The Unmistakable Creative Podcast

Bo Eason | Unlocking Greatness: The Power of Declaring Your Best Self

Join Frederik Pferdt as he shares his insights on fostering creativity and innovation within organizations. In this episode, Frederik discusses his approach to inspiring others to think differently and embrace uncertainty as a means to drive progress. He shares lessons from his experiences leading tech education initiatives, emphasizing the importance of nurturing a culture of continuous learning and experimentation. Listeners will gain valuable perspectives on how to cultivate an environment that not only embraces but thrives on innovation.

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Duration:: 1h 34m
Broadcast on:: 26 Jun 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

As you probably noticed this month, we're bringing you our "Life of Purpose" series and revisiting some of our most transformative episodes, tune in to explore expert insights and practical strategies on help, performance, and community well-being, all aimed at helping you achieve personal and professional fulfillment. If you sign up for the newsletter, you'll not only get recaps of the key ideas in each interview, but at the end of the series, you'll receive our free "Life of Purpose" ebook. What you have to do is go to UnmistakeableCreative.com/Lifepurpose again. That was poignant to me too, like no one ever asked me how to be the best. They always asked me if I can help them, like with my agent or get an acting job. And I said, "No, I don't care about that shit. I know if eventually if I'm the best, I know I'm going to get hired." I just wish people would do that more, you know? Like say you wanted to be the best quarterback in the world, or the, you know, go talk to the best quarterback in the world. Go talk to them. They're the only one that can help you, but it takes time, right? And then I think that's the part that really loses people. But as soon as you learn the principles of mastery, guess what? Mastery, equal and mastery. So it doesn't matter. I can write a book now and I've never written a book, but I know the principles of what it takes to be the best. So I put the principles in place, and then you've got a good shot of being a great author. I'm Srini Rao, and this is The Unmistakable Creative Plot Test, where you get a window into the stories and insights of the most innovative and creative minds who've started movements, built driving businesses, written best-selling books, and created insanely interesting art. For more, check out our 500 episode archive at unmistakablecreative.com. Bo, welcome to The Unmistakable Creative. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us. Glad to be here. Yeah, it is my pleasure to have you here. Like, I remember when I got the pitch for your interview as like former NFL player/actor/speaker, I was like, "Oh, hell yes, this sounds incredible." Like, you're this just multi-hypnot blend of interesting experiences. But before I get into all of that, I knew it part of the answer to this question from having read the book, but I wanted to start by asking you what birth order were you and what impact did that end up having on what you've ended up doing with your life in your career? Oh, great. Yeah, it's a great question. I love this question. So, I'm the youngest of six. I grew up on a ranch, on a farm with cattle and horses and sheep. I have four older sisters and an older brother were the two youngest. And that was my upbringing and a big part of who I turned out to be. Because early on, I wanted to be, I drew up this plan that I wanted to be an NFL player and I wanted to be the best safety ever in the world, in the NFL. And I was little. I saw myself as little, I was undersized, and that's just how it was. My sisters were tall and athletic. My brother was tall and athletic, and I was kind of small and in my mind, not very athletic. And so, but that's what I wanted to do with my life. And the first time I ever played football, first time ever played tackle football, the first day of practice, they weighed and measured us, the coach. So I was what? I was a freshman in high school. I was like 13, I guess 12 or 13. So the coach puts us on the scale and I weighed less than a hundred pounds. So like right around 98, something like that. And I think I was five feet tall, somewhere right in there. And this was the reason they were weighing and measuring us because it was going to go into the game program, right? So in the game program, he didn't want me to be five feet tall, 98 pounds. So he lied and said I was, you know, five feet, three and 110 pounds or whatever he said. Well, he told me I was too little to play on the team, but they weren't going to cut anybody. So I was going to get to be on the bench and stuff like that. And I remember my dad picking me up after practice, me and my brother. He picked me up, I got in my dad's truck and I was kind of in tears, right? I was kind of, you know, crying. And my dad said, what's wrong? And I said, coach told me I'm too small to play. And my dad, I swear he didn't hesitate one bit. And my dad, just so you know, a cowboy, right? Like a cowboy hat, dirty, full of, you know, horse manure, grimy, straight forward kind of guy. He says to me, after I tell him the coach thinks I'm too small to play on the team, my dad says, did they measure, do you, do people cost on your debt? You didn't get it. You didn't get it. Okay. Yeah. Because my dad ended every sentence he ever said his whole life with a cuss word. And he said, I said, dad, your coach says I'm too small to play on the team. He said, and I go, he goes, how does he know? And I go, well, they weighed and measured us. And he said, did they measure your heart, God damn it? And I was like, dad, I'm pretty sure they don't have a heart measuring thing there at my little high school. And he went on to tell me a story about how they choose the ranch dog. So we grew up on a ranch and you can't afford in those days. I don't know if they do this today, but in back of those days, the, the rancher couldn't afford to hire a bunch of ranch hands. So they would breed a dog. They would have a dog be one of the ranch hands. And the dog was this amazing curler of paddle and sheep. Amazing. You couldn't, you, you didn't take 10 men to be able to do what this, this dog could do because they're so quick in the, in the other animals, the cattle would, would mine the dog, the herd dog on the ranch dog. We called it the ranch dog. And my dad says to me, I'm sitting in the truck, he goes, do you, do you remember our ranch dog? You know our ranch dog? I go, yeah, I know the ranch dog. Yeah. And he said, do you know how we choose the ranch dog? And I, I, I didn't know we chose him. I just thought that, you know, the, the current ranch dog had puppies. And then we chose one of those to take over for the mama ranch dog. And he goes, no, there's a, there's a method to our madness. There's a reason why that ranch dog got chosen to be the ranch dog. And I was like, okay, tell me what, what? And he goes, well, we choose the ranch dog because here's how we do it. They, the ranch dog, the current ranch dog has a litter of puppies and there's 10 puppies in the litter. Well, they take the smallest puppy, the runt of the litter and they tie a little piece of yarn around the smallest puppy, the runt of the litter around his neck. They tie a piece of yarn around his neck. And so they watch these puppies grow up, these 10 puppies grow up together. And they choose, they keep that an indication of which one was the runt as they start to grow up with the litter. And they choose the runt of the litter to be the ranch dog every single time. And I was like, okay. And he goes, well, do you know what? The ranch dog has to fight to nurse the ranch, the, the runt of the litter has to fight. It's bigger brothers and sisters to survive, to eat, to run, to do anything. They have to battle. So they grow the biggest heart. The runt of the litter always has the biggest heart. You're, he told me I was the runt of the litter. I was the youngest of six, so I had to fight harder and I had a small body, but I had the biggest heart while growing up. And so for the rest of my life, stringy, that was it. I hung my hat on the fact that my dad told me that the runt is the champion every time because their heart is actually bigger than the rest. And so whenever I got rejected, whenever a team wanted to cut me, I wouldn't let them cut me. I would hang around. I would stay, hang in there. And I would tell them, no, no, I'm, I'm actually, you know, the runt of the litter. That means I have the biggest heart. I know you measured my height, I know that you measured my weight, but you didn't measure my heart. And these people would look at me like I was insane, but that's what kept me in the game for so long while other players who were bigger, who were faster, who were maybe more skilled, more athletic than me, why I was able to stick around longer than them only because of that story that my dad told me after the first day of practice that I'd ever had in football. Yeah. Well, you know, it's funny because I think about, you know, my own experience. So you, you know, Texas football, obviously, since you were drafted by the Oilers. So I grew up in Texas for mostly junior high. And I remember, and if you, if you go out for football in seventh grade in Texas, like it starts in the summer and you've played football in Texas heat, you know what that's like. The first time you put all that shit on, every one of my friends is like, we're all gonna die. I had these two guys are a huge, like two of my good friends, they will quit after the first day. I, like an idiot, stuck it out the entire season only to get the hell beat out of me. And just to give you some sense of my football experience. So you know, when they do those tackling girls where it's like you and one kid against another and you're trying to push each other back. So basically the coach complimented some other kid because he volunteered to play a position that he didn't go out for. And me being the validation junkie that I was, he's like, somebody needs a, I need a right guard. And like you saw me, you can imagine what I look like in seventh grade. And basically this other kid, you know, we're doing drills, he put me back like 30 yards. The whole team had a good laugh. But I'll tell you what surprises me. The thing that, you know, we were, I, my sister, I'm talking about this because, you know, we grew up doing extracurricular activities like other kids, but my, my parents, you're being Indian, they're like, all right, whatever, you guys are going to be good at school, that's a given one thing I realized, like when I look back at my own experiences of playing basketball, running track, the one thing that no coach ever told me was that I could get better, that there was a method to do this, that if I did these things, I actually could improve. Like that was just never part of the conversation. Like, and maybe that has changed, you know, now that we know what we do from a psychology standpoint. I feel like that was kind of embedded into me. It was like, yeah, you're just not meant to be an athlete. And then I became a surfer in snowboard. So I know I don't have a lack of athletic ability, but the fact that that was kind of ingrained into me from that early in the age, I wonder how do you think about that as somebody who made it all the way to the NFL, like, what do we, you know, what do we miss there? That, you know, what this, that is probably the number one conversation that I have with, with the people I work with, but especially my kids. So I have a daughter who's 19 and I have a son who's 17 and another daughter who's 50. And two of them are really, you know, great athletes. But all the time growing up as they're, you know, playing their sport, whether it's volleyball or football or basketball, all the time they come home and their first complaint is, I'm not as good as her or I'm not as good as him or he's been playing for three years. He's really good. I'm not very good at my, I always have to have this conversation. I always have to say to them, you guys, you're not better than them yet, but you're going to be no one gets this. I don't understand why this is such a hard concept. Parents, I think, try to save their kids some pain by telling them, you can't improve. We're not a good athlete. We don't have athletes in our family. We're not smart in our family. And they like decide their whole life for them right then as if they can't get better. You know? Yeah. And that. And so we have a saying in the Eastern family, which is we are the best at getting better. That's it. We don't have to be the best right all the time, but we do have to be the best at getting better, meaning improving, meaning training harder, meaning working harder. You always make up for that. And that, you know, that's what I noticed. The people, and this is really true and then you growing up in Texas, you'll know this. So you know how they have these prodigies and everybody talks about prodigies. And I think that is such a disservice. I think that really, I think that really destroys a lot of kids' dreams because someone will just name something you're not like, you're not smart, you're not a good athlete, you were not fast. Oh, our family, we're not known to make a lot of money. And they make these statements as if they're true that you can learn to make money or get faster, they'll say things like this is one I just drives me crazy every time. People who run really slow, here's what they say to me all the time, oh, hey, Beau, you can't teach speed. Can't teach speed. And I'm like, that's actually not true. You can't teach speed. I never met anybody who was born fast, you have to fulfill on the genes that you have. So we've all got genes passed down to us. So you either fulfill on those or you don't. You let down the lineage that you have. And so that's how I've always seen the world. And if there was somebody faster than me, I never said, damn it, that dude is faster than me. That's just how it is. I always said, I'm going to go be make friends with this guy and learn and see how we got that. Yeah. And he's the and those are the people that tell you, I don't go to like second fastest, I go to first fast and more if I'm having trouble in geometry, I'm going to the person who's number one in geometry and going, hey, how do you do that? What are you looking? I want to know what your eyes are seeing because if you can see it, I bet you you can teach me to see it and then I'll get better at it and I'll get to go to college or whatever the case may be. I just don't, I think this is the biggest hurdle that I've had to do with my kids because screening my experience of like playing, you know, pro football or becoming, you know, a playwright. Like I, there was a lot of people better than me if those two things, right? And I started, there was, there was Shakespeare for one. I was like, damn, who's the Shakespeare dude? He wrote a lot of good plays and I got to compete with this guy. He's been dead for 500 years. What am I going to do? You know? So what, what did I do? I just, I said to myself, look, obviously the Shakespeare dude who that everyone's telling me about is a great playwright. Well, if I want to be number one at that, guess where I'm going? I'm going to Shakespeare and I remember actually saying that when I was naive when the kids in my writing class were telling me, you can't talk to Shakespeare. He's been dead for 500 years. I said, yeah, but he must have left some crumbs, right? He must have left some, some ideas behind, right? So I just studied him and I studied his plays, not all of them, but the best ones I studied. And I said, okay, there's a pattern, there's a rhythm to what this guy does and it's reading no different than what it took to be the best safety in, in the country, right? I went, I didn't start off the best safety. I started off like the worst safety, but given the time and the energy, all I just kept asking the same question, who's the best safety? Who's the best at this thing that I want to do? And I went and I got ahold of them and I asked them, how did you become this? What did, what? This is the most important question. What are you seeing? What do your eyes see that my eyes can't see right now? I'm blind to the fact that to be the best safety. I need to, I need my eyes to see what you see, because you're the best safety. So I asked that of people who were dead, like Shakespeare. I was like, what was he looking at? Well, what I, what I came, what it came to was he was looking at his own culture of his time and he was writing personally from that culture. And that's what made him so not only well known, but popular and effective storytelling. And so I said, that's what I'm going to do. I don't live in Shakespeare's time. I live in my time. So I'm going to get in touch with this environment and this culture of my time. And I'm going to be the best at bringing that culture to bear. And that's what I did with playing football too, same exact thing. And that's why I just, I just have never believed in my, I'm guilty of it, right? Because my kids come home and they go, dad, I'm not as good as her. She's bigger. She's better. And I'm like, yeah, for now. But guess what? You got 24 hours in a day. Guess who gets to improve? Just guess who gets to pass that girl when she gets comfortable and she thinks she has reached her pinnacle, then you're going to pass her. And that's what most people do. They think that there's a graduation that being the best where they stop working. They stop staying hungry. They stop eating right. They stop the things that put them on top. So that's the advantage that I would take if I was my kids and that's what I'd tell them and that's what I'd do. Hey, I'm Ryan Reynolds. Recently, I asked Mint Mobile's legal team if big wireless companies are allowed to raise prices due to inflation, they said yes. And then when I asked if raising prices technically violates those owners to your contracts, they said, what the f*** are you talking about? You insane Hollywood s***. So to recap, we're cutting the price of Mint Unlimited from $30 a month to just $15 a month. Give it a try at mintmobile.com/switch. $45 up for three months plus taxes and fees, promoting for new customers for limited time. Unlimited more than 40 gigabytes per month slows, full turns at mintmobile.com. They say opposites attract. 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They said that he had seemed like he had eyes on the back of the head. That's the thing that nobody ever taught me was that like this could actually be improved. And I think that that to me is kind of unfortunate. But well, that being said, talk me about the experience of going, you know, like I know for a fact, you went to not a division one school, you went to Davis, which isn't exactly known for like reading future NFL players. What I'm interested in is the contrast between like, we get to see, you know, Tom Brady playing in the Super Bowl. I didn't think any of us see the reality of what goes into it. And I've had other other athletes here who are like, look, the end of the day, the colleges are basically bringing, particularly at a place like UCLA, who's like, you'll see all of the well players graduate with the same majors, mainly because they're just there to generate revenue for the school, they're really nothing more than assets for the school in that sense. He's like, and you know, people think student athletes live these glamorous lives far from true. But like, what is the reality, you know, when you make that transition, like when you go to the NFL, because I remember watching an episode of All American where they're, you know, showing the NFL combine, and they were, you know, the main character is a guy named Spencer and he's just getting thrilled, like with many questions that have absolutely nothing to do with football, like his personal life, difficult questions, like any controversy. And I think his agent is like, look, he's like, these guys are investing millions of dollars into you. They're going to ask everything and anything they can because it's not just about the field. But you're, you know, that that's TV, like, where are we not seeing that goes into this? Yeah, you know, and that I love this subject matter only because I've always thought this really, it sounds like your mind is in the same place. I always thought when I was getting dressed to go out and play in an NFL game, you know, you're very nervous. You're going to the bathroom every five minutes. You're trying to get the right nutrition in your body. You're trying to stay, you know, you're taping every joint that you have together so it holds together while you're out there. You're getting shot up by needles to numb the pain and there's all kinds of stuff like that. I always thought, you know, when you turn on football on TV, it is produced, right? You know, it's kind of predictable. You know kind of what team is favored. You know that this one has a good quarterback and this has this color uniform and you know what the commentary is going to be about this specific guy versus that specific guy. You're going to see the cheerleaders, you're going to see the crowd brewing and all that. So it kind of becomes predictable when it's on TV. I always thought it was an interesting stringy that they didn't allow cameras inside the locker room. And most people don't know this. So I played in the 80s. So there were, you could, you could not bring a camera into the locker room until all the shit that they don't want you to see is cleaned up, right? Like those needles aren't around. There's no blood. It's all mopped up. There's everything is gone and everything's aniseptic. Oh, okay, everybody, it's all cleaned up in here. Let the press in and the press comes in. So they only see and TV only sees what they want you to see. I always thought, wow, you know what would be cool? This would be cool to put a camera in that locker room when it's against the rules to have a camera in the locker room. Because that's when most of the drama happens. That's when the most, you know, the secret things, it's as if you're looking through a keyhole. Remember that the old fashioned movies, there'd always be somebody looking through a little keyhole to see on the other side what's going on inside that room with a locked door. That's what I always thought was interesting. And you know what funny enough, I wrote my play run to the litter. It's a one man play. I wrote it based on looking through that keyhole. I thought everyone knows what football games look like. But does everyone know what really happens inside there, especially when it's brother versus brother that raises the level that raises the energy of the storytelling. And that's what I felt like people, fans have never seen before. So I wanted to give them a peek into that keyhole to see what happens in there. But what does happen is, look, pro football players, you know, we think they're gods. When I was growing up, I thought they were gods. I didn't think they were men, they're men and they're boys. And they have all the issues that you and me have, right? They are insecure about certain things. Most of the time, especially in the 80s, they're injured. Most of the time they're hurt and they're playing through the pain of that injury. Almost everybody on the field is not feeling good that day. Right? Isn't that funny? Yeah. They make it seem like everybody's just feeling great out there, right? Yeah. All the guys puking. There are guys sitting on the toilet like, you know, for the fifth time in the last hour. And I'm not talking about like scrub type players. I'm talking about the greatest players in the history of the game that I've been in locker rooms with and against are a totally mess before it all starts their truck. You know why, Shrini, it's because the best players are, I think, the most nervous because they have the most to lose. And they, they've committed the most. So of course they have more emotion, more anxiety, more feelings about this. And my son, he's a football player, he's 17. He gets nervous before basketball games, before football games. And he doesn't want to get nervous. Like he, he's, he, he feels bad about being nervous. And I said, no, no, that's the key to being a great player. Because he thinks that, oh, you great players, the great players like Joe Montana and, and Jerry Rice and Earl Campbell and all these guys, they didn't get nervous. Yes, they did. I was in locker rooms with him. I saw them on the toilet. I saw them bend over. I saw them throw a, you know, I've seen this happen. The best players feel that way. So I always get nervous before I speak and I've spoken thousands of times. I always get nervous before I go on stage to do the play. I get nervous to play a, some kind of competition. I just do because it means a lot to me. And so I always have to talk to my kids out of that, they, they think like you're, I'm, they're going to get over their nerves and I go, the minute you get over those nerves, you should retire because you're done. It's just a normal human thing, especially for the people who really are great. And they really care about what they're doing. What? So speaking of people who are great, I've asked this question in some form or another, you know, I'm guessing you have probably seen it. There's this documentary on YouTube called the year of the quarterback. I think it was in ESPN 30 for 30. It's about the year that Tom Brady was drafted. And obviously everybody, you know, he was like, what, 199 pick in the sixth round or something ridiculous like that. And then he walks up to Bob Kraft on the first day of practice. You know, as the 199 picks and says, I'm Tom Brady and I'm going to be the best decision you've ever made, which is, you know, audacious for one thing. But the thing is that what was more striking to me and was more interesting to me was the other people who went for him and how they, they really didn't, most of them just kind of, you know, phased out of the NFL, they, they didn't, like, I think the number one draft trick was some guy named Giovanni Carmazzi. And he apparently lasted one game on the four to the 49ers and he was done. So tell me about that, like, what is it that, you know, what's the difference there? And one other thing, like, Jeremy Lin, actually, I heard him on a podcasting is like, you know, people see this very clamor slide, but they get with jobs just like everybody else. And he's like, and we don't play well. You know, we're affected from a financial standpoint, he's like, every night, your job is on the line. Yeah, that's, yeah, I love this subject matter only because like Tom Brady is always a great example because look, this guy, you know, he, to me, doesn't look like an athlete, doesn't seem like an athlete, but this guy, he, inside that body of his, he's got to be one of these guys, one of these people that just is so effing competitive and he so knows that everyone is going to pass him up. Like everyone's, he's going to be the last one chosen. And he was, you know, out of those quarterbacks, he is the last one chosen. And he, he has this belief in himself, like I've never seen before, even when he's playing bad, he believes it's going to turn around for him. He's like a miracle, right? But if you peel down, if you drill down a little bit, if you get past Brady and you think of the story of most great players, in particular quarterbacks, this is always kind of a theme that goes throughout the NFL. So you know those guys who get picked first, you know, they're, they're a child prodigy and they're the quarterback and they got the Letterman jacket on in high school. And they're the prom king and they, they date the hottest cheerleader. And then they get all kind of the football scholarships to the big football college. And they're a great quarterback and a five star recruit and all of these accolades and all these things. Do you know what my experience of is that, Serene, that that is a losing combination. Those guys never make it. Isn't that weird to say they never make it in, in college? And they certainly never make it in the pros. Now, I think that is more common than anybody knows. Because nobody really talks about that. Here's the problem. The people evaluating greatness. And in this case, we're talking specifically about quarterback are really shitty at evaluating them. Do you know why they want to know, and they have a lot of experience of being shitty. And they almost never get it right, almost never, otherwise, like Josh Allen, who I, you know, is probably the, you know, one, one, two, three best quarterbacks in the NFL right now goes to a junior college called Reedley College near Fresno because nobody recruits him. Aaron Rogers, one of the best throwers of the ball of all time goes to a junior college called Butte College up in Chico because no one offered him the scholarship. My brother, first round pick in the greatest draft in the greatest draft there's ever been of quarterback, my, he went numb, first picked in New England. He went to a junior college because no idiot came to our high school and said that kids got talent. My, my, my college quarterback that I named Kenny O'Brien went to a college called Sacramento States because nobody recruited him. He just walked on over there. He became my roommate over at UC Davis because he transferred out of there. We don't even know about this guy because everybody's really shitty with their eyes. They don't know what they're looking for. I'm telling you this, this doesn't just go for quarterbacks, but it's a great corner. Look at, if you look at great quarterbacks, you can kind of see it. You can kind of put your mind around it. You can go, Oh, really? So Tom Brady is not so rare. These other guys, you know, went before Tom Brady, right? They, Tom Brady at least had a scholarship to Michigan. These other guys went to, so, so that means to any that 300 colleges that play football in the United States had to say no to Josh Allen, you know, Joe Burrow, my brother, Daniel Bryan, uh, uh, Aaron Rodgers, almost every great quarterback has faced the same thing because here's the problem. People are looking at the wrong thing. They'll look, all they have to do, I always say this to my son. I go, Oh, I saw all they have to do is call me because here's, I'll just give you a rundown of the quarterbacks in my life, serene from the time I was a child, right? So my high school, grammar school and high school roommate was my brother. Okay. So he goes to a high school. He goes to a grammar school that's never had a pro player. He goes to a high school that's never had any pro players on any sport, right? He becomes the first round pick, not recruited by one college. He becomes the first round pick quarterback, takes the New England Patriots to their first Super Bowl. So I go to a college, me go to a college that has UC Davis, which doesn't have a lot of pro players, you know, my next roommate is a guy named Kenny O'Brien, right? Um, he becomes a first round pick. This dude went to Sacramento State, then UC Davis, you see Davis not known for pro players. He's my roommate. He becomes a first round pick in the greatest quarterback draft there's ever been. So now I've had two roommates in my lifetime and both are first round pits. Okay. So, and this is from high schools and colleges that don't have pro players. Try to get your mind around this. So then I get, I get drafted by the Houston Oilers. I go in the second round. My first quarterback in the NFL is a guy named Warren Moon. Warren Moon is in the Hall of Fame. Warren Moon was not drafted at all into pro football. He went to Canada, what Canada and played for five years in Canada. No one ever heard of him up there. He comes down my rookie year, we become, you know, captain's that team, friends. He now in the Hall of Fame, right? So then screening after a few years of playing with Warren Moon. And just so by the way, Warren Moon's back quarterback was a guy named Oliver Luck, which is Andrew Luck's dad. Andrew Luck was the first guy chosen at a Stanford quarterback, right? I got trained. The only reason the Houston Oilers got me is because they traded away. They traded for me and they traded a guy on their team named Archie Manning. Archie Manning has two sons, right? And Eli, right? So okay. So then I get traded at the, toward the end of my career to the San Francisco 49ers who have two quarterbacks, one named Joe Montana, Hall of Fame, the other named Steve Young Hall of Fame. So that is the extent of my career. And I'm not saying, I'm not saying I train these guys, but I know what I'm looking at. You know what I mean? I see what I see. And in a world where everybody misses this, I seem to get it right in a kind of a kind of a crazy way, right? Like, listen, I don't have any skin in this game. I don't get paid to train quarterbacks. I know I'm a free safety, which is the quarterback of the defense. So the person I need to know best, if I'm going to be the best safety in the world, is I have to know what the quarterback's looking at, what he's thinking, how he operates, what he eats, who does he date, is he married, has he a hard worker? Is he not all of these things that no one thinks about or looks at, I seem to have a perception of an accurate perception of. And so sure enough, here we are, my son wants to be, you know, top NFL quarterback. So of course, he gets overlooked by his, you know, high school, by, you know, he's going to get overlooked by colleges, for sure, he is right now. And that's how I know that he's going all the way, stringy. That's how I know, because he's being passed up by high school coaches, by college coaches, because they don't necessarily see what I see. And what I see is a guide going all the way, but for a guy to go all the way at that position, you have to struggle so much. You have to be rejected so much because you're going to it is that position is so wrought with pressure, with decision making, with leading a bunch of guys that you just met with leading a team, a franchise and a city. All the pressure is on you, even if the defense sucks. That's on you too. If you're a coach, that's on you too. If your team doesn't win, that's on you too. If you're not handsome and could speak well in front of an interview, what's on you too? Yeah. So I know what how that ends up. I know the end of this movie for my son. I know it because I've seen this movie how many times did I remember I had a quarterback here as a guest and I remember asking about this like I thought to myself, I'm like, okay, you must have to have a pretty high, cognitive ability to be a quarterback because not only are you making snap decisions in seconds, you also have to memorize an entire playbook. Like I've seen like when I play Madden, I'm just like, okay, I can kind of make out what this means. Yeah, I guess that's those are the receivers, but like a wreck has all that stuff memorized. He like knows every route that every runner runs and everything that every receiver does, right? That they they know here's they have to know everything that they're going to do. They also have to know everything that the other 10 guys on their team are doing. And then they have to know what the 11 people are trying to do to him to distract him to defend him and also check this out, streaming. He's got to know what the head coach of the other team is thinking and whoever's calling the plays, the offensive coordinator, whoever that coach is, he's got to know the rhythm and the mindset of those guys. So he's anticipating all these things coming at him. And that just takes of dude who has been rejected so many times that he is just numb to it. That is a dude who can lose a game, throw an interception, lose the game for his franchise and still come up and fight back. That's what that takes. That's why the superstars never make it because they're not used to having a hard time. They're used to having an easy time. Like their dad is the coach and he makes it an easy time for his son. So he doesn't give the son any obstacles any fight. He gets the date, the cheerleader like didn't get rejected by the head cheerleader that head cheerer actually went to the prom with him. So he's never faced any kind of struggle. And so the guys like Aaron Rodgers, like Tom Brady, like my brother, like Kenny O'Brien, like those guys, they're used to having struggle. They're, they're, they anticipate it. And then they overcome it. And it reminds me a little Friday night light story, you know, like we're not serious and goes down. Yeah. It's so funny, but I noticed this in regular life too, not just in football, right? Like this happens in regular life too. Like I always thought, well, I'm used to getting punched in the face. Like I'm used to that. Like if you're my size and you're playing in the NFL, you're going to get used to broken bones. You get used to blood, right? You get used to being concussed, right? And you get back up after those things happen. You just stand back up because you kind of used to it. Well, what, what happens to people in business as soon as they get, you know, fired or they go bankrupt or somebody tells them they suck. Well, what they typically do is they kind of just give up on themselves and they quit. They stop. Well, if you're used to having a bloody nose and getting back up, you just, you just hang in there just a little bit longer. And those are the people I trust the most and because I know they're going to show up, whether they have a bloody nose or not, they're going to show up. Hey, I'm Ryan Reynolds. 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If you guys could see me right now, I am running right at you with the ball in my hand, just imitating Walter Payton. Well, that was the picture that I looked at every time I opened my locker in high school. So for four years, every day, 10 times a day, I open up that locker and there's Walter Payton running right at me. So now cut to, I'm drafted by the Houston Oilers. Guess who's on our schedule, the Super Bowl champions, Chicago Bears. Walter Payton is there running back. I'm like looking across the field like, oh my God, that is Walter Payton. He is a God. I looked at him every day for four years, 10 times a day. What am I going to do if I have to tackle this dude? And sure enough, they give him the ball and he's running the ball and I'm coming up to tackle him and I swear my whole life turned into slow motion. Just everything just slowed down. And the image of him coming at me with the ball in his hand was exactly the image in my locker for those four years. And I would, here's what was going on in my head. And it seemed like 10 minutes had gone by and he's still running at me. And I'm thinking like this, oh shit, that's freaking Walter Payton. I'm going to tackle Walter Payton in about one second. Here he comes, here I go and bam, I tackle him. And it was, I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe that I tackled Walter Payton. I was laying on top of him and I was saying to myself, shit, I just tackled Walter Payton. And when you're an all pro player like Walter Payton, you don't let rookies lay on top of you. But I was just enjoying this moment. So I just laid on top of him for as long as I could and just, I was wondering, damn, I hope my mom and dad saw that on TV because I just, I hope they saw me tackle Walter Payton. Well, about this time Walter Payton is pissed off because I was probably on top of him for like five or six seconds and he tells me to get that F off of me rookie and remember he had that high voice. So like Michael Jackson, he had that really high voice like this, I saw him and he calls me a motherfucker and I'm like Walter Payton's a man of the year. And as I'm getting off of him, I'm kind of straddling him, right? Like he's between my legs down below. And he picks up his heel and gets me right in the nuts. And I'm like, yeah, that is the NFL man of the year right there, calling me an effort and getting picked in the nuts. I said, okay, no more, no more idolization of Walter Payton. The regular dude just like me, he kicked me just like I would have done to him and told me motherfucker, so we are more alike than I thought he didn't. He lost a little step of that dog status that I that I gave to him when I was in high school. But man, what a what an honor to be able to play against a dude like that. And I just I still to this day, I love Walter Payton. And I love that he kicked me in the nuts. I love that he was just a man that called me an effort. It was just one of those moments that I just always admire and love about getting to play against guys you admire like that. Well, let's let's get into the book. I mean, I think that, you know, one of the things that is interesting to me is the sort of segue. And this is one thing I've always wondered about is, you know, you're kind of particularly for Athens when you have, you know, this career ending injury, like what that does for identity and like finding a sense of identity after that, because any dupe actually had, you know, this book called, you know, quit the power of knowing when to walk away. And she talked about this idea that, you know, one of the hardest things by quitting often is basically when you are, you know, basically says when your identity is what you do, then what you do becomes hard to abandon because it means you're quitting who you are. But if the loss of identity that occurs in the transition, like talking about how you manage that, you seem to have come out of it, you know, like, or the better where as I feel like for a lot of people, that moment is, it just shatters them. And I, you know, I'm not surprised that it does because I've seen these documentaries, even kids who think they're going to get drafted to the NFL, they spent their whole life like on this one track thinking this is it. And then suddenly that dream goes away. How do you basically like rediscover your sense of identity when something like this happened? Yeah, it was not easy. It made look easy from the outside. And then I don't talk about this a lot because people typically don't ask about this part. But it's a, it's, I've always thought like, okay, if you have the ability to be a second round pick in the NFL, going to a college that I went to and, and, and playing a sport and, and playing at the highest level, what everything took that the principles that it took to be playing at that level are the same principles that it takes to be the best in the world at another subject matter. And I just told, I, I believe that from the word go, I just thought, if I can be the best safety in the world, I can be the best playwright in the world, or I could be the best husband in the world, or I could be the best stage performer in the world. My mind kind of thought like that, because I thought the principles were exactly the same and they turned out, that's the reason I wrote the book is because the principles were the same. They were exactly the same. I think problem that most of us have losing that identity for me was starting at the bottom again. That was hard ego wise, that was very hard. So you're at the top of your game, you know, I had my knee got blown out for the seventh time. So I'm going under, under the knife for the seventh time in a, in like, in about five years, six years, I'm no longer the top, if I've got it, if you have seven knee surgeries on your knee, there is a target on your knee in the NFL. There is a big old ass target because everybody knows. And all it takes is one receiver diving in the back of your knee and now you're on surgery number eight. And I thought to myself, as I was being wheeled off the field for the seventh time, and it was in Miami. In the orange bowl, playing Dan Marino and the dolphins. I was being wheeled off the field and again, these moments in my life, these defining moments in my life, everything always turns to slow motion. And again, it did happen then. I'm being wheeled off. I mean, I heard my legs snap. I heard it was loud and everybody who was on top of me heard it. I was being wheeled off the field on a gurney, and I just remember thinking, what am I going to do now? Because what I'm best at is illegal in the civilian world. I remember having that thought I'm in the 80s. If you were at the best safety in the world, you were probably one of the most dangerous dudes on the planet because you, you know, you, you got a pat on the back for knocking people's teeth out, right? And that was your job back then. It's changed now for the because of the rules. But so I was being wheeled off the field for 20 years. I have been trained to be that assassin. And now I'm going to enter the civilian world without a helmet, without shoulder pads. And I'm expected to follow the laws of the civilian world. That is not going to turn out well for me. Is it? Well, I'm on the gurney, and then another career popped into my mind. And here's what it was. If I can do the same thing I do in the NFL, which is it, I felt like my body could express itself fully in the NFL. I had no, no governor on me, I was just fully dangerous and expressive on the field and I got paid a lot of money to do that. If I can repeat that in the civilian world, I bet you I can be the best at it and I bet you I can make a living being the best at it. And what popped into my head was a stage in New York City. Now, at this time, I had never lived in New York City. I didn't know much about New York City. I played the Jets and the Giants there. That was it. I knew that they had theater there. I knew that they had Broadway there. And I said, maybe that's where I'm going now. As soon as I get off the operating table, I'm moving to New York and I'm going to learn how to express myself the same way I did as an NFL player. It might take me 20 years, but who gives a shit? I got time. I've saved all my money from football. I can take the 20 years. I can get trained to express myself on this stage in New York. And I could probably, after all that time, pass everybody who's in front of me now. And that's exactly what I did. I moved to New York City, I went into every class I could probably get in, I could possibly get into. Movement classes, writing classes, acting classes, theater classes, voice classes. I just would go to everybody in my class. And these were kids now, like I already had a career. I was 27, 28 years old. So I went to all these young kids in my classes. And I would say, who is the greatest stage performer of our time? Who is that? Who's the best on stage right now? This was 1990. And they all said, Al Pacino. And I said, cool, where is he? And they're all like, well, I don't know. He's Al Pacino. He's probably making a movie somewhere. I don't know. He's the best on stage. I go, well, if he's the best, then I got to know him. I got to talk to him because he can help me, he can teach me what to do for the next several years because he knows how to get there. So lo and behold, maybe a week later, two weeks later, I was at Al Pacino's house. And he was nicest, could be welcoming me into his home. His home was much like you'd expect. It was full of Italian people, not speaking English. Al was the only one speaking English. And he knew why I was there. He knew of my football career. He knew my dream of being the best stage performer. And so he basically broke down in a few hours what it would take to be, have his mantle, to be the best at what he did. And I said, that sounds cool, I'm going to do it. And I don't think he believed I was going to do it. That story stood out to me. I remember reading that in the book. I think what struck me most was when he told you, nobody ever asks me how they usually ask, you know, something else, he's like, you're not going to like the answer. And he mentions 15 years and I was like, yeah, no surprise, like that is not surprising to me at all. Yeah, you're right. That was poignant to me too, like no one ever asked me how to be the best. They always asked me if I can help them, like with my agent or get an acting job. And I said, no, I don't care about that shit. I know if eventually if I'm the best, I know I'm going to get hired. And that was that was his answer. He was right. And that's that I just wish people would do that more, you know, like say you wanted to be the best quarterback in the world of the, you know, go talk to the best quarterback in the world, go talk to them. Well, they're the, they're the only one that can help you. But it takes time, right? And then I think that's the part that really loses people to be the best. I mean, it takes some time. It takes mastery, of course, but as soon as you learn the principles of mastery, guess what? Mastery to go on mastery. So it doesn't matter. I can write a book now because I've had never written a book, but I know the principles of what it takes to be the best. So I put the principles in place and then you've got a good shot of being a great author. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's like how I became, I remember Julian Smith had one of the most popular blogs on the internet. I interviewed him multiple times. He'd written two bestsellers, done a book with Seth Godin and he mentions a thousand words a day. Like that I can do and I get it like religiously for almost like 12 years and paid off and paid off in spades. I mean, it was, and it wasn't glamorous by any stretch of the imagination, you know. Yeah. But one thing I noticed in particular, you have an entire chapter dedicated to what you call a declaration. And I remember reading that, you know, something very similar about declarative language in a book called the three laws of performance, these like, like you use the declaration of independence as your example, but they actually say specifically, they didn't write it as, they didn't call it the description of independent. So talk to me about this idea of a declaration and like, how does that differ because like, I think there's shortage of people who set goals, who have dreams and all this other, you know, craziness, but like, I noticed you specifically chose that language. So kind of, you know, give us the, what is the logic behind that? Like why a declaration? Well, for one, I, that turns me on, like that wakes me up in the morning. If you tell me, hey, boom, set a goal, that just doesn't do anything for me. I'm thinking of hockey, I'm thinking of soccer. I'm not thinking of something that's going to wake me up in the morning. But when you say declaration, like here is like the declaration of independence, when I learned about it, when I was a kid, I was moved by that, the phrasing that they used. I remember as a kid and I wasn't necessarily the greatest student in the world, but I was moved by certain language. And that seemed to float my boat. That seemed to turn me on, like that turned both lights on, like, oh shit, okay. So you're telling me that these founding fathers 250 years ago wrote some shit that I, that I didn't write that you and me get to bring into existence every day by the way we behave, by the way we live. That turns me on. I like that. And that is why storytelling, which if you guys notice, that's all I do, everything I do is a damn story. It just is, I train people by story, I inspire by story. I talk through story because I know that is the most valuable thing in the world. It moves people emotionally to take action. Well, that's what the Declaration of Independence did for me. So I said, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to be the best safety in the world. And the reason I used the term the best in all my declarations and all my kids' declarations and all my, the people that have worked with their declarations, I use the word the term the best all every time. I don't leave that out because my dad woke us up all six of us every morning. And it was early by rubbing our backs really hard with some dirty ass, rough ants, rubbing our backs, telling us that we were the best God damn it. And every, every morning for 18 years, you're the best in their God damn it. You're the best in their God damn it. That meant something to me. And that meant something to my sisters, that meant something to my brother. So we used this term declaration by saying what, what we're going to be the best app. Some people saying to push back on me and go, bro, I can't be the best. I grew up in a mediocre family. We don't have those beliefs. And I'm like, okay, that doesn't make any sense to me. It doesn't, it doesn't make any sense to me that you were born, you know, you know, there were 300 million sperm delivered on the day that you were conceived and you beat all those sperm. You were the gold medalists of that first race that you ever entered. And yet now there's parades right now you're born against 300 million to one odds, and you're the champion. And now you mean Loca? And now the world's going to promote mediocrity to you. You're already the gold medalist. So my dad was right. He was right in what he said to us. He's a man among animals, among nature, who knew who his kid were born to be the best. They already were the best. So that's how he woke us up now. We get into this world and the world's trying to convince you that you're not the best, that you're mediocre. And that's all you could expect. Well, I'm saying, no, you have to make a declaration and that declaration has to have the term the best in it, because if you don't say that, you're not going to end up with the gold medal. You're going to end up with a silver medal or a bronze. That's just how this works. My my experience of this is a 1000% accurate for my life and the people that I work with and the people that live in my life live in my home. That's our experience of this. My dad was not making this up. He is a man of the soil. He is a salt of the earth. We said it and he was right and he said, God damn it, after he said it, which put punctuation on so it meant something. That is why I believe in declarations because they wake me up in the morning. They turn me on that term, the best that makes me wake up. If you say to me, Beau, you know what? If I just I want to be kind of a great speaker, I kind of want to be good at storycline. I'm not your guy. I can't help me with that. Hey, Beau, I want to be kind of a good husband, kind of good, not great, good. I'm not your guy. I don't know how to train that. I don't I don't see the world like that. I don't get it. I don't also don't understand books that talk about that. I don't understand, you know, the news media trying to talk us into our own mediocrity. I'm like, what? What are they talking? I don't understand what languages are speaking. I'm sure they have their reasons. I'm sure they're not healthy reasons. I'm sure if you go back to the day that we were conceived and we want a race that had no second place trophies and had no participation in ribbons handed out, only the champion got rewarded with a life. And so we're going to fulfill on that life with a declaration and a story basically you're basically a declaration is a story that, you know, the declaration of independence. These guys wrote a story, sweetie, that you and me live out for them. They're the playwrights. You and me are just the stage actors playing out what they wrote. We're playing out by the way we live our lives with freedom. What they wrote 250 years ago, well, why don't we do that for ourselves? Why don't we just do that for ourselves? Let's write the story that we want to live and then play it out just like I did with the best safety of the world, just like I did with Al Pacino, just like I do with all aspects of my life. That's why declaration, you know, that's why we use it. Well, let's talk about one other aspect of this. Yeah, it's funny because you've kind of told me about the book normally I'm referencing so much of the book, but you've covered a good amount of it just through your stories. One of the things you talked about is this idea of practice, right? And the thing is that I think that to your point, like basically practice is literally what prepares you for performance. You basically say that your life is going to be 90% of your time preparing for performance, which will be 10% of your time. And that's exactly the way I described writing books. I was like, you basically spend two years for two days on the spotlight, like the spotlight is literally the most distracting thing ever. Boy, that the truer words were never spoken. This is what I would do. This is how I've treated my life. Look, practice is like eating your vegetables, like no one wants to do that shit, but you know, if you're, you know, if you're going to end up at the top, you've got to rehearse. You've got to practice. And my idea of it is I'm going to fall in love with practice. I'm going to fall in love with behaving in a certain way where rehearsal is the key to the kingdom instead of the show. Because you know, you, when you say you and I are going to do a Broadway play together, which, you know, maybe we should do, if we're going to do a Broadway play together, we're going to be on stage, like, not very much, you know, with audience in there, with a paid audience in there, we're going to be on every night at eight o'clock, seven times a week, right? And that play, if we're lucky, runs for six months or a year. Well, we're going to spend like eight years rehearsing that shit to get it to Broadway, to get it on top, you know, up on its feet. This is the part everybody hates. This is the part I love. I love rehearsal. I love practice because I know what comes at the end of it. What comes at the end of it is in this sense of mastery. Now you're right, sweetie, it is a distraction for those two days, right? But like when Tom Brady rehearses his whole life to play in Super Bowls, well, guess who gets to play in more Super Bowls than anybody else? Because he's used to it. He understands he behaves in a way in his life, like he goes to bed at a certain time. He puts only certain things in his mouth for years. He gets body work for this many hours a day for years. That's all behaviors. That's all rehearsal. That's all practice for what is the ultimate stage, the Super Bowl. But once he's on that stage, everybody wicks their pants. Except Tom Brady because he has so behaved himself into being comfortable on that stage. Now, if Serene and I wrote a two-man show, we're going to open it in on Broadway. We are picking a date like 10 years from now. And he and I are going to get to work on the writing and the producing and the fundraising. And basically, we're going to have our ass on a stage for the 10 years leading up to this opening on Broadway. And we're going to get so use to each other and being on a stage in front of a Broadway house where the critics show up to kick your ass, to kick you out of this city that they hold so sacred. We know that's coming at us, right? So we're going to wake up every morning attempting greatness to be the best writers and performers of this show. And after about that many years passes, then we'll be ready and we'll go, "You know what? They're going to hand us a Tony at the end of that." They're like, "Hey, Serene. Hey, bro. You guys won the Tony for best performance in a play of two people." And guess what Serene and I are going to do? It's going to be normal to us. Guess why? Because we've already run all the damn miles. We know it was coming. It's predictable because we ran those miles. We know what it's like to be on stage. We know what it's like to face the New York critics. And we've earned the right to have that gold medal put around our neck. And Serene and I would call that a day of distraction. Wow. That Tony's really, we had to put those tuxes on, we had to get our hair combed, but they do all kinds of shit that really took us off our game, right? Now we accepted the award. Let's start again. Let's start again. Hey, you guys. We're all, we all got time. We're not dying tomorrow. We're not. We're going to live longer and longer and longer. And you have the time to allow your dreams to come true, but earn that shit, man. You know, earn it the way Tom Brady did, the way the great, great performers do. Because then you have mastered something that could just be repeatable for the rest of your life. The only reason I'm a great husband, like I don't know that the best husband there is. You know why? Because I wanted to be the best safety when I was nine years old, the principles of being the best safety in the world are the same exact principles it takes to be the best husband. I didn't get married till I was 37, but I knew mastery. I knew what it took to be accomplished at something and be great at something. And it translated right into being married. Now, if you can relate being the best safety in the world to being the best playwright in the world, to being the best husband in the world, you get to do that only because you know what mastery takes. And then mastery doesn't take as long. Every time I approach it, a new declaration, and I find this with my kid and my clients too, the time period to master that thing becomes shorter because the principles are already in place and it doesn't matter the occupation. It just doesn't matter. That's cool. I mean, that's a cool life. Let's finish this up by talking about two things. I noticed your take on vision boards, which I found straighten because like I have always thought like anytime I see these people who are into their whole vision board thing, it's like these are just a bunch of people putting up pretty pictures and sitting on their asses hoping money falls from the sky. I think the secret definitely kind of caused that, but you had a very different way of explaining it. So tell me, how do you think of this? Yeah. I mean, look, I just, I like visuals, right? And I become that visual. I can't take every, it's like magic, you know, I see something over and over again, almost like the Walter Payton situation. You know, Walter Payton, you open up your locker, you look at him, and of course I'm going to face him one day. Of course, of course, if I'm, if I had Al Pacino as a visual of becoming a stage performer, of course he's gone. He's going to come into my life. These things are real, man. I, I, I just see those visuals and they become real to me and they become normal like happens that it's just normal. It's not like a miracle. It's not like, oh my God, it's I, but you know, of course it's Al Pacino. Of course, he's not the second greatest stage performer of his time. He's the first. That's how it works. So that's how this thing goes for me. Um, that's how it goes for everybody. The problem is is no one does it. No, nobody does it just you have to declare what you want to be the best at. You do. And then you have to put some visuals up or draw them yourself. And look at what you drew every day. And that thing is coming into existence can't not come into existence. That's, that's what I call a pretty cool life. Live in your life for the actual vision that you have for it. You get to live a life and you get to have like five or six or eight occupations in your life. And guess what? You get to be the pop in each one of those fields. If you do that, it's just that people won't do it. Cause they do, I guess they just don't believe it could possibly happen to them. But it's been proven over and over again that he, that it can. So I don't know why. I don't know why. I think they want to, I think they're just, I think, I think they're too much connected to the culture where the culture is very naysayers, you know, saying what you can't do. And they believe the culture, they believe the news, they believe the politicians that say that they believe the so-called leaders who say those type of things, they believe the coaches that say, Hey, you're not very good. You can't make this team. Well, I just don't believe that. I don't. It's not a part of our nature. I believe mother nature is undefeated, right? And you and me are a direct descendant of that nature. We are that nature. And she's one every time, right? So I'm connected with her, not what human beings, not what, you know, like natural, natural law, I believe people who make up laws, I don't necessarily believe or trust, right? Like who made up? Think about that. Who made up the speed limits got to be 55? Well, some human being did not mother nature because I'm sure the greatest race car driver thinks 55 is a little slow for them, right? That law was not made for them. Their nature is to go fast, right? So I follow the laws of nature, not the laws that some dude made or some gal made. Yeah. Well, this is a bit amazing. So I have one final question for you, which is how we finish all of our interviews on the unmistakable creative. What do you think it is? Make somebody or something unmistakable. Yeah. Yeah, it's really good. It's really good. So funny because I love the title unmistakable because, you know, like remember earlier when I was talking about people who evaluate quarterbacks don't know what they're looking at. They don't know how to evaluate them because they can't see. And I'm really good at that, you know, I have a real good vision of that and it's unmistakable. Like it's, it's undefeated, so to speak, right? And I think that's true of all of us. We all have these places where it is so predictable that we are going to get this right given the vision we have for our lives and for other people's lives. If you treat your life like an artist, whether you're an athlete, whether you're a writer, whether you're a producer, whether you're a speaker, a content creator, that is art, I wish that more business people would treat themselves as artists. They would have a lot better businesses. They would create a lot more better stuff if they thought of themselves like that. So and it's predictable. It's unmistaking, you know, it is. When I see a kid, I know I can kind of see their future. And so could you, you know, if you could see clearly, you can see the future in it. It is unmistakable. So I think that is the talent that I've seen the mind mentors and the greatest people that have ever helped me or influenced me, they see the world a certain way. And that is unmistakable. They are accurate with what they see in the world. Now, if you take the world at large, they miss it all the time because they can't get around their own, they're not resolved enough to see clearly. If you notice, most people who are doing all the talking or teaching or coaching or commentating, they're not resolved to themselves. They have no resolution to the health of themselves. So they can't see you and they can't see the world in a clear way because they're trying to prove something, how smart they are, how great they are, how intelligent they are. That's what I called it. They're unresolved. They're not healthy enough to see the world in a clear way. So I guess as I answer this question, I'm coming back around to it's the people that are have this resolute courage about the world. They see the world in a way that is unmistakable and it's also predictable. They know what they're looking at and they can name it. And what they see, what they see is greatness and potential in the world and in people. I think that's what it is. Beautiful. Well, this has been incredible. I mean, you're just a wealth of knowledge and have amazing stories. I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us and share your stories, your wisdom and your insights without listening. Where can people find out more about your book, your work and everything else you're up to? Yeah. Thanks for the opportunity to share with your audience because this stuff, this is my life. Everybody's got a story. Everyone does. They think they don't, but they do. And if you guys notice, that's how I speak in story. And I think given where the world is, where the level of trust is so low, that the one way to rebuild that trust, the one way to lead in this world is to know your own defining moment story. So I'd like to, I'd like to give your audience an opportunity to, for me to help them with their stories. Is that cool? Yeah, of course. Yeah. So, you know, if you text personal story, I want to give you a free guide, a story guide, which is what I've, I've taught for years and I've used for years. And I want you guys to be able to use because it's, it's, it's one of the most valuable things that you can have as a human being. So text this text personal story, text personal story to 323 310 550 5504. Text personal story to 323 310 550 4, text personal story to me and I'm going to send you a free guide. And it's a video training of your defining moment. So you can start to define what, you know, what made you, what, what story made you. And you can always lead with it is very powerful, whether you're raising money or whether you're coaching or whether you're a speaker or a podcaster, just very valuable. And if you guys want to follow me, you know, go to bowieson.com and you can find all my work there. I train people on how to do this. That's bowieson.com. Um, it's really, you know, this has been amazing. You just really, you know, you can tell when people do their homework, when I, when I, when somebody in your shoes does their homework, knows the content and works their ass off. That's a pro, right? And the rest of the world are amateurs. So I really appreciate you digging down in there with your hallmark and asking the questions and also having this discussion that we've had. So I really appreciate it. Likewise. And for everybody listening, we will wrap the show with that. Get back to school ready at Whole Foods Market, the best in class event is packed with sales on organic seedless grapes, organic honey crisp apples, apple gate, deli meat and more. Start your mornings with 365 by Whole Foods Market organic frozen waffles and better than cage free eggs. 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Have you ever felt a twinge of worry about AI taking over your job or diluting your creativity? Well, what if you could turn that fear into creative fuel? We've just published an amazing new ebook called "The Four Keys to Success in an AI World." And this is more than just a guide. It's a deep exploration into the human skills that AI can't touch. The skills that are essential for standing out and thriving, no matter how much technology evolved. We're talking about real differentiators here like creativity, emotional intelligence, critical thinking, and much more. Inside, you'll find actionable insights and strategies to develop these skills, whether you're a creative person, a business person, or just simply someone who loves personal development. This isn't a story about tech taking over. It's a story of human creativity thriving alongside AI. Picture this AI as your creative co-pilot not just as a tool, but a collaborator that enhances your unique human skills. 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