Someone asked me the other day who I felt was my strongest competitor at what I do. The first questions I had to ask this person was, "Well, what exactly do I do?"
There is no competition.

I am not the first basketball player. I was the first publishing basketball stuff on YouTube, but there are thousands out there now. I'm not the first professional speaker or author or motivator or blogger or marketer or personal brand or salesperson or trainer. But I'm the first and only who combines all of it into one and makes it work.
I am a brand new breed. So there is no one to compete with because I am the only one running the race.

My idols mentors are mostly from afar -- people who have hustled their way into business and made something out of nothing. Many of them I find from one of my earliest life influences which was not sports: Hip Hop.

Jay-Z. 50 Cent. Russell Simmons. Puff Daddy. Hustlers. People who all faced, at one time, situations where no one bought into what they were doing -- so they bought into themselves and forced everyone to come around to their way of seeing things. That's what I do.

I don't look up to many athletes simply for the fact that winning the lottery -- the genetic lottery, that is -- was no work of that person. Being 6'8" and having athletic gifts was bestowed upon you (the fact that I'm 6'4" and can dunk a basketball fairly easily, while my parents are both under 5'10", is not lost on me). Yes, athletes work hard in the gym and develop skills. But a 5'4" guy and a 6'5" guy who both put in the same effort with the same mentalities will not have the same opportunities. This is a fact I can state because I've seen it. So when an athlete parlays his career earnings or name recognition into outside business, I applaud their sense to do so the same way I applaud a second-generation rich kid for continuing the family tradition. They didn't have to make theirs from nothing. We will never truly know what they would have done had they not had that advantage. So I don't look up to a success who was born on first, second, or third base. But I can take pieces of what anyone does and use it if it works for me.

Calling me a basketball player would be selling 90% of me short. I love basketball and it's been a big part of my life, but calling me that and that only would group me with a bunch of people who also play, and don't have a single definable skill otherwise. So I'm not not a basketball player, if that makes sense (but I can be just that when it serves my purpose -- I'm flexible), but the whole picture must be painted.

The world is rapidly changing. And that change is brought about by new ideas, new knowledge, new people and new actions. There are many places you can grab some of each, and if you want to find them all in one man, start here.
There's Only One Dre Baldwin.