Transcript of Kobe Bryant’s Last Interview: On Purpose Podcast

It’s not just about sports, right? Life, right?

On Sports as a Metaphor for Life

KOBE BRYANT: It’s about the metaphor that sports has for life. Sports is the greatest metaphor we have in terms of dealing with life. Even if you listen to music, music will give you guidance that you can then meditate on and think about how you would apply it. In sports, you have to apply it in the here and now. You’re faced with challenges moment to moment. You’re faced with pressures and anxiety and communication or the lack thereof and all this other stuff. It’s in the moment. So you have to live it. And when you practice those things, you become better at it.

But I just feel like in this day and age, our children have become less imaginative about how to problem solve. And parents and coaches have become more directive in trying to mandate or give orders or teach kids how to think and how to behave — telling them how to behave versus teaching them how to behave. And so that’s why I’m creating these stories and creating this content.

JAY SHETTY: Yeah, I love that. I think it’s so true. When you treat people as kids, then they’ll always be kids.

KOBE BRYANT: Right.

On Unconditional Love and Confidence

JAY SHETTY: Even when they grow up. And for you, it was really powerful because you’ve talked about this before where your father said to you, “Whether you score 0 or 60, I love you.” Tell me what that statement meant to you at that time and how did it actually motivate you to continue scoring 60 rather than go, “Oh, I’m all right at 0.” Well, it did more than that, right?

KOBE BRYANT: The basketball stuff speaks for itself in terms of what that comment did for me in terms of giving me stability and giving me confidence to say, “Okay, it’s okay to fail because you’re going to be loved no matter what.” And that doesn’t just mean basketball. It means anything in life. That means writing. That means being an entrepreneur. That means having the confidence to go for it.

And I’ve seen too many parents do the exact opposite and it terrifies children. Children become paralyzed by their own fear because they don’t have that security blanket of love and comfort.

On Managing Emotion and Executing Under Pressure

JAY SHETTY: Yeah, absolutely. How have you been able to, in your life, see past the cloud of emotion to actually execute on things? Because I think what we were speaking about earlier — this challenge that young people have today, everyone has today — of just so much information, so much cloud of emotion, so many feelings, so much childhood baggage that you’re bringing. How have you always cut through that and executed on that?

KOBE BRYANT: What I try to do is just try to be still. And understand that things come and go, emotions come and go. The important thing is to accept them all, to embrace them all. And then you can choose to do with them what you want versus being controlled by emotion.

A lot of times I’ve seen players, even myself when I was younger, being consumed by a particular fear, to the point where you’re saying, “Okay, it’s not good to feel fear. I shouldn’t be nervous in this situation.” But that does nothing but grow it. Versus stepping back and saying, “Yeah, I am nervous about this situation. Yeah, I am fearful about this situation. Well, what am I afraid of?” And then you kind of unpack it. And then it gives you the ability to look at it for really what it is, which is nothing more than your imagination running its course.

JAY SHETTY: Yeah, absolutely. I love that. Because what you’re saying is that when you’re dealing with something, it’s almost like, how can I get to the root of it? Because sometimes what we’re dealing with, like you’re saying, it’s an imagination, an illusion. It’s not really—

On Unpacking Fear

KOBE BRYANT: It’s not really a thing. Like, you think about game-winning shots — or game-winning free throws — and people go to the free throw line and they’re nervous about it. Well, what are you really nervous about? If you unpack that, okay, you’re nervous that you’re going to miss the shot. All right, so you missed the shot, then what happens? People are going to be embarrassed. You’re going to be embarrassed because thousands of people, millions of people see you miss the shot. All right, and then what? People are going to talk bad about you. Okay, right.

And so you’re looking at it and you go, are those things even important? If that is my fear — you’re worried about letting your teammates down? Okay, have you let them down before? Well, I’m sure in practice and things of that nature, right? They’re still there. And so when you’re able to unpack it, you kind of look at it for what it is, which is really nothing.

JAY SHETTY: Yeah, I love that — breaking it down. I think that’s so important. I think everyone who’s listening or watching right now, next time you’re facing a fear, next time you’re going against something, do that. Literally unpack it. Don’t just settle for your first answer because the first answer is rarely the right one.

KOBE BRYANT: Don’t hide from it. You have to be able to look at it and deal with it head on.

On Getting Over Yourself

JAY SHETTY: Yeah, I love that, man. And you talk about that because you talk about when you talk about missing 5 throws, you talk about getting over yourself. Right, like getting over yourself. How did you get that mentality of just being like, I need to get over this, like I need to get over myself?

KOBE BRYANT: Trial and error. You grow up and you make game-winning shots and it’s awesome, and you come back the next day and miss a game-winning shot and it’s misery. And then the next day comes and you’re back playing again. And you understand that life has this cyclical nature where what you do on Monday is fantastic, but then Tuesday is a bad day, but guess what? There’s Wednesday.

So are we just supposed to live our lives like this the whole time? Versus just staying level and understanding that it’s really just a journey of evolution. Every day is just constant improvement, constant curiosity, constantly getting better. The results don’t really matter. It’s the figuring out that matters.

JAY SHETTY: Yeah. And we all get obsessed about the results. Like, we get obsessed about the output.

KOBE BRYANT: Yeah.

JAY SHETTY: Not the input of not figuring it out and not changing things. What you said — trial and error, like the experimenting.

KOBE BRYANT: Yeah.

JAY SHETTY: We forget to do that.

On Coaching Young Athletes

KOBE BRYANT: It’s unfortunate, man. I’ve seen a lot of players, especially now in youth basketball, dealing with that. You have players that are bigger and faster and stronger, and their coaches are just coaching them for results. We’re just going to use your size — because you’re bigger than every other 12-year-old out there — to dominate today. But they’re not growing, right? They’re just focused on that result, but they’re not focused on growing this young child.

JAY SHETTY: Yeah.

KOBE BRYANT: Into becoming a better athlete, and through that, teaching them how to become a more well-rounded person. And we’re missing that.

JAY SHETTY: Yeah. See, what you’ve said there, just—

KOBE BRYANT: It—

The Origins of Strategic Thinking

JAY SHETTY: I want to ask you this, and I’m not saying because you know yourself best and you know how you’ve got there, so I’m asking it from a place of humility, of learning. When I look at you, I’m like, your superpower isn’t just your work ethic. Your superpower isn’t just figuring things out. Your superpower is like you think strategically. Like, that’s a very strategic thought of saying this person could be this in the future if they were developed as a whole individual, right? Rather than just like, let’s use them for the short term, right? Where did you develop that from, that ability to see beyond, to think deeper, to reflect deeper? Where did that come from?

KOBE BRYANT: Well, I had to do that because, growing up in Italy, when I first moved over there, I didn’t speak Italian, I didn’t have any friends. I had the game of basketball, and through sport and playing soccer, I was able to make friends and build connections. But it was a lot of time spent alone. And when I came back to the States, I wasn’t the most athletic kid. I was really scrawny, like really, really skinny, and had major knee issues because I was growing. So I was the dorky kid with high socks and big old knee pads.

JAY SHETTY: It’s fashionable now.

KOBE BRYANT: It’s fashionable now.

JAY SHETTY: It wasn’t then.

KOBE BRYANT: It wasn’t then. And so I had to look long-term because in the here and now I couldn’t compete with these kids. I mean, there were kids that were like 12 years old with beards. Like, what am I supposed to do with that? Like they’re doing windmills and dunking backwards. And I’m happy to tap the backboard. So I had to look at it from a long-term perspective because I wasn’t going to give up on the game.

JAY SHETTY: Right.

KOBE BRYANT: So I had to say, okay, this year I’m going to get better at that. Next year, this, and then so forth and so on. And then patiently I was able to catch them.

The Consistency of Work

JAY SHETTY: Yeah, I love hearing that because I think so many of us, when we see people like yourself, it’s so easy as an excuse to ourselves to just be like, oh, you’re destined for it, right? You were made for it. But when you talk about saying, oh, actually, when I started, I didn’t have the physicality that meant that I was going to make it. Like, you had to figure it out, and I love it.

KOBE BRYANT: Figure it out, man. It’s just piece by piece, and it’s the consistency of the work, which I feel like a lot of parents are missing today because we’re not teaching that to our kids. We tend to say kids don’t want to do the work, but in reality, we’re failing them because we’re not leading them the right way and teaching them how to fish. And so the consistency of work — Monday, get better. Tuesday, get better. Wednesday, get better. Right? And you do that over a period of time, not like 1 month or 2 months. I mean, it’s 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 years. And then you can get to where you want to go.

JAY SHETTY: Yeah, I think it was Bill Gates who was talking about that. He talks about how we overestimate what we can do in 1 year and underestimate what we can do in 10 years.

KOBE BRYANT: No doubt.

JAY SHETTY: Right? It’s like that. Yeah.

KOBE BRYANT: No doubt.

How Kobe Deals With Winning

JAY SHETTY: I think everyone thinks about it like, what can I do right now? Like, how can I make it happen? But with you, I think people always ask you like, how do you deal with losing or failure? What I’m intrigued by is how someone like you deals with winning, because you’ve won again and again. Obviously we know you won in basketball as an athlete, but you’re winning now even in the work you’re doing here as a storyteller, as a producer, right? It’s amazing to see so many incredible awards coming through. How have you dealt with winning? Like, when you win, what goes through your mind?

KOBE BRYANT: Well, it’s a little different. In basketball, it was different because I expected to win. I expected us to win championships. I expected us to win 5, quite honestly, I expected us to win 8. And so when you have that vision in sports, it’s a direct competition. Like I know how hard they’re working. I know how hard we’re working. I know what their strategy is. I know what ours is. So when we won in the NBA, it was like, yeah, we expected to do that, but now we’re going to come back and we’re going to do it again. And so it’s that constant churning. You win one championship, I’m back in the gym the next day working, getting ready for the next one.

Now it’s different because it’s not about the awards. You just wind up trying to create something that’s going to inspire someone, and hopefully through that inspiration, they can inspire somebody else. And what I’ve come to learn as my career went on is that’s more significant than any championship. How do you connect with somebody that can then connect with another? And whether the awards come or not, that’s for the Academy Award body to decide. But for us, it’s just to try to create things.

JAY SHETTY: Yeah. Well, I guess now that’s what shifted — the intention isn’t even expecting to win. It’s expecting to change lives.

KOBE BRYANT: Right.

JAY SHETTY: Like your content is really about making a difference and an impact on young people’s lives. Which I think is like the biggest way of winning.

Inspiring the Next Generation Through Storytelling

KOBE BRYANT: I think so. I mean, if you’re looking at 62% of young children dropping out of sports, 62%, and they cite the fact that it’s not fun anymore — well, what is that telling us? That’s telling us that we as grownups are getting in the way. Get out the way. Let these kids be imaginative.

In our stories, it’s important that there’s a fantasy nature to it, but it’s rooted in reality. When we have fire-breathing winged horses and things of that nature, those are actual drills that are taking place. We don’t have fire-breathing winged horses actually performing that, but we do have ball machines that are spitting balls at tennis players. And so all of our stories are anchored in an element of truth so that children feel like when they are doing these drills with these ball machines, they can envision maybe it’s a fire-breathing winged horse.

JAY SHETTY: Yeah. To keep them excited. Yeah.

KOBE BRYANT: They can envision Gus throwing fireballs at them.

JAY SHETTY: Yeah.

KOBE BRYANT: And even the plays — in the Wizard Art series, when the basket is opening up and shrinking, these are things that we experience as athletes. Like some days I feel like I can’t make a shot, man. And the basket feels like the size of a keyhole. And other days it looks like a swimming pool. That’s magic. And so we root our magic in reality so that when kids experience these things, particularly the failure side of it, they can connect it to one of our stories and say, okay, I’ve seen this before, I know how to deal with this.

JAY SHETTY: Yeah, that’s beautiful, man. I love that analogy of feeling the basket bigger or smaller and then being able to envision that. I can envision it right now. Like, you’re so right. Some days it looks huge. That’s such a great way of thinking about it. And I guess so much of this is from your real life vision.

KOBE BRYANT: Oh yeah.

JAY SHETTY: Yeah. Some days I’ve experienced it. But I love that because it’s also giving them the permission to be imaginative about this, right?

KOBE BRYANT: Yes.

JAY SHETTY: And that obviously gives so much. I think when we imagine, it changes the reality of, oh, I’m just sitting out here taking shots.

KOBE BRYANT: Yes.

JAY SHETTY: Right. Which can get boring and tiring.

KOBE BRYANT: Becomes mechanical.

JAY SHETTY: Mechanical. That’s the right word.

Coaching, Creativity, and Letting Kids Own the Process

KOBE BRYANT: Mechanical. Our job is to try to inspire the creativity inside of our children so that they can think through how to problem solve situations. When I coach my daughter’s team, it’s not about giving them answers. It’s about asking them questions and getting them to process things. When the game is being played, I’m not sitting there giving them answers or barking out things on the sideline. I sit down and I’m quiet. My assistant coach sits there and she’s quiet, and the kids figure things out for themselves, or they don’t. And then they come back and there’s always questions, and then you ask them more questions and you help them figure it out.

But then you see their level of excitement to practice increase every day because it’s a process that they are owning. They’re not coming to get orders barked at them every day. They’re coming for their personal quest to get better.

JAY SHETTY: Yeah. And how do your daughters feel about you coaching? I guess that style makes them feel comfortable, but how have you been able to manage that with the pressure of you being there?

KOBE BRYANT: No, it’s no pressure because it’s their process to own. I have knowledge and information that I’ve gained through playing. So the little details of things I can teach at a high level, but ultimately it’s them.

JAY SHETTY: Yeah. You seem very still and detached about it.

KOBE BRYANT: I mean, the kids love playing basketball, so that’s the anchor of it all. They come and they play and they learn and they have fun, and they compete and they challenge themselves and one another. And you just get better every day.

The Choice of Tennis and the Inner Game

JAY SHETTY: Yeah. How have you seen that with Legacy and the Queen? You chose tennis. What was the choice of sports about? I’m intrigued by that. Why tennis?

KOBE BRYANT: So the first novel we did was the Wizard and I series. It was important for that to be basketball because I wanted the first story to be one of empathy and compassion. And in team sports, if you don’t have that, you can’t win. And so it was important to tell the tale of a basketball team dealing with their own personal fears and how those fears and insecurities lead to empathy and compassion for others.

With the second story, I wanted to look more internal, individually, and look at how do you deal with the inner challenges, the self-negotiation that takes place inside of our own heads. And there was no sport better for that than tennis. There’s golf, but tennis — you have more movement, which to me symbolizes life in general because life has a lot going on. There are the elements in tennis that you have to deal with as you deal with in golf, maybe not to the same extent, but they’re still there. And then there’s the confrontation with the person across the net from you.

JAY SHETTY: Yes.

KOBE BRYANT: As well as the strengths and weaknesses in your own movements and how you feel in your own body. And because of that, it was important for this story to be a tennis story.

JAY SHETTY: I love that. That makes complete sense. And give me an example of that self-negotiation. I love that word. Can you expand on that a bit?

KOBE BRYANT: Like, you’re out running on a track, working out, and you start talking to yourself saying, man, my knee is really sore right now. Maybe I’m doing too much.

JAY SHETTY: Sounds like me.

KOBE BRYANT: Maybe I need to back off. Man, my lungs are burning. Maybe I can just slow down here. I’ll do like an extra 2 sets tomorrow. It’ll be okay.

JAY SHETTY: Yeah. Right.

KOBE BRYANT: That sort of stuff.

JAY SHETTY: Yes.

KOBE BRYANT: That stuff’s dangerous.

JAY SHETTY: Yes.

Non-Negotiation and the Creative Process

KOBE BRYANT: And that’s when you just got to say, you know what? I’m not negotiating with myself. The deal was already made. The deal was made when I set out at the beginning of the summer and said, this is the training plan I’m doing. I signed that contract with myself. I’m doing it. Throughout that process, you’ll start talking to yourself like, man, I got to— I think I need to— maybe if we—

JAY SHETTY: Nope.

KOBE BRYANT: No, this is non-negotiable.

Developing Empathy as a Superpower

JAY SHETTY: Yeah. I love that. And for you, empathy and compassion were things that you’d been through. That was personally inspired work. When did it come to your awareness that empathy was something missing for you and that you wanted to develop it?

KOBE BRYANT: I had a teammate that spoke to me and say, “Hey, Kobe, I just want to feel like as a teammate, you need me.” I was like, “Well, duh.” Like, that was my immediate reaction. Like, “Dude, yeah, of course.” But I had to kind of think about really what he was saying and where that was coming from. For him and his story and his journey and what that meant to him.

And that opened my eyes to there’s a bigger game being played. It’s not just basketball, but it’s the emotions of each individual and the backstory that they’re carrying with them, the baggage that they’re carrying with them. And if I really want to be a champion and be a great teammate, I have to understand what those mean to help them become better and in turn help me.

Creating the Highest Quality Content at Granity

JAY SHETTY: And do you think all the content you’re creating here at Granity — is that for you to help build better bonds between parents and kids? Like, are you hoping that the podcast, for example, kids are going to listen to on the way to school or on the way back? Like, how are you imagining people consuming the work?

KOBE BRYANT: I imagine it in different ways, but ultimately people always figure out a way to do it that’s comfortable for them. Which is why, in everything that we do, we try to create the highest quality of product.

People will sit down and tell me, they’ll say, okay, well, audiobooks — very small percentage of people listen to audiobooks. We don’t really have to invest too much in doing audiobooks. And what? Excuse me? No, because what if that one person just listens to audiobooks, that one family enjoys audiobooks — they have to get the best experience that I could possibly give them. So that means using a London orchestra. That means doing full symphonies. That means having Phylicia Rashad read the stories.

The books themselves — I got this all the time. “There’s no money in making books, man. Nobody makes money in books.” And I’m sorry, you want to make a book using what material? Like, yeah, because children matter. I don’t know exactly how they’re going to be consuming content. But ultimately, it’s my responsibility and our responsibility as a studio to make every single thing that we put out the highest quality possible.

JAY SHETTY: No, I can imagine. I can imagine parents listening to it on the way to school. I can imagine listening on the way back or on the way to practice. Things like that. I think it’s cool.

KOBE BRYANT: Well, the Punies for sure. When I first made the Punies, we released it in the summer — I think we released it in August. In my mind, I was saying, okay, parents are going to listen to this every Saturday morning. Because I know I’m in the car driving my kids to soccer games and volleyball games and stuff. So parents can listen to this with their kids in the car as they’re driving to sporting events. That was kind of what I had in my mind.

And then when it came out, teachers were using it more so than anybody — in classrooms, doing classroom reports on the Punies and all sorts of stuff. So, you know, you never know.

Studying Life and Fueling Imagination

JAY SHETTY: It seems like you study life a lot. When you’re talking about all of this imagination, which stems from your own work — for example, when you’re dealing with empathy and compassion, it’s reflected in the content. When you’re going through these visualizations of what could this look like, it goes in the content. You study life a lot. What currently are you studying and what kind of gets your imagination really growing right now? What keeps that moving for you?

KOBE BRYANT: There’s a certain element of truth in everything. The creativity generally comes from personal experiences first, and then you kind of look on a broader scope of, okay, how do you take something extremely personal and then channel it in a way for masses to understand or get their arms around? But it always starts in the element of truth.

And then you start unpacking that by sitting in thought and figuring out character — who is this person, who’s his family. And then that’s when I start getting in trouble, because the questions don’t end.

I have books and books and books of backstory. Because it’s not good enough just to say the character’s this way. Why are they that way? Well, where do the parents come from? Why are they raising a kid this way? What does it have to do with the economy that’s around them? And just one thing leads to the next, and then you’re just writing all kinds of stuff. It’s crazy.

Structure Breeds Creativity

JAY SHETTY: That’s awesome. Because I think so many of us, in our lives, we get stuck with imagination. You kind of get into that autopilot mode — doing the same thing every day, same routine, same drive to work. And I feel that what you’re sharing is that’s easy for anyone to do. It’s not like, oh, because you’re Kobe Bryant, you don’t feel that. Everyone gets into that. You’re able to find these creative outlets.

KOBE BRYANT: Yeah. Creativity is in everything. What I found is creativity a lot of the time comes from structure. You have those parameters and the structure, then within that you can be creative. But if you don’t have the structure, you’re just aimlessly doing stuff. Where are you going?

So like, having a clear structure of understanding — okay, when I was writing the Wizarding Arts series and outlining Legacy, I come in in the morning, 7:00 AM, and I’m there. I’m writing backstory from 7:00 to 12:00, then go pick up my kids, and then I come right back and I’m writing again. Within that structure, my mind when I go to sleep is already planning what the next day is going to be because I know what it is I have to do. It’s that consistency and structure.

JAY SHETTY: Yeah, I couldn’t agree with you more. I’m writing my first book right now.

KOBE BRYANT: Oh wow.

JAY SHETTY: And a lot of people have been asking me — I have a very scheduled focus on writing — and people are like, “Well, how do you find inspiration at that time? What if you’re not inspired at that time?” And I’m like, no, the structure helps spontaneity. It’s that consistency that breeds creativity.

KOBE BRYANT: Well, that’s the thing too. People think you’re just kind of mulling along and all of a sudden, aha! The show that we have on ESPN now called Detail — a basketball, sports breakdown show — that came to me when I was walking around with my wife shopping.

JAY SHETTY: Yeah.

KOBE BRYANT: I look at a piece of fabric and I’m like, wow, this is really the detail in this thing. Oh my— Detail. That’s the name of the show. And then everything came from there. But I had been thinking about a show like that for like a year. And I couldn’t shake it loose. I’m like, I’ve got to find a sports show that I’m going to do, but it needs to — can’t just be basketball-focused, has to be broader. And I want to hear from the best minds in the world. I want to hear from Peyton Manning. What is it? What is it? For like a year. And then all of a sudden, boom. So people think it just comes out of nowhere.

You’ve got to obsess over it for a while and then it kind of pops loose.

JAY SHETTY: Absolutely. You have to plant the seed well before to see the fruit.

KOBE BRYANT: And you’ve got to water it all the time, man. You’ve got to sit down and watch other shows that are out there. And then ultimately you just find — when the answer comes to you, it’s like, my God, I could have thought of it on the first day.

I remember John Williams told me that he’ll sit for like 2 months to try to figure out what the melody is. He’ll just be playing. He’ll be at his piano all day. He’ll say the only day he’ll take off is Sunday because his wife forces him to take Sundays off. And he’ll just be sitting there writing, writing. And then it just comes. And he’s like, “I seriously could have thought of that on the first day.” Like, wow, it’s just so simple.

JAY SHETTY: Yeah, absolutely. And that’s what people don’t realize as well. When you go out shopping with your wife and you see the detail and you’re like, okay, that’s the show — and then you go back into consistency to create it. It’s like, it wasn’t just like, oh, now I thought of it, I’m just going to throw that idea out there. It’s like, now I’m going back to the drawing board. Have the name now, build around it.

Stress-Testing Every Idea

KOBE BRYANT: What I try to do is shoot the idea down and figure out everything that’s wrong with the idea. Detail, for example — this show won’t work because it’s not for fans. It’s for the 1% athlete.

JAY SHETTY: Yeah.

KOBE BRYANT: All right. Well, will it be successful? Will people connect to it? And you start unpacking every little thing. How would we shoot it? Can I even get Peyton Manning to do it? And you start shooting them down. Same thing with the novels — characters and plots and stories — does this make any sense? No, here’s why. Pop pop pop pop pop! I feel like that really helps me.

JAY SHETTY: Yeah, I like that approach a lot, actually. Because I think sometimes, especially right now in the world, we go to the wishful thinking side. You have the positive vision and you’re like, oh, this is how it’s going to turn out. And then you ignore the bad stuff, or you ignore the potholes and the loopholes, because you’re just like, oh no, I don’t want to focus on the negativity. But actually what you’re saying is, if you’re aware of those known unknowns, then you can actually break them down yourself.

KOBE BRYANT: Well, yeah, it’s just like the same thing for any great movie. You have to have the antagonist.

JAY SHETTY: Yes.

The Power of Storytelling and Obsession

KOBE BRYANT: You know, a strong villainous character will really drive the narrative along. If you don’t have that, you have nothing from which your hero has to bounce off of. That villain could be Maleficent. It could be something inside of you. It could be whatever. But you have to have that clear antagonist that’s driving the narrative forward. And so in this sense, it’s the same thing. You pick apart the negative and from that you can then move forward.

JAY SHETTY: Absolutely. What I’m loving here right now is that all I’m hearing is Kobe the storyteller. What I feel is what I’m hearing about is your obsession and obsessiveness with stories. And it’s not just something you’re saying, it’s like you’ve really studied stories, like you’ve really broken them down and understood it. Tell me about where that obsession comes from in general, like how you find obsessiveness and how you’ve applied that to story.

KOBE BRYANT: Yeah, obsessiveness just comes from something that you love. Like you really love it, you’ll go through fire for it, you’ll go through the ups and downs with it, and you’ll just keep at it because you love it so much.

And story for me started a long time ago. I had a great English teacher at Lower Merion High School named Jane Mastriano, and she explained to me the art of storytelling my sophomore year. And that’s where I started falling in love with it and understanding story structure, how to develop compelling characters and how stories are the driving force, whether they’re inspirational or informational, that really change society.

JAY SHETTY: Yeah, absolutely. We’re defined by the stories we tell ourselves, whether personally or outside. And it seems like you just mentioned the role of teachers. And now when you find that teachers are using the work you’re creating to teach, that must be amazing.

KOBE BRYANT: Comes full circle. Yeah, it’s a pretty cool feeling, man. Like growing up when I was in high school, man, I didn’t read much at all. Because basketball was my thing. Now if you give me a basketball book, or a sports book or a sports psych book, I’m devouring that. It was a clear focus for me, which kind of gets me into this market a little bit too, because like for our active children that love being outdoors and playing all the time, they’re not reading.

But they’re missing out on so much by not reading. But they will read if there’s something that they feel like speaks to them. And so now I think we get more readers in the world because of it.

JAY SHETTY: Hopefully. That’s so true. I agree with you. And this is why everyone’s different. And I think there’s such a need for what you’re doing because when I was growing up, I never enjoyed fiction. And so I thought I didn’t like reading because all the books that the school suggested were fiction books. And then when I was 14, my dad handed me an autobiography and a biography and I devoured it. And then I started reading because I was like, I want to hear about real people who break and who develop and who learn and grow and have been through failure. I want to hear about rags to riches. I want to hear about real people who went through real pain.

KOBE BRYANT: That’s right.

JAY SHETTY: But I grew up believing that I didn’t like reading. And I think that’s— you’re so right. I think there’s a lot of kids out there who think they don’t like reading, or they think reading is boring.

Diversity, Representation, and Self-Publishing

KOBE BRYANT: It’s a problem because what I found in the industry, which is why we self-publish, is that a lot of publishers want to publish the same type of story, the same type of plots, same looking characters. Not a lot of diverse characters out there at all. And so we said, you know what, we have to do this on our own. This way we don’t have anybody in our way telling us what the market wants to hear. I don’t care about that. We write stories that come from the heart. And our characters are going to look like my daughters because my daughters don’t have characters out there that look like them.

So yeah, they’re going to look like my kids. And we’re going to go from there.

JAY SHETTY: Yeah, I think what you’ve just raised there about diversity and representation is huge.

KOBE BRYANT: It’s huge, man. Huge. Because I don’t see it, man. Books is just the first thing. Publishing is the first thing. Now, if we look at animation, animation is even worse in terms of developing diverse characters. But even beyond that, the animators themselves, there’s no diversity in that industry.

None. And I’m talking not just racial diversity, but gender diversity as well. And so there are a lot of things that we need to take on that we are taking on. And hope to make the world and the industry a better place because of it.

JAY SHETTY: Yeah, no, I fully agree with that. I’m a British Indian, right? Born and raised in London, Indian, never seen any character like Laila Faqri anywhere.

KOBE BRYANT: Because they think the mass market is not going to— it’s not going to appeal to the mass market. So we’re not going to do that.

JAY SHETTY: Yeah, exactly.

KOBE BRYANT: Wait, what? What?

JAY SHETTY: Yeah. And everything’s spreading so fast now and everything’s global now. Nearly all content is global now. And most global markets are growing everywhere. So the need for people, especially young people, being able to see themselves in characters. And it’s a deeper point that you’re making — you want to be able to see your story in someone, right? Even just beyond color and background. It’s like your story, your experience of life.

Dear Basketball and Proving the Doubters Wrong

KOBE BRYANT: When we made Dear Basketball, we got a lot of pushback from people. I took it to some very prominent studios at first, and they all said no, because they said basketball is too sport-specific, nobody’s going to connect with this sort of thing. Because there are a lot of people out there who don’t watch basketball. And I’m like, well, that’s not the point.

JAY SHETTY: Yeah. That’s not the point, yeah.

KOBE BRYANT: It’s not the point. And so it was really a case study, even with our novels — everybody was like, sports novels, nobody’s going to read that, it’s too much of a niche market. I’m like, sports is bigger than that, man. And so we made Dear Basketball to really prove a point that you don’t have to watch basketball at all to connect to the journey of a dream.

And once we saw that connection, it kind of validated our point of view.

JAY SHETTY: I think that’s a massive point of view. And for anyone who’s listening or watching right now who thinks because Kobe Bryant wants to do something, it just happens — it just shows you have to do it yourself sometimes because not everyone’s going to believe in you.

KOBE BRYANT: Certainly not. And what you’ll see is, once you start doing it, people want to come and jump in. But I’m like, you kind of forced us to go about this ourselves. So I think we’re just going to build it from the ground up ourselves. But thank you.

JAY SHETTY: Exactly. They saved you. Yeah.

KOBE BRYANT: Thank you. Appreciate it. Because if you had signed on, we just kind of would have been going with the flow.

JAY SHETTY: Totally. You can be grateful to them. Yeah, absolutely. No, I agree. It was the same with this podcast, funny enough. When we launched, a lot of people were considering whether it was going to work on a podcast. And there were a lot of people that were not sure. And then we launched one of the biggest podcasts in the world in the health category, which is my world. And it was just like everyone’s like, oh, interesting. But I’m like, thank you. Like, thank you so much for saying no. And you didn’t think it was going to work because now I figured it out myself.

KOBE BRYANT: Yes.

JAY SHETTY: And what you said actually builds confidence and validation.

The Oprah Lesson: Ownership and Belief

KOBE BRYANT: Yeah. Oprah told me this when I first decided to build the studio and I was asking how Harpo came to be. And she said, well, when she was doing her deal for the Oprah Winfrey Show, she was re-upping her deal. And actually the first contract she made, she said, “Well, don’t pay me upfront, just I want to own a percentage of the show.” And so they gave it to her.

Now at the time, there weren’t any Black women hosting a daytime talk show. So it was really new. And she said, “You know, Kobe, if they believed that the show was going to be successful, they wouldn’t have given me that. They wouldn’t have.” In their mind, they’re thinking, “Oh, we got a steal. We don’t have to pay her. We can take this money and move it over here. This is great. This is going to be a flop, or we succeed. I don’t know. At least we get diversity on TV. It’s fine.” And all of a sudden it’s, “Oh, uh-oh. Uh-oh, we’re in trouble.”

JAY SHETTY: We shouldn’t have given it away.

KOBE BRYANT: Opened up Pandora’s box, right? So now you come back for the next deal and it’s like, you’ve got to give me some more ownership. And then ultimately she came to owning 100% of her show.

JAY SHETTY: Yeah, which is amazing. Wow, that’s a great story. That’s fascinating. I think because sometimes when you think that, you’re like, oh, they like me, that’s why they’re giving it.

KOBE BRYANT: No, don’t like me, please. Here’s an idea, it’s terrible. I just need you to buy in just a little bit.

Finding Mentors and Learning from the Greats

JAY SHETTY: Yeah, that is awesome. How are you encouraging young people to find the right mentors? You’ve shared so many stories — like your teacher who taught you about storytelling and writing early on, you just shared Oprah’s example. You’ve had so many incredible mentors in your life. We all know about that. How are you encouraging young people to find the right mentors and how can they find the right mentors even through your work? I guess your work is somewhat mentorship.

KOBE BRYANT: We try to be. And I think the important thing is research. In the hall here in the office, I have a hall that I call Muse Hall. We have all the portraits of some of our muses here, from J.K. Rowling to Steve Jobs, and so forth and so on. I think it’s important to research them. It’s like putting fuel in the fire every day. It’s constant inspiration when you read about them, what they were able to accomplish, how they went about accomplishing it. It’s just constantly feeding that flame and learning. And the best way to do that is to learn from the people who have done it.

JAY SHETTY: Yes. Yeah. That just made me so happy. I have a gallery wall in my home. If we were recording this at my place in Hollywood, I have a gallery wall. Steve Jobs is right there. And Einstein’s there, Martin Luther King’s there, and there’s a few other people. And for me, it’s the same thing. It’s like sometimes I’m sitting there and I’ll be like, well, what would that person do? Like, how would they have dealt with this challenge? And you’re so right. I think you can be mentored by people who aren’t alive.

KOBE BRYANT: 100%. And their stories still live, which brings us to the importance of storytelling. Their stories still live. These muses are here. It’s important to learn from them. And if anything, it helps you remember that they are human just like us.

These great things that get accomplished can be accomplished by others and beyond. Building the Walt Disney Company is not something that people look at and scoff at and go, “Oh, it can’t be done.” Well, why not?

JAY SHETTY: Why not? Yeah. And the more action you take, the more you think is possible.

The Final Five

KOBE BRYANT: Yeah. Because you realize they’re people just like us. They make mistakes just like us. And they kept going. And we can do the same.

JAY SHETTY: Absolutely, man. Well, I could talk to you for hours, but you’re a busy man and you got loads of things to do. So we end every interview with what we call the Final 5 quickfire rapid-fire round, which means you have to answer in one word or one sentence maximum. Got it. So this is easy for you. So the first question is, what brings you the most joy right now?

KOBE BRYANT: Family.

JAY SHETTY: Beautiful. Second, what do you want your girls to think when they hear your name?

KOBE BRYANT: Daddy.

JAY SHETTY: Nice. Number 3, your favorite animated film?

KOBE BRYANT: Pinocchio.

JAY SHETTY: Oh, nice. I was not expecting that.

KOBE BRYANT: It’s the greatest. Yeah, they made— I mean, they were in a zone when they made that film.

JAY SHETTY: Absolutely. Question number 4, the book that’s had the biggest impact on you?

KOBE BRYANT: The Alchemist.

JAY SHETTY: Oh, nice. Okay, great. Question number 5, your one message to all storytellers would be?

KOBE BRYANT: Create from truth.

JAY SHETTY: It’s beautiful, man. Kobe, thank you so much.

KOBE BRYANT: Got it, man.

JAY SHETTY: This has been an honor, man. Thank you. It’s such a beautiful conversation. Thank you for sharing so many gems, so many wisdom pieces. And anyone who’s out there right now, I’ve got the copy of the book right here, Legacy and the Queen. You can go grab it, and you can also listen to the podcast, The Punies, as well right now. So you can go and download that. We’ll put the links to both of them in the comments section and in this podcast so you can go directly there. Kobe, thank you so much for allowing us into your space, man. This is really special.

KOBE BRYANT: Thank you.

JAY SHETTY: I remember this. Thank you, man.

KOBE BRYANT: Thank you.

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