UDSKRIFT 🔗
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In the acknowledgment section of my book Daily Greatness, I wrote this.
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I have a fundamental belief in life that too much credit is given to the Batman, the one who builds the company, the star who leads the team to a championship, the lead actor or director, and not enough to the robins, the sidekicks, the one working behind the scenes, those in less glamorous roles.
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I wrote this book, but it wouldn't exist without the help of countless individuals who deserve their praise.
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I'd like to send a huge thanks to my parents for supporting me through everything, even when they thought I was a little crazy.
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My sister Lexi for being a great role model and an even better person.
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Morgan, the love of my life, who puts up with me every single day.
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To my friends, teachers, and coaches, past and present, you played a role without even knowing.
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Thank you to Vanessa Mendozi for creating a great cover.
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And to all the greats throughout the book who challenged me, I say thank you from the bottom of my heart.
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If you're reading this, you're a real one.
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But let it be a reminder to say thank you to the robins in your life, those who played a role in making you who you are.
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Because after all, you are the center of your life, but you are not responsible for everything in your life.
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So don't forget to show your appreciation.
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The more I read, the more I learn, the more, the more books I read, the more podcasts I do, the more I see again and again this pattern of unlikely events or these unknown people or these lesser-known people who end up altering the tr the trajectory of someone's life who goes on to have this astounding success.
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These robins who help launch the seed of the success for these Batmans.
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And I don't think they will ever get enough credit, or at least, in my mind, the credit that they deserve.
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So I want to give a little appreciation to some of the Robins throughout history who have altered the life of a few people in ways that they themselves could never have imagined the wild man.
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Nothing in life is worthwhile unless you take Christ.
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A few weeks ago, I dove into legendary coach Vince Lombardi.
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But Lombardi's Green Bay Packers in the 1960s would not have had its success if it wasn't for Vince Lombardi himself, but also for the quarterback Bart Star.
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As he's described in his biography, while leading the Green Bay dynasty during the days of the Beatles in the Space Race, as the NFL stormed out of the shadows to become an American obsession, Bart Starr rarely attracted the respect he deserved.
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Frequently, overshadowed by Lombardi's dominant aura, he was easy and convenient to diminish his role in the Packers' unparalleled success.
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He was not gifted with an especially powerful arm, so he was never confused with bomb throwers like Sammy Baugh, Joe Neymar, Dan Marino, or John Elwick.
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He was not fast on his feet, so he was never able to elude defenders like Frank Tarkinton.
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He was not a force of nature like Johnny United's, but he was a clutch player who delivered time after time, lifting the Packers with the power of his mighty will while setting a new standard for offensive leadership.
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The cerebral, poised and efficient star, who methodically piloted the Packers through the most dominant seven-year running professional football history, remains the only quarterback to win five NFL championships.
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That was before Brady did it years ago.
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And Bart Star, as the years have gone on, as historians have started to look back at old quarterbacks, old film, have really started to understand just how great he was in the grand scheme of things.
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Kerry Bryan, he was this football historian.
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He once wrote this like a decade ago.
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It was before Brady became the greatest ever.
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He said, if you believe in numbers, in substance over style, there's really only one conclusion to draw.
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Bart Star was the best quarterback ever.
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No quarterback has ever performed so well, so consistently in pressure situations, said NFL films president Steve Sable.
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Bart was the master of the calculated risk, converting all those crucial first downs on the way to one big victory after another.
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But here's the importance of Robbins, because Bart Starr would not have led those Green Bay Packers to championship after championship after championship.
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He would not have helped Vince Lombardi become one of the greatest coaches ever if it wasn't for a random good deed from a fellow peer that would change the course of his life and sports history forever.
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So for some context, Bart Starr was a great high school quarterback, and he earned himself the opportunity to play at the University of Alabama in the 1950s, which was right when they started to become a powerhouse in college football.
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And while Starr had some promising arm strength, while he was a great student of the game, a fast learner, it would take
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him until his sophomore year before he was given the starting role as quarterback for Alabama.
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And Starr would actually end up leading Alabama to an SEC title that year, his second year.
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But it would be the beginning after his sophomore year that would really start a rough two-year stretch for the young quarterback.
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So after his junior year, his head coach, Harold Drews, was let go by the University of Alabama.
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He was there for like eight years.
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He had a lot of success, but they finally let him go.
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And they brought in a man named JB Whitworth.
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And Starr had dealt at this time with a back injury for most of his junior year.
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And he was still recovering heading into his senior year, but he would hope to come back fully healthy for one final year to, to, to really play well.
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And maybe if he had such a good year, it could give him a chance to play at the professional level.
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But it would be just the opposite of that.
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His biographer Keith Donavant writes, largely recovered from his debilitating back injury, Starr worked hard during the offseason to regain his momentum, eager to bounce back from a frustrating 1954 season and lead the Crimson Tide to a big season in 1955.
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But instead, he mostly watched as a dark cloud descended across the once proud Alabama football program, determined to emphasize the run and go with a youth movement to build for the future.
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JB Whitworth, who was the new coach, left passing specialist star, future member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, hero of the ice bowl, to ride the bench as the Crimson Tide finished 0 and 10.
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The history of football is littered with great pros who never developed fully in college, but it'd be difficult to find a future pro of such prominence who was so fully wasted as Bart Starr during his senior year in Tuscaloosa.
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With Albert L.
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Moore and Claywells, who were the other two quarterbacks, taking most of the snaps, Starr played only sparingly on the only winless team in Alabama history.
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The situation dented Starr's confidence.
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When Whitworth played him, usually after the game had already been lost, he felt less sure of himself and he often performed poorly.
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One year after he was called the best passer the University of Alabama ever had, Starr felt completely demoralized, believing his football career was over.
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So with Starr not playing at all during his senior year, senior campaign, and uh especially in the 1950s, with no advanced scouting, no advanced film at the time, it seemed that Starr's football career, his any chance at playing at the professional level, was over.
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His biographer writes, at a time when college football appeared to be an end in itself rather than a launching pad for the NFL, when the vast majority of players at schools like Alabama moved directly into fields related to their majors, when the salaries in pro football remained modest, when the entire league consisted of just 12 teams and therefore produced fewer than 5,000 playing positions at any given time, Starr's dream was complicated by an even more daunting task.
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In his senior year, he had essentially vanished, discarded by a winless team.
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Many people would ask, Bart who?
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As Star wondered if he was walking the fine line between delusion and dream, one man believed in him, one man who had the power to help him.
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And that man was a man named Johnny D.
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He was actually the current Alabama basketball coach.
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And he had developed a relationship with Barr.
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And he himself, he had seen Bart play, Bart Bart Starr play, and he had seen his greatness at times, and he truly, truly believed that Bart Starr was good enough for the pros.
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And he said this, I'm going to call someone in the NFL for you, D told Starr one day.
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I think you can play.
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I know I can play, Bart said, if I can get the opportunity.
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For some unknown reason, Johnny D had a feeling about Starr, so he called his friend Jack Vancey, the director of player personnel for the Green Bay Packers.
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You need to look at this kid, he insisted.
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And then there's this great line in Starr's biography.
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Sometimes a phone call can change a man's life.
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And that phone call from Johnny D led Bart to have a tryout with a Packer Scout and would ultimately lead the Green Bay Packers to drafting Bart Starr in the 17th round of next year's draft, the 1956 NFL draft.
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I was so happy, Bart said after getting drafted, just knowing I was going to get the opportunity to compete.
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Starr stopped to thank Johnny D for his help, but at that moment he could not fully appreciate the life-altering impact of one man's active fate.
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How do you thank a man for opening the door to your future?
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Because just a few years later, with Bart Starr as the starting quarterback for the Green Bay Packers, with Vince Lombardi finally coming in and turning the culture around, the Green Bay
Packers would put together one of the most dominant runs, not just in football history, but in sports history.
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And Bart Starr's life was changed forever because of a single phone call, because someone believed in him when others didn't, because of a Robin named Johnny D.
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This is something I feel like I keep mentioning more and more throughout these podcasts.
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But there seem to be these hidden forces or unknown people who completely change the trajectory of someone's life.
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Maybe it's a phone call in the case of Bart Starr, maybe it's someone just believing in the person, maybe it's a connection someone makes, maybe it's money they supply for their business, or some words of wisdom just at the perfect time in their life.
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But in these stories of these Batmans, there are always Robins behind the scenes who helped make things happen, who don't get the credit they deserve.
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Another one of my favorites on this idea, because I'm a massive sports fan if you haven't picked it up, and I think he's the greatest athlete I've ever watched in my life, and I've come to admire his genius and his greatness, and it's it's LeBron James.
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But LeBron James is not LeBron James.
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He's not the greatest basketball player ever, or the or one of the greatest basketball players ever.
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If it wasn't for the help of a random family who extended a helping hand when he and his mother were struggling when he was young.
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So LeBron James, for some context, grew up in Akron, Ohio.
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And he didn't have you could argue anything working for him from a very young age.
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He didn't have a father.
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His mother, Gloria, gave birth to LeBron when she was in high school, which was a very tough time in her life.
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Gloria actually had to drop out of high school after giving birth.
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And those in her support system, there were two women, her grandmother and her mother.
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And shortly after she gave birth, both of them passed away.
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So here was here was Gloria with no support system, no education.
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And she was trying to raise a young boy and she was she was struggling to say the least.
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Here's a description on their situation.
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Gloria and LeBron lived like nomads during this period.
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People who knew them referred to them as Glow and Brian, a mother and a son just trying to survive.
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I can remember numerous times when my son and I ran out of food and went hungry, Gloria said.
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What kept us going was help from friends, family, and the community.
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With his mother barely getting on by welfare and food stamps, LeBron struggled to form friendships with classmates or establish bond with bonds with teachers.
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Without a permanent address, he frequently changed schools and developed into a quiet kid who seldom spoke up.
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I was a scared, lonely boy, young boy, LeBron said.
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As LeBron put it years later, I was on the edge of falling to an abyss from which I could never escape.
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There's this, there's even this uh uh crazy stat that in the fourth grade, LeBron missed something like a hundred days of school, basically like half of the school year.
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And it was because of this lack of stability in LeBron's life and and those who knew him that people really started to want to offer a helping hand.
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And that's when a family would alter the course of a young boy's life forever.
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Things were so dysfunctional that LeBron's football pee-wee coaches wanted to take him in, but most of them were younger single men who weren't well equipped to take on the responsibility.
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The one exception was Frank Walker, the coach everyone called Big Frankie.
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Walker worked for the Akron Metropolitan Housing Authority.
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Walker cared more about LeBron's personal welfare than his athletic prowess, and he knew that LeBron was hurting and needed a lifeline.
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It was apparent that he had seen and experienced hard things that had sapped some of the joy in his life and made him mature beyond his years.
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The Walkers approached Gloria about having LeBron move in with them.
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It was a difficult subject to broach.
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Gloria knew she wasn't able to provide LeBron a stable home life.
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Without passing judgment on Gloria, the Walkers were offering to give LeBron security and family structure.
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He could share a room with Frankie Jr.
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There would be three square meals a day.
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He'd have a set bedtime, and school attendance would be an integral part of his daily routine.
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Frank made it clear that they have LeBron's best interest in mind.
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Gloria knew she needed help.
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I hated raising him that way, moving and moving and moving, Gloria said.
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I truly hated it.
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So what does LeBron do?
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He ends up moving in with the walkers.
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And for the first time in his entire life, he's eight, nine, ten years old at this time.
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He has the one thing he has never had before: stability and structure.
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There were a lot of rules with the walkers.
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LeBron was expected to wake up each morning at six to bathe and get ready for school.
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And after school, homework came before anything else.
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The family ate dinner together each night.
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Afterward, there were chores, taking out the trash, doing the dishes, sweeping.
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It was all foreign to LeBron, a schedule, a routine.
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Chores.
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I got the stability I craved, LeBron later said.
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I loved being part of the flow that is a family.
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I saw how life was meant to be lived.
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And it's actually with the Walkers that at this time LeBron hadn't played basketball yet.
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He's actually introduced to the sport of basketball and a handful of the coaches who would later influence his life and how he plays the game.
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But what was most important was just the stability he had for the first time ever.
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And LeBron even said on the importance of that time in his life and the importance of living with the Walker family.
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LeBron recognized how lucky he was to live with them.
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Without that time with the Walkers, he said, I don't honestly know what would have become of me.
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Without that time with the Walkers, I don't honestly know what would have become of me.
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It's so crazy to think about that the man, like I love to watch him play basketball.
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The man who has inspired millions of people and kids worldwide, someone who has changed the game of basketball forever, may never have been put in that position if it wasn't for a family's help during a rough point in his and his mother's life.
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Another example of the importance of Robbins.
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And if you listen to the episode on Mary Kay Ash, who built her cosmetics empire, K Cosmetics, we saw a very similar thing.
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So after Mary Kay spent decades working as a saleswoman and was close to the age of retirement, she couldn't actually fathom retiring and stopping work.
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So she decided to build what she called her dream company, which was a cosmetics company.
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And she wrote this in her autobiography.
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It was 1963.
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After 25 years as a professional saleswoman,
with my children grown, I just decided that retirement didn't suit me.
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And so I had developed a strategy and philosophy for beginning my own dream company.
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I had recruited several salespeople and invested my life savings into a chance of a lifetime.
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Using my years of experience in direct sales, I was going to train and supervise the beauty consultants while my husband was going to handle the administrative details of our new business.
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Exactly one month before we were scheduled to open, my husband and I were having breakfast.
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He was reading the final percentage figures for the company.
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And I was listening very much as a wife often does when her business when her husband talks about the budget with half an ear, because I considered it to be his problem.
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At that moment, he suffered a fatal heart attack.
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I believe that work is often the best antidote for grief.
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So I decided to open the business as planned.
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Starting the company had been my dream and my idea, but I never imagined that I would run it alone.
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I knew that I didn't have the needed administrative skills.
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And yet at this point, all the merchandise, bottles, and common labels were useless if the company folded.
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I had to go on.
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And one of the few reasons Mary Kay Ash was able to go on, one of the reasons the company would get off the ground and have its eventual success, is because of the sacrifices her kids would be willing to make for her.
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Here's how Mary Kay described it.
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The day of my husband's funeral, my sons and daughter came to Dallas from Houston.
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Perhaps it was the worst possible time to make a business decision, but it could no longer be delayed.
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My 20-year-old son, Richard, was a sales representative for Prudential Life Insurance Company, one of the youngest agents in Texas.
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He was making an incredible salary of$480 a month as a 20-year-old, the equivalent of like$60,$70,000 a day.
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But if Mary Kay were to become a reality, she wrote, I needed his help, but there was no way I could afford a salary like that.
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I took a deep breath and offered him$250 a month to help me guide the new company.
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Richard accepted without hesitation, and over the horrified protests of other family members and friends, he immediately quit his job and moved to Dallas.
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My elder son, Ben, was 27 married and the father of two.
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He could not pull up roots and move as quickly as his brother.
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But after hearing my plans to continue the company, he said, One day I'd like to join you and Richard.
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Then calmly and deliberately, he reached into his breast pocket and pulled out his savings passbook.
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The balance showed$4,500, a sum I knew represented everything he had saved since high school.
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Mother, he told her, I think you could do anything in the world that you wanted to.
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Then he handed me the passbook.
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Here's my savings.
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If it will help you in any way, I want you to have it.
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Eight months later, when we needed someone to handle our expanding ware expanding warehouse, Ben left his job.
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At the time, he gave up a salary of$750 a month and started with the company at the same pay as Richard,$250.
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If you think about it, if her son Richard didn't leave his promising job to help her, if Ben didn't give her all of his life savings at the time, Mary Kay Ash may not have survived the early years.
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That's the power of Robbins.
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I mentioned this one on Howard Schultz in episode 154, but there's this moment in his life when Schultz joined Starbucks, which was before it was this global empire, it was this three, four, five chain Starbucks retailer store.
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It only sold coffee, beans, not actually coffee by the cup.
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But after a year of working with Starbucks, he decides that he wants to leave to start his own espresso bar and cafe type company, basically exactly what Starbucks is today.
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And he decides to make the decision right when his wife gets pregnant.
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Schultz writes, gradually, I realized what I had to do.
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This is my moment.
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I thought, if I don't seize the opportunity, if I don't step out of my comfort zone and risk at all, if I let too much time tick on, my moment will pass.
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I knew that if I didn't take advantage of this opportunity, I would replay it in my mind my whole life, wondering what if, why didn't?
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This was my shot.
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Even if it didn't work out, I still had to try it.
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I made up my mind to leave Starbucks and start my own company.
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Just as I made up my mind, we found out Sherry, his wife, was pregnant without my salary.
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We would have to live off her income until I could get the new company up and running.
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She was willing
to go back to work soon after the baby was born in January, but I hated the fact that because of my decision, she had no choice.
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And this idea of Schultz starting this coffee company, it'd be called Il Giornale, which was not an ideal business in the 70s and 80s because coffee was not this premium thing, it was not this, this, this commodity that people actually enjoyed.
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It was not popular at all.
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Right when his wife was getting pregnant, was not an appealing idea, especially to Sherry's father.
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And Schultz recalls this moment when his wife's father actually pulled him aside to have a talk.
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And he tells Schultz this whatever you're doing, I respect it.
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But it's not a job, it's a hobby.
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My daughter's working, she's working, you're not.
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You need to get a job.
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And Schultz said in an interview four decades later that after that conversation with Sherry's dad, that he just started bawling.
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And Schultz ends up telling Sherry about this conversation.
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And you might think that she would agree with her father that she was frustrated by this whole situation.
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But she was actually outraged by her father's work.
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She couldn't fathom Schultz, her husband, giving up this dream and this idea.
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And she urged him to keep going.
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And what happens years later?
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Schultz buys back Starbucks and then turns it into the empire it is today.
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And Schultz later recalled on his wife, she is the glue to everything that happened.
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So just a little reminder that I like to remind myself in my own life a lot that as you work toward your ambitions and dreams, as you give your life to a mission or a craft, do everything you can to make those things work in your favor.
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Be disciplined, work obsessively, make, make, make the right sacrifices, do what you can to move in the right direction to make progress.
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But don't forget that there will be robins in your life who have as much of an impact as any single thing that you do.
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Sometimes it's a coach or a peer like Johnny D.
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who helped Bart Starr.
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Sometimes it's a it's a random family like the Walkers who helped LeBron James.
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Sometimes it's your own family or your partner, like it was for Mary Kay Ash and Howard Schultz.
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But the robins in your life help you more than you realize.
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You need them, to be honest, more than you realize.
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And if you think about it, we don't have the entrepreneurs, we don't have the artists, the athletes, the difference makers in this world.
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We don't have the Batmans getting all the spotlight, the Batmans who who eventually inspire millions and millions and millions of people who help others today if there aren't those robins in the background.
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So when you have that person in your life, make sure to thank them because they are as important as anything you will ever do.
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And no one, not a single person, succeeds their way without them.
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Batmans, they they do deserve their praise and adulation, but without the Robins, they wouldn't be where they are today.