#847: Steve Young, from Super Bowl MVP to Managing Billions – Hall of Fame 49ers Quarterback on High Performance, Reinvention, Faith, and How to Blend Dreams and Plans

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/6a44c0fc6d3b1c58

Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferris, and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world class performers to try to break down
How they have done.
What they've done.
What you can copy and paste.
and test in your own lives. And it can take many different forms. This interview
Has been probably two years in the making. I was so happy.
to finally have it happen. Steve Young, also very timely.
Right about now at the time of recording. Steve Young.
Is a Hall of Fame NFL quarterback who played more than 15 seasons, primarily with the San Francisco 49ers. He was Super Bowl 29 MVP, earning sports illustrated and sporting news player of the year honors from 1992 to 94, and won the NFL MVP Award in both 92 and 94. When he retired,
He held the all-time record for highest quarterback rating and remains the only quarterback to win four consecutive NFL passing titles.
What makes him also very interesting to me is that he's a multi-hyphenant. So the story did not end there. He didn't fade into obscurity after football.
Young became an ESPN analyst and a private equity executive. He co-founded HGGC, which manages
Roughly nine billion dollars in capital commitments and there have been some amazing, amazing
Profiles of him which
initially piqued my interest because he seems to have been so good at reinvention and also high performance, not
only over decades, but in different
Disciplines entirely. He's also the founder and current chair of the Forever Young Foundation, which supports children's charities globally. He is the author of QB.
My life behind the spiral and the law of love. You can find him on Instagram at Steve Young.
And without further ado, please enjoy a very wide-ranging, very in-depth conversation with Steve. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention one thing he requested.
that I include in the intro, which is that he and I seem to be journeying on parallel paths and certainly both
During the interview, but after recording, that seems to be the case. Not at all comparing myself to Steve.
He is so many levels above me in so many ways, but nonetheless he asked me to include that, so I am doing that here. Please enjoy.
At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. And then also do a personal question.
No, we're just seeing it.
I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

No
Steve, thank you so much for making the time.
But um
Hopefully I can add something to the amazing stuff that you've done for
Long time. So we'll see. It's yet to
You had to be determined. I'm sure that'll be the case. We'll first point out the pink elephant in the room. Um welcome to my temple of Tim. I love it. I love it. I've I bowed to the to the greatness.
And also, this has been for me two or three years in the making, sort of a slow build because a friend of mine
Sent me a Bloomberg article.
about you that talked about the many chapters
Of Steve Young.
And at that time, as is true now, I've been incredibly interested.
in people who successfully navigate these
Face shifts.
And I do not follow football. I have a lot of respect for football.
God knows every time I see one of the car crashes, AKA collisions, I think that
one hit and I would be done. Right. I don't know how you guys do. It's insane. I even now as I watch now I'm like, did I actually do that? It's just remarkable how durable
Player sorry, I I have no idea how you guys do it.
But what I would
Been hoping to dig into is
psycho, emotional, spiritual
Mental side of things. Right.
And that's football.
Weirdly. Yeah. It's crazy. I can
We can go on we'll go on for that for a little bit, too. We'll definitely get into that. And I thought we would start. Actually, I'll start with a wave hello.
I don't think you guys know each other. You might have had a connection decades ago. Friend of mine who's a bit of a reckless named Josh Waitskin. He was the basis. He would hate me to introduce him this way, but he was the basis for searching for Bobby Fisher, the book and then the movie and Yes. Yeah.
Yes. And he was most recently he got
kind of doxed. He he didn't really want to be public about it for working with the Celtics in the last few years. Really? With their coach. And
He is a huge fan. I mentioned he's like, Hey at five minutes on the phone he texted me this morning and I said, I can't do it. I'm preparing for a podcast with this legend. And I sent him a link and he goes, Oh, I studied his game. I used to study and study and study. He's not a football guy. But I thought you were bringing it up because that was my favorite movie.
Oh I had no idea. Oh.
Absolut. I thought that's why you were saying it. I know you like
How do they know they must have said'cause I've said it many times.
I was like oh that's why like that's why I love that. That's a movie everyone needs to watch.
It's a
Compelling.
Story.
get put into the movie because it couldn't have been put into the movie given the time frame, is that Josh
at his peak, effectively retired from chess because of all the attention that ended up landing on him.
After the success of the book and the movie.
And he has navigated three or four very, very, very successful.
Face shifts. That's awesome. And so Game recognizes Game. He's like, Oh, I know Steve Young. I've studied Steve Young.
That is weird. Wow. That's like a full circle for me. Very small. Growing up when I was in like when I was a kid, the movie in high school.
And people probably never heard
Probably don't know it.
Yeah, so I'm I'm glad you're let's shout it out. Go see that. It's uh it's worth it. It's really amazing. And the and the book is very good. It's it's a fun subject slash store subject to chat with Josh about, but I'm going to invoke a name.
that was very meaningful for me in terms of writing way back in the day.
And that is Steven Covey.
So could you describe
Meeting Stephen Covey.
And
who Stephen Covey is.
So
In the you know, eighties, nineties, even the
I guess you call them.
He was writing books.
Seven habits books.
And really
I known his kids, but I never met him.
You had known his kids through the through church. School, yeah. No, at school at BYU, like I'd met them and they played football and so
But I never really met him.
Yeah, I have a good little background here. So I'm
I'm playing for the forty niners. Joe Montana
We were on the same team and I we both wanted to play and he was the king and I was this kid that wanted to
I didn't want to just sit there, you know.
And I finally got my chance to play in nineteen ninety one and
It didn't go great.
And I always joke about
Walking around town and
And how I describe it is
Telling people, No, I think he did throw an incomplete pass once. You know, I mean, I think he did lose a game. In fact
I think he's thrown an interception or two. Like'cause the memory of someone who's great
is only great. And here's this kid
Trying to
Live up to
All of that.
And I was pouring myself into it. I was
Over.
Indexed on trying to figure out how to
All I could look around was everyone who wasn't.
And how everything was my fault. And everything, no matter what happened, I went anywhere. It's like, Well, yeah, Steve Young sucks, you know, it's uh Steve Young's problems. I found myself
Middle of the season.
middling around and I noticed that I was like
Depressed.
I was
Miserable.
I felt like I was like at a bottom of a hole.
We lost a game against the Raiders in front of a hundred thousand people at the LA Coliseum.
Jerry Rice is open in the end zone.
To win the game and I never
He's literally waving like you know, and I didn't see him.
And it was just like the epitome of like everything that could go bad. And so I was miserable. I'm I'm I I need to give you that backstory'cause you have to know my state of mind. I was miserable and I got on a plane because Tuesday is day off in the NFL.
So Monday night I got on a plane, went to Salt Lake City to see my brother,'cause he was in University of Utah Med School.
I was like, man, maybe he can
I don't know, help me get out of this funk. I mean, this is just terrible. I'm not sleeping well. It's just miserable.
And I walk around the town with him.

Steve, I got two kids and
broke in medical school, like your life s looks sweet to me. So he didn't help very much.
I had to hold him. I didn't know how I was gonna get to Christmas, so
I get on the plane to come back, sit down and
Steve Covey sitting there.
And he says, Hello. And I'm like, Oh my gosh, it's been
You know, I've always wanted to meet you.
And w and he goes, he he asked a simple question.
How you doing?
And
I'm in a state of mind where I was pretty uh
Vulner wise just told them.
kind of recitated everything that I just said to you.
And how m kind of miserable I was.
I got done with it.
You know, twenty five, thirty minutes later, and he goes.
Mm.
Wow.
Man.
I can feel that.
Like I can feel
All of that.
Expectations.
How
Tough it is to
Not get
The help that you think that you need and
Things that are working against you and
Man, can I ask you a couple questions? I go
Yeah.
Because
Your owner Eddie Debartaloo
Tell me about him. Oh my gosh, he's the only owner in football that ever
saw players as partners. I mean
He's amazing and I went on about that and then he said, What about your coach Bill Walls?
He's like, Yeah, he's like
The guy that
Talks about
Hydration and
nutrition and sleep and mental health and
You talk about partnership, he's
He's like
No one's doing what he's doing. His West Coast offense, that guy's amazing. He goes, Yeah, I'd I'd heard that. I'd I'd love to meet'em both, you know,'cause
Let me ask one last question. Is Joe Montana on the team?
And like
Yeah, he's hurt and
That's kind of the problem.
And he's like, Well, if you had to ask him for mentorship
Go ask him questions to help your game. Could you do it?
I'm like
Yeah.
I could.
And he goes.
All right. Well
I want you to know what I do.
I travel the world looking for platforms
companies, organizations
That
Create
The ability for the humans on the platform
to see how good they can get.
And iterate.
And find out because that's
That's what life should be about.
And so I I tr as I travel the world, I'm always looking for it and I I'd love to talk to those guys about
Their platform.
But I gotta step back, Steve, and tell you.
That
From my perspective.
the platform that you're on.
The place that you are.
I think might be the greatest.
One that I've ever seen.
And I was like
Didn't you hear me? Like, bro, this is
Miserable. Things are terrible. Things are terrible.
But it stung me. It like went through my heart. It was like
Oh my gosh.
My first thought was
I think I might have screwed this whole thing up.
Like
Oh, cause to have him say that truth to me.
He goes, Let me ask you a question.
Because it's scary.
He goes.
I always wonder
If people are willing.
To take the chance to find out how good they are.
You know? And I'm like
reflexive about it. Yeah, of course. I'm absolutely up for that.
And then he
Took a minute and he's like he he looked kinda like
He was little and
All in
Long finger a little Yoda ish, you know what I mean? I remember the about the author photo. Yeah, and so the and so he he took his finger and he kinda looked at me
Uh and said
Then be about it.
And I was like
Oh my gosh.
I realized right there
That the hole I was in.
That I thought
So many people had dug.
That I had dug it.
I had no idea that I dug the hole.
And
I had thought that everyone
Push me in.
And I didn't realize that I had jumped in.
And so it was that
We can talk about victimization for a long time'cause it's such an important
thing to fer it out in your own life over and over again, like never stop.
It was the realization that I had
played the victim.
And had jumped in a hole.
Dug it and jumped in and I
I'm the author of it. Like that's what the shock was.
Like I authored this.
Um
I remember
Getting off the plane.
As if I was transformed.
I don't want to
Say it lightly, it was as if
I now knew
If I was gonna do anything, I was gonna be about this.
And I remember
Not sleeping well that night?
But for a different reason.
I thought, Oh my gosh, I think I've screwed this up enough.
That on Wednesday morning's when you get fired in the NFL.
And I'm like, I'd heard rumors about maybe getting benched and
I'm like oh crap.
Don't tell me that I have screwed this up so bad.
that I don't get a chance to go fix it.
And I screamed down at practice the next day.
as energized as ever, like I've got just please don't b please give me another
And
I didn't get benched and I did play and I was about it. And it was fun because it's like something that's true, like truly true.
Universally true.
When it's that way
It doesn't waver.
You don't have
Iterations of it. Like it's just true. I don't have to worry about like and he said
People are really afraid.
Like it's hard to find out how good you are,'cause you might find out
You're not very nearly as good as you thought you were.
But that's you gotta make that okay.
And then
No, I'm gonna be iterate and find out.
How good I can get.
It's really about fear.
And if you can lose that fear and that's
Basically what you're dealing with is a fear based
You've been fear based. And I was like, Oh my gosh.
And you just wanted to exercise it. Now it doesn't happen overnight.
But
I remember soon after
That season ended and the whole off season and and and so
The next year.
We're playing the Cowboys. They're the best team in the league, right?
And I think to myself.
This is where you find out, right?
And I remember running up to Troichman.
We're warming up and he's a friend.
And he's a quarterback for the for the Cowboys and I'm like, Joy.
It's so great that you're here, man, because I'm on this quest to see how good I can get and I can only find out against the best. And so I'm so glad that you're here.
And I remember Joy looking at me like
Frickin weirdo. What's what's the problem with you?
But that's what I was about.
And to finish the story, I think I have to finish it.
Kind of honestly and authentically.
I was MVP of the NFL that year.
And you think back to being in the bottom of a hole run running to my brother to see if like I could get out of this depression.
And it's just amazing to me.
The perspective
A truthful
Universally
Authentic.
Fact.
can make that kind of difference in somebody's life. I owe him
The greatest debt.
Right. Because you think about angels in your life or people that
Show up.
It was almost like
It's a wonderful life moment, right? You know what I mean? Like you almost think was he really there? Or was I imagining like this guy that's sitting next to me. So that's the
That's a Steve Covey story. What a wild
Sliding doors moment.
Right, just the happenstance.
Of that interaction.
And how it changed things. It's so remarkable to reflect on. And it really never ended.
Because it's true.
I now
Seek out that victimization in my life, watch it for other people, try to help.
Because
It's such a nefarious
Common
State of being.
And totally rationalized to
I always talk about the entropic world that we live in. It's like
super transactional, eat what you kill.
Sweating your brow, like it's all the conditions of the world.
Like victimization
Feels almost rational.
But it's
Kind of death.
That feeds to accountability. It feeds to who authors all this.
You think that someone else is authoring it, but you continue to author it and don't take it
That's what I was missing, right? And so that's why the perspective was so powerful.
to this day gives me a little chills. Like I'm so grateful'cause I was about
To
Walk.
Down a path.
That was gonna be miserable.
And I would have said
It wasn't fair.
This is not right.
I need another chance. I want a better shot. No, I want people who will support me more, or you know, you come up with all kinds of stuff.
And that's what would have happened.
And who knows where we'd be it may be, but
Great Stephen Covey, man.

Just a quick thanks to our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show.
Listeners have heard me talk about making before you manage for years. All that means to me is that when I wake up, I block out three to four hours to do the most important things that are generative, creative, podcasting, writing, et cetera.
Before I get to the email and the admin stuff and the reactive stuff and everyone else's agenda for my time. For me, I need to find people who are great at managing.
And that is where Crescent Family Office comes in. You spell it C-R E S S E T. Creset Family Office. I was introduced to them by one of the top CPG investors in the world. Crescent is a prestigious family office for CEOs.
Founders and entrepreneurs. They handle the complex financial planning, uncertain tax strategies.
Timely exit planning, bill pay, wires, all the dozens of other parts.
of wealth management and just financial management that would otherwise pull me away from doing what I love most, making things.
Mastering skills. Spending time with the people I care about.
And over many years I was getting pulled away from that stuff at least a few days a week and I've completely
Eliminate that.
So
Experience the freedom of focusing on what matters to you with the support of a top wealth management team. You can schedule a call today at crescentcapital.com slash Tim. That's spelled C-R-E-S-E-T. CrescentCapital.com slash Tim to see how Cressit can help streamline your financial plans.
And grow your wealth. That's Crescent Capital.
dot com slash
Tim. And disclosure, I am a client of Crescent. There are no material conflicts other than this paid testimonial, and of course, all investing involves risk, including loss of principle. So do your due diligence.
Many of you know how deeply I love Japan and its culture of unwavering dedication to craft, refinement, commitment to continuous improvement. Well why do I bring this all up? Well, the same focus
On improving one thing.
Over the span of years is found in today's sponsor, AG One.
They are now unveiling AG1 Next Gen, the same single scoop, once a day product that I use myself, but now with more vitamins, more minerals, and five new clinically studied probiotic strains shown to support digestive and immune health. AG1 is also NSF certified for sport.
One of the most rigorous independent quality and safety certification programs in the supplement industry. So check them out. Subscribe today to try the next gen of AG One. Listeners will also get a free bottle.
of D3K2, an AG1 welcome kit and AG1 travel packs with your first order.
So start your journey with AG1's next gen and experience the difference firsthand. Simply go to drinkag1.com
Slash Tim.
That's drink A G one.
dot com slash
Tim.

So after that
Realization.
And makes me also think about
His book called Extreme Ownership, written by Jocko Willing.

really also under this ownership. Yeah. Right. Being all about it.
I love that. As you put it. And
I'm curious to know after that realisation, after the questions.
about seeking out mentorship or
Otherwise on the plane.
What were some of
The next steps. What were some of the most important changes that you made?
That allowed you then
A year later.
To be where you were.
It's like
The boat that leaves the harbor.
It changed the direction that you left every morning.
Like there's an intent.
There was a aha, right? It was like, Oh my, I can't believe that I
Almost.
Walk down this.
Treacherous path.
And that's why I knew it was true, is'cause every morning I wake up and say
You didn't have to doubt it. It was like
Don't
Play.
The victim.
Start owning.
And look forward to the possibility.
What you can
Like my theology is about we're here as humans to learn and grow.
It can be tough and miserable, it can be all kinds of things, but
That's the underpinning of what we're trying to do is learn and grow.
Be about it again. Like
Don't be afraid.
It changed how I went to practice, like
You might not have a great practice.
But own it.
You might not be as strong as you thought you were. Well, frickin' own it.
Like stop.
Dancing around.
The authenticity of what you're trying to do. And it once I
Open myself to all that.
It brings you to the moment. Like it brings you to the present. Like what can I do right now?
Not what if or what possibly.
It was a quest that was
Intentional every day.
To go find out?
Like it's okay if you're not as good as you thought you were.
In fact
Let's just know.
I don't need to read the paper.
To have somebody tell me how I'm doing.
I don't need to wait in the line at the grocery store.
At the checkout.
You know, paying.
As they talk about the forty niners waiting for the inevitable
What do you think about Steve Young?
And then waiting for the answer.
As if it was gonna define me.
That's where I was. That's before it was like
Oh, he sucks. I'm like, Oh yeah, I suck. You know, it's like
You've allowed
Thinking that you're doing it to me.
I'm allowing them to do it to me because I'm I'm not defining it right. So
I just
And that has stuck with me even to today, where
It's a vulnerability. It's um
Authenticity about accountability. Like where is it? Where does it lie?
I'm using football to describe a lot of stuff.
That are very important.
Concepts.
It's like when you throw an interception.
And for people who don't know football, what does that mean?
I have the ball. I'm the quarterback. I drop back to pass.
To win the game.
The last minute the last seconds the crowd is screaming.
Th with anticipation.
80,000 people, you can feel the emotion of it, like it's happening.
We're gonna we're winning this game!
And then I throw it.
And the
other team, the defense that's on the field
They intercept it. They take it.
And there's this moment where eighty thousand people with all this anticipation is like
Oh
Like
Who and sports is that
Cool, because that's that's hard to get those moments.
Where they're like
Binary moments where it's like
And then the emotional swing.
Like to get that kind of a swing with eighty thousand people.
It's kinda
Crazy cool. I can't believe I'm saying that because it wasn't that cool at the moment. But it was cra it's crazy to feel that.
And
I spent
A long time.
with my teammates at that moment.
When they would look at me and say, Hey
We watched you do this and it felt like
You threw it right to him.
Mm.
Like there's an underpinning of it like
We know you didn't do it on purpose.
But
Kinda looks like you did.
And so as a human behavior emotion, I'm like
Oh, I gotta show them that this was a mess.
Like you turned the wrong way, or you didn't block your guy, or
Something else happened.
Mitigation. Right. That's the mitigation. It's the instinct. I I I I take the banner.

Look at all this truth.
I'm not telling you lies, I'm telling you truth. This is how it happened.
Facts.
Own the facts.
But I didn't realize
That
There's a truth.
The mitigation.
But it's not
Actually
Useful
Until
I turn to them.
And say the ball was in my hands.
And now it's in
Their hands.
That is the truest truth.
If you live in mitigation, which is kind of the Stephen Covet's like where I
I was living in all this truth.
People saying things, people doing how he felt.
But it was mitigating.
And it wasn't
Authoring.
And so when I started to breathe that back into the system
Look, I screwed it up.
No matter what happened.
Don't worry about mitigation right now.
Screw it up.
Let's go fix it.
And everyone was like
Uh
Yeah, let's go do that. And I'm sorry that I turned the wrong way.
And so all of a sudden is contagious and military ownership is contagious.
And so I have to when I talk about Stephen Covey, I have to talk about my
Authorship.
Vulnerability.
And accountability for me.
The quest is really a
To be honest with yourself.
And that's what I wasn't doing.
And so that's
When you say what did you do? What were the aspects of it? What you know, if someone here heard this and go
I wanna be about that too.
How do I do it?
To me it's it's a state of being. It's not a
list of things to do. Right. Well also sounds like you were
If I'm hearing you correctly.
Basically out of the gate each morning.
It sounds like you are reminding yourself of that underpinning truth.
As you went out into practice.
It was almost like you have to exercise
The victimization.
Yeah.
I don't know a ton about brain. I'm not a scientist, but what I little I know is that the brain's here to keep me safe.
And and so many times your brain's working against you because it's
Playing the victim for you.
And you have to retrain.
kind of how you think about it. So like that's why I say every day
You have to
Keep
Training
A new thought pattern, a new way to and it was so clear to me. It was easy. When it's not clear and muddy.
It's harder. You're like, I can't what was the point? I can't remember and
Here comes the life, but for me it was so clear and obvious.
That I was
playing the victim that I think for me it was just a
State of being every morning.
I might suck.

But it has to be okay.
It has to be
Whatever it is.
So that I don't
Look anywhere else.
It's just
You can author it.
You can get better at it.
But quit.
Living in the mock of mitigation, I guess is how I would say it.
We're gonna come back to some relationship. I'm sorry to riff like that. I know. This is why it's long form. And
As a muggle, right? Someone who's looking at football and I I don't
understand all of the technicality behind it and the strategy, but I respect the athleticism. I look at a quarterback and I wonder
If you were to try to explain it to someone like me who's a

What separates good from great quarterbacks?
Are there any particular elements that you see consistently
In great quarterbacks.
That are
Absolutely.
not paid as much attention to or otherwise. I mean they could be physical, but I'm wondering if anything comes to mind.
There's not a l long enough form for this. Yeah. Because I mean people have been searching'cause think about it, how many
Very, very
Smart people have been looking
Into college.
to predict who can be great in the NFL.
And there's no
Worse results. Yeah.

Then
Trying to predict trying to do that.
And that's why why is college
Not a great
predictor. You know what I mean? What's happening?
Yeah. In the NFL. Like their ability to learn in a certain way? I've been trying to
melt it down to something that people can just grab like this is the truth.
One thing's for sure.
Human behavior.
I don't know what the right way to think about it, but
When there's
Adrenaline.
and focus and pressure
opposition.
I mean how many games are
Someone's paid to actually screw you up, like
physically, like I'm paid.
to grab you and throw you to the ground and hurt you. Like you know I mean that's my I made I've made millions of dollars.
So it's all in that moment.
In that kind of dynamic.
That you now have to
Ferret through
And I w Tim, I wish everybody
Who loves football.
Could stand.
With a helmet on.
And
Six.
four or six three or whatever, six two, whatever anyone like Russell wasn't six five ten.
Stand there.
And
Ferret through
Bodies.
In motion.
The fastest
Most athletic humans on earth.
On both sides.
And
That's why when you talk about
The difference in the NFL is the speed.
It's the athleticism.
Lot of times.
People's brain can't be able to do it.
Process that.
Fast. Right.
They were processing and fine in college.
They're probably in grade in high school.
But it's just an elevation. Gladly for me, there's not a
Super pro.
Like I would have talked out, you know, but
It's I think more than anything the quality
Because there's fundamental things. You gotta be able to throw the ball. You gotta be able to
But it's the it's the process of figuring out
The speed
And then
Because n no one's in my mind, college everybody's every receiver's open in the pros, nobody's open. Like that's the change.
You have to f now figure out how to deliver it.
So that it's not open at the time you throw it.
But by the time it gets there.
It's open.
And I think that's
The best way to explain. Yeah.
How and then do it over and like every thirty seconds. Yeah.
And how many times do you throw it right at the and then
Just as it leaves your hand.
You get just pounded into the ground. You don't even see it.
I mean, how many times do you bottom of a pile?
And you're like, how did it go?
Like you don't know.
And you just listen for the crowd, right? Because you're like
If it's home and they're securing like
It worked, you know.
You know, if they're booing you then it's bad. So
I think it's the processing
That's a guile.
It's a street smart.
It's not necessarily
IQ for
Taking it.
Calculus test. Right.
There's memorization.
But it's there's a
You just get it.
Yeah.
That I see in some of my friends in business a certain
EQ savvy. They're very fast. Like their clock speed is
Hi.
And I think that's they'd be great quarterbacks, right? That's where
That's the thing.
And I think you just described it very well in other fields.
I see it too. But again, even when I see it in other people, I think
I don't know at that speed if that you know,'cause you just don't you don't know until you know. There's also the pressure of imminent
Bodily harm.
I think most humans when
Things get more intense.
The adrenaline runs and when adrenaline runs
The brain.
Focuses, right? It gets smaller.
And it gets
More
Focused, but yet
You're not as aware.
And so that
Physiology doesn't work.
Because in quarterbacking you have to
You have to have the peripheral And it has the more present you are
Like if you're in your backyard.
Not eighty thousand people watching, but and
If like this is all happening in my backyard.
How would I take this in?
So I've noticed that
The best quarterbacks
have a genetic. I think it's genetic.
predisposition to when adrenaline runs, it doesn't
Do the normal.
Things that we're gonna do.
For most humans.
And that's why the quality is like
I wish I was a test for that'cause I could

Just
Thinking out loud, I interviewed someone named Alex Honnalt on the podcast before he did his big run, which turned into a documentary called Free Solo, but he climbed Oh my
I think L I think it was L cap. I can't remember the exact phase. And it's like with no ropes.
And so I interviewed him. I I can't watch it. Yeah, it's too I can't. I mean my I literally can't watch it. I wanna watch it.
I can't watch.
Life and death like that. And his his brain
responds differently to exactly the circumstances. And that's the only way.
Because all of us watch it go, Oh no.
Panic and falling.
Every grip.
It has to be life or death. Like no way. Like
People think about quarterback in the NFL is like, whoa.
You know, how do you do I was like, look.
Talk about what you just said.
This is

Like neurologically or genetically related. Is there anything that
When you look at your trajectory.
that was learnable or coachable, that you absorb by watching other people.
Like what did you improve most at?
So there's a lot out of the box, right? I mean, you were successful as a younger athlete.
And

But
You were successful as a younger athlete, you seem to have some hard wiring out of the box that was very helpful.
But you didn't just hit the ground running in the NFL and you were top of the game. There was something that improved. I'm one more many things.
one fundamental thing had to happen, which was how to throw the football.
It's not intuitive.
Kinda like golf.
Break golf swings.
When you grab a club as an adult.
you're not gonna do it right.
And as a kid I grabbed a football and because I didn't want to be
Embarrassed, I wanted to spin.
Perfectly.
I would spin it out of my hand.
And that's how I did it. But you can't get behind.
To throw it hard.
And you know, this was not something that was like a deep dark secret.
Some people grab it and
grab a golf club, grab a football and just like, Oh yeah, that's how you must do it.
That's not how I did it.
And so I got to college. I'd faked my way
into playing college quarterbacking.
Without really understanding it.
And Jim McMah was the quarterback at the time.
At BYU. Incredible.
Second the highest man, like he was amazing.
But he was righty and I was lefty and I was like, How does
He's throwing it different.
And then I realized that
You have to
Instead of spinning it.
out like to spin it.
You actually go the other direction using the

And then just go in. Oh wow. You spin it.
It comes out and spins, but now you can
Throw it like with all your power. Right, right.
And that was you talking about what I
I had to have that.
I mean those are f those seem
And I've I've played a bunch of sports, certainly at a very J level. Well no, it's but it seems like rebuilding your swing in golf or something. A little bit.
But b it was such an unlock.
Yeah.
Once you felt it, golf's maybe more complicated because you got a stick and you got it's like the fact the fact that it was in my hand, once you felt it.
You're like
Oh my gosh.
And then
What I realized is I can
Now throw it as hard as I want.
Right.
There.
Like it was like this
Gift I had
That was gonna go un
Discovered. Yeah.
And all of a sudden it just it
Came out.
Did you realize that at BYU or just right there.
It was my freshman year.
I wish I would have written down the date was like November 10th, you know? Okay, I was like discovering fire. Fire. Exactly. We we live. And I
All I did from that point on is throw the ball.
Like I just want to throw it. Throw it everywhere. Throw it
And what's ironic
Is that
The coach.
Who was the offensive coordinator at the time.
Soon after.
Because no one knew this is all happening. I was eighth straight I was no one
I was nobody.
But I had figured it out. It had clocked in.
It was clocking.
Right. And so I think
For me
He pulled me aside.
later in the year he goes, By the way, I don't I don't coach lefty.
Said it to me.
I don't coach lefty. And so I was moved to defense.
At the end of that season.
Because
Lavelle Edwards, the coach said, Look, you're super fast.
Super athletic.
We have ten quarterbacks.
We want you on the field.
And so
I start in the winter.
Practices winter.
As a safety in a defense.
Coley position I couldn't stand. I hated every second of it. Soon as practice ended, the quarterbacks would throw after practice.
I'd go
True.
And in the interim.
That coach who told me when coach left he's
took a head coaching job at San Diego State.
Another coach, Ted Tolner, came in.
And I'm throwing with the quarterbacks after practice.
And he goes, Steve
I thought you played quarterback.
I go, I do, but they told me I'm lefty.
So I have to play defense.
And he goes, That's ridiculous. That's stupid.
I go, I know, it's insane. And then I screamed out, then I I didn't learn how to throw too. Like so. I have this
And he's like
Let me go see if I can fix it. So he goes in and changes it.
And that spring.
Springball was a month.
You know, thirty days of practice.
He got two weeks.
For me to practice.
Before I you know, they made a decision and by the end of the two weeks.
Because of this.
New gift.
That was it.
That was it. What that change
Everything'cause I was fast. I could
Run, I could
Throw it hard, I can I could process.
The game wasn't too fast for me. I kind of all made sense to me. I just didn't
Unlock that one.
Fundamental piece of throwing the ball.
You know, it's so fun having this conversation. I've been looking forward to it for so long. And before I forget, I just wanted to say again on a very reduced junior varsity level, but I wrestled my whole life, basically. I have total respect.
Yeah. I rustled in ninth grade. Yeah.
It's a tough sport. I will never wrestle again. It is it is it is brutal. There is no good news. There's no good news.
I remember the first wrestling I go to the st uh just to break in the story.
Free one minute.
Or three minute. I can't remember how long. And so by the first the first one was over, I was done.
Yeah.
The the best the people are in the best shape.
The greatest athletes
When I see wrestlers, I tip my cap.
I walk away, man. I'm like it is a sufferer fest. It is brutal. No matter what. And
I was
Just a brief digression here, but I spent a year abroad in Japan in high school, which was my first time really outside of the United States from Long Island to Tokyo, which changed my whole life. But I competed in Judo while I was there. Then I came back for my final year of wrestling in high school.
And I was doing really, really well.
But I hit a wall.
And the reason I'm bringing this up
Is not at all to compare apples to apples to but I somehow found a book.
Called Mental Toughness Training for Sports by a guy named
James Lair spelled L O E H
Or
Josh Waitskin actually also knows.
And I read that book, and the key piece of that, it talked about different approaches to mental toughness, but it had an assessment and
It's
Asked you to give this assessment to close friends, coach, teammates
And it just made all of your strengths and weaknesses had them rate you on all of these different aspects.
Of
Toughness, performance, resilience.
etcera psychology.
And
Once I had those report cards from all these people and I was able to see
And accept.
Strengths and weaknesses.
And I don't think this is unique to me. It there really was a before and after, right? Like the next practice was different, and that's when everything hockey sticked.
and ended up having a just an incredible season.
But to people who are listening and
haven't experienced what, say, Steve experienced.
on that plane ride or what I've experienced with that book, there really can be that flash boil before and after.
Like that's kinda what
Self help stuff does and tries to get you
And the problem is it doesn't all time land because
I get the idea.
Right.
And so I read the bo Oh, I'll go read the book.
And read the book on Oh.
Okay.
But
The flash point is really to me
The vulnerability.
That that's the hard part.
The hard part is to open up
And take the risk.
Truly.
Internally.
And I was living this life where it's like, I wanna be great, I wanna be great, I wanna be great.
And anyone who tells me I'm not, I don't know what to do about it and it feels like I can't overcome it and
It's like you have to become
Vulnerable.
That's how you take it in.
So people like
How what do I do? I was like
In relationships with your mom.
With your siblings.
The most intimate ones. Can you start?
To recognize
The complexity of that relationship, which it always is.
And
However you've defined it's probably been
Not a great authentic
Vulnerable.
Place can you start
But
Opening up.
To your accountability, to your part of your country. Like how can you
If you want to have an aha moment or you want to have a
Read a book and change, you know, kind of inflection point.
It comes from
You were open for it.
You were ready for it. And I was so desperate with Stephen Covey, but it wasn't necessarily I was looking for it.
It was because it was
It resonated so truthfully.
Like
I'm screwing this up.
I am royally
Screwing this up.
And I cannot.
keep screwing it up. And I think a lot of people
At that moment.
go, oh, I'm gonna keep screwing it up because I don't want to face
The other side of that. That's what Stephen Covey, remember when he said.
A lot of people don't.
Wanna know how good they are.
It makes sense to my brain. Yeah. That unless you get to that space, you really can't
Change.
Seems to me fundamentally.
Accepting the possibility, almost the certainty.
that you're making mistakes and part of accepting how good you are is not necessarily accepting
How excellent you inevitably are.
But accepting the possibility
that you might be falling short.
In certain places. And then also the the grace in it, right? Where
What's the point?
Is the point to
B
Regarded by
People.
Why it resonated with me is'cause my own theology was like
We're here to learn and grow. Let's
Let's do it!
And part of learning growing is I suck right now, but I'm not gonna suck tomorrow.
And once you can start to get into that mode of like
That's what I'm about?
That's what happens. There's a clarity that comes like
Cause now everything gets fed through that.
Truth.
And now it comes in.
More authentically. Like it doesn't doesn't hit the same way.
And you can go in front of eighty thousand people and find
A piece about it.
Eighty thousand people could boo you mercilessly.
It is hard.
What I'm talking about. But you can

Look.
I'd boo me too.
In fact, I might just boo with you.
Like and it's okay.
And you get into that place.
But you're not gonna boo me I'm gonna try not to get booed tomorrow.
But yeah, might be. And like this but as long as your brain is saying
The whole point.
Is to learn and grow, then
Stephen Covey, be about it.
And I think that really freed me up.
Seems like such an important tectonic plate underneath everything else. I want to ask you about one of those quotes from your dad that I was alluding to earlier. So this is from the
Bloomberg piece and the the URL has in it. Steve Young is an athlete who's actually good at finance, which I just part of handed compliment. So your dad is bewildered by
How well he was bewildered by how well you did at football at different levels.
And then this last line is the one I wanted to ask you about. It says honestly, Steve's personality is probably a better fit for law or business.
As compared to professional athlete. Why would he say that?
Do you think?
He's referring
To
I I look we should talk about it. So when I was a kid
Growing up, you know, first grade, second grade, third grade.
I was a kid that when the first day of school
I would turn to my mom or dad and say, Look, uh uh I'm not going.
And they're like, Why?
It's super fun.
And I'm like
My brain was processing it in fear.
And
A new place, new people, and that seemed super scary.
And that's
I think
clinically would be called
Separation anxiety.
And I think
people listening, I'm sure they know somebody probably that
Had that as a kid.
And so
That didn't really show up in my life'cause I realized very young that I was not gonna be like going on vacation with my friends and
I was gonna be home. Sleepovers, not so much. Not so much.
But
During the daytime?
I was killing it.
Only for context, like all state and three sports.
Captain, straight A's, like not because I was
Like
You know.
Tiger parents or tiger person, like
I just
The day was awesome.
I can't wait, it's gonna be great.
And at night it was like
I'm home.
And I didn't realize that how much I had of this is when I went to college.
And had to go through a
process of
Geography change that
was like existential.
And it's hard to explain to people'cause they're like
Going to college is awesome, man. What the-
What's your problem?
And why you didn't unpack your bags the whole semester?
And you kept telling you just miserable?
Like, how's that possible? Well, it's how my brain worked, function. I can't really say much about else about it.
And I remember when I came up back for Christmas, I finally got to come home.
I remember walking through the door.
And going
Oh wow.
I kinda wanna go back to school.
And I realized that that was a
Huge.
Shift.
For me
You know, you live in your own private Idaho, like
all the things that you're feeling, all the things you don't really share. You don't really, you know, it's like some of it you're afraid to even share. And it's like
All of a sudden I realised
It's gonna be all right.
Because now I have two homes.
And that was a shift that I needed. But my dad's describing
Yeah.
generally when I had to go play.
There was a pattern
Uh
Focus.
That was like
You know.
He would call hyperfocus and not fun.
No. And so he's like he's built for something else. I think that's what he's referring to.
But I think it comes from the roots of that.
What I would call
clinical part of my life.
Another little
Internal battle.
'Cause now I like
I see the world
And I'm like

Can't wait to
Discovered. At some point it just flipped.
The thing that was so constrictive and
Difficult and
Threatening.
My parents left for a couple of days when I was really little.
At my aunt's house.
And I can still smell it.
I can still feel it. I can still like
The terror.
Of them walking out.
And I just think
I look back and like
That's an insane reaction. I rem I can still hear my brothers and sisters outside.
Laughing and
With all the my cousins.
But that was me.
Part of the authenticity has come to
A place where we can look at the eye too, you know?
I think that explains my dad's comment.
That part of me
But what he doesn't realize is that part of me
Drove
The intensity and the focus. So it's like there's not all bad. Yeah, there's a flip side. There's a flip.
And so I would say
To my dad
Well, the way you're looking at it, I can see why you'd say that.
But the way I'm looking at it is like I think it was an N
I had to have it.
Yeah.

Just a quick thanks to our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show.
It has been a wild year for money in the markets, but managing your cash doesn't have to be a guessing game. Wealthfront has a simple solution to help you cut through all the chaos and manage your money with confidence.
With the Wealthfront Cash account.
Your cash can earn three point two five percent variable annual percentage yield from partner banks.
You get instant
Fee-free withdrawals to eligible accounts twenty-four-seven.
Your money is always accessible when you need it. When you're ready to invest.
Transferring funds into one of Wealthfront's expert built investing portfolios is easy peasy.
For a limited time.
Wealthfront is offering my listeners, that's you guys.
An additional zero point six five percent boost
over the base rate.
For three months.
Which means you can get up to three point nine percent.
APY on your first one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in deposits.
More than one million people trust Wealthfront.
to help build their wealth.
go to wealthfront.com slash Tim to receive the boosted APY offer and start earning up to three point nine percent variable APY today.
This is a paid endorsement of Wealthfront.
Wealthfront brokerage isn't a bank.
The base APY is as of december nineteenth, two thousand twenty five, and subject to change.
For more information, see the episode description.
I
Was there a point where
I mean this is gonna be a strong way of putting it, but you know, I I've experienced this in my own life.
And have talked about.
Struggles.
Some of it I think is hereditary with
Generalized anxiety.
had depressive episodes, which I've seen throughout my family.
And appreciate how open you've been about
Discussing some of this, and I'm curious at what point.
You realized you didn't need that kind of monkey on your back. And specifically, I'm thinking about
In the course of doing research for this.
Reading.
a New York Times piece and it mentions Dr. James Clint and Reggie, I guess.
And approach you approaching Reggie at one point. I think it was after what, three sleepless nights, something like that. Mm-hmm.
And
I guess I'm wondering.
What was happening, right? For people who don't know what the context is. Yeah.
And then
What happened?
Afterwards that helped.
It's kind of bookend.
Actually tight book ends between the Steve McCovey story and the Jim Clint story.
Because
Just before that.
And maybe that's what leads to the vulnerability in the depth of what I just described.
And where I was in a hole and victimized and
There was a game that I just starting like Thursday night. The good news about all of that
Anxiousness around playing. I always slept.
So it was like you could deal with it.
And all of a sudden I wasn't.
And so it was a game where
People that I was.
Near.
We're like, you're a mess.
You gotta talk to them. Like you gotta you can't play.
And I'm like, Oh no.
That's not an option. Like we're playing.
And I remember telling them
As I left for the game.
In such a state I just
Probably never been quite like that.
So I promised him, I said, look.
If
We win.
I'll talk to it.
the team doctor just tell'em like I'm not something's going on, you know.
But if we lose I can't
There's no place.
To be able to
Like you can't
An excuse. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
That's just the way my brain was working.
So
We won.
I played pretty well.
Like I don't suggest, by the way, that that's how you prepare. Correct. But
After the game, I'm sitting in the
Training room.
Cow
Ice pack and I see Reggie.
You know, he's been around. He'd been around all the Super Bowls. He was somebody that
I promised
My friends that I would
Do this.
But I didn't want to.
And we won.
So like
We're good for a little while, right?
But I did. I pulled him aside and I remember
Back in the corner of the old candlestick park, it was
Like stuff was dripping down. It's a dank.
It's old school, right?
And we're in the back corner.
Yeah.
kind of move away from everybody and I'm kind of almost nose to nose. I'm like
Reggie, I'm going through this thing, I don't know what's wrong, and I kinda explained it all.
And as I'm explaining it.
I see a big ball.
Of a tear, like a big ball.
Come out of his eye.
And then drop.
And then another one.
And he hasn't changed his face, he hasn't changed anything.
And I'm like
Reggie.
Are you crying?
And he's trying not to like break, like he's like
I
Don't
With
So much.
Clinical anxiety.
I could hardly get through.
Medical School.
Mm.
That's what he said. That's what he said.
This is what he I mean, as he answered with a straight like he hadn't changed his face at all.
I
Had dealt with
And I
Watching you.
Instinctively felt.
That there was something going on.
And I
I feel like I've
Like malpractice.
That this is what's how to come to it.
Like he felt this
Incredible.
Pain.
As the
Team physician that would and
qualified to maybe watch for this kind of stuff. And I'm like

Like I was relieved.
Yeah. Cause I didn't know what was gonna happen. I was like splaying something that was all like
Total vulnerability, total like
Weakness, it felt like, right? Mm-hmm.
And he's like responding like
Oh, I blew it.
And I'm like, Reggie.
Don't worry about it, bro.
But he said we're gonna get the bottom of it. And it wasn't
Maybe
Two days later.
He sent me up to a child psychologist, psychiatrist, I'm not sure.
And they gave me a test of ten questions.
It would describe things that happen in your life and that would be if you answer it.
Yes, to eight of them, then you're kind of
undiagnosed childhood separation anxiety as an adult.
And so I was nine of'em, right? Like so and he said
Most people, Steve.
Who have this going on in their life.
They're like
Self medicating, right? They're in the basement. They're like, you know, but you're
The M V P the NFL. So I think we're just gonna let you
Keep rolling. You know what I mean?
And find your way through it. And I I did find
Solace in the knowledge.
Because I
Until that point.
I had subconsciously always known that I didn't like
Being at other people's houses when I was a kid or you know, in other places.
But my life was so full
And
Amazing.
That I just kind of we just made our way.
And so this is a point where
Now book ended with Stephen Covey maybe three weeks later.
These are pretty.
Vital
Big changes that happen that I think
Allowed me
The place to kinda find
Peace about it all.
And so was the the diagnosis
In itself.
The treatment and the respect that
You finally had
A label to apply, a way to think about it.
So that it wasn't this nebulous set of worries or what allowed you, I guess, to go back to the street.
I didn't think about it as a
Stigma.
Like I thought about it as like
Oh.
That makes sense. Yeah. And then as I told my parents and told my my
Then we found out that like in my mom's side of the family
This is
A thing.
Yeah.
And uh explained all kinds of
craziness that was going on that now go
Oh.
So now I get paid forward, you know what I mean?
So in its own way, that was the knowledge was the key.
And then because I was so
functioning through it like it was helpful. Didn't make
Playing in front of eighty thousand people and trying to be a great player didn't make it simple.
But it I think it was a piece to the
Puzzle for me.
to recognize that what I experienced as a kid
Then you could kind of put into context.
And knowledge is power, right?
Yeah.
I remember maybe it was
Two years ago.
I wanted to do this experimental treatment that's actually not so far from where we're sitting, right? We're sitting here in Palo Alto and they're in Sunnyville, but I was doing something called accelerated TMS. I won't bore you with all the details, but it's this medical treatment and they had to put me through all these assessments beforehand. Is it red light?
It's called the Cacia Clinic, and they apply a
magnetic coil basically to your brain or to your skull. And the long and short of it is it produces a type of stimulation that is remarkably effective for
Generalized anxiety, in some cases depression.
O C D. Mm-hmm.
And part of
them checking the boxes for me to be able to pursue this, not just for myself, but to
interview scientists about this on the podcast and hopefully present more tools to people who might be suffering.
They took me through all these different tests and at one point
After an hour or two, they took this big pause and they said, You know, Tim
Based on all of this.
You
Seem to qualify for moderate to severe OCD. And then he paused and the the doctor was kind of nervous and he's like, I know this is a lot to take in. If we need to take a break and come back tomorrow, and I was like, Are you kidding me? I was like, It makes perfect sense. Like none of my friends would be surprised. It was just like in retrospect, yeah, it makes a lot of things click together. Yeah. Even one of my friends later, he's like, Oh.
Man, now knowing that you got diagnosed makes it so much easier to put up with your O C T And I was like, Okay. And it was really uh
I think there's a risk that maybe you over define yourself by the label, but in my case
I was just like, Oh, okay, that's great. Now I have a shorthand way
to piece these things together. That's exactly how it felt. It was like I got a job to do, I'm about it.
I didn't realize how victimized I had become and how inauthentic I'd become and and how all that part of it.
But at least
It all kind of like
Like you said, my friend's like oh
Yeah.
I can see that. You know, my parents like
My dad's like, I keep telling you just go have fun.
And you're not having any fun.
Oh, now I get it. So that way it was
It was useful.
In that way.
I feel like
Again.
What are we here to do? Learn and grow. It's like that's okay.
Let's go let's go through it, right? And
And I still to this day
Find myself
The anxious parts
Have all kind of abated.
But
The pattern as a kid
I'm realizing now
How you achieve, how you accomplish.
What's the root of how you
try to do it and I was doing it in a fear based way.
Like in other words.
If I
Worry.
About something that's important to me enough.
I can make it.
Happen.
It's magical thinking in a way, right? Like if I worry and work and
Fred and
Something good will happen.
Like in my life. And
If you think about all the good in your life.
Did it come because you worried about it? Probably that's the wrong dynamic.
But it takes again this vulnerability and authenticity to kinda say
Over my life I've now realized watching good things happen and like
I don't even worry about it.
Something good happened and it I didn't have to author it.
And so it's like
Life is so
crazy amazing in a in that way where
The onion unfolding like unraveling, like you just
Learning
is so powerful to your life and
And again, you can't get there unless you're willing to say
It's okay.
It could sting.
It could hurt. It could hurt for a while.
But at least it's
What is real, you know? Yeah.
Yeah.
Steve, I have to ask you about
The following. This is the law degree. Over the course of seven off seasons he pursued a law degree
Happy W.
Side note.
This is from the Bloomer piece. His great great great grandfather was Brigham Young himself. That's wild. I mean, I've spent a lot of time in Utah. That's uh maybe a whole separate chapter for another time, but
Why the law degree? Why did you pursue that?
My dad when I was growing up
'Cause I had a picture of Roger Stahlback, who was a famous quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys on my wall.
He'd tell me what do you want to be when you grow up and I'd be like I wanna
Be a quarterback.
Like Roger Starbeck, uh.
Look at my you know, and you go, What?
That's a great dream, son.
That's a great dream. And dreams are
Less than one percent chance.
But dreams are important.
Like have a dream.
Like I love it.
Have it.
But that's
Very unlikely.
I need you to make a plan that's eighty percent chance.
And so I would tell him, uh, eighty percent chance I'll fake it and tell you that I'll go to college and then I'll go to law school.
Uh you dad, and I'll be a lawyer.
Okay, so my dad was a lawyer. My dad was a lawyer.
You know, he described law and I was like, I think I could do that.
So then I would tell him that he goes, You know?
I think there's an eighty percent chance that you can do that.
So that'll be the plan.
That's a plan.
And now we have a dream and a plan. He was always about that.
He even he turned ninety in February.
And I recently asked him like
Well what's the dream, Dad? You know,'cause you always
And you're like one ten.
You know, like he has it in his mind. Yeah. Like that's the dream.
So then I had a dream and a plan.
So then I
Go to
Calls and I end up going.
Pro and
The dream comes true, right? I'm like, dad.
So much for one percent, bro. It's a hundred percent now. You know? And uh and then he would always say, Well
The average career is three years.
And then I played for six years and it's like well
What are you gonna do the rest of your you know, you're gonna retire at thirty five and then what
Another half of your life, what are you gonna do?
So he just kept
Kind of put in my head. Dog with a bone, yeah. Yeah, well it it it wasn't I didn't bother me because I knew it was
Pretty true what he was saying. Like what are you gonna do with the rest of your life?
And so it got I don't know how it got in my head. I look back on that as like
Tim, that's that's just stupid.
to try to go to law school while you play. Like that's just
Like this is dumb.
But
I I figured it out with the ABA with the law school'cause they're
The first semester in law school is in the fall.
nationwide. The first year curriculum is sequential. You can't
Cheat it.
And they worked it out where I could audit.
The second semester, one winter
If I pass the classes cold, then that would qualify me to come back and take the second semester, blah, blah, blah, blah.
So over seven
Years six.
For credit semesters.
I went back and what was
funny now, but wasn't funny at the time is we went to three Super Bowls.
In that time.
And the Super Bowl's in February.
You know, end of January, February, school starts
Right after the new year.
So I'm showing up a month late and no one in law school cares.
You still gotta do the work.
So I remember
Going to parade down Market Street in San Francisco.
And jumping on a plane, the Delta plane back to Salt Lake City at like evening
And then the next morning in class
And every class, the five first you know, whatever class I usually five or six classes.
Every class is Socratic method.
The walk in and they say
Miss Jones, can you please
Brief us on blah blah.
The whole day was
Mr. Young.
Could you please brief us up? So I'm just scrambling trying.
But I think I loved that in a weird way.
But I look back and it's like
What are you doing, man?
What are you doing?
But my dad was right.
I'm now twenty five years in private equity.
And
The only way I was able to cut the line
Being late to the party.
was because I had an advanced degree.
That's how I did it.
And so
He was right.
Yeah, it served its purpose. Dream and plan.
All right. So you're doing
Yeah, these seven off seasons. Flying back.
Parade, get on a plane, fly back next morning.
Mr. Young.
Right. So you're doing that.
How do you make the hop?
to finance. How does that
So I okay, so
You gotta remember.
The forty niners
Nineteen eighty eight.
We're given land in Santa Clara.
by the city of Santa Clara'cause there's nothing going on down there.
To build a
Training facility.
And try to attract more
Business and
That's funny now because Silicon Valley, you know you know
Santa Clarence. Middle of the is the epicenter of Silicon Valley.
And so that's where I worked all the years.
And so as we worked and watched
Explosion.
of Silicon Valley and technology.
We're sitting in the in the locker room.
And there's five or six of us, the lunch group that we would
Figure okay, look, how do we get in on all this
Venture investing and all the stuff that's going on, these businesses, guys were
Leaving Stanford.
Business school.
Literally
In the middle of class we get a
Tex or something, and they would take the CEO job of a new startup. They'd walk out. You know what I mean?
And so how do we get in the middle that's we started trading access to the locker room.
From the skies on Sand Hill Road for Venture
Investing. So we started to get
Everything they did, we give them fifty thousand dollars of what they were doing. We just wanted to relationship happen.
Yeah. So it doesn't seem like the Venn diagrams would totally overlap. Well no, because like
Doug Leone was a great guy. He's one of the great
He was one that said look
We didn't make a trade.
Yeah. It wasn't a transaction. It was more like hey
We'd love a relationship.
Come in the locker room.
Be a part of our life.
And let us be a part of your life, essentially.
And he was somebody that
I think really appreciated.

complexity of what we were doing and the high function that we were doing and then
We obviously appreciated
The hype function.
And so we shared in that. And I think that that was
Та старід процес.
I was asked by Brian Maxwell, who's now passed away, but he started
Power bar.
That was a meal replacement for marathoners, right? But for a single guy, that was my it was meal replacement, like not for marathon, for day to day, right?
And so I kinda got famous around the Bay Area that I was you know, he you know power by he asked me to be on the board.
And I was like wow.
I never done that before. I'll try that.
First board meeting.
Larry Consini.
One of the
Like
Icon of Silicon Valley lawyers.
So when I first moved, just for people who don't recognize so back in the day
Wilson Sun Senior were kind of the connective tissue.
behind the scenes for Silicon Valley. They were one of the big
It was the backbone of the legal backbone. And then Warren Hellman.
of Hellman and Fre like Warren Hellman's like the icon.
Uh
Investing.
in the late nineties.
And really his whole life. He's he is the icon. So there's two of them and I'm sitting on the board.
I mean your list is pretty insane. Pretty insane. Yeah. How does this happen?
And so
I
had a guy that I I'm glad this is long form. I had a friend in college
Who was messing around with the URLs before the internet was shut down by the government. You could go in and he had an algorithm where he'd put a geographic boundary.
around an internet search and if you're old enough to know in the nineties
The internet was a mess. It was a mess. If you put in
You know
Palo Alto
Hammer.
Yeah.
You'd get like a USSR sickle.
Yeah. Like you'd get like nothing makes sense. But with this enablement, you could put in Palo Alto
hammer and get the local Ace Hardware store. Yeah. So that made it
useful and so
We had that enablement. My buddy was doing it. He was like, Can you help me? I'm like
So I take it to the
Board meeting.
And I'm like, hey this what do you think about this? And like
That
Works.
You niede start a business.
That
Retailers are panicked right now.
Because their brick and mortar stores are gonna

Amazon nineties, like it's ten years before the time, but the people are thinking about it.
Take this enablement to them, they can query their
inventory real time and
They can drop ship it that day and someone can pick it up. They could use you know, it's like it becomes your distribution point.
And I'm like, oh.
So we went
And did that. And my longtime partner
Thirty years together.
left his banking job at Morgan Stanley to be the CO of this business called found.com.
What's your partner's name?
Rich Lawson.
How did you meet this? I love these stories. And I wanna s just take a quick sidebar for folks.
Because
This is a great example of going to where the action is.
In this sense, I just had a conversation with Bill Gurley, legendary venture capitalist. Yes.
He's got a book that's might be out by the time this is published, but it's coming out soon called Running Down a Dream. And in it is a chapter on Going Where the Action Is. Bob Dylan going from Minnesota to
New York City.
And you can kinda go down the list and in this case, it's like you you happen to be
In the epicenter. Again.
I wish I was Bob Dylan and had the smarts to go from
Minneapolis.
to the action in Silicon Valley. But I actually
Luckily
Yeah.
was already here, like just sitting here. I actually watched the traffic get worse and worse. Like where's all this traffic coming from?
Like I used to get to work in ten minutes, now I get to work in thirty.
And so it's like
You made fun of the athletic brain uh
It's like took a little while to kinda get it going.
But in the end, we were in the middle of it and I found myself
So to finish that story
We start a business. Rich is the CEO. I'm the chairman.
Back by Excel KKR and Bain.
And uh it was
All of that. And so
That's where More.
And
Larry Cincini.
Larry became a very close friend of mine and mentor.
Still is.
I mean, really it still is. I mean, he's just an amazing guy.
He's like Steve.
I'm a lawyer.
You need to go do this.
That's how it switched.
Oh, I see. He said, I'm a lawyer and he is saying that referring to He's just said, Look, your EQ and the way you look at the world
And I had graduated in finance, so it was like I knew enough to be dang not not even dangerous, but knew enough to know what what it was about.
You said you need to go help people build businesses.
That's kinda how it switched.
And
I'm looking right over your shoulder.
That looks like maybe a tweet from Rich Lawson, your partner says very proud to break into the top twenty of five hundred plus private equity firms globally.
In just over the decade. So
I mean you've had these multiple chapters.
How did you connect?
With Rich Lawson, that's actually you can see.
Rich Lawson right there. So perfect timing. How did you manage to Well, let's let's back up because
What you're alluding to, I think, is
That what we've been talking about really for the whole time is transition.
Yeah.
And
The difficulties.
'Cause I love football and I was very successful at it.
I run into a lot of people who played in high school.
And loved it.
The dream.
Like they would give their arm to be able to
or leg to be able to play in college and keep the dream going.
And always think about
How when I left the game
It wasn't necessarily force, but you do age out. Like it just sooner or later. Even Tom Brady aged out at forty five. Like it's still as a
It's a young man's game.
And I remember the day I retired.
I was known for this thing that I had been able to do worldwide even.
The next day I remember waking up and now that that's gone.
Now what?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And what I've learned about transition that leads to rich loss and
How I describe it that everyone and even the high schooler
The last day they play and it has to be put away.
Needs to recognize
and treat it like a death.
To mourn it and go through all the steps.
Of mourning it and burying it and actually having it as a place that you can
Keep referring to as a
Almost like a grave site.
Because otherwise.
You carry it around.
You never transition.
Transitioning is about
Actuv.
Right. And so
I'm really grateful my
Roger Stauback, poster on my wall.
I got to know him.
Mm.
You became a friend.
Like it's insane. Yeah.
How cool is that. And he famously transitioned.
Probably the most successful transition in history of the NFL.
What did he transition to? He did the Starbuck Company was a real estate business that he was hugely successful.
And I remember asking him towards the end of my career.
Roger, what do I
Give me some tips.
Run.
Might run.
Run where he goes just.
Run away.
That was his tip.
Because he said.
The game will never leave you.
But you need to leave it.
You need to move.
On
And I thought that was just
Simple but really important.
And I tell people today, and I really want to write a book about transition.
Because everybody is constantly transitioning, whether they like it or not.
Most of it forced.
If there's a
Authentic, vulnerable way.
To transition and bury and and mourn.
You can wake up the next day, realize
I was great at something.
And now I'm not even good at anything else. But you know what?
I'm gonna
We're gonna learn and grow.
I'm slow, but I'm getting there.

What did morning?
football look like to you? What did running from it look like and what did morning so you lead to rich, so
As we built this business and I was still playing.
I was getting ready.
To run.
And I was already running away from it, even before it was over.
I think there was a f
Fear based, which is not necessarily the best way to do this.
that if I didn't run really fast, that it would somehow
Keep me from getting
really clear of it all. And so I just started
You know, we had that business. We just run it and so he was a banker at Morgan Stanley.
We took this idea that Warren and
And Larry had
Said great.
My buddy Jim Herman and he said
as we went to go get financing for this business.
We ran into Rich, who was a
very successful banker and Morgan Stanley, but young
recognizing everything that's going on, I says, You need a CEO.
And I'm like
Yeah, you're right, we do.
You gotta be in the late nineties in technology, like
I'm walking out of Morgan Stanley, I'm gonna be the CEO. And so we've been together ever since then.
And so the transition you're talking about as far as
I think because of that energy around
Great mentors. I mean I'm very, very lucky.
I didn't have to do it raw.
I didn't have to do it.
alone. That would be super difficult.
I had
All this
mentorship, all this ex modeling, all this example.
From Roger from
Everybody
So to me it was just
Can you just go and act?
What is obvious to go do.
And I really appreciate it'cause the game never does leave you.
I traffic and memorabilia for our golf tournaments for Forever Young Foundation and so we need
Constant.
signatures from
Jerseys from players and hockey players and
Or Hollywood or and so I
To this day.
You can't imagine how many
signatures that I do that as part of the memorability company and they pay me
In
Stuff.
So we can use it for the tournaments you know what I mean?
And I'm still if you told me in twenty twenty five I'd still be signing my name on Steve Young jerseys or helmets.
It blows the mind.
But
We're still trafficking in it because
It funds the foundation and
We have great golf tournaments and we make a lot of good things happen. So it's like a
Virtuous cycle that we got going.
It seems also
Really fortunate.
We were chatting.
Briefly, and we won't get into the details of that, but about some of the former military kind of Tier One operators who are friends of mine who run into a very similar challenge, right? They're they're the best of the best. It is brutal. They've been hugely invested in
Not that dissimilar in some ways from
Top level professional athletes. Hand they go from being the best at what they do to question mark.
Or
feeling they're not good at anything. And and that happens to gold medalists or or I should say just Olympians broadly.
It happens to the high schooler.
Who never leaves football. You're talking about there's dramatic moments that are clear, like the SEAL team
Who's the elite member it like it resonates with everybody, like, Oh my gosh, that would be hard. It happens. Yeah, but it happens so many other ways. But the transition pattern
is so common.
Yeah, and I was I was thinking
How
Incredibly fortunate, it seems to me that you happen to be here because startups are a full contact support. Right. Like that is full commit, right? It is not unbelievable. That is not a nine to five check in, check out.
going six out of ten. This startups is in a way, it just seems like a a a good fit.
In a sense.
For someone who's been in six gear for so long.
There's a little bit of drug in it, right? Where
The action.
I talk about this with other quarterbacks have played a long time.
What do you miss?
And you missed.
The opportunity to pour yourself into something.
Like
I always say
There's physical athleticism that's part of it. There's emotional athletism that part of it. There's
psychological about it.
Like it's every part of you is necessary.
Be poured into be
even good at this, if not great.
And so
That
Rigor.
Even business can't
Provide that. It's nothing like it.
in front of eighty thousand people with a score, you know, and officials and
A clock and like that's just
It's a really
Crazy cool.
Environment.
Because there's
There's truth in it.
Always. Like purity to it. Sur purity to it.
But even in the purity of it.
Going back to the truest truth of accountability.
You can still
Try to fake.
That it wasn't you.
Even in the most true, clear.
Witnessed eighty thousand witnesses just watched it.
And you can listen to quarterbacks after the game.
Especially the you know, losing quarterbacks when they ask him what happened.
Try to spin
What 80,000 people just witnessed, bro? Like come on. And so in that way.
It just tells me about human nature that if you try to spend
What just happened on a football field, what are you gonna try to spend in business or in your personal life? Family or in your family.
Like and that's what I say when people say, look, I really want to change. I really want
to
Transition to something
Better.
I want to learn and grow.
Authentically, truly.
You gotta be about it. You know, it has to be
Core. Core because otherwise you'll f
Humans.
An inch entropy with gravity and
Our bodies are rotting like
Things are gonna like it's just truth.
We'll go along with that rationale.
And
That is a transactional
Half
Yeah.
But yeah, you're right. It's a rotten path.
And people we live it all the time. We're definitely gonna talk about transactional and
Um we're gonna get into get into one of your books.
But I'm so curious.
Morgan Stanley Banker.
Name Rich Lawson. And he's like, You're gonna need a CEO. Furthermore, I'm the guy. Why
Why say yes, right? What was the what was the pitch? I mean I love spa of it.
I mean
Think about it.
I don't know how I try to explain stuff, it's always my dad goes like or my wife is like
Steve, get to the point. But industrial revolution, hundred years. Technology revolution, twenty years. Like like so like
It was happening.
Yeah. Right in front, like with us.
Businesses were literally going from nothing to
To public.
In months. Yeah.
That we're now being valued at
A billion like it was insane time.
So you have to put yourself in there. So why would Rich turn and see this I
Because I I understand why he would do it. It's more the question of why you guys would agree to it.
'Cause we just had an idea.
Yeah, I see, I see. You needed an he seemed like an optimizer. And and really the guys that formed us and the alg the guys that did the algorithm and the
I'm the facilitator, right? Like I I wanna be in business. I w I'm energized by the
Human
complex calculus in business.
And so I was drawn to it.
I still have imposter syndrome a little bit, right? Like
But back then I definitely felt like I'm kind of
Making my way through it.
And here's a guy that was classically trained at Harvard.
Went in business, you know, went to consulting and then now is a
Big banker and like
To me, he's like
It's got a whole category. He's expert, right?
That's fun. The yin and yang of it all. What is made
I mean, I've quite a few friends. I mean a lot of friends in the investing world or at large, but I've quite a few in the private equity world as well.
And I mean, how long have you guys been partners now?
It was that was nineteen ninety seven. So it's been a minute. Almost thirty yeah, thirty years.
Why has it worked, right? Because a lot don't.
Uh very yeah, right. There we go.
First of all
I think that there was a clarity early on that
The things that he's really good at.
I really am not good at.
And the things that I was really good at
Wasn't his strongest suit. You know, so there's a yin and yang kind of feel to it.
And then there's a trust that gets built.
That just works.
Like it either does or doesn't.
And it gets tested.
I mean the times that
In thirty years, or you gotta be kidding me. I remember
Sitting in the corner, there was a time there's existential moments.
When it felt like
Well,
That was fun.
You know?
See you later. What types of if you if you're able to talk about like what types of
Well there's just a how do those private equipment.
It's really unique business because you go globally to find investors to believe that you can go
Now deploy capital
In businesses.

you know, significantly more over a period of time than
the public equities or other
bonds or anything else. And so private equity's got this
Fuse.
Of capital.
That has to
Be great.
And you have to be great in kind of
ten year increments.
So that
As you go out and you raise the money and you go do it.
Every few years you're gonna have another referendum.
On
Whether you're in business or not.
Truly.
And you could be out of business.
And it so it's a crazy world.
To now
Try to build
Continuity from fun to fund.
And a business that reflects
The values that you want in the middle of
The truth of it is like
There's a referendum every few years.
And it might go away.
When you're getting started, like any startup.
There are
Existential moments that feel
I look back and it probably wasn't
Truly existential, but it
Felt it?
And that builds trust.
Or
Scar tissue.
Yeah.
You mean to me
The most interesting people in the world
Have lots of scars.
Right.
and have filed a bounty in it.
the good in it. And so that's why I think that's that's how it's worked. And like we we had our
Holiday party yesterday.
Last night and there we are sitting together.
Chopping it up like
Well amazing what's happened.
But yet what we can do, you know, so
It's just
Henry Cravitson.
George Roberts both I've had the pleasure
And the honor of knowing
And knowing them and that's one of the great
Partnerships of all time.
Two cousins that have just
And they still
Humble.
Gentlemen.
Sincere. I mean, I just I'm inspired by both of them.
And so in that way
I'm now getting old enough where we can talk about
It's
generational relationships.
Yeah.
Are super cool.
We all had the same office, we never had separate offices.
He's like
I'm Oscar, he's Felix, like you know the old odd couple. You know. That's you look at the around the room with all the helmets hanging up.
That's Covid. All the stuff I remember I told you about the memberbilia that I eat traffic in?
They were in the corner in a big pile. Like it was just a pile of crap that just keeps getting cycled through.
And during Covet he couldn't take it. He's like I gotta clean this place up. That's me. So that would be me. So we hung it I walk in.
Yeah.
After a couple of weeks being I'm like, what have you done? You hung up helmets around that. Don't look stupid. You know? Cause to me as a
Ex pro athlete, like that's just dumb. Yeah. But to him it's like that's clean. You know? And so uh we have helmets. Looks pretty cool as the background with the camera facing this way. So HGG C handsome good guy company, what does that stand for? It it's historically it was Huntsman Gay.
Global capital.
At the time, back in two thousand eight, seven
Rich and I were the younger partners, founders.
And the two older partners, John Huntsman and Bob Gay with Craig Benson.
And John wanted
His name on it. And Bob didn't want his name on it.
So but then John won.
So it's Huntsman Gay Global Capital, but then
John.
was selling his huntsman chemical business, but
In the two thousand eight credit crisis.
You can read the story, it's an amazing story where
Leon Black at Apollo had bought it.
Signed it.
But then didn't fund it.
Because everything had gone crazy.
And then what ended up happening is
The transaction did not
Get funded.
They broke it. There was a huge lawsuit and billion dollar settlement, but the net of it was
John Huntsman never was able to
Come over.
So here we are raising money as Huntsman getting and we don't have John.
And then Bob left for full time church service three years later.
And uh so then we go to fun two and it's like
For Huntsman Gay Global Capital.
No John, I said no Bal Gate.
But yeah, Rich Lawson and Steve Young, what do you think? Let's go.
So that's so glad I asked such better So much better than I'm so then we so then we have a decision to make in two thousand twelve.
What do we name ourselves, you know?'Cause we can't stay with that name. Yeah.
And there's a little panic, like
Again, existential crisis. Can we even raise Can we raise a fund?
Let's melt it down so at least it's
A reflection of something that was existing.
And I
Honestly and everyone around my the firm knows this, I can't stand our name.
Because H G G C is hard to say. So you stand up in a very formal setting and you're trying to
Express the values in this
incredible partnership culture that you've built off of the back of my previous life in football and how you have to come together and uh Perry Passue, we can block arms, strategic vision, we can go, we can and and you know, everyone in here at H G C
You know, it's like
Uh my great idea is to call it c I used to play at Candlestick Park, so it's candlestick ventures or candlestick partners, but
We've so we've branded it, it's worldwide, it's everything. So now we're H G G C
Just because and it's fine. It's fun. It's fun.
You mentioned something that actually
Might be.
A nice segue to where I was planning on going next anyway. You said left for full time church service.

And I was gonna ask.
About faith.
Yeah. Sure.
not only plays in your life now, but has played. Has it changed form?
Over time. I don't know if it has or not. No, it always does. But it should.
Yeah.
Learn and grow, right? I mean that's just
As a young kid, you know, like
It was formative, right? Like it gave you a sense that
Gods.
With you.
Cheering you. I always my as a kid, I always felt like
You know, even in the hardest times, like no, God's cheering you on. Like
I never felt
This wrathful.
Like when I read the old Testament like
Not really that doesn't make sense to Leviticus L doesn't have a bile on it. But it doesn't it actually and I was able as a young kid to kind of ferret through
The things that resonated and the stuff that
Didn't.
And so my
Theology is really
Wrapped into
What I would call
No, being LDS is
Like
Complex because it was a
And we claim this kind of restoration, so it's a restart.
And in the restart there's
I mean, you look back at the history in the last two hundred years, it's
pretty chaotic. And so for me, I don't have to carry all that.
Right.
But the things that resonate, the things that are
Beautiful.

Rooted in that.
event. So it's like to me it's always resonated.
It's always been something that
And I don't have to carry
what I see as kind of the chaotic
Parts of of a young
organization. So in that way I'm
I tell my wife, you know, she
She got me started on
No, really questioning
And challenging.
Thank you
Culture.
as a cultural experience because
True faith can't be cultural.
Right. It has to be
Rooted in
In something
Actionable that
is beyond you.
You know, and so
I find myself.
More energized than ever.
Around faith and around the
Potential.
And it's
Beauty.
Yeah.
Recognizing how
Devastatingly painful and difficult.
Then
All the other parts of it. So
Ferriting through all that.
I find myself
More energized than ever.
at how I feel.
Around
Face.
And
connection and relationship.
I learned somewhere in there that
If you're not careful.
Go back to
What we talked about around
Entropy and
Rotting and transaction and
Like if you're not careful
Religion becomes
what I call boy scout theology, kind of
Go get a merit badge.
Do the work. It's good work. It's not bad work.
Go get a merit badge.
Put it on your sash and then wear it around town so that everyone knows
What an amazing boy scout you are. I mean, does that make sense? It does make sense. So that theology is productive. It's like performative.
There's good things that come out of it.
But the relationship can't last.
Because it's
Transactional.
It is self interested at its core.
And it can't make it. So I'm
super energized by
The roots.
That really
Kind of like
I don't know.
I I find myself every day
Enjoying
As I chew on the ideals of my faith, like
How it keeps
Resonating in a way that
It's
We're talking about learning growing, right? Like I find myself
Always
Refining.
And spiritually kind of that
Light that I feel that I
I wanna be around.
And it doesn't necessarily it comes from everywhere.
I find my
Organized religions.
It's not hoveled. It's not insular. It's not
Like it makes me more curious.
Like I can't wait to hear
When you tell me about something that you're doing like
Tell me more about that, man, because
That's informative to where uh kind of where I'm sitting.
And that's when I know it works.
Is when you get away from
Transactional insular
Hovelling.
Self righteousness.
Judgment.
Like those are all transactional words.
You asked me a question, I'm sorry to go start riffing on it, but
It's a really
I think energizing place to be for me right now.
No need to apologize. I mean, this is an exploration and I
Wanted to ask for a number of different reasons. One of them
I mean, this is a reflection of sort of the antithesis of Insler also in my reading of
The Law of Love, your book, which was sent to me by Greg McEwen, who wrote Essentialism. Wow. And ended up listening to it. And Oh man. And I listened to it. I apologize for that.
No need to apologize. Like
We're in a place.
Where our roots are incredibly non transactional.
And yet have
Allowed
For the the rational
I shouldn't say infection, but
Allowing for the
transactional to actually lead in places that it
Needs to be kind of excised.
And so that's the book is about, is that there's a law
Governing the universe universal law for all humans.
That says.
to see the full measure of something, you have to lose the self interest.
And I
I was
Brought here by my
By Bill Walsh, my coach in the Forty Niners who used to talk about
Every year he'd stand in front of the team and say
I don't care what play we call, I don't care what defense we run.
We're gonna win because we have shared common experiences amongst each other and an element of love for each other.
And it was like
That's how we're gonna win football games?
And it was actually true.
All the way to
You know, just all elements of
My marriage, my family, my relationships. It was
Oh

Sought the
Higher ground, I guess you would call it.
It just started to resonate and I wanted to write about it. It was my journey.
led by my wife who I just think s like I'm so much better
rubbing up against her every day, you know, shoulder to shoulder, like I just
I've sh she's I always say she gets the barnacles off my boat, you know what I mean? Like
I love her for that.
And so that's
I don't even know what the question you are. I've kind of lost myself in it, but
I'll pick up where you just left off with respect to
Keeping this
It's not the loss of self interest. It's also this
Love of the collective, that might not be the best way to phrase it, but self transcendence, maybe would be one way to put it.
How do you how do your wife, how do you guys, your family keep it at the forefront? Maybe it's a question for you like.
How has that become more important? How do you keep it?
Like you did the accountability after that.
Plane ride.
Something that you
Have as a lens.
on a daily or weekly basis.
Think
That's where the theology really is important, is how you see
How you define.
The crazy world that we have.
You know?
I mean
I just noticed the
Fiery orb that came through the sky again today. Amazing how it just comes in and makes Palo Alto
No, sixty seven degrees and perfect. You know what I mean? Like
The things that are going on
the miracles that happen. I mean I can't you know, I had breakfast but I don't digest digest my food. I don't know
Vitamins and minerals that the body needs. Like there's just this intelligence that's out there that
is universal.
And um
I forgot your question because uh just asking the
The law of love, how you keep that Oh in the forefront. Yeah.
Typical of me, I was gonna go.
A roundabout.
What I was trying to say is that
Again, it's an intent.
And it's really about
recognizing and defining
Kind of the conditions of our life.
That
I think God authored.
Like
The whole
You know, it's a body.
There's agency.
Choices to make.
There's opposition.
Everywhere.
And so with that kind of as an ingredient.
That's our
Laboratory.
It goes back to learning and growing. That's the laboratory. So in that laboratory, as we define each other, what are
How are we related?
And so my theology is that
God, Mother and Father.
We are are terrible spirits inside of us.
That are not from this place. We take a body for
Learning and growing, but then when we die
There's this
physical
Entity.
Of spirit that's durable.
And that it's divine.
Like so that every human
Is divine.
So in that way, as you start to define things
That are every day.
How you relate with them.
It's in the definition is how you actually act.
And so if I see everyone as divine and like
more eternal like іслай сначала
Like you see someone on the street and you say, Oh, they're in a bad spot. I mean, that's terrible. I've they chose their way there. What a bad life. What a bad
And he's like, no, let's back out.
And recognize that there's a broad
big spectrum of experience.
And let's see and have the curiosity.
For how to help
Those around us.
learn grow as well. Like and'cause we're
We really are related. We were all together.
We all chose to take a body.
And so in that theology
There's this universality.
And so if you talk about the law of love, it's really just a fulfillment.
Of
The relationship that's already true.
So it's not like I have to
Go through all kinds of
Mental machination system.
Make myself see others.
as little family, like it's in the roots, it's in the dirt.
You and I are
related in that way. You're divine. We're both divine, so
Let's be about it.
And so in that way, the intent of the law of love is says the full measure
Of what I can get out of this life.
Cannot
Be a transaction. God cannot
B Santa Claus.
As much as Santa Claus is a cool idea.
And that like if I'm super good, I get a gift.
At its root, it's self interested and it can't last.
If there are durable spirits inside of us.
There are
More
In perpetual.
The law that leads us cannot be self interested,'cause it will rot. It will rot like
Everything around us is decaying. I looked in the mirror today, Tim, it's not going good, bro.
Like it's going the wrong direction.
So in that way the law of love is really about saying
There is a law.
That is decreed from like the
Origins of the universe.
That says if I
can lose the transaction if I can lose myself
And be curious about you.
And be curious about where you've been.
There's an element that's
Pure in that?
that you take in in a different way.
If you and I have a transactional relationship
It's gonna feel that way.
And there's a lot of bounty in it.
lot of profit, there's a lot of money running around the world, there's a lot of fame, there's a lot of everything. There's a lot of goodness in many ways, but in the end
If it's purely transactional, if my marriage
Is purely transactional.
At some point it's gonna break.
It has to.
In self interest.
And so if you ask me the intent or how do you live it?
To me the definition's important, right? Because otherwise
You'd be like, Screw that, I'm
I've been curious about people and I've been hurt.
And I'm done with that.
And I'm tired of being
Left behind.
And then um the victimization shows up. We have themes, right? We got
And all of a sudden it's like w the world's against me and now I'm gonna I'll you know I'm gonna take my number one so I'm gonna take my part.
Right? And as soon as you do that.
Yeah, there's a
Mitigating truth to it.
All makes sense in my brain.
Well it makes sense. Like there there's just because you can identify
Truths in a scene or situation.
It doesn't mean that by focusing on those
Particular truths, right, those mitigating factors.
That you produce.
Any type of durable good for yourself or others.
No, the idea is that the full bounty
Of a relationship.
Put a religion aside again.
Just put it all aside.
The full bounty of a relationship.
is actually ironic.
In an unfeigned
Love.
Care, concern.
Even a fairly well hello, you know, just something that says I
Um about your
Well being you're
Hope you have a great day.
You know, in that simple statement that's not
I'm not looking for anything. Just I truly hope you have a great day.
In that element.
I believe is unloc an irony of how you actually receive a great day.
If that makes sense.
And so
You can't
Say I hope a great day.
Because then you can help me have a great like you can't make it about something, then it all of a sudden devolves. In kids.
Kids.
Feel
Pure love.
From a parent.
Do you want to raise your kids in a transactional way?
It works for a while.
But
To really love them.
In a way that they s feel
They feel it. I'm loved and I
I'm a screw up and I'm a make the bad decision. I'm I I don't know.
But
I know.
There's a the I'm loved.
And that that changes people.
'Cause it it hits in a different place. And so
The book is really around
What I believe is the universal truth that is true.
For my LDS community.
Particularly'cause that's what I'm
Very focused on.
But
It's true.
True everywhere.
Yeah, can it be applied.
But it's the irony of it.
We all who are trying to accomplish that's what we see in front of us.
The better the life is the more
accomplishments, right? That's how you
Show a great life.
It's irrational.
to the world that we live in today. It's irrational.
Yeah.
I think it's the unlock.
Yeah.
That's what I would put it. Because
People could tell me you've screw you, Steve. That's
That's just ethereal, weird, crazy stuff.
I know what I need to do to be happy and it's I'm getting it right now.
That's fine.
What I'm describing is irrational to all of that.
And I'm chewing on it. Jim, I am not an expert.
I've been brought to it because of a
Quest? Another Steve Cubby quest?
Yeah. And I'm just chewing on it.
And I'm learning.
About it.
And
Yeah.
That's it.
I'm so deeply curious about this. I did not grow up religious. I went to an episcopal book.
boarding school for a period of time, but I mean that was non denominational. So yeah, we sat in a chapel and they gave announcements, but besides that, it wasn't terribly religious.
And I don't identify as religious in the sense of having an organized religion I adhere to, but
There are also

Our current
Let's say breadth of science can explain. And there are also a lot of questions.
That are really important.
And there are things that we can feel like love that are very hard to put under a microscope and provide spreadsheets for.
You can try and there are ways to sort of torture
Some of these things into the
Conforming to numbers, but
At the end of the day.
There's a lot we don't know. There's certain questions we can't answer. And I for a long time was I would say
A
Pessimist disguised as a realist, if that makes any sense. Sure of course it does. So so totally rational.
The glass is half empty type of
thinking that was justified and reasoned and it made sense to me. I look out at the world, look at the cover of the newspaper like, yep.
Things are bad.
People are bad. And therefore A, B, and C. Right. However
As I've gotten older, I've realized that for instance, if you have
a base assumption, let's just say a a belief that
Humans are divine. There's some
Aspect of every human that is divine.
And divine is a word that'll make some people squirm who are listening. That's fine too. Which is fine.
My dogma is very about
The human interaction. Right? So it's so it's like if you have that belief and it's like, Okay, people might say, Well it can't be falsified, Carl Pa the point of it is, does it make things better or does it make things worse? And that I'm not saying
Everybody should adopt
Every fairy tale that they want.
But at the same time, there is some latitude in how you choose to view things.
And
If you start to entertain
Something that is
Ever present, intangible. You could call it divine, you could call it something else sublime. You could call it wonder, you could call it awe. I mean there are different ways to short it. I'm not saying those are all equivalent.
But you begin to get more curious.
And you begin to see, like you said, the fact that
plants eat sunlight to produce energy. It's completely right. And when you start to really
refamiliarize yourself with beginners' eyes looking at how incredibly
Improbable it is that you and I are sitting here.
experiencing more or less the same reality. It is it is irrational. Yeah, it's wise. Don't you think it's irrational? It's incredibly crazy. It's nuts. And so I look to me, take the
Anyone that's uncomfortable talking about religion or theology or put it aside for a second.
Let's just think about
Take the universal truth that I believe is universal because it's universal.
Forget about in all of that.
Just take it as a lived experience.
The rational transactional life that is
In front of us.
And the results of it. Watch.
As you watch it politically.
You watch.
What happens is over time
You have to separate, right? Because and the transactional path is more fundamental.
So what is happening politically today? More and more fundamental.
Both ways because there's no nobody is looking for
The law of love is not
Part of the calculus.
No one's open. So it's like
Forget about religion for a second. Just
Politically.
I've never seen a more divisive
Transactional time.
led by the most divisive transactional people.
It's not that complex.
You can also look at I mean even you know, we're sitting here in Silicon Valley, right? A lot of very wealthy people.
And
If the hope is that the list of successful transactions and we're gonna land the plan in just a couple minutes. Um if you look at if you look at the if people hope the list of transactions will ultimately redeem
the time that they spend on this planet in life.
I've never seen it work out.
Right. I've never seen that work. Right. It's just
It's testable.
Right. I've experienced the great town never catches the rabbit.
And so this self transcendence this discussion, I just more and more feel like it's so critical. Steve, I I know you've been very generous with your time. I
I've really enjoyed this. Is there anything else that you'd like to share or talk about before we wind to a close? I will tell you, Tim, that you're really good at this.
Because I don't know that I've ever had a conversation like this.
I leave
With
That unsettling feeling like I've really
Shared. You know, like I'm like
You know, overshare.
Possibly. And I've I'm like, oh man. But
I'm at a place in my life where
I just I'm curious about
You know
About that. It's like I'm not worried about it. I just like
But thank you for a chance to
put into words and like I wish I already feel like oh I wish I could have
Said that differently.
You know,'cause it was so raw in some ways. So I'm gonna
I'll get better at that, but I really appreciate that
For me.
The depth of how you took me to places that I really
Appreciate I will not listen to it because it's just too much too much. But I'll get re I'll get responses from people. But
Thank you for the for the gift of
Vulnerability.
And the gift of
Expressing kind of my
My story. I appreciate it.
Uh thank you.
I've really, really enjoyed it. Folks can find you on Instagram at Steve Young on uh
X at
At Steve Young QB.
You've got the HGG C dot com website, of course. Also people should check out Forever Young Foundation.
And we'll link to many other things in the show notes for everybody at Tim.blog slash podcast. And until next time, as I always say, folks, be just a bit kinder than is necessary to others, but also
to yourself and thanks for tuning in. Thank you, Steve.
Hey guys, this is Tim again, just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend?
Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Fi Bold Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out.
every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kinda like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading,
Albums, perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests, and these strange esoteric things end up in my field, and then
I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to Tim.blog slash Friday. Type that into your browser, Tim.blog slash.
Friday, drop in your email and you'll get the very next one.
Thanks for listening.
Many of you know how deeply I love Japan and its culture of unwavering dedication to craft, refinement, commitment to continuous improvement. But why do I bring this all up? Well, the same focus.
On improving one thing over the span of years is found in today's sponsor, AG1.
They are now unveiling AG1 Next Gen, the same single scoop, once a day product that I use myself.
but now with more vitamins, more minerals, and five new clinically studied probiotic strains shown to support digestive and immune health.
AG1 is also NSF certified for sport, one of the most rigorous, independent quality, and safety certification programs in the supplement industry. So check them out. Subscribe today to try the next gen of AG1. Listeners will also get a free bottom D3K2.
an AG1 welcome kit and AG1 travel packs with your first order.
So start your journey with AG1's next gen and experience the difference firsthand. Simply go to drinkag1.com slash Tim. That's drinkag1.com slash Tim.
Yeah.
Listeners have heard me talk about making before you manage for years. All that means to me is that when I wake up, I block out three to four hours to do the most important things that are generative, creative, podcasting, writing, et cetera. Before I get to the email and the admin stuff and the reactive stuff and everyone else's agenda.
for my time. For me, I need to find people who are great at managing. And that is where Crescent Family Office comes in. You spell it C-R-E-S-S-E-T. Crescent Family Office. I was introduced to them.
by one of the top CPG investors in the world. Cresset is a prestigious family office for CEOs, founders, and entrepreneurs. They handle the complex financial planning, uncertain tax strategies,
timely exit planning, bill pay, wires, all the dozens of other parts.
of wealth management, just financial management that would otherwise pull me away from doing what I love most, making things.
Mastering skills, spending time with the people I care about. And over many years, I was getting pulled away from that stuff at least a few days a week and I've completely
eliminate that. So experience the freedom of focusing on what matters with the support of a top wealth management team. You can schedule a call today at crescentcapital.com slash Tim that's spelled C-R-E-S-S-E-T.
Pressitcapital.com slash Tim to see how Cressit can help streamline your financial plans.
and grow your wealth. That's Crescent Capital.
Татком слаш Тим
And disclosure, I am a client of Crescent. There are no material conflicts other than this paid testimonial. And of course, all investing involves risk, including loss of principle. So do your due diligence.