Kobe Bryant Cold Calls Business People To Ask Them Questions About How To Be Successful

He's starting a company, Kobe Inc., that will serve as his primary focus when he retires from the NBA. In order to learn about how to building a company, Kobe says he calls well-known people out of the blue to pick their brains.

From Bloomberg:

Bloomberg: "What is this Kobe process. You'll pick up the phone and call people who are leaders in industry and you'll just pick their brain?"

Kobe: "Exactly. [laughing] I'll just cold call people, absolutely. I'll just cold call people and pick their brain about stuff. Some of the questions that I'll ask will seem really, really simple and stupid, quite honestly, for them. But if I don't know, I don't know. You have to ask. I'll just do that. I'll just ask questions and I want to know more about how they build their businesses and how they run their companies and how they see the world."

Bloomberg: "Who are some of the people who you pick up the phone and call?"

Kobe: "You can start in the Nike Family, I cold call Mark Parker all the time. Jony Ive. Dan Wieden. Oprah Winfrey. Recently Arianna Huffington. The list just goes on and on and on and on. Hilary Swank."

That's a pretty impressive list of people from the retail, tech, advertising, media, and entertainment worlds (Hilary Swank made the cut!).

It's a smart strategy, and it's safe to say Kobe can get any number he wants.

Check out the rest of the interview here >