Ping Pong Leadership, With Justin Bookey

How can ping pong teach you leadership skills that apply to life and business? In this episode, host J.R. Lowry welcomes Justin Bookey, a top-tier table tennis player, award-winning marketing strategist, and author of Ping Pong Leadership: 18 Principles to Succeed at Any Table in Business, Sports, and Life. Justin shares his journey from discovering ping pong at a young age to competing at the national level and how the principles he learned through the sport translate into success in business and life. From overcoming obstacles to improving self-awareness, Justin reveals how the strategies from ping pong can help you elevate your career, lead effectively, and achieve your goals.

Check out the full series of “Career Sessions, Career Lessons” podcasts here or visit pathwise.io/podcast. A full written transcript of this episode is also available at https://pathwise.io/podcast/justin-bookey

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Ping Pong Leadership, With Justin Bookey

Global Ping Pong Player, Author, Former Lawyer, and Award-Winning Marketing Strategist

My guest is Justin Bookey. Justin is a former lawyer, an award-winning marketing strategist, and a global ping-pong player. Bookey trained with Olympian and world-class table tennis coach Wei Wang. His efforts with her and other national and world champions helped him win medals at the US Open and the US National Championships. He grew up in Seattle, Washington, and he now lives in Santa Monica, California, where he also runs PongFit, a nonprofit that builds fitness and community through ping pong. In our discussion, we’re going to be covering Justin’s ping pong career, his book, Ping Pong Leadership: 18 Principles to Succeed at Any Table in Business, Sports, and Life, and his broader career journey.

Thank you, JR. It’s good to be here. 

A Global Ping Pong Player

You are a top table tennis, a top ping pong player. When did your interest in the sport first develop and when did you get serious about your play? 

When I was six years old, we moved into a new house. It just so happened that in the basement, there was this ratty old table and it had this white line down the middle and a net. I’m like, “What is that funny table?” My parents were like, “We’ll teach you a thing or two about this table.” They were good players and they were so patient and they taught me from the get-go and I never really gave it up. I immediately loved the game. 

When did you get serious? 

I played a lot, even when I was 8, 9, and 10 years old I had three older sisters, all pretty sporty and competitive, and our family was into it. I cannot say that was serious in terms of competition, but it was serious for me. I gave my heart to that. I played with friends and family members. I did start studying the game at a young age, maybe 9 or 10. My mom, realizing how much I was into it, got me a couple of books. She got me a nice paddle. I really started to take it seriously. I pored over magazines and books. There was no internet. There was virtually no TV coverage. For me, that’s when it got serious. Then I started doing competitions around probably twelve and I rode my bike to the adult rec center and played within the adult leagues when they would tolerate me. 

We had this after-school thing in my junior high school. I signed up for ping pong as an after-school activity. I won the tournament. That is my complete claim to fame. I would get my tail kicked by anybody who’s even semi-decent at this point, including probably most of my kids. Anyway, that was the height of my glory, and it’s been downhill since there. Who wins in a hypothetical matchup between you and a force gump?

Forrest Gump, seeing as every individual shot he made was CG, the movie was designed to be a perfect, beautiful, correct arc. I think to bank my butt pretty hard. That said, I would love to meet Tom Hanks, talk with him, and play with him because he is the ultimate pop culture icon, as is Forrest Gump, in terms of the recognition of ping pong and mainstream media and pop culture. I think that would be fascinating. 

There were so many things in that movie that were just fun to relive, the notion that he was the one who got sent over to China to help with the ping-pong diplomacy and the Nixon era that you referenced in some of your media materials. We’re recording a few weeks after the Paris Olympics. The Chinese again dominated the sport. How has China created such a powerhouse in table tennis? 

I would say if you boil it down to one word, it’s commitment. Back in the 1950s, Chairman Mao, given their political structure over there, was pretty much able to decree from this day forward, table tennis is now our national sport, and virtually overnight, it became their national sport. The thinking apparently was that it would be a good way to broaden international exposure and commit a lot of resources to something that was a wholesome pastime, but it would also be a good avenue to show how they could commit themselves to a skill and really excel, and they did. They haven’t looked back. Since 1988, the vast majority of gold medals have been given to Chinese players at the Olympics. They do commit more resources than any other country, by far.

I was watching the Olympics one evening, and I said to my son in a text message, “It’s like I’m watching on fast forward, but it’s not.” How do you keep up with it and in terms of the speed of the game when you’re in the middle of a match?

A lot of it is muscle memory and anticipation. Yes, it’s incredibly fast. They call it chess at 80 miles an hour because it’s a thinking person’s sport. You’re always thinking 2 or 3 strokes ahead, and yet you have microseconds to decide and react. How you keep up is repetition, practice, and learning to anticipate because you don’t have time to consciously decide, “My opponent just hit it to my shallow middle, I think I might just lean forward and brush it over the top with a backhand.” That has to be reflexive. You also need to anticipate. 

When I do this serve or when I do this shot, they’re probably going to go either deep or shallow with a top or a side spin because that’s what they’ve done before. It looks like you’re reacting in the moment when in reality, you’re just applying this database of probabilities similar to chess. You have all these different scenarios in your head and then you’re constantly categorizing and recategorizing which is the most probable shot they’re going to take. That’s why I love it too, because it’s so strategic at the same time, just brutally fast and physical. 

Has the sport evolved a lot in the last few decades or is it pretty stable? 

It’s evolved. In the year 2000, the international governing body, ITTF, revamped the rules, even the size of the ball. This ball is 40 millimeters in diameter. It used to be 38. The scoring went from 21 points to it for a game to 11. Certain other rules applied that were changed. That was meant to make the sport more TV-friendly. The ball was actually a little slower and it spun a little less. I talk about that in my book, and these changes ultimately were window dressing because there were deeper issues facing the game in terms of getting it popularized more and accepted more worldwide. 

In terms of evolution, there are always advances in rubber technology, such as the thick rubber that sits on the paddle. Many, many advances keep happening. Some are hype, some are marketing ploys, but some truly do make the ball spin faster and go faster. There are different materials in the wood blade, carbon, and so forth, and then different strategies. Different quirky players would come along every once in a while. Usually, I would say, it could be spearheaded by the Chinese players, but sometimes a Swede or a German will come along with a unique way of returning serve, like almost always backhand. 

For example, in tennis, imagining someone always scooching over and returning with the backhand would be unusual. In table tennis, even if it’s far from your forehand, they lean over and return with the backhand. That was a trend that started, I don’t know, maybe a dozen years ago and that’s something that’s really transformed the way a lot of young players are now coached. These trends happen, and different shoes and different styles of clothing even come into play. 

It’s interesting. I’m not familiar enough to know that some of the rules have changed. They do in other sports, too. They adjust for this as things evolve, as the technology in some sports evolves, as the athletes evolve, and as the style of play evolves they have to make course corrections. I was just curious whether that had been true in table tennis as it has been in many other sports. 

Like rally scoring and volleyball, you used to have to get a side out. You couldn’t score if you didn’t serve. 

It’s better with rally scoring.

I agree. It’s like, let’s get this game going. 

Ping Pong Leadership

You mentioned your book a minute ago. Tell us a little bit more about it. 

Ping Pong Leadership: 18 Principles to Succeed at Any Table in Business, Sports, and Life. I’ve had these amazing lessons bouncing around in my head, if I may, for years, decades, that I’ve learned from my table tennis coaches. I’ve also learned in my career. I was a lawyer, marketing strategist, and involved in some entrepreneurial ventures. I’ve learned so much. I’ve been lucky because I’ve been able to learn from national champions, Olympians, and table tennis, but also on the business side. I’ve been able to learn from amazing CEOs and founders of XPRIZE and Qualcomm CEO and so forth. 

When I would follow their logic and approach to obstacles and see them stumble, get back, and succeed, I started realizing that these principles are so similar. There’s so much overlap in what both sides of these worlds do to succeed. Before that, I started thinking I’ve got to start using these more in my personal life because they really helped. They helped me with table tennis and they helped me with my job. I’ve got to cross-pollinate more because they both helped the other side. Then the pandemic happened and I had a little more time for self-reflection, a little more time at home and I crystallized them into these eighteen principles. I actually have about 30, 35, but there was room for 18 in the book.

There’s another sequel coming, right? 

Yeah, look out for the sequel. That’s really the genesis when I was actually able to distill these and get them out there on paper. 

Awareness

Part one is about heightening your awareness. What do you mean specifically by heightening your awareness? 

There are entire worlds of knowledge out there that we have access to. We may or may not be tapping into that. We may or may not even be aware we’re tapping into that. For starters, Pong Principle number one, be careful what you measure and why. We’ve never had this much data available at our fingertips in the history of human culture. Big data is ubiquitous and it’s cheap now to access. We make just as many bad decisions, I would argue, as we did before we had all this data because you still need to layer in that overarching vision and lens of human judgment. You still have to begin with that analysis of why we are doing what we’re doing. 

What is our objective? Why are we here? It’s just one of those hopefully eye-opening reminders that we have to be aware of what table we’re even playing at. What game we’re in? What objectives do we need? What we personally are doing. It’s like a wake-up call before we dive into these other principles. Be careful how much knowledge you apply to what, be careful what knowledge you’re even digging into. The ready position is palm principle number six. That also under heightens your awareness. We may not think about it in our daily, weekly, and yearly lives and careers. 

What is our ready position? It’s critical in table tennis because the ball flies at you so fast. You have to be ready for virtually any situation. It’s an awareness issue because if you’re not self-aware about what you’re doing to prepare yourself for every stage of your day, let alone your career, you’re going to find yourself off balance at really inopportune times. Let’s just open our eyes first to what’s around us and all the possibilities. We then can move forward into part two, which is overcoming obstacles. 

There’s a lot in what you just said. That heightening your awareness, in part, could be being a student of the game. The game could be ping pong, the game could be some other sport, the game could be a hobby, and the game could be what you do for a living. It’s always amazed me how many people go to work and are not even students of their own company, let alone the industry they’re in. 

You obviously aren’t going to be as good at your craft, irrespective of what that craft is, if you aren’t a student of the game. You started studying this. You said your mom bought you books when you were young. You learned about the sport before there were YouTube videos and lots of television coverage of sports that would allow you to learn more about it now. You made yourself a student of the sport. I would imagine you made yourself a student of some of the other things you’ve done professionally along the way and heighten your awareness. 

What’s your main sport, would you say? 

My main sport at the moment is running and a bit of hiking as well. 

I’m sure you’ve learned either from osmosis being around other runners or actively sought out research about running techniques or shoes or terrain, whatever, right? 

I do. It’s funny, though, and this is where I would say that I know I’m never going to be a great runner. The difference between me having a pair of comfortable shoes and a pair of fast shoes. It’s not going to help me really move up in the leaderboard in a meaningful way when I’m running a race I’d rather make sure I enjoy the sport and that I can continue to enjoy it and stay comfortable. In some ways, both my running and my hiking, I would say, I probably don’t do nearly as much to learn the activity and the details of the activity as I could.

Partly, it’s just time. Just trying to fit time in for that, among other things. I’ve gone down that rabbit hole before with some things. Certainly, when I was doing cycling more seriously, I definitely went down that rabbit hole. At some point, you just say, “I just want to enjoy it and go out and have fun doing it and not sweat every little detail and stride length and all those kinds of things.” Like you said, you can measure earlier. 

That goes right to Pong principle number one again, be careful to measure your metric these days is probably comfort, enjoyment, maybe fitness, and health. That’s a very important and valid metric. Someone else’s metric, you go to a running store like, “This latest shoe from where, wherever, wherever is going to go be very fast and there’s not a lot of cushion, but it’s going to save 10 seconds off each mile.” That’s potentially a dangerous metric for you, even though it sounds very sexy to them. Just be careful what you measure. 

Big Data

You talked about data. I want to go back to ping pong for a minute. Has big data invaded the sport in a way that’s invaded many other sports? 

It has, but I wouldn’t say invaded. It certainly affects a lot of the very serious table tennis programs. Germany, Sweden, and China all use pretty advanced metrics in terms of not only the physicality of preparing the athletes but also analyzing the matches. All the main players, just like there’s a book on Clayton Kershaw, late innings, might go more to the slider, the fastball, and how fast is the fastball, whatever. The greatest players try to remain unpredictable, and they’ll bring a new style and a really jarring shot when you least expect it. I interviewed Stellan Bengtsson in my book. He’s a friend of mine, and he’s a former world champion from Sweden. 

He says data is important. He takes copious notes and visual and mental notes for every match he coaches. He says data is always a backward-looking snapshot. The best player Janove Waldner is seen as the Michael Jordan or the LeBron James of the sport. He would go against the data, meaning just when you thought you had him figured out, just when you thought of all the probabilities, he would give you this shot in the middle of a rally. It’s like, “Where did he even pull that one out from? He hasn’t done that in the last 1000 shots because he knows the value of improvisation. Against an amazing player like that data and metrics really don’t get you that far. 

Deception

You talked about pitchers earlier and this is not a sports podcast, but the pitchers who have the longest careers figure out how to keep creating deception or dominance. Most of them cannot throw a hundred-mile-an-hour flame ball forever in their careers. They have to get good at something else. They have to be able to disguise their pitches. The ones who don’t have long careers are of the one-trick ponies. You have who do get figured out. There is something to that. You talk about deception as one of your principles when deception is fair play. Obviously, it’s a big part of the sport. You try to make it look like you’re going to do one thing and then you do another. When is it deception, fair play, and the rest of the world in the work world?

That was a fun chapter. Principle number three is when deception is fair play. You mentioned probably most sports, certainly table tennis, you’re spinning one way and you disguise it and you think, you want your opponent to think it’s going the other way where there’s no spin. I talked to Nolan Bushnell, who founded Atari and Chuck E. Cheese. That’s the Chuck E. Cheese rat right there. He is a fascinating, brilliant operator, not only in software and family entertainment like Chuck E. Cheese, but he had to be really nimble and innovative just building and protecting his business. 

Back when he was starting off with Pong in Atari, the 1980s, they developed the prototype and they were trying to protect it. There was a small company in the Bay area and they were able to pump out a few hundred games a day, maybe. It really took off. It was a huge success. One of the biggest juggernauts in the video gaming industry. The arcade game industry. It was a small company, so they could only produce a few thousand at any given time frame. 

Meanwhile, his competitors were simply buying a unit, opening it up, reverse engineering the chipsets, going to manufacturers, ordering the same parts, slapping them together, and then out-selling and 3 to 1, 4 to 1, 8 to 1 using that exact same game. He created that entire market for Pong but he was only capturing the returns on, say 10% or 5%. He’s like, “Something is really wrong here.” It was because it was moving so quickly. I don’t think he even felt he had a legal recourse because by the time that would have taken hold any legal recourse, the damage could have been done, and who knows? 

They were a small operator. He is a bit of jujitsu and he figures, “Let’s just go to the manufacturer.” He had them purposely mislabel the little circuits, the little centipede-looking chips that you put in the circuit board. Number 19, they would label 27. Number six, they would label number 11. They would order them all mislabeled. Back at the Atari factory, they knew, “27 really means 17, so we’ll put it here,” so they worked fine. 

All the competitors had these beautifully constructed pong games that did nothing. It was a blank screen. His goal was to have them build giant warehouses with unusable products and it worked. They just went out of business. There was nothing illegal. He was certainly in his right to mislabel as he wanted. It was his product, and it works beautifully. It was just a way that I think was a brilliant form of using the insidious forces that are pushing you into a corner, using their own energies against them. He prevailed. That was just one example from that chapter. 

Overcoming Obstacles

I’d never heard that story. I was a pong player as a kid, an Atari player as a kid. I’d never heard that story about him. Let’s shift on to part two. Part two is about overcoming obstacles. What have been some of the obstacles that you’ve had to overcome in your ping pong career and even more generally?

One main obstacle I faced in my formation as a table tennis player was our basement was a little cramped where our table was. I naturally had to play pretty close to the table because otherwise, I would hit the bookshelf behind me. If I went too far to the right or left, I might hit the piano or the boxes that were there. Then the other person might hit the refrigerator. I learned by necessity a very close-to-the-table game that was fast. 

Not to mention I was a shrimpy kid before I blossomed into the five-foot seven-inch frame that I am today. Both of those aspects of my game required me to be pretty close to the table and cut down on the angles. Later on, when I learned proper footwork and spacing and moved back, I’m now comfortable 4 to 7 feet back from the table, which is just one of my comfort zones at a proper club. It will serve me well in the future. As I learned to move back, I also easily moved forward and tried to take command of the geometry of the game, similar to tennis where if you serve in volley and you’re at the net. 

Unless there are some beautiful passing shots or a beautiful lob, you’re more in control of the rally. In some ways, that’s similar to table tennis. I learned to use that to my advantage; it was just that comfort level with being compact in my game. Of course, I had to expand my game too, but I’m never afraid to go face the fire and I don’t back up as quickly as some other players would, which is not a liability, but it’s a certain quirk of my game that I’ve been able to turn to an advantage. 

As you say, you turned it kind of the disadvantage of not having a lot of space in your basement setup as a kid into an advantage. You hear those kinds of stories in sports, even in business. In entrepreneurial ventures where, they treat a constraint and they turn a constraint into an advantage later on. That’s what you did. 

Necessity is the mother of invention.

Necessity is definitely the mother of invention. There are some good principles in this section. One of them, I think, right at the beginning of this section, is you learn more from your losses than from wins. We’re used to this in sports. How does that play out in business? Most of us are in business and are afraid of failure.

In this chapter, I feature Aman Bhutani, the CEO of GoDaddy and the largest domain registrar in the world. He really exemplifies the principle that you learn more from your losses than your wins. He revels in these lessons of the stumbles and the setbacks and the losses. He’s infused that into the culture at several of the companies that he’s worked at, such that when they have quarterly reviews or annual reviews, he will use them as his case studies, often, one of their great failures, instead of trumpeting this great merger or this great spike in revenue or a top line beat, whatever. 

He finds it so much more instructive because those losses, they sting and they stick with you, back to our ancestral. Ancestors are our DNA. When you get stung by a scorpion versus seeing a pretty butterfly, you’re going to remember the scorpion at a very deep level because that’s a survival or non-survival issue. Seeing a pretty butterfly is a nice part of your day, but it’s not going to affect how you live your life necessarily or survive or not. There’s a reason why those losses sting. He’s not afraid to embrace those losses. 

In fact, one of the funny or insightful stories he tells, he had so many great chances to interview really high-level people throughout his positions at very high-level companies. Some amazing people who had done amazing things accomplished great things, and he had heard all sorts of stories. One story really stood out. There was a guy who interviewed for a high-level position at his company and he told the interviewer, “I used to be a terrible manager. I would alienate people. I did not treat them fairly. I had low empathy and low emotional intelligence. I turned a lot of people off, but I’ve overcome that. I’ve worked really hard to increase all of those really important skill sets. 

Here’s a list of references and you can contact them.” The interviewer is like, “Okay.” On that list were no references with glowing accolades. These were the people that were pissed off by the guy that was interviewing for the job. That really blew away Aman. How did he know about it? It’s because he was on that list. That made an impression on him. That’s an example of someone who’s not afraid to really embrace their low points and use that as a springboard to enter a whole new phase of their career, which was much more positive. 

I’ve certainly interviewed people and worked with people over the years for whom it is important to create an air of infallibility. I think that is a massive flaw in the scheme of things. I would much rather work with people. I’d much rather hire people who understand what they’re good at. Understand what they’re not good at. Who are committed to getting better at all of it and have mechanisms for doing those kinds of things. 

Who can talk about their failures and what they’ve learned from them because those are people who are more open to taking in all kinds of information? Not just the information that fits the narrative that they want to have, which is that they’re infallible and nobody’s infallible. This is one of the principles in your book that stands out for me because I think we all think about the losses and how the losses sting in sports, whether we are participants or fans. 

We don’t spend enough time. Most of us in business, thinking about what I could have done better there. That didn’t go well. What would I do differently next time? You repeat some of the same mistakes again and again. Building in that habit of learning from your mistakes, of learning from your losses, your failures, it will make you better if you keep doing it. 

Speaking of building in that habit, Aman really encourages all the departments that he deals with to build that into a routine, so let’s not shy away from talking about the failures. He gets excited about when they run diagnostics and experiments within the company, whether the results are positive, negative, or neutral. He really enjoys those so-called negative results because that’s what the meat is. That’s where you learn. That’s where you can build improvement. We get a rush of dopamine when we nail something. “Great feedback and no issues there. Okay, that’s great.” It doesn’t lead to self-reflection because it’s rarely perfect. When it’s a real slap in the face, it’s like, “I got to wake up and do something different.”

Triumph Of The Mundane

Especially when you see a survey result or user feedback or something like that, that’s very negative on a particular thing. You’re like, “We’re learning something here.” That clearly did not work and we need to adjust scores. One of the other ones in this section is the triumph of the mundane. I’m curious how you think about the triumph of the mundane in your ping pong and how you’ve applied it in your broader life.

I have a friend, Vladimir Samsonov, who’s been in six Olympics. He’s from Belarus and an amazing player, of course. He has all the skills you need. He was a former number-one-ranked world player. Before every major tournament, and especially when he was a youth player developing his game, he would take a bucket of balls and practice serves repeatedly by himself, not with a coach, not with anybody. This is not a fun drill. There’s no glamour. It’s not a physically demanding drill. You see a lot of really cool drills out there that are flashy and powerful, but this is not. 

I’ve done this myself. That is mundane. That’s what I see as very mundane. He says he doesn’t even feel comfortable beginning any major tournament without a good long session of just the very basics. This is not even experimenting. This is just the same old serve, same old serve till there are several buckets gone. It could be 30 minutes or an hour. That, to me, is quite mundane and yet it is quite critical. That’s the difference between amateur players and professionals. You embrace the routine and the fundamentals. It absolutely pays off, though.

On the business side, I talked to Rob Angel, who created Pictionary, a very creative, amazing game that is one of the best-selling board games of all time. He was really stuck. When he was developing this game, he was fresh out of college, waiting tables, and didn’t really know what he had. He had a fun game he used to play with his roommates up in Seattle, Washington. He figured, “Maybe this is something.” It’s like, “I don’t know anything about marketing or game production or legal or strategy. None of this. I just know I have a fun game. I don’t even know where to start.”

He started trying to create this game and prototypes. He just felt so stuck. He realized he was going to need a lot of word prompts to create this game, like draw a beach ball. The beach ball is on one of the cards. He needed about 5,000. He decided one summer, he took a lawn chair, went out into his backyard, and said, “Let me just start this very basic task.” He sat down and he looked through the dictionary. He came across aardvark. 

It’s like, “That’ll be a fun little thing to try to draw.” He wrote down aardvark. From that minute, he said that was like, “Bang.” All of a sudden, he was not a guy dreaming about someday creating a game. He felt that at that instant, once he wrote that down. He was now a game designer. He had a lot of work left to do, but he was on the path now. It was a very mundane thing. He sat there all summer, just creating this list of words, 5,000 of them. 

He says, “Find your aardvark. When you find your aardvark, find that little beachhead, that little first step. Once you’re actually on that path, you feel so much more grounded and you have a direction.” That mundane action was a triumph for him. Practicing just a couple of serves and then a hundred serves, then a thousand serves, is a triumph once you start that path. 

You certainly see this with athletes, whatever the sport is, once you warm up on the driving range if they’re golfers shooting free throws if they’re basketball players. The thing I think makes it hard for a lot of people in business is that at this hour, I have a meeting on this topic, at the next hour, I have a meeting on another topic, and tomorrow, I have to travel someplace. You don’t have the luxury of, I only have to do one thing today, which is play a baseball game or play a basketball game.

I think it just highlights the need to build systems. It comes back to some of the things we were talking about earlier habits and systems, because if you walk into a meeting and you’re running the meeting and you want to have a reputation for running a consistent meeting, then you better have a good system for running a meeting. It cannot be, “I’m winging it in this meeting and I’m going to wing it in the next one and I’ll wing it in the one after that.” 

Some people are very good at building systems. They make them look almost invisible so that it looks seamless in the way that they do it. Others have very visible systems and it works, but it’s a lot more obvious. A lot of people just never really develop the systems, the rituals of going through, practicing, and serving a ping pong ball 200 times before starting a day’s competition or whatever. That’s, I guess, where the mundane probably has more of a place in the business world. 

Finding the system might be a mundane task that is going to pay huge dividends that will end up being invisible, like you say, but will be really critical to your day-to-day operations. 

Elevating Your Game

James Clear talks about rising to the level of your systems. There’s a lot to be said in that. I think it’s particularly true in things where there’s a lot of repetitive activity. The last topic or last section of the book is about elevating your game. You chose to work with a legendary coach at one point in your playing time. What other steps did you take to raise your game along the way? 

One thing that was really helpful to my development, and this goes back to overcoming obstacles, but that also bleeds over to elevating my game, was embracing my quirks. As we said, I grew up in the basement. I actually grew up playing a hard bat, which had hardly any rubber on the paddle, and it was a much more flat hit, a very different stroke motion. I had to unlearn a lot of those habits once I got the more modern, thick rubber paddle. I realized that as I grew in my skills and my coaches encouraged us to experiment more and don’t just use the conventional strokes, I could reach back into my well of childhood activities and motions and bring back some hardback shots that people aren’t expecting. 

Maybe you haven’t even encountered it before because it’s rare to just have a slap in a modern game. Almost every shot has a top spin, push, or cut stroke for underspin or some side spin. Every once in a while, from eight years old, I would do one of my reach slaps on a backhand and it’s a very hard ball to return because it’s a sharp, flat trajectory or there’s no spin on it. It really surprises some opponents. I cannot do that all the time because it doesn’t always work. When it does, it’s a really nice surprise. 

I realized that I’ve got to get out of the rigid mindset that growing up, kid habits equal bad, adult modern techniques equal good. There’s always room for some improv. There’s always room for a little of your own flavor. Once, I felt less self-conscious about applying that, but that did elevate my game. An example was Reach for Excellence, Not Results, long principle number 14. That is in the heat of the moment, in a fierce battle at the table, you cannot win the whole match with one point. There’s only one point you’re ever playing in a whole match.

That’s the point right now. You’re not playing the one you just did before. You’re not playing the next one. Every single stroke, I just learned to tell myself, just hit this one ball back to the best of my abilities, and then do it again. When I’m serving, I do my best possible serve right now. Nothing else even exists. The results take care of themselves. That was a shift because I used to get so hyped like, “This is a must-win, do whatever it takes to win.” That is a terrible recipe to win because as soon as you start thinking about the victory, all the other subtle tactics and strategies go out the window. 

That mind shift just really helped me out a lot. As well in business too, it reminds me of Jordan Peele when he first created Get Out, his huge breakout movie. He was working on that script for 5 or 6 years, way back in the early 2000s. He was thinking, “We have a script where I’m trying to sell this to mainstream Hollywood and yet it’s all African-American leads and heroes, and all the Caucasians are evil, and we’re going to get the audience to hopefully clap when the African-American heroes kill off all the mean Caucasians.” 

That’s not going to fly in Hollywood of the early 2000s. He loved the story, he felt good about it, and he figured, “I’m developing my writing skills. I’m just going to make this the best movie that never gets produced. If nothing else, it’s going to be my version of excellence.” Academy Awards. It showed how he reached for the ultimate excellence within his own sphere and within his own beliefs and skills. That was absolutely enough. He wasn’t worried about the outcome anymore. He wasn’t worried about the victory. He was worried about excellence and it worked. 

It sure did. I want to spend a little bit of time on your broader business career. What else would you want our audience to take away with respect to your book? 

Overall, it’s just important to identify what table you’re playing at. We’re all playing at different tables. Mine happens to be a table tennis table, but it’s also a strategy, brand strategy, and content strategy table for my professional consultancy. It used to be a legal desk. That was my table. Within those pursuits, we all have certain competitive landscapes, and we all have certain challenges and nets over which we have to hit the ball. You better identify those because sometimes we’re playing at a game we don’t even realize. 

Sometimes there are different rules and the rules change and we have to really adapt. If we’re not really crystal clear about what arena we’re in and what table we’re at, that’s going to give us some issues that could jump up at any moment and really give us a headache. A lot of these principles are about self-awareness, about homing in on where you are and when and why. Then there are self-reflections like, “I’m here and I really want to be there. Why am I looking that way then?” It really helps direct your vision towards where you might want to be. 

Communications To Law

You’ve played on a few different tables in the course of your career. I know you originally went to school, you got a degree in PR, a degree in Communications, and then you went and got a Law degree. You went and practiced law and you left law. What led you from communications into law and back out of law? 

I did practice communications law. There was some dovetailing there. I was always interested in that aspect of it. This was in Washington, DC. I was dealing with some early internet clients and communications telecom clients. I realized there’s a lot of fascinating activity out there in the world of the internet, entrepreneurial ventures. It looks like there’s just as much opportunity there as there is here in my legal world. 

I had gotten married while practicing law and I wanted to see my wife a little more. That wasn’t happening very much. I figured this was a good opportunity to make a pivot. We moved out to the West Coast. We’re in LA now. I left the law behind and I transitioned into some of the digital strategy that I was already starting to think about with my internet clients more in a business sense. In some ways, I still use a lot of my legal skills. I’m really glad I went through that.

I never had any formal legal training, but I have read a lot of legal documents over the years. I think everybody has to have a little bit of lawyer in them, whether it’s for negotiation or just for understanding what people can and cannot do in business. It definitely is, whether you have the formal training or not, having a willingness to learn aspects of law definitely helps you in the professional world. Now you’re at Lollipop Labs. Tell us about that and your role specifically. 

I’m also doing a lot of the communications and brand strategy for Lollipop Labs. It’s a really satisfying company. We help kids, mostly middle school, high school, and some college, get excited about STEM learning and STEM careers and all the possibilities out there because some kids just are not exposed to that, whether it’s their geography or the type of school district they’re in or their other responsibilities. 

My own two boys were really curious early on, and I liked to play with them with Legos and out in the backyard with trucks, exploring things, breaking things apart, and seeing how they worked or didn’t work. I was really happy to see that that curiosity carried on. Now, they’re both in the engineering world. I think they were lucky that I was able to, and my wife was great, too, able to feed that curiosity. Sometimes, kids don’t have all those resources around them. They were doing robotics and we had to pay dues to help them go to their robotics clubs, not all kids have that luxury. 

It’s so fun to see these kids do these challenges. I worked at XPRIZE for a while, doing digital strategy for them. We’re basically using a boiled XPRIZE model, which incentivizes competitions to solve these grand challenges. We put these kids on robotics challenges, ocean health challenges, on reusability challenges. It’s really cool to see what they come up with at a very young age, and they’re learning teamwork, process, and innovation and getting college credit for it, even in high school. That’s what Wally Pop Labs is doing. 

What’s Ahead

You’ve got a ping-pong-focused nonprofit that you run as well, right? 

Yeah, PongFit. That’s all about physical and mental fitness through ping pong. It’s the ultimate bridge. It brings all sorts of people together. My dad is 97. He can still play. My mom’s 92. He still plays. Kids as young as 3, 4, 5, 6 can play. We will bring that out into the community to rec centers, senior centers, and schools where they don’t otherwise have a table and we’ll donate tables and pro equipment.

I’ll bring out our PongFit Pros, who are really high-level coaches and players. We’ll do a demo, we’ll have a party and we’ll leave them all this equipment and it’ll jumpstart a whole ping pong community that gives them a lifetime game and sport that they can adopt and also really satisfying to do that. We’ll bring the UCLA team out to some of our events and there’s an Olympian on their team. It’s just really cool for the kids to see these ultimate role models too. 

That’s great. As you say, in some of your marketing materials, this is a sport that pretty much anybody can play. You don’t have to be incredibly physically fit. That makes it a good common ground that you can build with people in your community or work or whatever because it’s something everybody can do together. 

I call it the most inclusive sport in the world because it doesn’t matter your geography, language, income, body type, or skill level. Everything melts away when you’re at the table, see huge smiles, and you can go virtually anywhere. 

Ping Pong Leadership: Ping Pong is the most inclusive sport in the world because it doesn’t matter your geography, language, income, body type, or skill level.

That’s very true. What’s ahead for you? Last question. 

I’m looking forward to expanding awareness of the book and the principles and working with a variety of different organizations and places to really get them excited about the potential for ping pong and these principles to transform how they enjoy productive workspaces and more camaraderie and more fitness. It doesn’t matter if they know ping pong or not. It’s not about that, although we can definitely increase our skills. It really is about an amazing avenue for teamwork and self-awareness and learning more tools to make them effective wherever they’re playing or working. 

Terrific. It’s been a fun conversation, and it got me thinking more about ping pong than I probably have in a long time. 

That’s great to hear. 

I appreciate your time and some of the insights that you’ve shared. 

Sure thing, maybe we can hit some time. 

No, you’d kill me. That would be no fun. 

I can play with all levels, it’s fun on all levels.

I’ll make you play with one leg tied behind your back in your opposite hand. Then I may have a bit of a chance. 

That’d be fun to try. 

Thanks again. Have a good day. 

Thank you, JR. 

—

I want to thank Justin for joining me today to discuss his journey as a top-tier table tennis player, his book, ping pong leadership, and his broader business career, you can find his book on Amazon. If you’d like to work on your career journey, visit PathWise.io and become a member basic membership is free. You can also sign up for the newsletter on our website and follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. Thanks.

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About Justin Bookey

Justin Bookey is a former lawyer, an award-winning marketing strategist, and global ping pong player. After practicing communications law for several years in Washington, DC, he transitioned to web content development. He’s earned Emmy nominations for feature documentaries he produced, and Telly, Viddy, and ADDY awards for digital marketing campaigns he spearheaded.

Bookey trained with Olympian and world-class table tennis coach Wei Wang. His efforts with her and other national/world champions helped him win medals at the US Open and the US national championships. He learned different leadership cultures while studying in India and teaching in Japan, and has played table tennis on seven continents.

He grew up in Seattle, Washington, and now lives and works in Santa Monica, California, where he also runs PongFit, a nonprofit that builds fitness and community through ping pong. He recently authored the book, Ping Pong Leadership: 18 Principles To Succeed At Any Table in Business, Sports, and Life.