he gets up, he's walking off the court, and one of the, you know, courtside reporters comes up and says, Kobe, you seem, you seem really emotional. What's going through your head? Are you, are you okay? And he kind of like straightens up and looks at her and goes, what? Like, like, that's not, I'm paraphrasing, but essentially his like response is, is essentially, I'm not emotional. I was thinking about what I need to work on tomorrow when I get to the gym. so that this doesn't happen again next year. She goes, you should have— the look on her face is like, what are you talking about? And he's like, yeah, I had the towel over my face because I was thinking about what I wanted to do at the gym tomorrow to make sure that next year we're not in this position.

And it's moments like that when you realize just how, and to your word, committed he He was literally going to the gym the day after he lost and his season was over. And he was thinking on the bench about what he wanted to do the next day. Like it's just another day in the journey.

Not planning a vacation, not thinking about the beach. He told me it's getting to do this as a privilege. I love getting to do that. I get to do this for a living. I don't have to do anything else but this for a living. And I love this game. You know, I'll tell you another funny, uh, Kobe story, just so you know the mentality. of Kobe Bryant. Kobe said to me one day, he said, you know, Arturo, I like playing away games more than home games. Kobe, you're one of the world famous Los Angeles Lakers. You play in the most beautiful building, you know, in LA. The celebrities come out, celebrity row, you know, you got the vibration, the artists, the actors, the musicians, the rappers, everyone's there. What do you mean you like playing away games more than home games? He said, Arturo, Nothing makes me more excited than watching a father with his child in a Minnesota Timberwolves jersey leaving the building with 4 minutes left because they have no chance to win. Nothing gets me more excited than that. I was like, wow, you are a savage, sir. You're an absolute savage.

It's like he described everything, the fun finger, they're walking out. They've got no chance. There's 4 minutes left. It's done. Nothing, nothing gets me that excited.

You just used a word that I think, um, unfortunately in today's current environment is used in its negative capacity, but you just used it in its positive capacity. And that's the word privilege. One, maybe what is for the audience kind of the difference between the two and why, how you use that term, I believe is so incredibly powerful from a mindset perspective to be able to think of something as, like, I get to talk to you today. I sat down and I was like, I'm watching your clips online and I'm going, I can't wait to talk to this guy today. Like, what a privilege to be able to speak to a human being who has your insights, your knowledge, your personality, your energy, right? Like, but we don't often frame these things as privileges and we use it in a way of like, oh, he's privileged or she's privileged or in this negative capacity. So maybe what is the difference in what does it actually mean to think of the way Kobe did about the privilege of being able to do the job?

Yeah. Imagine, imagine, you know, everybody, you were growing up probably like when I was growing up, you know, your parents wanted to be, want you to be doctor, lawyer, Indian chief, you know the story, right? Everybody wanted to be, that was what greatness looked like. Hey, I want you to go and be your best, be a doctor, be a lawyer, be, Whatever. That's what my parents told me at least, you know? Imagine telling your parents, no, I wanna play games for the rest of my life. I wanna play games. Wait, what? How you— no, no, stop. Games are for schoolyard. Games are for kids. Come off the schoolyard. They're not, we're not playing games for a living. That's not a thing. He gets to play a game that he loves for a living. What an incredible privilege that is. You know, I talk to young people all the time and I say, you know, what I like to think about my life as. Is moving from a picture, picture a pyramid in your mind. Picture a pyramid, right? Have to do, wanna do, get to do, blessed to do, called to do. How do you feel when you have to do something, man?

I gotta, I have to do this, man. Oh man. You know, I don't really wanna do it, but I have to do it, right? That's one feeling. When you get to do something, that's kind of cool.

Yeah.

I get to do that. Right. Or when you wanna do something, when you get to, yo man, you have to take out the garbage today, or do you wanna take out the garbage today? Well, it depends on your perspective, right? That's a matter of perspective. Some people say, I have to take out the garbage. Well, I don't want my place to stink, you know, and there's food in there. I'm gonna take out the garbage. I, I have my place, I have my garbage. I'm gonna take the garbage out. Have to do versus want to do versus what you get to do versus what you're blessed to be able to do versus what you're called to do. And what you're called to do is you couldn't not do it if you tried. That's the purpose that we were put here. A life's purpose is I was put here to do this. There's no way I can do anything other than this. That's what I'm blessed to do, right? Blessed to do, called to do. But for Kobe, the privilege was, yo, man, I get to play a game that I love for the rest of my life.

Yeah.

It provides for my life, it provides for my family's life, provides for my children's lives, and I get to exercise myself in this game. And if I continue to play at the highest level, Who knows how long he play? So I work on my body and I work on my game and I watch film where I get to do all of that. It's a game. It's a bunch of guys in short pants playing the game. He gets to do that for the rest of his life. It's a really powerful privilege. You know, you know, think about things, you know, I, I've had so many people related to work. You know, you get to work and, and, you know, sometimes you, you're lucky you're working, you know, your dream job or you work on something that you really want to do. When I worked at Nike, it was a, it was a great opportunity for me, a great job. And I did a lot of really cool things at Nike. That's where I met Kobe, even though I'd worked at the NBA before. But I worked at Nike. It was kind of a dream come true.

And I would interview people who were like, man, my dream job is Nike. My dream, uh, my dream is to work at Nike. I interviewed, they'd say this in an interview verbally, you know, and if they had the qualifications and they were talented and they passed the process and all that, they'd get that job. That same person. 8 months later, we'll be like, oh man. And I'll be like, hey, what's going on, man? You good? Yeah, man. I gotta fly to LA to do the Kobe commercial. We gotta shoot it today. And you know, it starts at 6:00 AM tomorrow and I gotta fly there and I gotta take this conference. Wait, are, are you talking about your dream job? 'Cause it sounds to me like this is the same job you were begging 8 months ago to do. What do you, what, what, I'm sorry. You want me to play a violin 'cause you get to fly to LA? to go to a photo shoot and to shoot a commercial with one of the world's greatest basketball legends, Kobe Bryant, but you gotta be up at 6? What are you talking about? Remember when you prayed for the things you have today, right?

That's the privilege. Remember when you, well, Kobe prayed to be able to play the game of basketball as long as possible, and he got to do that. And that's the privilege. Remember when you, remember when you prayed for the things that you have today? And today, a lot of people take 'em for granted.

Right.

The privilege is in getting what you want and wanting what you get. And Kobe wanted to play a game that he loved for a living. He got to do that. And he, and he believed every part of that for him was a privilege. The workouts in the gym, the running was a privilege. The, the training sessions with his team. He, by the way, he not only trained with the Lakers, he had his own sessions. He's like, dude, I don't just work out with the Lakers. I have my own sessions, man. I can't show everybody what I'm doing. I got my own workouts every day. I'd have my own workout, then I have my Laker workout. Those were all a privilege for him. Those are all what he played for. Yeah.

I remember, uh, uh, Kevin Garnett was doing an interview one time and he's like, and they asked him, the question was like a generic general question about Kobe. And he's like, Kobe, he's like, shakes his head and he's like, Kobe was different. And that was that. He stopped there and the interviewer's like, kind of prompts him to go on. He goes, all right, we're in the Olympics. We're in, I think it was Barcelona. I can't remember exactly. It doesn't matter. One of the Olympics that they were in.

Oh, the Salt story. Yeah.

No, no, this is the one. This is before they go. He goes, he goes, we're, we get there. He goes, we get there the first night. We got 2 days for our first game. And, and, you know, everybody goes out on the town. He goes, it's 3:00 AM. I, I got a few drinks in me. I'm sitting in the hotel lobby. We're just coming back. He goes, Kobe's got ice on his knees. He's already done his first workout for the day. He's like, we, we haven't even got going to bed yet. He's already got his first workout in. He goes, that's when I knew this guy was just different than everybody else.

Yep.

And you think about that, like, it's a conversation I used to have with my children. So I, I think I may have told you before we went live, I got 2 kids, uh, 2 boys. 12 and 10, both play sports, football, baseball, golf, basketball, different sports. And one of the things that we talk a lot about is the difference between kids who are talented but only willing to go 90% and the kids who are willing to go 100% and the mental hurdle that it is to go all the way. Because if I go all the way, if Ryan Hanley says, I want to be a professional speaker, I want to be the best speaker in the world on, you know, X topic. And I go all in, I work at it every day. I think about, I go 100% into this thing I want to do and I don't make it. Well, now, now I'm a, now I'm a failure right now in my mind right now. I don't believe that, but that's, that's what goes on in my head right now. Oh my God, I didn't do it. But if I go 90%, If I go 90% and I don't make it, then I can go, well, you know, I was almost there.

I almost got there. You know, I was, you know, I have that outlet. How do we cross? One, do you believe this mentality is real? And 2, how do we cross that chasm? How do we, if we find ourselves, and I think a lot of people do this unconsciously, I don't always think that this, it's like a self-defense mechanism. It's not even something they're aware of. but they're stuck at 90%. And how do we make that jump to 100? How do we, how do we give ourselves permission to go all in, to be fully committed as we talked about before?

I think there's a few things, man. I talk a lot about burning the boats and I use that expression. I don't know if you've heard that expression before, but, um, it really, it really derives from the, you know, Spanish and the Portuguese conquistadors that came to the New World. They weren't the nicest guys, you know, they were colonizers and they came to to ravage and to find what they could and to take advantage of the situation that they found. But if there's anything we can learn from them, many times when they got to a new land, they actually burned the boat. Like, going back is not an option. We're burning the boat. And I think too often, too often we don't burn the boats. We have a plan B and a plan C and a plan D. And if this doesn't work out, then I'm gonna do that. And if that doesn't work out, then I'm gonna do this. I think sometimes if you focus on just plan A and you burn the boats and there's no option but success. I don't think we do that enough. You know what I mean? You talked about your kids.

You know, my son played baseball and he played basketball in high school. And, you know, and I, and like any parent, I'm sure you did too. You know, you do too. I'm trying to give him every opportunity. If you really want to do that, you know, here's the trainers, here's the facility. I'll go with you. I'll take you. The thing, you know, parents go through innumerable sacrifices, costs, expenses, et cetera, to get you what you want so you could And sell at that, you know? And my son did okay. My son made varsity basketball and all that. He, he quit baseball a little earlier, but he enjoyed it while he played it, whatever. And again, I gave him every opportunity to succeed. Having said that, 3 of his friends, one plays for the Orlando Magic, Jett Howard, who played on his team with him. The other one plays for the Houston Texans. He's a wide receiver, the number one wide receiver on the Texans, Jayden Higgins. And the third, Sal Stewart, is the NL MVP this year, rookie year in the league. All I'm saying is— Was he his buddy? Those are his buddies. Oh no, these guys were the guys on his basketball team.

Jesus.

Yeah, that part. You know, 3 professional athletes that you played— yes, I was in the locker room with them. Yes, I played ball with them. Yo, they were doing something, you know, they say You know, do what others won't do today so you have what others won't have tomorrow. They were doing something everybody else wasn't doing. You know what I mean? They took it to a whole nother level. There was a whole nother gear. Maybe they didn't socialize as much. Maybe they didn't go out as much. Maybe they didn't date as much. Maybe they weren't— there was another gear and they put it in that gear and look where they are now. You know, the, the Sal Stewart story is incredible because he's a, You know, the, he's gonna be NL MVP this, this season. I think he's got 32 home runs and over 100 RBIs in his freshman year, his rookie year in the MLB, which is insane. And, and that kid, you know, there was something about that kid, man. We're gonna talk about this too in this conversation, but you watched that kid play basketball. He was on my son's basketball team, varsity basketball team.

He didn't look like a great basketball player, but he was really confident out there. He was confident out there because he was the best baseball player in the school on his team. It was like, if I can do that at the highest level, I can do this too. You know what I mean? So he wasn't built like a basketball player. He didn't look naturally talented to play basketball. Went out there and contributed. He was tough. He was aggressive. He'd give you 10 or 12 a game. You know what I'm saying? He was a distributor. He made the right pass, made the right play, studied the game, but he wasn't a basketball player. He was just so confident as a, as a, his athletic ability as a baseball player that it translated to anything that he tried to do. That guy walked into the Major League Baseball and hit 30 homers and 100 RBIs his first year. It's insane that someone would do that. Figured it out. There's a different gear. He put it in that different gear. He was willing to do what some won't to get what most won't have ever. You know what I mean?

And I think it, it goes back to, like, I think the biggest word we talked about earlier today is commitment. Are you really committed or are you just curious? Does it seem cool? Does that look cool? Does that look like something cool to do? Are you really committed to doing what it takes to being proficient at that, to being the best at that, to being superior at that? Kobe was trying to be the best basketball player. He wasn't trying to be second to Jordan. He was trying to be the best basketball player, full stop. You know what I mean? LeBron wasn't going for, oh, you know, maybe if I play a few years, it'll gimme a few trophies. No, no, no, no, no. He was trying to be the best basketball player ever of all time history. That's an intention that's driven by intention, commitment. That's intentional commitment. Kobe used to say it like this. Greatness is a choice. Greatness is a choice. Not some far-flung one day I'm gonna be great choice. A daily choice. Greatness is a choice. What am I doing today? To be better than I was yesterday. That's the choice I'm making.

That's how you choose greatness, and you have to do it daily to achieve it. And even then, it's elusive, right? It's not guaranteed. No guarantees. Everybody doesn't make it to, to top Everest. Everybody doesn't make it, unfortunately. You know?

So let's tie this back to the Culture Compass. How do we take these ideas, excellence, commitment, confidence, greatness? How do we put them in a pot in a corporate environment and actually turn it into success?

The Culture Compass is really the book that I wish I had when I got into corporate America, because there were so many things I didn't know. I didn't have any of my fa— everybody in my family. Who was a corporate executive. There were so many things I didn't know, and there's a ton of things that are not in the employee manual. They literally aren't gonna tell you how the rules work, how the game actually works, how to succeed in the game. They're not gonna tell you. You have to figure that out. And unfortunately for me, I had to figure it out through trial and error. So my book is designed to give people the tools to be able to succeed without making the same mistakes that I made. So I talk about failure. And I talk about failure as part of the learning process. By the way, anyone who succeeded at anything knows that failure is part of the process, right? If you, if you haven't failed, you're not gonna get to greatness. If you haven't failed, matter of fact, Kobe, we were talking about Kobe before, said his first summer league, he didn't score a bucket.

Not one. Zero. Nothing. Goose egg. His first summer league. He said, I sucked and I need to figure out how to get better fast. And I needed to train harder than anybody else fast so I could get there, right? So failure is a part of success. How resilient you are to get back up after you've been knocked down, after you failed, that's the measure of whether you're really gonna be successful or not. Are you really committed to this? Are you really willing to fail and then come back from that failure? You know, take the lessons and implement the lessons. And so in the book, I talk about a lot of lessons that I've had over time. I talk about some failures that I've had in my corporate life, and I talk about the unwritten rules, the things that nobody will tell you about, but you'll figure it out. You know, you have to figure it out on your own, hoping that people will learn from my mistakes and it'll help them their paths, move their path a little bit.

What is one of the unwritten rules that you think most people who either haven't lived the life or read your book run into? The most often?

I can give you a few. Um, the first one I think, and the first one was a important one. I heard this quote, it's attributed to Tony Robbins. I don't know if Tony Robbins said it first or not. Doesn't really matter. The quality of your life is the quality of your relationships. Full stop. Point blank. If you're not a relationship builder, if you're not building with your colleagues and your peers and your superiors and subordinates, if you're not building situations that are win-win for folks, you're not gonna succeed. If people come to your office, if I come to your office as a business person, and every time I come to your office, I lose, I'm gonna stop coming to your office. That's just how the way it works, right? So if you're not able to build collaborative win-win situations and build relationships, you're never gonna be successful, right? People are looking for that from their leaders. People are looking for that from their subordinates. People are looking for that from their peers and collaborators. They want you to be invested in both parties winning, not just you getting your way. Super important. And most people think that winning, winning is just me getting my way.

Not just you getting your way. It's creating win-win situations such that people are invested in your vision and people wanna collaborate with you going forward, right? That's what success looks like in that space. People, people learn that lesson the hard way, and then it's hard to, to, you know, you, you don't get a second chance to make a first impression, right? So if you make a first impression as someone who's not collaborative, who's not a team player, who's not relationship-oriented, who doesn't care about your winning too, it's hard to overcome that, right? That's one big lesson. That's a really fundamental one that kind of undergirds everything in the book, really, is related to the importance of relationships and the power of relationships. Uh, my second lesson I think would be, you know, you get that one, uh, time a year where you sit down with your leader or your manager and you talk about your performance, your performance review. So critical, so essential, so important to level set with who you're working with what success looks like. A lot of people get to that meeting and they're surprised by the feedback they get. You shouldn't really be surprised.

You should have been talking to the person who's setting your objectives and working with you on your objectives to understand where you are in the process, if you're doing well or not. I'll tell you a quick story. I had a friend who called me one morning. He said, Arturo, I think I'm gonna be let go today. I said, wow. Worked at a big company in New York. And I said, wow, how'd you get that impression? What's going on? He said, man, I've got a meeting with my boss's boss today. That rarely happens. I don't think, I don't think it's gonna go well. You know, they've been laying people off. I think this is it. I said, well, listen, you know, keep your head up. Whatever happens, you know, I'll help you. You know, he's one of my mentees. I'll help you figure out how to get you back on track, find you a new opportunity, et cetera, et cetera. He might have, you never know, you know, go, just go in there and do your best. I'm saying, he goes to work that day. I don't hear back from him. 7, 8 PM that night, I still haven't heard from him.

I give him a call. Hey man, what's going on? What, what happened today? He said, oh, you know what? I got promoted. A new job. I'm the new director of such and such and so and so. And I was like, oh, that's great. Congratulations. That's amazing. But something was uneasy in my mind when I went to bed that night. And I said, what must it feel like? To be working in a place where from one day to the other, you don't know if you're being fired or promoted. To me, that sounds like terrible leadership. To me, that sounds like I'm nervous all the time. To me, that sounds like I can't do my best work because I don't know where I stand. It's great to know where you stand. And that employment, you know, review, that 1-year annual review is an opportunity to know where you stand in the organization. Are you seeing my contributions? Did you witness what I just did? Are you following? Am I doing, am I following up on the things that you think are most important? For our business. Most people use that as a checkbox, man. I'm just trying to get through this review.

No, no, no, no, no. This is your opportunity to level set with the person who's responsible for your career, right? And make sure, you know, I, I walk into that meeting, you know what I'll say? Even at the end of the meeting, if it, whether it goes well or not, hey man, if we're gonna sit here next year, 12 months from now, and I was gonna get the maximum rating possible, what would that look like? What would I need to do to do that? Detail that for me. You're gonna need a maximum rating, which means the maximum bonus, the maximum salary increase, the ma— the full bennies. What does that look like? What would I need to accomplish to do that? Because once you and I agree on that and I write that down and you write that down, I'm going for that. That's the, that's the ring. That's the new bar that I'm going for. And I don't wanna have any conversation 12 months from now where I've done all that and you tell me, yeah, you know, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, my friend. Pause. I wrote down what you told me I needed to do so that we wouldn't have any questionable conversations.

Now, 12 months later, here it is, and here's how I ticked off her. So much so, if you'll bear with me, when I was at Nike, hopefully you could see this on the camera.

See that?

I brought that with me to my review. Here's what I've been working on. Here's what's been successful. Here's some things you didn't ask me to do that I've done. Here's what I've been focused on, and here's the plan for next year. Every review. Yeah, I did the template. Yeah, I did the document. Yeah, the self-review. I did that for sure. I walk in with a full-color brochure. Here's what our objectives are. Here's how I'm doing against them. Here's the things you asked me to do and how I'm doing against them. Here's some things you didn't ask me to do that I did anyway. Here's my plan for the next year. You good with this? If you're good with this, let's go. Every year. That's how seriously I took the performance process, right? Because that was my opportunity to put a stake in the ground about what I deliver and who I am and what my value is. That's the, the following year.

Yeah.

I love that.

Do, do you think that people don't track their own accomplishments throughout the year enough?

You are supposed to be your number one hype man. There's a way to do that without looking egocentric. But if you don't track your accomplishments, no one else will. Your boss is too busy trying to win his game, by the way. Your supervisor's trying to figure out how to win his game, right? So if you're not gonna talk about your accomplishments, no one else is gonna either. You need to be your number one cheerleader. And by the way, that doesn't mean that you're an egomaniac, right? Because part of what you accomplish is what you've done with your team, how you've led other people, how you've mentored and sponsored other people, how you built collaboration, how you innovated with your team. That's part of the process too, right? Absolutely. It's your job to toot your horn. And particularly at that critical juncture where your boss is saying, so, because really what your boss is, is saying, like, your boss is not saying, tell me what you did. Your boss is saying, tell me how I can support my argument for you when I go in that room where we split the money up and we decide who gets what rating and we decide who gets what bonus.

Give me the support. Give me the ammo. To, to put your name up in that room. I wanna make sure you're fully loaded when you go in that room on my behalf.

How do you tell your own story as your number one hype man, as you said, without breaking Robert Greene's first power rule, which is, uh, never outshine the master, which I have had a few people that I've mentored and worked with or just call me for, you know, advice or whatever, where they've been in situations where they've gotten into conflict with their superior in an organization because the way they come off, the way they present themselves, or even just the work that they're actually doing is almost making that boss or middle manager look, you know, maybe in their own eyes bad or some sort of perception. And now there's conflict there and they're like, I just thought I was doing my job. And now all of a sudden I got conflict with my boss and I don't understand.

That's the challenge that happens. That happens quite frequently. But I think that people need to understand that part of your role in an organization, if you have a superior in your organization, if you have a boss or a manager, um, part of your job is to make that person look good too. You're on a team with that person. You're a member of that person's team. Part of your job is to make that person look good too. So how do you deliver on your work? You know, but when, when called to, you know, You ever listen to a ballplayer of any, you know, repute, any superstar in NFL, NBA, whatever, after a game where they completely crushed it? What do they say? Well, team effort. The guy come out here, we gave it all. We had been training for this. You know, you scored 60 tonight, sir. You're Kobe Bryant. You scored 82. And you're talking about, no, it was a team effort. We came out here, we gave it all. You know, they gave it a great shot. This is what teamwork has looked like. This is what collaboration's like. So you can apply that same principle in the work that you do.

Yeah, I crushed it. Absolutely. I overdelivered for sure. I overdelivered for us to make us look good, to, to make our division win, right? So that our division gets all the re— I told, I used to tell my teams, yo, man, you know Shark Tank? Yeah, man, we know Shark Tank. Yo, every time we go talk to senior leadership, it's Shark Tank. Arturo, what do you mean? We are making a pitch to the senior leaders of our organization. Why? Another dollar spent on our division, another dollar spent on our objective, another employee hired to our division, another computer bought for our division is worth more than one spent on some— another group. We're in Shark Tank here. We gotta win. You know, it's not a competition, but win anyway. That's the mode I told my team. It's not a competition, but win anyway. We're going in there to fend for ourselves and tell the company why we have the right plan, we have the right vision. We have the right assets. We have the right people to get the resources, the manpower, the equipment, the technology to be able to go after this, this thing that we're going after, this goal that we're going after.

And part of that is we believe in our leader's vision and we're driving towards that vision. If you could tell that story, you shouldn't actually, your, your boss, your, your, your superior, your supervisor, your boss, your manager shouldn't feel threatened by you. They should feel like you help them look good. Man, I'm glad I have that person on our team. That person makes me look good. Helps me look good. On every team that I've been on, I've had at least 1 or 2 rock stars on my team that I couldn't have done it without. I couldn't have done it without. They're amazing. The people that I say, yo, jump, and they're like, let's get it. How high are we jumping? Yo, that wall needs to come down immediately. Let's get after it. Love those guys. I'm not mad at those guys. I'm not jealous of those guys. I wanna support them. I wanna see them win.

Yeah.

Now, I'm not in competition with them. I wanna see them win. And by the way, I have mentored and supported people that have been promoted through every organization that I've been in with my help and my leadership, because they deliver, because they deliver. So it's not a competition between you and your superior or you and your manager. You're there to help them look good. How can you be collaborative, build an environment where you help them look good and also get credit for what you've done, get credit for the work you've done? It's not about giving away the credit for the work you've done, right? Because eventually, Kobe gets around to talking about the 82 points, right? He, after he says it was team effort and all that, right? And what he said, by the way, in that interview is what he said in that interview was, right? I interviewed him on the same subject at one point at Nike's campus. And he said, to be honest with you, Arturo, I know it's gonna sound crazy. I wasn't surprised when I scored 82 points. Kobe, what do you mean you weren't surprised? Well, those were moves that I had been practicing all summer.

And if you look back to the prior 5 weeks of the NBA, I scored 62 the week before. I scored 59 the week before that. I had 61. You, you go back and look at the numbers. That was on its way. That was coming. He knew it was coming, right? So he wasn't surprised when it happened. How do you create an environment where you can deliver your best, your maximum potential without being a threat to your manager? Having your manager understand that you're there to help them achieve their objectives as well. At the end of the day, you should make your manager look better and they should reward you for the amazing work that you've done in the best world. Now, there's also crappy managers, right? This is, this is the best world scenario. There's also bad managers and bad management. I mentioned the story about my friend. You don't know if you're fired or promoted. That's bad management, right? There's bad managers. But in the best world, you and your partner, you and your, your manager are collaborators on a mission and a vision to get things done. You help him look great. He supports you in your career.

He or she.

A question I get a lot, and I'm very interested in your take on this from, we'll call it relatively new leaders, few years in the job, is managing the breadth of talent commitment. You know, you have A players, B players, C players across the board. How on one team Do you properly manage an A player that's also sitting next to, say, a B player who's also got a C player in their team? And now, you know, maybe they all work useful functions, but you have all different personalities. How do you pull that together and get them all pointed in the same direction without some of the jealousy or, you know, other things that may come you know, when an A player's doing epic things and maybe getting the appropriate, you know, uh, airtime or spotlight.

Yeah. That's tough to do. And I think in many ways as a leader, you're kind of functioning like a coach. You know what I'm saying? Phil Jackson didn't have 5 MJs, you know what I'm saying? Or even 5 Kobes, right? Phil Jackson had a team and they had different strengths. You have to understand what everybody's strengths. First of all, not contributing's not an option. So that's not a thing. We're not gonna, you know, get to the point where we had Ds and whatever, T-Merrill. Not contribute is not an option. Everybody's gotta contribute. If you, if I allow you to be on my team and not contribute, it's offensive to those who are, right? You're getting paid too, and you're getting a salary. That's, that's, that's unacceptable. So everybody's gotta contribute, but everybody doesn't have to contribute equally. You have different role players for different roles, just like there was a Dennis Rodman, you know, just like there was a Byron Scott, just like whatever. You have different role players for different roles within the team. And as a leader, you have to know how to harness the best that we I've had guys on my team that were like the, you know, the mailman.

I, I, I joke about this. I think my book, you know, guys who like, hey man, they're gonna be there from 9 to 5. They're gonna take lunch at 12:01 and come back at 1 and be at their desk, whatever. And, and, and if they're delivering to a certain level, I'm cool with that. I know what you can be counted on to do. You're not gonna burn that midnight oil with me. You're not staying till 1 in the morning with me. I'm not expecting you there at 6:00 AM. You're gonna come in and gimme a full solid day's work. By 8:45, he's in the office. By 9:00, he's, he or she is sitting at their desk and they're grinding and they don't pick their head up until noon when it's lunchtime. And they go for exactly an hour for lunch and they come back. Now, that's not normal, right? That's not normally, brother. 9 to 5 is a misnomer. Anyone making, uh, working 9 to 5 is not gonna win, right? Win the game. 'Cause the game's not 9 to 5. The, the 9 to 5 most of the time gets eaten up in meetings, and every meeting has takeaways and deliverables.

So at what point do you do the takeaways and the deliverables? Well, that doesn't happen from 9 to 5. That happens after 5 and before 9. Check. But like a good coach, you're assessing the weaknesses and the strengths of your team. You're trying to make sure your team has complementary weaknesses and strengths, and you're making sure that everyone's recognized, not just the A guy. You know, I guarantee you Phil Jackson didn't walk into the to the locker room every night and say, MJ, you did it again. You were the top scorer again with 43 points today. No, sometimes he walked in and said, Rodman, that 18 rebounds. Holy shit. That's amazing. Right? Or he walked in and said, man, that pass, Steve Kerr, bro, when you hit him in the corner, are you kidding me? Brilliant. Right? So you have to recognize all the players, recognize their contributions, understand their strengths and weaknesses, and try to build a team that's compatible Towards achieving your objective. And that doesn't mean that, you know, you, you allow, you know, slacking. That's not a thing. You don't, you don't allow people to not get to work and everybody's gotta be delivering, but everybody doesn't have to deliver exactly the same.

People have a role to play in the organization, and as long as they're delivering to their role, and by the way, if those people are interested, if somebody's looking, listen, MJ did a thing called The Breakfast Club where he was up at 5 in the morning working out in the gym when he got to the Chicago Bulls, knowing that nobody was doing that. And one by one, everybody joined the precious club with MJ, right? If you've got people who are like, man, that guy on our team is the best presenter, you know, the way he delivers is unbelievable. Hey man, you want to work on that? Hey, you know, let's get you to speakers class. You want to work with me on that? You got a presentation coming. You want tips? I'm helping my people get better, right? Not about jealousy or envy. That guy's great. Yeah, he's amazing at presenting. Yeah, he really delivers. You wanna learn that? You can learn that too. You can be that too if you're really committed to it. Here's how that process works to get there, right? So I think as a coach, as a manager, you're an enabler, right?

And your job is to clear all the barriers, obstacles, challenges, road mines, landmines, fall on the grenades to allow your team to do the best work of their lives. And if you can do that, your team will be grateful to you. They'll feel recognized and rewarded. They'll run through Wall Street. That's been my experience.

I completely agree with that. And I love the way you described it. Um, how I always talk to, to, you know, I, I, my primary industry is the insurance industry. That's where I kind of grew up in and, um, and moved into more of the tech side as I go. So I have a lot of young tech, tech entrepreneurs, startups, you know, they get that, it will call me and I'll talk to them and You know, the way I've always described it is like the traditional leadership structure is a pyramid, right? With you, the boss, the leader, the entrepreneur, the founder at the top. I said, and that is literally the worst way to look at it. I was like, you literally have to flip it upside down where you actually become the foundation of the organization who supports your, you know, I refer to them as generals or whatever, your, your next level up, who then their primary job is to support the people who report to them and so on. And literally the top of the pyramid, the new top is actually your foot soldiers and the people who are doing the on-the-ground work every day, touching, you know, feeling and the tangible product, et cetera.

And it's like when you, when you think about it that way, it's funny how like for some people that just clicks, right? They listen to you describe it and they're like, yes. And then there's a whole other person who just is like, Nah, that's— I, I need to control. I need to manage. I need to know what's going on. If you're not clocked in, if your Slack avatar doesn't have a little green dot next to it, you're not working. And like, I just find like this idea of it. Well, let me put it this way, with the amount of content that has been released on the interweb. and in books around how performance-based cultures versus time-punching cultures, like you can't even compare them and how many organizations still count card punch for card punch as your contribution to an organization is scary and bewildering to me.

It's a lot more personal. By the way, if you learned anything during COVID it was that people could be just as productive away from the worksite as they can at the worksite, right? A lot of companies Lost nothing in productivity over COVID. People were working their butts off, working, just working at home, working in environments that for many people was more comfortable or more amenable to doing the work they do. For many people, not for everybody, right? But I think it's a fundamental lack of trust. And I think that's a cultural issue in the organization. Like, do you have a culture where you trust your people and respect them and accept the idea that they're grown people and adults and they're going to go and do the best job they can? Or are you constantly worrying that someone's slacking, abusing their power, abusing their authority, abusing the time, abusing the privilege given to them, the responsibilities given to them? How do you want to look at your world? I prefer to look at people as adults who make choices. I talk to my son all the time, my daughter all the time too. I talk about decisions, choices, actions, consequences.

Decisions, choices, actions, consequences. That string is unbeatable, right? And I think that if you're working on a team, you gotta know that your decisions you make, the choices that you accept, you know, the actions that you take have consequences. You wanna deliver at your best, you wanna do, you know, you wanna go above and beyond, you'll be recognized and rewarded for that. You wanna slack off, your days are numbered. That's just the way that it is, right? You know, I think, uh, somebody at Amazon said, you know, we gotta get off this notion that we're family. We're not family. We're not family.

Mm-hmm.

This is a job site. We're working, right? We're not family. We're working. You know, you don't, you don't fire family members. You know, most family members still get invited to the barbecue and all that, right? That's not what we're doing. But we can build an environment that's positive, where you feel rewarded, where you feel recognized, right? Where everybody feels part of the team, where everybody believes in the mission, where everybody wants to work together on a mission, where we help each other out when we're struggling. You know, that idea, oh, you know, that built an environment where you can bring your full self to work. Yeah, of course everyone brings their full self to work. What are the chances that you're going through a monumental thing in your personal life and you just leave it parked somewhere outside the building when you go to work? Of course we bring our full selves to work, right? But if you're working in an environment where people care about each other and they wanna collaborate, they wanna get the best from people, people are willing to help you. Hey man, what are you going— whatever you're going through, I'm here for you.

I'm here to support you. I feel didn't, you know, Thousands of inquiries in my time as a leader and a manager that had nothing to do with work in my office. 'Cause I had human beings working for me and human beings have human being problems. And I had great respect for the human beings that took the time and the energy and put the effort in to get the work done, to make our team successful. So I see them as whole human beings and I'm here for that, right? So I think if you create a collaborative environment where everybody's trying to pull their weight and do the best that they can. would deliver on an objective that you can create, you know, a little bit of the family sensation without being family, right? Everybody needs to pull their work, their, their, their, their weight, and everybody needs to get the work done. We have a mission and a vision. By the way, a leader is— the leader is responsible for creating a compelling and inspiring mission and vision, a galvanizing vision that everybody can get behind. When I walked into my job as the head of Nike Basketball worldwide, Um, marketing.

Uh, my first meeting with that team, team about 30 people, I'll never forget. Uh, I put a slide on the board. It was a picture. I don't know if you've ever been to West 4th or Rucker Park in New York, the big basketball meccas in New York City, street basketball. I put a picture of the crowd at Rucker Park and the photographer that took the picture, the crowd had just erupted. So all you're seeing is this crowd of people. 100 people in the stands going crazy cuz something just happened. And I put that up and I said, hey, I have a question for you guys. What do you guys think that is? Uh, you know, that's probably West 4th Street or the Rucker Park. That's good. That's good answer. That's not it. Hey, what do you think that is? Well, that's people, you know, really excited. Probably a dunk happened. No, no. What do you think that is? No. Uh, you know, maybe a crossover. A guy fell down on a crossover. Everybody jumped up and went crazy in there. Those are all great guesses. Thank you so very much. I appreciate those great guesses.

That is, that is the new global marketing plan for Nike basketball. That's it. One page, one image, one slide, no words. Arturo, what do you mean? If we're not doing something to inspire that reaction from 17 and 18-year-old basketball-playing kids worldwide, we need to be doing something else. Whatever we're doing, don't do that. If it doesn't elicit this response, from our consumer, let's do something else. That's what we're going for. That's the North Star. We want every kid that's 17 or 18-year-old who plays basketball to feel that way about what Nike just did. That's our goal. And if we can deliver on that time and time again, we'll be their favorite brand. We're, we're gonna do the, we're gonna do incredible storytelling. We have the greatest athletes on earth on our side, on our team to tell stories about. And every story that we tell, everything that we do is going to elicit that response from kids that play basketball. You got it? Everybody was committed to the vision. Got it, Arturo. Let's go. Shock and delight. Shock and awe. That's what we're doing.

Ladies and gentlemen, Arturo Núñez. My friend, my friend. Absolutely fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. The book is The Culture Compass: A Bold Leadership Philosophy on Why Staying True to Yourself Is the Secret to Success in Corporate America. Uh, we'll have links to, uh, book goes live October 6th. Um, uh, we'll have links to the book, all of that. Where else can people dive into your world and follow along with your journey?

Get the book or the audiobook. I just actually recorded the audiobook myself, uh, which was really hard. I thought that would be easy.

I saw your, uh, message about this where it was in the same recording studio that Jay-Z and, uh, was Um, Jay-Z and who?

Jay-Z and Timbaland did Dirt Off Your Shoulder right in the same studio.

That's right. That's right. That's right. Jay-Z and Timbaland. Oh, that's pretty cool, man. That's pretty cool.

Yeah. So you can listen to the audiobook on Audible, uh, wherever you listen to your podcasts is available. Uh, the book October 6th. I'm really excited, man. It's, it's a legacy project for me. Excited to give young people these gems that have really helped me throughout my career. And thank you, man. Thank you for making the time. Thank you for having me. Uh, thank you for sharing your audience with me. I really, really appreciate it. Well, let's do part 2 and part 3 and part 4. There's more coming.

I'll be honest with you. You have an open invitation anytime you want to come back, my friend. You just let me know and we'll, we'll do it again. I could, I could, I could do 5 more hours with you, but we both got things to do and I appreciate you. So thank you so much and have a wonderful day.