Episode Highlights

• How Akbar got his first job in television even though he wasn’t a “hall of famer”
• Taking a monetary loss for the sake of your ideal career plan
• Realizing that the work you get paid more for might fail to fulfill you
• Learning to reject your circumstances and do what you can with what you have
• Counteracting the negative narratives that you’ve been give about the cards you’ve been dealt in life
• How to stop using the obstacles and low expectations in your life to keep yourself from improving
• Recognizing when you’re afraid of being successful
• Learning how to accept and even take joy in failure without watering down how painful it is in the moment

Useful Links

• IAmAkbar.com
• Akbar Gbajabiamila’s Ninja Warrior Run for Red Nose Day
• GO FAR Official Theatrical Trailer

About Guest

As one of television’s most compelling personalities Akbar Gbajabiamila reigns supreme as host NBC’s 5-time Emmy® nominated, heart-racing obstacle course competition series American Ninja Warrior. In addition, a former NFL star player, Akbar hosts NFL Networks’ highest rated show NFL Fantasy Live.

His debut book “Everyone Can Be a Ninja: Find Your Inner Warrior and Achieve Your Dreams” will be published by Gallery Books (A division of Simon & Schuster) on May 7th of this year.

Akbar is honored to leverage his formidable professional platform to inspire and motivate others as well as advocate for those in need. Currently, he serves on the board for the Asomugha Foundation, which provides pathways to college for disenfranchised youth, as well as for The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. He is also privileged to be a celebrity ambassador for Red Nose Day, which since its inception in 2015 raised more than $150 million dollars to fight child poverty. Moreover, Akbar is a strong proponent of financial literacy, lending his time and energy to educating young people and pro athletes.

Akbar grew up in hard-scrabble South Central LA, one of seven children of Nigerian immigrants. A solid family foundation coupled with a natural athletic ability made him a stand-out high school student athlete, excelling in both basketball and football. Akbar went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in Communications and Media Studies, while attending San Diego State University on a football scholarship and then spent five years in the NFL as a linebacker and defensive end with the Oakland Raiders, Chargers (San Diego), and Miami Dolphins before retiring in 2008.

Akbar began his broadcasting career while still playing for the Chargers as a contributor to KLSD 1360 AM and as a co-host for Football Night in San Diego (NBC 7). He went on to serve as an analyst on the MountainWest Sports Network (formerly mtn.) and CBS Sports before joining the NFL Network.

He and his wife live in Los Angeles where they are raising their family.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram

Transcript

Zack Arnold: I’m here today with Akbar Gbajabiamila, who’s the host of American Ninja Warrior, alongside his partner in crime, Matt Eisman. Of course, he’s also a former NFL player for the Oakland Raiders, the San Diego Chargers, and the Miami Dolphins. He’s a co-host for the number one rated show on the NFL Network, NFL Fantasy Live, and he’s also the author of what I have no doubt is soon going to be called a bestseller, Everyone Can Be a Ninja: Find Your Inner Warrior and Achieve Your Dream. So, Akbar, my God, is it a pleasure to have you on this call with me today?

Akbar Gbajabiamila: Hey, Zack, thank you so much for having me. Yes, and from your mouth to God’s ears, I hope that it does become a best seller. I put a lot into it. The process was extremely challenging, but, like the show, like the book, it’s an obstacle, and it was one that I had to overcome. So, it was, it was quite revealing, and just even the process of, you know, understanding the whole process.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and then just knowing how much people are demanding your time at any given moment. It’s funny that we say that, as you know, get a text message that’s just dinging all day long, every day, rehearse for you, got shows to shoot. How you wrote a book in there, I have no idea. Yeah,

Akbar Gbajabiamila: That’s been the hardest challenge.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, I’m sure just managing time, right? Like that’s the toughest thing. Well, before we jump in, one thing that I wanted to say, and I’m sure my audience probably already knows this, but just so you know, one of the things that’s on my bucket list is I’m going to earn you saying someday me running on the course saying, “I see you, Zack, I’m gonna earn it right. You can say it to me today, and I got it on recording, but I don’t care. I’m earning that, that’s one of my goals on my bucket list right now, but rather than talk about my journey, what I want to talk about is yours. Now, anybody that probably found you as a co-host of American Ninja Warrior, they’re like, oh, Akbar, he’s great, he was a former NFL player, so, well, his story is probably pretty simple, you had a, you know, it’s a very, very easy path going along, where you, you know, grew up in a nice neighborhood and very supportive parents, and went to high school naturally, physically gifted as a football player, that was always the path. Ended up going to college, and then becoming an NFL player, because you were just naturally discovered, and then you transitioned into broadcasting, because that’s just naturally how it happens for football players. So, all of this is pretty much the way it worked, right?

Akbar Gbajabiamila: You know, Zack, you know, it sounds like you were reading the biography of a Hall of Famer, a guy who went to the Super Bowl. Well, that wasn’t me. I was, I was a guy who grew up in South Central Los Angeles, you know, in the Crenshaw district. I was an undrafted free agent, and I didn’t have, quote, unquote, an NFL career. I wasn’t a guy, wasn’t, you know, I wasn’t a big name guy, and when you typically see the positions on TV, they’re typically reserved for guys who are Hall of Famers, guys who won Super Bowl ring, and I wasn’t that guy, and I thought to myself, How am I going to get into this industry if I don’t have that type of credential? I knew it was something I wanted to do badly, and I didn’t think I was going to get a hosting gig if I didn’t have a platform. Nobody’s gonna say, ‘Hey, we’re gonna randomly give you off the street like you needed to some way in. And I discovered something. When you talk about obstacles, this is a book everyone can be a ninja talking about obstacles. And I thought, what’s the one way I could problem solve? I said, I’m gonna go back to the place where I had the most amount of equity, and that was San Diego. I had a cup of coffee with the San Diego Chargers at the time, they were San Diego. I played at San Diego State. I did well at San Diego State. I’d spent a lot of years there. I went to the local television station in San Diego, and just said, “Hey, look, I’d work for free, and I knew there are a lot of retired guys, a lot of guys like to retire, NFL guys, NBA players retire in San Diego. I said I’d work for free. I do the San Diego Chargers post-game show for free, and they looked at me and like, what? I was like, yeah, I’ll do it for free. It’s like, you’ve got the job. I was like, oh cool. And for two years I worked for free, but now in return I said I just wanted my tape, because prior to that I actually went to ESPN, and I felt so proud of myself. I was like, “Boy, you can’t tell me anything. All right, maybe my NFL career didn’t work well, but I’m gonna get in in this industry, and I remember meeting with two executive top executives, Fred Brown and Al Jaffe, and they were like, so what makes you any different than the guys who are Hall of Famers and Super Bowl winners? Like, what makes you any different? And I was like, first of all, I gave the wrong answer. I said I was just like Stuart Scott. Let me stop you. First off, you’re not Stuart Scott. We already have one, so we don’t need another one. He says the reason why I brought you in was I saw that she had been awarded school of business, he had a certification from there, and I just thought maybe he’s an interesting guy to bring in, but maybe not in the role, in the position of going on as an on-air talent, and so I think at that point after I messed up by saying I was gonna, you know, be just like Stuart Scott, they was like, “Oh, let’s give you a tour of the campus, I got a tour of the campus, and they kind of asked me to say, hey, look, if you want to get into this, you’re going to need some tape. That was the last parting words I got from Fred Brown, who again did it in a very nice way. It wasn’t like, you know, they big time me or anything, was just like, dude, this, this isn’t for you, this isn’t, this isn’t your kind of deal. I took those last words of, you need to get tape, and I thought, How am I going to get tape? I said, I know, I’m going to go through the back door, and that’s that began my journey into the broadcasting world. So, it wasn’t one that was just handed to me, and even at that, Zack, I had to start from the bottom. After working for two years, it’s not like it just naturally turned into a big time position, I. And that was the challenging part for me, where it made me almost turn on a dime, because at that point in my life it was $300,000 that I had left the NFL with. Some people say, “Oh, man, that’s a lot of money. Yes, it’s a lot of money, no doubt about it, but you have to factor in that I’m transitioning from something I’ve done basically my whole life playing sports, my whole life into a new career. I got my college degree, but never had a chance to even apply it, because I was a football player, and I’m now married, two kids, and family starts to build. It starts to happen. I have to be a father. I went from not being a father to, boom, two kids. My wife had a child prior to, we had a child on the way, or a child that was already born at the point, and I’m like, How do I do all of this? Meanwhile, I take my very first gig doing the CBS College Sports Network, and I’m doing Division Two games in the middle of nowhere, Cleveland, Mississippi, and I’m going all to these different random states that I’ve never been to, and at that point they’re paying me $26,000 Meanwhile, that $300,000 is quickly making its way down, and at one point I was at $40,000 that I had in my savings account from this, what was supposed to be a head start in life, down to $40,000 and I didn’t know where to turn, and two years of making 20-$6,000 a year, I was like, this just.. I don’t think I’m doing the right thing. My wife questioned whether, you know, I was being selfish, like, hey, you’re maybe going after a pipe dream, like, you know, you got to be honest with yourself, and this was a major, major obstacle, and at one point I decided that I was going to make a turn, and I started selling turf. I was selling artificial turf because they were going to pay me $75,000 a year, and they were not only going to pay me debt, but they were going to give me commission. So I thought, yeah, I could make money, and I was doing it for the wrong reason. I was doing it to make money, and probably isn’t a surprise to many that I didn’t find a lot of success in selling turf.

Zack Arnold: Well, I think one of the biggest things here that’s such a great takeaway, specifically for my audience, because my audience is comprised mostly of people that work in creative careers, such as myself, that are directing or editing in Hollywood, and by the way, I love the quote that you had at one point saying that post production is where the magic happens. Thank you for that, by the way. Because I have several friends of mine that are actually editors on Ninja Warrior that live and breathe you in the course every day, so I really appreciated the love there. But I think the big takeaway here is there’s somebody that was in the NFL for years, $300,000 in the bank, and you’re taking free work and making 20-$5,000 a year, and there are people in creative industries that are at very early stages in their career, saying, well, well, I’m too good to be taking free work, they need to pay me for my time, and I always say there are so many other things you get from the jobs and the opportunities that are given to you, other than the money, the money will come eventually, it’s about building relationships, it’s about, you know, building your skill level and getting better at your craft, which you saw tremendous value in, and eventually it led you to a place where now you’re being paid very well, I’m assuming, for being a host on a top TV show, but there’s this period of years that nobody ever sees, right? So, Akbar was an overnight success, he came out of nowhere and became the host of American Ninja Warrior, and you’re like, yeah, maybe an overnight success, but would you like to talk about the previous 10 to 15 years that got me to becoming an overnight success? Nobody sees that part, and that’s the most important part.

Akbar Gbajabiamila: Yes, I think that the part is, you know, with the skill set building, because the truth is, I sucked. I was horrible, I mean, but I was doing it in a local market where I’m glad I didn’t do it. Like, imagine if I would have taken that ESPN job, and I was as bad as I was on the local market. I only knew that it was bad, not because in the moment people were telling me that it was the following year where people go, ‘Oh my goodness, you do are so much better. I mean, the emphasis in which they said it, I’m like, well, how come nobody told me in the moment I was doing like I was horrible, like nobody told me that everybody after every show said great job, great job, great job, great job, like when you say great job, like I’m kind of believing you, no, okay, maybe it’s not that you know, but then I go back and I look at it, I was stiff, I was, you know, I was nervous, I was, you know, I didn’t know what point to make. Sometimes I’d ramble, I couldn’t put my points together, I’d be long-winded. I didn’t know how to really kind of work the magic of the TV in a tight space, especially when you have to be creative in a smaller space, and that took time to learn and to develop, but once I got the on-camera confidence, once I got kind of the inner working, then I graduated to the next level, which was doing a live TV broadcast, which is calling a football game, which is extremely difficult, by the way. For $26,000 I was putting in a ton of hours, I had to build my boards, I had to take time in under. Stand in college football is harder than NFL, and that you have to know both rosters 100 deep. Why I remember doing a Buffalo game, Zack Maynard was the third string quarterback. The first quarterback was out, but I will say that I had to learn Zack Maynard’s depth chart, I had to learn my third string quarterback, and he ended up playing because the first string was out, and then the second string got sick, and I’m like, are you kidding me? I’m down to the third string. What if I didn’t prepare? What if I didn’t prepare for those moments? So it was very challenging putting in the hours and the work for that, but I’m glad that I stuck through it, because I know so many people will have this sense of pride that I’m too big for it, and I knew, and I bet I bet it on the fact that people would be too big in my position to be a former player and to work for free.

Zack Arnold: Well, I want to talk about the origin story, so to speak, because for you to get to the point where you’ve decided I’ve been in the NFL for years, I’ve got $300,000 in the bank, and I’m going to work for free to go to this next level that didn’t just come out of nowhere. That person was forged through an experience, and one of the key takeaways that I think is so important for people to get from this book is this concept of how you can take comfort when nobody expects anything from you. When you look at your circumstances and you say, well, this is the hand that I was dealt, so you know, I guess. I guess this gives me the perfect excuse, where that can make it so much easier to say, well, if nobody really expects anything from me, well, maybe that’s kind of a good thing, because then I really don’t have to put in the effort, because there’s no expectation, right? So, and this is a really core fundamental philosophy of your book, and you’re in a position where somebody were to look at you before all the success, they’d say, well, based on where you grew up and you’re standing, and you know, financially and everything else, like nobody really expects much of you, so you know, just go, you know, end up joining a gang, right?

Akbar Gbajabiamila: Right, you know, it’s rejecting your circumstances. I talked about that in the second chapter. The second chapter says, reject your circumstances, because we all have them. We all have things that we go through in life, and it’s very easy to say, “Hey, I’ve got a crutch, I’ve got an excuse. We all use them, right? Oh, I got an excuse. Hey, I was late to work because of traffic. Like, well, yeah, but really. But if you know that there’s traffic, can’t you maybe plan ahead? Can’t you not necessarily maybe fall or succumb to the excuses or your circumstances, and for me, I knew that was it, and it was there was a moment that I feel like changed my life. It was one of my former teammates who I actually write about in the book, he tells his story, Namdi Asimov. We were living together my rookie year, and I remember I was telling somebody, saying that, you know, football was my way out of the hood, and he was like, “Man, like, I hate when people say that. I was like, “Why? Like, it’s true. He goes, “No, that’s just what we’ve been fed. Like, I know your parents, because we both grew up Nigerian, a Nigerian household. He’s like, “I know your parents emphasized education. I know your parents were showing you what it means for hard work, and I thought to myself, I’ll say, you know what, you’re right, like I’m just.. I’m only recycling and regurgitating something that a life commandment that I’ve been told, and it was at that point I said, you know what, no, like I know I’m more than just a guy who only could depend on his athleticism to get out, and so I said, from that point on, I had this mindset that I was going to reject my circumstances, I wasn’t going to allow those things, but even before that, I made a conscious decision that I wasn’t going to let my, my neighborhood impact the way I was going to move forward. Yes, I grew up in the hood. Yes, you know, my parents had a tumultuous relationship, and yes, I probably didn’t go through the best schools. Does that mean that I get slowed down? Does that mean that I shouldn’t try to move forward? And I think that decision making, when we go through that in our life, I think that process is the turn. That’s when you get to the other side, that’s when you turn the corner.

Zack Arnold: Well, and I think that what people often make the mistake of doing is, if somebody’s in those types of circumstances, they’re thinking, well, it’s not my fault, right? Well, it’s not my fault that I was born in this neighborhood, or I have these parents, or I’m in this economic situation, but guess what, it’s still your responsibility, right? If something tragic happens to somebody, that’s not their fault, but you know what, it’s still your responsibility to not turn it into an excuse for not moving your life forwards. A perfect example would be, and I don’t know if you had a chance to watch the trailer for my documentary film, Go Far, but this is somebody that was born without the ability to use his arms or his legs. He decided, you know what, there are no quadriplegics that have become scuba divers and have been licensed at it. So, guess what? I’m just going to have to be first. That’s turning a disability and finding a way to make it become an ability. And he achieved so many different things despite his circumstances, because he didn’t say it’s not my fault that I’m disabled. He said it’s my responsibility to do what I can with what I’m given, and I feel. Like you’re just the perfect example of that, as somebody that very easily could have said, “Well, you know, I grew up in the hood and nobody expects anything of me, so therefore I’m not going to do anything, and you defied all expectations.

Akbar Gbajabiamila: Well, you know what’s crazy about that, in watching the documentary, is that I remember listening and hearing the doctor saying that he’s going to be nothing more than a dish rag or something close.

Zack Arnold: Yes, that’s exactly what it was. Yep,

Akbar Gbajabiamila: And that really struck me, because I’m like, first off, who gave the authority to the doctor to determine his future? But there are so many people out there that will hear a messaging from a doctor or from a lawyer, whoever they considered an authority figure, a teacher, a parent, and that life commandment ends up dictating the rest of their life, like you’re like, I talk about this in the book, where I know that people’s like, man, you from the hood, like this is essentially your lot in life, or the white man doesn’t want you to succeed, oh, he doesn’t want me to succeed, the white man. Okay. Well, I guess I shouldn’t be successful, but no, I didn’t want to. I’m like, there’s something intrinsically just didn’t seem right that I would let a person who didn’t know me, I’d let a person who didn’t understand me dictate my future, like that is ultimate control. You’re giving up, you know, how many times have you heard of people saying, well, I went to this such and such person, and they wouldn’t allow me, and they say, okay, that’s it, I don’t have to do anything, or the doctor said that, you know, it’s gonna take me a year and a half to recover, which was my case when I tore my Achilles, and you said, okay, it’s gonna take me a year and a half, and you just kind of follow that timeline, like you’re gonna give some general timeline or some general description applied to me, and I’m supposed to just accept it. That’s, that’s just hard for me to digest.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, I mean, I’m in the same place right now, and I have been for the last year and a half, where I decided, but the ripe old age of 38 at the time, and right now I’m knocking on the door of 40, which, by the way, for anybody listening, today is your 40th birthday, so you know, super excited that you’re here with me, but I decided over Christmas vacation of my 38th birthday, it stood on the scale, and I was a little bit over 200 pounds, and I said, “Nope, I’m no longer going to accept this, I’m going to make a change, and I’m committing to the goal of becoming an American Ninja Warrior, and the first response was, well, but they’re all like kids, they’re all like in their early 20s, and they’re gymnasts, and they’re parkour athletes, and like, you’re a film editor, I’m just like, yeah, so I’m just gonna have to figure it out, but that doesn’t limit my circumstances, and what I found is that ever since committing to that goal, and I haven’t, as I’m sure you know, because you’re one of the hosts of the show, I wasn’t. I did not get on this year. I was, I did make it as a tester, though. So, I did actually get to run the course, which is an amazing experience for me, hoping to be able to get on next year. But if I don’t, it doesn’t matter to me. And the reason is because I’ve learned so much about myself, and my life is completely changed, not because I got on the show, it’s because I made the commitment to go after something incredibly difficult that made me change all of my habits and my behaviors and my outlook on life, and I’ve met so many people just because I committed to the goal, and something you talk about is how Ninja Warrior isn’t about getting on the course and getting to the warped wall and getting to the finals, it’s the struggle of just getting to the starting line, and that is what means so much to so many people.

Akbar Gbajabiamila: Yeah, you know, I love what you said there, because there’s so many transferable skills there, especially going through the process. So many people are so afraid, like myself. But you know, at one point I was afraid to go through the process. I was afraid to figure out what, like, I think about me running the course last year, I read it for the first time last year, and it was nerve-wracking, and people saw me get to the buzzer, but what they don’t know is that I was extremely afraid. I almost backed out because I said I’m the one who came up with the idea to run it, and then when I realized that I was in for something totally out of my league, I go, “Nah, this is not for me. I was trying to find an excuse out my very first day of working out for with Kevin Bull, one of the top ninjas on the show. My first workout lasted like 30 seconds, because I pumped out. I didn’t have forearm strength, I didn’t even know that stuff existed in there. I was like, what, I wasn’t pushing weights, squatting, tackling anybody. This was a whole new skill set for me, and it just, again, it was just so it’s kind of like a metaphor for life. You start thinking about when you’re going down a new path. Some of us are transitioning into new periods in our life. For me today, I’m transitioning into my 40s, whatever that means. But there’s a person who’s out there who’s transitioning into parenthood, or person who probably just went through a bad divorce, and it’s transitioning into being a single parent, or maybe you’ve always been a single parent, and now you need to find a job that is going to be able to support a bigger family, and there are these moments where you have these two choices, you can either accept the difficulties that has been given to you and figure a way out or. Or figure a way to overcome these obstacles, or you can use that obstacle as an excuse, as a crutch to turn away, to then lower the expectations. You were kind of talking about that earlier, about the expectations, and so many people live in the world of, if I stay below the expectations, then no one will find me. No one will expect anything of me, and I can just kind of cosplay. And I remember our coach when I was in high school, he said, “Don’t be a guy, don’t just be a guy, because it’s easy to be just a guy. It’s extremely stressful. Yes, I’m admitting it, it’s extremely stressful when you have to perform at a high level, when expectation is that you will deliver every time, or most of the time, you will deliver. And I remember a teammate of mine telling me one time, says Akbar, “Don’t be afraid of greatness, and I thought instantly, without thinking about it, I go, “That’s dumb, who would be afraid of greatness? Doesn’t everybody want greatness in their life? Truth is, not everybody, and I had a relative of mine I’ll never forget, was in the kitchen working, I mean, as a.. I forget, I don’t know the term, as like a helper chef or whatever, but then he had an opportunity to get kind of promoted to as a sous chef, and he stopped, I was like, no, no, there’s a little bit more responsibility as a sous chef, and he turned down an opportunity as a sous chef, because he says, I just want to keep things simple, because more would be required of him, and he would have to perform at a higher level and be responsible for other chefs as well, and still, while working under the master chef, or however that time goes, and I just thought to myself, I never want to be that person when an opportunity comes, I don’t want to be that person, but then it did happen to me, and I almost succumbed to that, but I thought back to that, that incident with one of my relatives, and I was given the opportunity to be the host of American Ninja Warrior, and I’ll never forget march 23 2013 I get the phone call, and I’m like, kind of like blown away, like, oh man, like, you know, I’m overwhelmed, but then it set in, like, oh, this is prime time, this is this is big time, this is this is the real deal, and I thought, well, okay, how do I get out of this? Um, I can say, you know what, but my schedule doesn’t work. This isn’t.. I was thinking of something, but I had no one else to talk to. I’d already gotten off the phone with my agent. I thought maybe I could call him back, hurry up, and say, like, I don’t want to, you know? Let’s think about something. Maybe let me just try to find another sports job that I can just stay in my safe zone. I can talk football and stay safe in this area. This was a whole new skill set. I was afraid of what was going to happen. Well, what eventually happened to me? I didn’t want that to happen, but had that not those things didn’t happen, I wouldn’t have grown into the role for eight years. And I talked about it in the book, that first day on set was an absolute disaster, and that first day ended up being the first year, that first season. I mean, to this day, I still cringe at watching season five of American Ninja Warrior, because it just wasn’t me, and it wasn’t my best work.

Zack Arnold: Well, I think that one of the things that we’re talking about here, like you said, is this idea of expectation, and once that expectation of success is actually there, that’s terrifying for so many people, even though they don’t realize it. I went through a period myself a few years ago where I said, wait a second, I’m not afraid of failing anymore, I’m afraid of being successful. Like, what does that even mean, right? Because I was in the process of building this platform, the website, the podcast, and at first it was just me getting a bunch of stuff off my chest, and I was in learning mode, but then it started to grow, and people started to come to me and wanted me to fix their problems, give them advice. I’m like, oh wait, people are actually counting on me, and I’m terrified of this thing’s actually growing, because then people have this expectation that I can repeatedly do this for them, provide the service, and I basically had to stop for like six months and say, am I really ready for this, because I’m so terrified of succeeding rather than failing, because failing is not something that I’ve done a whole lot in my life, but I’ve learned how to accept failure, but I wasn’t ready to accept success in my life, and it’s funny, I actually had another one of those experiences last year, where I don’t know if you’ve heard through the grapevine about this, this group that works out with Tony Horton on Sundays, the Tony Horton Ninja Group, he’s the guy that created PX.

Akbar Gbajabiamila: I know,

Zack Arnold: But I was, I was invited to that group when I’d only been training for Ninja for like six months, and, dude, like, you’re gonna watch me, you’re gonna be like, yeah, all right, like you’re trying real hard, and there’s a lot of effort, but I’m, am I in Ninja yet? That’s yet to be seen, but I was just thinking, how cool would it be to actually get in that group and be a part of it, and then I got the invite, and I’m like, oh man, like maybe I can find a way to just say I can’t make it this week, or I’m injured, or whatever it was, and I went my first week, and I mean it’s just four and a half hours of just ninja over and over and over and over, and I was not in shape for it, and when I got into my car, I couldn’t even put my hand. Hands on the steering wheel. I was so tired, and then I thought, “Wow, I have to go back and do this next week. Well, maybe I can think of a reason not to do it. So I experienced that again, and now I can’t imagine my life without that Sunday Ninja group, because it’s completely changed my life. But I can’t imagine if I’d succumb to that fear of, “Oh, well, do I want to show up and, you know, continue to fail to get me to the point of success, and I think that one of the biggest takeaways from your book that I absolutely love that I want to dive into is this idea of failure, because I think what’s happened is that for so many years in our culture we were just afraid of failure, and to use the word failure, but now the pendulum has swung to the point where everybody’s saying failure is okay, and embrace it, and it’s fine. It’s just this little thing, and it’s all part of the learning process. And you say you cannot water down failure.

Akbar Gbajabiamila: Yeah,

Zack Arnold: This thing hit me like a ton of bricks. So I want to talk about this idea of not watering down failure and accepting criticism, because it’s so important to grow.

Akbar Gbajabiamila: Yeah, yeah. And I love how you talked about just the history of failure, where you know, before it was, you know, exactly, people kind of like, you know, they danced around it, but I look at failure in a different way, because I find, like, a lot of my teaching moments, a lot of my growth has come from failure, and you know, in my book, I talk about sitting in the failure, like actually being a student of why this failed, why this didn’t work, and kind of absorbing, and most people be like that, just sounds negative. When you think, sit in your failure, I’m like, move on, get past it. Well, hold on, if you accelerate past failure too fast, then you miss some of the great lessons that that could teach you moving forward. What I loved about my time during the NFL was Mondays. Mondays, as you guys know, is the day after Sunday football. I mean, most of the games are played on Sunday course outside of the Thursday night and Monday night football game, but most of the games are played on Sundays. And so, Monday, what it looks like for an NFL player is that you have to watch as a team, you have to watch, especially if you’ve lost, and I lost a lot in the NFL. You have to watch film, and the coach goes through, and he picks out maybe 30 plays that like, what happened here? We just went over that during the week, and how come you didn’t? And one of the things you wish for, please don’t beat me, don’t please don’t let it beat me. It gets called out, and that’s happened to me several times, and when you’re the guy that’s called out and everybody’s looking at you, you feel like you let the team down because of that one big, that minor mistake that turned into a big play, and because it was just a minor technique thing, but it turned into a big thing because you didn’t execute the way you were supposed to, and then everybody’s just looking at you, and then you got to go back that weekend, you got to work on that weakness, you got to work on that technique, that fundamental. Now, imagine if I just kind of pass through, like, go say, “Hey, Awkward, you got to work on this book. All right, now next one. All right, hey, don’t do that anymore. Okay, go, go to.. and it’s just like you’re flying through it. You escape the pressure of really just like the pressure that forces you to sit down and examine, like, oh, this is what I did, and this is what it looks like in real time, but so many of us are trying to water down. We don’t want our kids to experience it. We don’t want to experience it. We say, “Don’t call me out. Why are you calling me out? People don’t want to be like, “Hold on, are you trying to get better? Don’t ask to get better if that’s not what you really want, because some of us, we dream of it, we dream of getting better without the reality of what it takes to get better, and that right there, I think, is the turning point for so many. Like, if you’ll just accept the idea that failure is a part of it, and that it’s not a bad thing, it’s bad, but it’s not a bad thing. I used to love when my coach would say, you know, don’t make the same mistake twice, and the only way you can’t make the same mistake twice is if you actually learn from that mistake, and the only way you learn from that mistake is by examining that mistake, and so you’ve got to spend some time with it, as painful as it might be, as awkward as it might be. It’s, you know, like I just talked about cringing, the cringiness of watching season five, like, ah, it’s so hard for me to watch, but I had to watch it because I had to learn for myself. I wasn’t who I was in season five because of the way of the things that I struggled with, and we can talk about that later, but I think that to me is the biggest, to me, sitting in your failure is probably one of the aha moments of the book, and especially as I detail kind of the strategy on how to be able to get comfortable with being uncomfortable, and once you can get comfortable with being uncomfortable with the idea of failure, and just make it kind of more of, because it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen. Perfection doesn’t really exist. I mean, I mean, I even going back to the Bible, it talks about, you know, not one of us, not one of us is perfect. So, if I will just say, okay, cool, I’m not perfect. It I can be consistent, but because I’m not perfect, I can learn to be more consistent by learning from those failures.

Zack Arnold: Well, and I think that the key to failure, to go on an even deeper level, is that you have to really feel it to sit in your failure. You have to be allowed to feel the emotion that’s associated with it, whether it’s shame or guilt, like I let my team down, or whatever it is, like one of my greatest experiences with failure, and this was a really a turning point for my entire life, and what’s driven the direction of my career now. I worked on the TV show Empire in its first two seasons, when it was when it was a giant series, like when it was a cultural phenomenon, and it was right before iconic, yes, and it was a, I was editing the season one finale at the time, which I knew, like one to two weeks later, was going to be seen by about 25 million people. So I’m sitting there in a dark room all by myself, editing footage, thinking, oh my god, in two weeks 25 million people are going to watch this. I’ve quote unquote made it right, but then I was putting my kids to bed via Facetime, which I had to do all the time on that show, because it was a really crazy schedule, and my, my wife thought she had hung up the phone on Facetime, but she hadn’t, and my son, who was at the time, I think, maybe four or five, he’s nine now, he said, Why doesn’t Daddy want to put us to bed at night? Why doesn’t he love us, or something along those lines, and it was just like, oh, oh, like I’ve been so focused my whole life on getting to this level, very career driven, very successful, and I still feel that and get emotional when I talk about it to this day, because in my mind I was failing as a parent, and being a parent is far more important to me, and is my deeper why, and my purpose beyond just being successful and winning Emmys or Oscars, or whatever it is, but I needed to feel that on a guttural level, if it had just been, oh, don’t worry about it, your son’s a little bit upset, and yeah, you failed this time and that night, but just move on, it’s no big deal, everybody fails. Had I not allowed myself to feel that on a guttural level, the change that has happened in my life would not have happened, and I think that we’re training, especially our kids, and like, don’t get me started on participation trophies and all that, but we’re training people to just like you said, skirt by failure, but you got to feel it, like I’m sure that in addition to just how deeply people were criticizing, whether you know you had an offsides or whatever it is, you felt it, and all you’re thinking is, I never want to feel this again, so how can I get better to avoid this emotional feeling that I have right

Akbar Gbajabiamila: Now, it’s that, and you know, you said something that just kind of made me think of this whole thing of like with feeling the failure that we have this mechanism that we have to recognize, and you recognize it only if you’re sitting in it and you’re feeling like what you’re saying, feeling the failure, it’s called denial, and denial is so tricky. I think God gave us denial to kind of help keep us sane, but that same sanity can become insanity if it’s, if it’s overused or abused, because you could easily have said, just like you said, denial. He’s a little kid, he doesn’t understand, I’m, I’m providing for him, like this is how Daddy provides for you, you know, that bed you’re sleeping in, and that nice PJ you’re in, that’s got, you know, 100 thread count, or four, or whatever, that’s considered a nice thread count, I don’t know, that’s because Daddy’s working, and that’s the denial part, and then you can just move right past it, because it does sting. It was like, well, I don’t want to feel the sting, because I don’t want to know what’s on, because sometimes we’re afraid of the choices we have to make. Well, hold on. Does this mean I have to quit my job? Does this mean I’m working too many hours, cut my hours? Those, those wild imaginations of what the end result is going to be, that’s what really deters people, and in an instant, the brain is so smooth it can process all of that like a computer, like in milliseconds, and all those things. Like, nope, nope, I’m gonna keep pushing forward, because I don’t want to go there. That’s too painful to think that I would be that type of father, or that type of mother, or that type of person. And we just keep going through, rather than, oh no, rewind back up. Why am I feeling this way? Oh, yeah, I get it. Yeah, I get it. And then saying, okay, and maybe it is. Maybe the answer is cutting down the hours. Maybe the time is being actually cutting. I’m thinking of the writer for Scandal,

Zack Arnold: Shonda Rhimes.

Akbar Gbajabiamila: Shonda Rhimes, and she talks about being just this creative genius, and Shonda Rhime talks about how with her daughter, like anytime her daughter asks when she’s at home, like, “Hey, Mom, can I get some time? or “Mom, you know what? She stops what she’s doing and she gives her her daughter that time. She says what she’s found is that usually it’s about 15 minutes, you know, like it’s 1520, minutes, just to get that time. They just want that one on one time, because sometimes we can be so locked in, and before you know it, now you’re trying to cram in your relationship at the last minute before they go to bed, trying to get it in, so you can get that guilt off, and go, “I’m doing the right thing, and then you’re off, and I’ve been in those same.. I’ve been in that same. Exact shoe, where I had to stop and ask myself, What are you doing? Is it for the Emmys? Is it for the confetti? Is it for the likes? Is it for whatever it is? And saying, is it worth more than your family? But I don’t get to those asking those questions if I’m not used to kind of sitting in your filler, because we all have a little chink in our arm.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, I mean, I was actually just in this situation again with a very similar circumstance. Where have you heard of the TV show Cobra Kai?

Akbar Gbajabiamila: No, I’m not.

Zack Arnold: The karate Kid series, I know that Matt’s obsessed with it. Why I worked, I edited that season too. I was one of the editors on that show. My son, who’s nine years old, is absolutely obsessed with it. Has watched the first two seasons, like four times in a row, like it’s

Akbar Gbajabiamila: Always in the history of it.

Zack Arnold: Oh yeah, of course, I’ve educated my son well on the Karate Kid segment. Don’t worry about that, he’s well taken care of. But the point is to bring it back to this conversation when he finished season two, he was like, “Oh, you know, Dad, that was so awesome, and this montage, and that did you edit that? And like, yeah, no, that was mine, like I’m talking through the process, and he’s really interested in it, and I said, “Well, if you’re such a big fan, then obviously I have to go back to work on season three. And he said, “Well, no, Dad, actually I don’t want you to work on season three. And like, “Why not? He’s like, “Because I’d rather that you stay at home like you are right now. I’m like, “But don’t you love the fact that I’m, you know, working on the show that you love, and everybody’s, you know, watching it like it’s to a nine year old? I figured that would be amazing. He’s like, yeah, but Dad, season three is still going to be good. I would rather you were home. It was just like mind blown. Oh my god, coming from a nine year old, it was like the shift in perspective was like the TV show is still going to be there, but I would rather have you around. And in my mind, I’m thinking, yeah, but how cool is it to tell your friends that your dad works on Cobra Kai? And to him, he didn’t care, the time was so much more important, and it made me realize, oh, I am making the right choices. By, I ended up leaving Empire in the middle of season two for that exact reason. It was that one phone call that started it all, but it brings me back to this idea in this conversation that in order to embrace these failures and make the hard choices, you have to be able to define your larger purpose and why you’re doing things, otherwise that fear, it just feels like you can’t overcome it, but it’s so easy to push through the fear and the failure when you see the bigger picture, and that’s something that you talk about a lot as well, where purpose can defeat fear.

Akbar Gbajabiamila: Yeah, purpose will defeat fear, because once you have an idea of where you’re going, you like to use it, because I think a lot of people can understand navigation, and we all have the GPS in our cars, and when I still remember, before we had navigation, my dad would pull out the Thomas guide. I never learned how to use the Thomas guy.

Zack Arnold: Oh yeah, I remember the Thomas guy,

Akbar Gbajabiamila: Thomas guy, and he pull out the map and try to think, but there was this genuine fear of getting lost. It was a concern of mine as a child. I remember when I watched my parents driving, I’m like, man, when I get older, what if I don’t know how to get from one place to the next? Like, there’s this fear, but what I love about the navigation system, like, there’s a purpose, right? It gets you from one point to the next. Your purpose is that in destination, and it’ll tell you you’ve arrived at your destination, because that, that in destination, that’s its purpose, that’s this whole GPS, is to get you to your destination, and there’s no fear when you’re driving, you know, like my net, in fact, there’s more confidence that grows. Oh, yeah, you call, hey, I’m going to be there 10 minutes late, according to my navigation, hey, I’ll be there about 20 minutes ahead of time. You know exactly what you’re doing, when you’re going to get there, how you’re going to get there, what route it tells you all the different step by step, how you’re going to get to your destination. And if we apply that to life, if you have your purpose and you understand you’ve got the GPS understanding of your purpose, it makes that fear go away. The fear just doesn’t even exist anymore. There’ll be new fears, but it won’t be in that process. It won’t be on that route, and that to me is the type of confidence. And so it takes time to understand purpose, and the only way it’s not like you, hey, just come on, define your purpose. And if you ask people, you could even do the purpose test. I’m just making this up right now. Say, hey, what’s your purpose? You’re gonna get two, one of two things. One, somebody’s gonna try to speed through it, and, oh yeah, my purpose. Yeah, my purpose is, yeah, live my best life. Okay, yeah, that sounds real cliche, but what that even mean, live my best life. Yeah, that’s my purpose. I’m gonna live my best life. Okay, how are you going to live your best life? Or you’ll get the person who’s very cerebral and really think about it, like, oh my, like, I really don’t know what my purpose is. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I did this executive leadership class, and I took this test to figure out what my purpose was. And do you know, it took me about four months. I had to schedule quiet time. You’ve heard during this interview process my laptop and my computer ding, and I’ll get these dings throughout the day that stops me from focusing, you know, ding. And then my brain goes, uh, oh, what’s that? Who’s there? What’s there? Oh, who’s texting? What’s it, and there’s this anxiety that builds up that I have to respond and have to react to everything, and living life like that will get you further and further away from being able to spend time with getting to know yourself, getting to, because the hardest person to get to know is yourself. I often feel like other people know you better than you know yourself, because they get to at least examine you with no disruption, but for you to examine yourself, there’s all the disruption, there’s the fear, there’s the doubt, there’s the family, there’s the work, there’s the phone, there’s the email, there’s social media, there’s all these distractions that as you’re just going through life and you’ll look back and you’re like, whoa, I’m 50 years old, and I don’t know what my purpose is, and it’s very.. and that’s very easy, and I think at this point in time, in the time and the age that we live in, the only thing that is finite right now is our attention, and everything is competing for our attention, like commercials, and this.. I mean, all of it, especially. I like, I go crazy when it comes to social media, because, or just the way we, we socialize now, everything is being, we’re socialized to like grab our attention away from who we are, what we are, our relationship, our relationships, our relationship with a higher being, whatever it is that we need to grow, it’s being broken down by the very idea of distraction.

Zack Arnold: Well, and it’s so easy when somebody asks, well, what are your goals and why haven’t you reached them? Well, you don’t understand. I’m just so busy, right? I’m just such a busy person. But busy is not a badge of honor, right? Like,

Akbar Gbajabiamila: I hate the. like, if you asked me like Akbar. Hey, how’s it going? And I hate when people go, oh man, just busy, busy. You won’t find me saying that anymore. I used to, but now I’m going like, what does that mean, right? We get caught in that, that term where people like, and I use the strong word hate, because it just drives me nuts that people will say I’m busy, busy, and I’ll literally have somebody just sent this to me the other day. Well, that’s good though. I’m like, no, it’s good. not

Zack Arnold: No, no, it’s not

Akbar Gbajabiamila: Like being busy is not good. And yes, I’m busy, and I don’t like it right now. I don’t like it. I’m frustrated, actually, by it, and I don’t want to sound like a complainer. I’m very blessed in what God has provided for me, but also I need to do a better job of making sure I’m managing my time on a day to day basis, and even further out, like Kellen, I have to tell my manager, no, no, no, no, no, I’m blocking, like this just happened not too long ago. I just got, I went from Japan for a week, working in Japan, then I went to Baltimore to film American Ninja Warrior. I came back home, and my manager was like, hey, I need you to do this on this day, and this day, and this day, and we’re gonna just keep doing it up until your book tour. I go stop, wait a minute, block out everything until the actual tour starts, which starts today. As I’m talking to you, because I’m like, hold on, like, you may not value my time with my family, but I do. I’m getting ready to go on a long book tour, so you’re just gonna jam up my time, but we got to get your book out, you know? What I know, I got to get my book out, but come on, I’m human, I have people that I’m responsible for, like I need those three valuable days just so they know that I’m present, you know, because I’m going to be gone for two weeks, but it’s very easy to get sucked into that. Oh my gosh, I better have to do everything possible to sell my book, so I better just not make myself available, you know, and just, and just be a slave to the book tour. And I was like, I mean, look, I wanted to be successful, but not at the at the risk of alienating my family at every little turning point when I can just say, hey, let me take a breath and spend some time with my family.

Zack Arnold: Well, not only that, but how are you going to be the best version of yourself on your book tour if you crammed everything in preparing for it before you even left, feeling the guilt of not having given your family the little bit of time that they get before the tour, because then that’s on your mind. And I was actually one of the people that you sent an email to and said, you know what, Akbar just got back from Baltimore, we’re going to have to reschedule, and I’m like, fine, totally get it, because I understood the mindset that you were in, and I said I would rather have Akbar on the podcast later than I had planned, getting a better version of him, than trying to cram it in, because that’s what makes the most sense based on the calendar, right? Like this idea of being busy, I’m gonna give you a comeback that you can give to somebody on the phone that’ll stop them dead in their tracks. I ask people this, and they’re like, “Oh, man, I’m so busy, and I say this, I’m like, well, are you busy or are you effective? Crickets, man, I get crickets on the phone. They’re like, oh, oh, wow, that’s a really good question. I don’t know how to answer it. I’m like, well, if you can’t answer positively that you’ve been effective, then you need to start making changes, because I don’t give a crap how busy you are. What I care is how effective are you? That’s the important part, you know. That’s what it’s all about.

Akbar Gbajabiamila: Yeah, yeah. No, no, it’s effectiveness with your time. It’s effective with the type of.. because that word ‘effective’ turns into.. translates then into impact. What type of impact are you making? If you’re not making an impact in your life, in the lives around you, in the company that you work for, then I. I’m sorry, I just thought about one of my old coaches. I was about to use this term, but I thought it was very mean when he said it. Claude Gilbert, he said, ‘Why are you even breathing our air?

Zack Arnold: Oh, I love that.

Akbar Gbajabiamila: I said, ‘Whoa. I thought they.. I’ll never forget when he said that. Why are you even breathing our air? Because it’s like you’re not making an impact, so what’s your purpose? What’s your point? Gosh, I mean, that’s old school love, right there. That’s, yeah, coaching. I mean, he coached like in the 50s, and so I called him late in his career, so he would just say whatever came to his mind, but I mean, you know, I probably won’t be as cutthroat as Claude Gilbert, but I think you get the point. Like, okay, so what’s the point? Like, if you don’t have a purpose, if you don’t have, like, what’s your point? If you’re just busy just to be busy, because it’s like kind of the cool thing. I’m here, I’m here, I’m here. Also, I was like, man, look at your life, examine your life. If you’re willing to go there and say, are you busy because you’re covering up an insecurity, are you busy? Because this is what you’ve been taught, and this is the only thing you know. Why?

Zack Arnold: Well, let me, let me ask you this final thing, because I, of course, want to be effective with my time and with your time, and even though we’ve barely just gotten started and we’re warmed up, I know you got to go, but I want to ask you one last quick question. Yes, and I want to, you know, we want to wrap this up as quickly as possible. But what does it mean when you say everyone can be a ninja?

Akbar Gbajabiamila: What I mean by everyone can be a ninja is that when I look at the show, most people look at the athletes and go, I could never do that. You don’t know how many times I hear that I could never do. I love the guys who’re doing it, but I could never do it. And it’s that thought process, that life commandment, what we tell ourselves, the internal conversations that we have with ourselves, that right there, it’s what’s moving the train. And so I say everyone can be a ninja, and the funny responses that I get from the titles, like I couldn’t be no ginger. Well, what you gonna tell me in the book? I was like, well, you’ll be surprised, it’s not actually being a ninja on the show, but being a ninja in life. And like the show, there are 10 obstacles that you have to get through to get to the final buzzer. In this book, there are 10 chapters, and it talks about different obstacles that I faced in my life that Allison Felix, gold medalist, she talks about the obstacles that she had to overcome. My former teammate, who was a first round draft pick, who was titled a first round bust, turned around Nam Diyasim on to be a shutdown corner, one of the top cornerbacks in the NFL, and I didn’t tell some of the ninja stories as well, like Zack Gowan, who you know, a guy who competed with one leg. This guy had the belief that he could be a ninja, and in life we have personal obstacles that we’re going through. And I truly believe if you’ll focus, find your purpose, and live a life full of meaningful impact, and have impact in your life and in other people’s life, I think. Then, and only then, will you become a ninja, but a ninja in life.

Zack Arnold: Bam! If anybody didn’t feel that last phrase, check your pulse, because for the love of God, you must not be alive. Because that just hit me, that just hit me deep. I love that. That’s that is the reason why I’ve persisted for six months to get you here for 45 minutes to talk about this, because I knew what an impact this conversation would have, and like you said, it’s all about impact, right? It’s all about how can I facilitate a great experience for others, which is what you do, like you’re you’re the vessel, you’re the one that facilitates this American Ninja Warrior experience and brings it to the next level, and anybody that doesn’t understand that, go watch it live, and you’re gonna be like, “Oh, okay, it’s people kind of jumping up and down, and yeah, that’s kind of cool. But then you watch it on TV, and you’re like, “Oh my god, this is the most amazing thing ever. You, you and Matt are a huge, huge part of that. So,

Akbar Gbajabiamila: Storytelling, and I love it, and I can’t wait to call you a run as well, because we’ll have a lot to go to talk about.

Zack Arnold: Well, I appreciate that very much. And I’m looking forward to when that day comes, but in the meantime, I want to make sure that you don’t miss your flight. So I just want, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to be here today. And I want to make sure that people can find your books. Where’s the best place to send my audience?

Akbar Gbajabiamila: Best place to find my book is I am akbar.com That’s I A M A K B A R.com I am Akbar, and you can find where I’m going for my book tour. I’m proud to say that I’m going to be going to the Lebron James I Promise School. The kids there are kind of like me, and how I grew up in South Central Los Angeles, and so I wanted to go there and start my book tour officially off there in Akron, Ohio. But yeah, you can go out and find more information about where to find the book, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, wherever books are sold, and follow the book tour.

Zack Arnold: Awesome. Well, I’m very happy to be a very small part of the impact that you’re going to make of this book. So, I really, really appreciate your time today. Thank you so much.

Akbar Gbajabiamila: Thanks so much, Zack.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Episode Credits

This episode was edited by Curtis Fritsch, and the show notes were prepared and published by Elyse Rintelman. The original music in the opening and closing of the show is courtesy of Joe Trapanese (who is quite possibly one of the most talented composers on the face of the planet).