Andre Iguodala’s brilliant tips for navigating uncertainty – Video

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Hello and welcome to this episode of NowWhat, a conversation series in which we talk about what happens next during a time of great change.
I am so thrilled today to be talking with Andre Iguodala NBA champion Better selling author and entrepreneur.
Thank you for joining us, Andre.
What do you think should happen next for the NBA?
How should everything reopen when it does?
That was very interesting.
There’s a lot of things that play a stake, health being number one thing We have to keep in mind and, you know, player safety, peace of mind as well knowing that you know we’re going to be could possibly be in an environment with an environment may look like.
So I think that’s most important but as we’ve seen throughout these times, you know, not just in sports but in politics and.
In with our unemployment levels, being where they are, when’s the right time to move forward and at what cost.
So just trying to be in the right places with the right frame of mind to make sure the guys on the court and able to produce the best product that we’re capable of.
Do you think that there are any Silver Linings here for the NBA.
Anything that might come from this time is sort of a strange time of rest for a lot of people and a minute to rethink how things work.
Do you think we’ll get anything good out of it?
Well, I think is really interesting.
I heard and that we saw was Bruce Kappa golfer.
I’m an avid golfer and he’s, number two in the world and golf.
And they were asking him about his time off and he said he’s really been thinking about You know, life after golf, and you know this gives you a time to reflect and see okay, what’s life going to be like and actually gives you opportunity to prepare for it.
You know, as athletes, we’re always living in a moment living.
Living What’s next in terms of what’s on record?
What’s the next accomplishment to shoot for, but when it’s kind of stripped away from you, you actually have to develop sort of some intellectual property outside of the game, something that gives you an identity To prepare yourself to be ready to go through a transition, you know, once you know your time is done in that profession.
This is something that you’re particularly interested in.
You’ve talked a lot about.
You’ve written a lot about helping young NBA players.
Thinking the long term I’m thinking about this a lot as I was prepping for this interview, the life of a professional athlete and especially a basketball player starts with a ton of uncertainty and always professors with a lot of uncertainty, right?
You join the NBA.
You don’t know what’s gonna happen in future seasons.
You don’t know what’s gonna happen in the next game.
You don’t know when the next injury is.
So it’s a life of uncertainty.
What kind of advice would you give to other athletes but also to just other humans who are in this world where we’re not used to this much this much uncertainty?
You’re probably used to a ton of uncertainty and navigated it really well.
What would you tell people who kind of don’t know what to do next?
I think he’s just about maximizing your time.
And the situation you’re in understanding that there’s going to be ups and downs.
Understanding you have to be able to adjust.
And with any situation that comes your way You know, you’re talking about professional sports in especially, you know, context sports, with reactions, you know, I always guys, its better to be proactive than reactive, when you are proactive you can get to a space first and that puts you in a position of power, position of influence so on and so forth.
You take those same principles you have on the court in terms of trying to be first, trying to study Be ahead of the curve and you take those and apply them to the things you do off the court as well.
You know, what are some of your interests off the court?
You know, how can you be up to date on some of those things, you know, just having a good balance, you know, how can you surround, give yourself the right surroundings to be the best you can be on the basketball court.
Whether it be.
Implementing yoga, meditation, you know your diet, just your frame of mind, you know, just having that peaceful state of mind to help you be a better basketball player but you’re applying that to being a better person as well and you’re able to transition your skill set to other things because your competitor.
You know how to work hard is just applying it with your brain instead of your body in you know some of those principles I try to give to the young guys as a some pointers.
That’s great, that’s helpful i think for everybody as we go around our small spaces and and try to figure out what’s next Question just a funny little side question that I’ve been thinking about a lot.
How are athletes training at home I assume that some basketball players who’ve been in it for a long time have built a home gyms but a lot of the new guys probably don’t.
What’s going on in houses people staying fit Yeah, that’s interesting as well, you look at the body.
Look at basketball players in the NBA, the NBA is getting younger and younger.
If I had to guess half our league is in the first four years of their career so there’s not a, we have what’s called a rookie scale.
So The salaries aren’t what the casual fan thinks it is on a lower scale in terms of basketball wealth, and those guys have to be mindful and budget well so there’s no home gym.
So, they’re living in whether it be apartments or condominiums and they’re making Do the Miami Heat zone workouts 4 or 5 times a week you’ve got about eight nine guys at least on there,and we’re making do with we got the bikes guys have a trade news guys Had the weight you know, even if you just have, you know, a set of 40s and 50s and there’s a plethora of workouts that you can accomplish.
You know, I’m a Nike athlete and you look to the Nike app they have in home workouts that you can do this in your living room.
You know?
peloton has been doing really well in the markets lately with the number of subscribers and the number of people that have joined that platform and they’ve expanded that and so many areas from the meditation have yoga, they have the bike, they have treadmill.
The weightlifting and all those things you can do within the comfort of your home to keep you not just strong and healthy, but it helps you in the right frame of mind of knowing that you’re putting your body to use and go Yeah, that’s great.
And I think for our audience, I think the message is you can train like an NBA athlete even at home.
Right, I’ve gotten really creative in the front yard actually doing a lot of boxing workouts in You get the right trainer over zoom call.
And trainers are very creative and their whole objective is to make you suffer.
So they come up with some pretty creative things.>>That’s awesome.
And you brought up zoom, I wanna ask about zoom.
I think back in February you told CNBC that it was your best investment.
So far and that was before this happened, correct.
You were just singing zooms, praises.
There was a lot more going outside and you can’t even hear it on my mic because zooms cancelling it out.
How do you know that it was?.
How did you make the decision to invest in zoom and or was that just a stroke of luck Well, I think with investing, you have to understand their odds and your risk.
It’s like a batting average, you have to invest in a certain amount of companies and you understand you’ll see returns with a certain set of accompanies and you you hope one of them, is that one And then Zoom has been that one for me.
But I had a really good conversation with CEO Eric, and we sat down at the Forbes conference of tech companies and we were able to have dinner together.
Kinda got his vision of how far he’s brought the company.
This is just before becoming an IPO, so series D.
And he was very passionate about Just his company in his space and a majority of the time you’re investing in the entrepreneur you’re not investing in idea per se and with him, I saw.
An amazing entrepreneur who had a great vision and rarely do you see someone be disruptive in a space that one of the major conglomerates is already in Google’s in a space and Microsoft’s in the space and the Facebook’s in the space.
So he was able to go in and disrupt and build a better product.
Which is really hard to do.
And, you know, just you taking this easy to take a gamble on guys like that.
Thinking about that thinking about how to make investment decisions in general and not just investing in not just investing your money but investing your time, investing your thought, investing the moments in your day.
And, you know, a lot of professional athletes end up investing in things that are very consumer.
oriented headphones shoes, you’ve gone a different direction and gone in a really thoughtful direction.
What’s your advice for the world and how to make smart investments?
You talked a little bit about entrepreneurs and looking at leaders when it comes to investing your time investing anything else.
You have heard you say that you’re a process guy.
What’s your process for thinking about that?
In general advice?
Well, I have a pretty solid team surrounding me.
You try to surround yourself with really smart people, and then you try to get to know even smarter people.
And we’ve been fortunate to Be able to get to a few conferences to introduce me to a new areas of investing.
And, I was able to join Morgan Stanley’s enterprise tech conference, which introduced me to the enterprise space and I met some great minds.
erawan from Zoom obviously being one of those people that I was fortunate to meet but also tn, from Zora and I read his book subscribed and on the subscription economy and his company is basically manages the subscription base for us.
All companies on enterprise ISO, was able to gain some knowledge there, do my homework, do my research.
And like I said before, as an athlete, you have to be able to maximize your time.
So, being able to network as an NBA athlete, and meet these incredible minds and then take it, acknowledge it.
Digesting it.
And then making use of that knowledge, not just having a good making use of it, and trying to take that knowledge and go forth and invest in companies that I see that have some returns to, you know, these brilliant minds that have already met
So when you’re doing that homework and that research, what’s your day like?
Walk us through your process, your daily process, because I think all of us are rethinking What our daily processes?
What have you kinda landed on in this time of lockdown?
Yeah, well as has been pretty busy actually.
I find myself being more busy now than I am I’m actually doing an NBA season.
Just a recent role join with Comcast ventures and specifically the catalyst fund which invest in entrepreneurs of underfunded backgrounds, African American, Latin x and in women That job has me pretty much doing a lot of research and homework on human behavior.
And when you look at the text base, a lot of it is about About making systems and making economies more efficient, more productive, accountability, and in cam cast we say we wanna help our company grow Healthy and responsible.
So we’re doing a lot of homework on the COVID virus, a lot of homework on you know, the new environment of living, you know, the unemployment space.
So you just taken in a lot of information and everyday to just given us the tools to go out and try to find companies who can best serve What might possibly be the new world.
So that’s what it’s about and you gotta really enjoy it and love it and it’s a lot of reading and a lot of teamwork.
The teamwork has been amazing.
Zoom has helped us stay in contact, stay.
In as a team collaborating has been very important.
So, couldn’t do a lot of what I was doing not to keep plugging zoom but it’s been a lifesaver for a lot of our portfolio companies and for our company as well.
Is there anything else to circling back to to the to the [UNKNOWN] Decisions we’re all making on a daily basis.
Is there anything else that you would want to tell young people just entering the world, whatever their career is, whether it’s oriented towards athletics or or anything else really?
What’s your advice for thinking about the future when the future is uncertain?
I just think you try to adjust to the situation that you’re in, I wrote a article how to, how to maneuver in this new COVID space.
And the article was posted on LinkedIn and got a lot of positive feedback in terms of people trying to figure out what the days would look like.
I actually read I read a book was given to me by the team Is kind of interesting how things tie him up, you speak about he spoke about zoom in February before this happened.
And it was like I like I was genius but just the circumstances happening but also this book I read Ron the same time it’s called the 5am Club which essentially, you know, set you up to have the most productive days.
You kind of sit in it for the team, so it was right in line with it.
So that’s helped me a lot in terms of, you know, plan out your first hour of your day.
Once you do that, the rest of your day is set.
It sets you up for success.
So [UNKNOWN] Just waking up early in the morning, working out, and then writing down your goals for the day or for the week, and how to not touch your phone early in the morning or turning it off at night.
How important it is that you sleep.
How important is that balance as well, in terms of whether you’re meditating and you’re doing yoga or Having family or beer without family how to adjust with that being in contact with people.
But at the same time it’s kind of every week there seems there’s new information or and there’s new data on how to maneuver in the workspace because now is like, are we working too much if you’re working remotely, to turn off your slack channels, and want to be able to just relax and turn your brain off, so There’s a lot of information out there and the advice that I would give is just for young people to just continue to seek information.
And in a world where there’s a lot of information, you’re going to have to shuffle through some that may not be the right information, but if you seek approval really feel like you will find the information you’re looking for.
That’s fantastic.
I just want to thank you so much for spending your time, your very valuable time with us today.
And Andre Iguodala, author of the best selling the sixth man and entrepreneur and NBA star.
We wish you the best for you and your family and.
Come back and talk to us soon.
Thank you so much.
I really appreciate you having me and always enjoy conversations that extend beyond just the court.
So, thank you.
Great.
Thank you very much.
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