How to Build a Bulletproof Mindset Through Preparation | Ed Mylett

At Betway Casino, stake 20 pounds and get 150 free spins for new customers. 18 plus, Tisensee's apply. Bet the responsible way, gambleaware.org. This is the Edmonton Show. Hey everyone, welcome to my Weekend Special. I hope you enjoy the show. Be sure to follow the Edmontlet show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. You'll never miss an episode that way. Here's our first guest. Welcome back to the program everybody. Today's going to be a great one. I have a champion to share with you today. It's a guy I've followed for a long time. He's one of my favorite athletes in the world by a stoned him off camera. We have a lot of mutual friends. He and I have been talking for a long time. He's one of my favorite men leaders in the world. Not only was he a three time Belator lightweight champion, but I liked watch. He's just he just pulverized Dan Hooker and a recent UFC event. And he's a rising star in the UFC. He's probably going to get a chance to fight for the title soon. But I love his mental and life approach. So Michael Chandler, welcome to max out. Thank you so much, man. I really appreciate it. It is a blessing to be here and I'm not going to be after it. Okay, question. You said something. There's so much depth to you earlier. You said, I'm not training against the dude necessarily that I'm fighting next. I'm not even training against the dude that I spar with. I think so many people that want to be high achievers compare themselves to the person in the cubicle next to them or in their current office. You know, we're in the local area as opposed to the standard, the best possible standard. So could you just speak to that a minute about training to a standard compared to just the opponent or just the sparring partner or just what's in the gym that day? Because that holds us back as well. True. True. Yeah. And I think it's I mean, for me, people ask, they're always asking me about my opponent. My opponent, he's this tall. He's got these attributes. He's got these accolades. And without sounding cocky, like I'm not what I'm looking past the opponent. Truthfully, I can tell you this with 100% certainty that I don't need to be. I don't need to train to beat that opponent. I just need to be the best version of myself that night inside the doctor. I need to be the Michael Chandler with zero handed hindrances, zero second guessing, zero fears and only faith and excitement about becoming my best self. If I can get done with that fight, get my hand raised and have zero regrets about my performance knowing that I performed at the highest level that I possibly to it that night. Then there's not a man on this planet that can beat me and I truly believe that. So, and I so my prayer before the fight isn't God give me the victory or God let my opponent stumble. My prayer is God just let me perform like I trained let me perform in a manner that is consistent with the way that you see me God. And that is consistent with my gifts and my abilities that you blessed me with. Because I like I said, I truly believe that in that moment, if I'm inside that octagon and that cage door closes, if I perform at the best at my best, I'm not going to lose. And this isn't like a, and this isn't kind of the hurrah. Well, you gave it your best. So you really didn't lose even if you did lose. This is this you know, like they say, well, if you gave it your best, you didn't lose. You know, that's true in a lot of senses, but also I'm more just saying that if I can go out there and get in that flow state, there's nobody that can beat me and I truly believe that. So, so how do you get, how do you make sure that you perform that way? Well, you can't ever make sure with 100% certainty we're going to have bad days. We're going to have all nights. We're going to have bad performances. No matter what. But number one, never being afraid of having a bad performance. Number two, being okay with the uncertainty that's about to ensue. I mean, you can't really think of a career or more volatile than mixed martial arts being inside of a cage, locked inside of a cage, being tied on to our tornado. You have to be okay with the uncertainty that's about to happen. And for me, I always say, you know, when loser draw. I'm going to be okay because my God still loves me. My family still loves me and I still love me. And the hardest thing was I always knew my God love me. I always knew my family love me, but that hardest part was and I still love me. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, but you have to be okay with the uncertainty that's about to happen. Yeah, I talk about every area of life and we'll do embrace uncertainty and run towards it on the other side of uncertainties, everything you want. Best relationship you've ever had. There's no certainty to it, right? There's no certainty that at all. Any great victory, anything you've ever done, you have to go through the uncertainty barrier. Everyone say you're comfort zone. Forget all that comfort zone. You got to go through complete uncertainty. You the other thing too, for me, I don't know if you relate to this or I'm just curious. That I love me. Third one's my issue too. And I've gotten a lot better that over the years. And one of the reasons I know me overly hokie here. I'm with one of the toughest men in the world. One of the reasons that I would not give myself love or affirmation or permission to like myself even if I'm being completely candid like actually like myself. So so everybody knows is to me, I had to be perfect. And if I wasn't perfect, I didn't I wasn't worthy of really liking or loving myself and perfect is a cop out standard perfect is impossible. But I've kind of heard you talk about this a little bit too. This notion of the perfect fight or the perfect sparring session or the perfect husband, right? The perfect man of faith. Well, you're going to miss that one every time. So if that's your standard, you have wired yourself for misery. And then it stumbles into at least for me. Kind of the cycle of lack of confidence because I'm not hitting the promise I made myself, which was perfection because self confidence is keeping the promises you make to yourself. So I'm just curious how that plays with you. 100% and that's you know, I think especially whenever you. And not to get overly, you know overly spiritual about it, but when you when you truly believe that God, you know, Rick Warren's purpose driven life, that's that's what everybody wants right. I'm not going to be on my purpose whenever you feel like you found your purpose and I I truly believe that mixed martial arts being put on a platform through mixed martial arts is my purpose. So I found my purpose. So it's God ordained. So if it's God ordained, then okay, I got to be perfect, right? Because this is the gift that I'm trying to get God and God deserves. We all know God deserves a perfect gift when really he's looking down on us saying you're all you are all flawed individuals. I made you perfect in in the image of myself, but you are made perfect. Through the sacrifice that Jesus made on the cross, right? So so we are striving for perfection. And that's and that's really truthfully if I'm being honest, why am I first lost happened? So I go out and yes, I win. I win my I beat Eddie Alvarez. I become the number three guy in the entire world. Everybody saying Michael Chandler's the next big thing. So immediately. Okay, I'm the number three guy in the world. Everybody wants me to go when the UFC title when I'm doing my Bellos or contract media is talking about me award after award. You know, this guy's the next big thing. So what do I say? Am I human brain? Okay, now I got to be perfect, right? Before I was just trying to go before I was just shooting off the cuff. I was working hard. I was doing things right. I was living, living the champion lifestyle. But now that I am the champion. Now I got to be perfect. So what did I do instead of instead of taking my training to the next level? It went down in the dumps because just as you said, every sparring session was another opportunity to be imperfect. So I could win four minutes and 58 seconds of a round. But it was that two seconds that I lost that told me in my mind, I lost that round. I could have I could have hit a guy a thousand times with the best combinations in the world, but I got popped once with a jab. And immediately my mind said, Michael, you're not perfect yet. You know, I could lift a thousand pounds, but well, Michael, you're not perfect because that guy over there can lift a thousand and two pounds. So I gave I started I started living in this jail cell in my brain of perfect. And there was it was impossible. Perfect. And it wasn't until my mentor Chris Patterson talked about instead of trying to be perfect. Why don't you just focus on success? So because success can be gained one percent, one percent, one percent every single day and over a long career. You know, I can joke about it now, but it took me 12 years to become an overnight success. Now I'll be setting on Michael Chandler, UFC lightweight number four in the world, probably going to win the UFC title here in the next calendar year. But it took me 12 years to become this success named Michael Chandler, right? So I just needed to start just stop putting so much pressure on myself to be perfect and just put the pressure on myself and the friendly pressure on myself to be above board to be to be excellent, but not be perfect. There's there's a lot of different what things that we can strive for that are just below perfect that allow you just enough grace, just enough, just enough leeway to still love yourself through your trials through your through your bad days, because let's be honest, man, it doesn't matter. You speak to a lot of high performers, millionaires, billionaires, the people at the highest level, they have their bad days, they have their ups and they have their downs and it's in those downs, it's in those bad days where they can continue to motivate, continue to see through the month, see through the muck towards a brighter future knowing that the sun really, the sun did go down today, but it will rise again tomorrow and our best day to be tomorrow, even if we had a bad day today. One of these shows, brother, I will listen to back several times, so one of these is really true is when I started to really work with, you know, whatever one would call higher elite performers, whatever it was, this is many, many years ago, I come home and think to myself, man, these are very human beings, you know, like I was struck by their humanity, I was struck by their frailties, I was struck by their, some of their weaknesses and actually gave me hope, I think that's what you're doing right now. I've all heard this thing like comparison is just a deadly game to play compared with another person, the worst comparison is to perfection because that's a standard you're going to miss every single time you've literally wired yourself for paint. I'm as curious about fighting in general, by the way, I love Chris Patterson, I just want to make sure I stick that in there, in fact that's how you and I met. Let me ask you this question, I'm just curious, is there fear before a fight for you? In other words, 10 minutes out, you're going to go in there, this is the thing about fighting that I think people just forget, because it almost looks like this. Video game. When you're watching it on TV for guys, right. I've had the pleasure of. Being in the cage a little bit myself. And so I know what it's like. Not like you do. But there's another man in there you can't hide. They closed the door Michelle water. Some said on the show. You know. And there's you and another man. It's the ultimate form of combat. It's the ultimate form of. You dealing with you. Ironically, as you said. Do you have fear in those moments. Or is there no fear. fear because of confidence, because of faith, because of preparation, or what do you do with the fear if you do have it? You know, I actually, there is no fear of the physical, you know, could I get injured? Of course, could I break a bone? Could I, you know, even worse? Could I end up, could tonight be the night that my career just ends, career in the injury? Of course, those things could happen, but once again, as I was alluding to earlier, if you're afraid of that uncertainty that's about to happen, if you're afraid of the physical aspect of the fight, it's going to be tough, because you're not going to be fighting in that flow state. You're not going to be fighting at your top level. Me standing across a wrestling mat, or standing across a cage from another man, my size doesn't scare me. The biggest fears that I have are, you know, going out there and performing at a sub-par level, and not just sub-par, but, you know, a really bad level, right? You know, we've all had those moments where we, you know, you get back into your car after a meeting or for me to go back to the locker room after a fight and you just take a deep breath and take a step back and say, what just happened? That was such a bad performance. And I've had those, and those are the worst, that's the worst feeling in the entire world. Because for a mixed martial artist, you know, we only get two, maybe three opportunities a year to showcase our skills in an engaged, in front of millions of people. So there's so much riding on that one performance. But I've gotten to the point where I want to get going back to, no matter what, when lose a draw. My God still loves me, my family still loves me, and I still love me. And because I've gotten to that point, knowing that once again, leaning on the fact that I'm not going to be perfect, just trying to be successful, you know, if I would have hung my hat on the couple of losses that I had in my past, I never would have got here to become the overnight success who is Michael Chandler and the UFC, right? You know, it took a long time for me to get here, but I'm a battle-hardened veteran. I was galvanized by the road that I took. You know, I was a new name to a lot of people when I made my UFC debut back in January at UFC 257. But I was not a new name to the true MMA fans. I was not a new mixed martial artist, a new professional fighter. For me, all roads had led to me being backstage at the UFC 257, but it's almost a weird parallel because before I felt like I always had something to lose when I was fighting a bellator, I was fighting a lot of guys who I was supposed to beat in the first round. There was almost no way to win or it be a positive outcome unless I went out there and finished somebody in the first round. You're talking about fighting world class athletes. They're still world class athletes. They still train every single day. They're still across the cage where you want to rip your head off just like you want to do the same. But I was always fighting guys who, for the most part, were ranked below me. And I had to go out there and have a dominant performance. I could go out there and if I beat someone in the second round, people would always say, well, you should have even the first round. You're a bike or a champion, you're supposed to be that much better than them. Whereas this was also a beautiful thing at UFC 257. I was fighting Dan Hooker, the number five, number six guy in the world. I had nothing to lose. So that was a beautiful feeling having nothing to lose because I would venture to say that the underdog is so in such more of an advantageous situation because they have nothing to lose compared to the guy who was on top who has everything to lose every single time he steps into an arena. And I got to that point and UFC 257. And luckily for me, I'm going to be an underdog the next fight, probably an underdog the next fight. So you're going to see the best version of myself for sure the next couple of five. I was going to say to you, I want you to remind yourself of that no matter what situation you're in because you're exactly right. In every situation, it's the illusion of loss that causes us to underperform. So if you can always not give yourself this bogus illusion of loss, even if you're the world champion and anything you do, even if you're the best, what I'm on a speaking ticket and there's 10 other speakers, but everyone may be assumes in that case, potentially, I should dominate that stage when I speak. I don't let myself think that there's an illusion of loss coming if someone, if I don't live up to my game because that's when I slip. I've that idea that subpar fight. I just had a subpar engagement recently. But for me, every time I've had one of those what just happened moments, if I'm really self reflective and it's really self reflection, there was something in my preparation that I could have done better. It's always back to me, like you said earlier, it's not my opponent, especially in business. It's always preparation. How much of your conf, and when in this particular situation, there were a couple things where I said to myself, literally, what just happened? No joke. And by the time I got on the plane to come home, I'm like, I know exactly what happened. I'm beessing myself. Here's what happened. I took a little bit for granted this one area that's my big strength. I didn't need to work on that preparing for this. Turns out I did, right? And so is that for you, usually the answer to what just happened and how much of your confidence is linked to preparation? Being the small guy from the small town who had to always fight to scrap and claw his way to being seen by the coaches or being seen by the team, I had to be the hardest worker in the room. I talk about the walk on mentality. I walked onto the University of Missouri. There were 16 guys in my class. Only two of us ended up becoming all Americans. And one of them was going to become an all-American. His name is Raymond Jordan. He was a state champion from New Bern, North Carolina. He was my roommate. He was destined for big things. It's a full-ride scholarship guy. But I was the walk on guy. I was the guy who the coaches didn't look at for a whole year. Didn't say a word to for the whole year. So me being the naive young guy, I had to outwork everybody. I was the first one to practice. I was the last one to leave. I was putting the extra reps. And although that might sound a little bit, I guess, maybe insecure to a lot of people listening right now, you still have to have that walk on mentality. That mentality that says, even though I've gotten to where I am now, even though there's a couple zeros in my bank account, even though I got this name, even though I have this account, even though I have this level of success, I have this level of platform, you still have to be working every single day like you're a walk on. So for me, my preparation is the most important part. I know for a fact that if I step inside the cage and there is doubts about my preparation, I'm never ever going to perform at the highest level. Now I might win the fight still. I might win the contest, so to speak. But there still will be that some self-reflecting of you got kind of lucky because you slapped in this area, you slapped in that area. And that's, I think, what a lot of high achievers do. They hold themselves to a higher standard, not the perfection standard. That's where you fall into that valley of trying to be too perfect. But that level of excellence, am I excellent in all these areas that I need to be excellent? And if that answer is no, then chances are you're going to be in a spot that you're leaving yourself open to having failures and having loss. I just think it's amazing that when you walk into an octagon, you walk into the cage. By the way, I'm going to take this from you myself. God still loves me. My family still loves me. I still love me. Everybody listen to the show. Should be writing that down or watching the show. And that would be a mantra you give yourself the gift of on a very regular basis. What a beautiful reminder as you're going into combat. It's just amazing. That's what you're saying to yourself. Okay, physical. DELPC's with Intel Insider built for the moments that matter. 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What it really comes down to is what you're eating. And you know what, we all want to eat home cooked food. That's why I love hello fresh and it's delicious food. Like I never had any more healthy food in my life that tastes this good. They got 35 high quality protein, different meals. You got GLP one, friendly ones, you got Mediterranean. They got all wholesome ingredients, none of the bad stuff that you put in food. But the other thing that I like about them is, you know what, you can get seafood on there now for no upcharge. There's three times the amount of seafood on there. My favorite, by the way, is the ribeye. So go to hellofresh.com slash my let 10 FM to get 10 free meals plus a freeze willing knife, which is $144 value on your third box offer valid while supplies last free meals applied as discount on first box. And you subscribe as only varies by plan. The cool. When I look at you and I, you know, I'm around a lot of athletes, I see a superior physical specimen. And even as you've gotten older, I look at you six, seven years ago, I look at a dude now. This is a superior physical specimen. And I for a lot of myself confidence just comes from my physicality. I'm not the same as you obviously, but I think self confidence can come from moving your body. It's one of the first places everybody listening or watching this can transform their self confidence because it's something you can control. You can't control a sales call or a close or the amount of money you've got or even how someone's treating you in a relationship. Is there something specific you've done the last two or three years? Is it heavy or lifting? Is it incorporating more weights? Is it, you know, like in Brady's case, it's all this plyometric stuff he's doing to be more pliable? What is it for you that's made you, I mean, to me, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you were physically better before you look physically better to me now. Am I right about that and what's the difference? I think you are right about that. I think I think I, when I got into the sport, I was already going to be more asked athletic or stronger physically than a lot of people because of my wrestling background. Division one wrestling in my opinion is the hardest, most physically demanding sport in the entire world. So when I was going to come from division one wrestling into the sport of mixed martial arts for these guys that just been training mixed martial arts, I knew for sure I was going to be faster than them, stronger than them. I wasn't going to have great strike and it wasn't going to have great submissions or submissions defense necessarily, but I was going to be a good athlete coming from wrestling. And then I've always trained to become the best athlete I can possibly be. And it was actually interesting that you say that because there is a young football player from MCSU here in Nashville. I was training with my trainer and he asked my training and he said, hey, Jay, hold, if you've never fought before, how do you train a fighter? And I love that I heard it because I wanted to hear his response and his response was, well, we're just training to become a better athlete because I say, if I can be the better athlete in the cage that night, it might not win me the fight for sure, but it will put me head and shoulders above my opponent when it comes to speed, quickness, changing angles, closing the distance, strength, picking a guy out, putting them down and cardio. The only one who is undefeated is probably time. So eventually, they will come a time when that clock ticks for the last time and it's time for me to be done fighting. I just don't have it anymore. So the more I can turn back the hands of time by doing explosives, more plyometric movements, the better, and taking care of my body. You know, it'd be crazy. I've been training out for 12 years and probably only about the last five or six years have I been doing bodywork every single week. I get a bodywork by a massage therapist. It'll be a highly knowledgeable, physio body worker who understands the body. And I live in the back pain for a really long time and I discovered a product called PSO right. I realized my SOAS, my SOAS muscle from running, jumping, kicking, doing all these things was hindering me physically. And also I just woke up and pain every single day. So I have a low back pain at all times. So I started lengthening my SOAS. And then you got a call, Michael? So right. PSO-R-I-T-E. I'll send you a few of them. Because I believe you've heard David Dawg and talk about it. I actually spoke about it on the Joe Rogan podcast. Because everybody. You speak to anybody. What's the one thing that hurts everybody? They're back always hurts. And I think right now I'm sitting at a desk right now in this chair and my SOAS is being crunched down and God didn't design our bodies to sit for the crazy amount of hours that we do. Or if you're sitting in beautiful Southern California traffic, you're sitting in your car. It doesn't matter how nice your car is and how beautiful the weather is on the seats. You're still sitting down in a non-optimal position. I think when it's affordable, people need to investigate more of this bodywork stuff. I've neglected that all my life. I've done pretty good with nutrition. I've trained really hard. I've not done enough bodywork. And I know that there's a dollar amount. Although I have sponsors on my show with little different gadgets and different things that do help you with that. And I'm not plugging the sponsor. I'm just telling you guys the Theragon is something that's really made a difference for me. And I'm not plugging the product. I'm just saying that's a form of bodywork. The other thing I want to just say to everybody too, this is one of my favorite conversations of all time, bro, which I knew it would be. But the fact that you define yourself as an athlete as much as you do a fighter. And I just want all the business people or moms or dads out there. What if one of the definitions, one of the terms you gave yourself as you were an athlete, you can be an athlete at any age. I actually call myself that. It's one of the words I use in my affirmations is I'm an athlete. I think about that. I think that I think more athletes are attempting to become business people. If you look at the LeBron James and the Michael Chandler's and the Tom Brady's are good examples of they're becoming business people. More business people need to become athletes. That's the future. That's the present of where we are. So totally agree with you on that. Got to ask you about maybe my favorite thing I wanted to talk to you about all the time that we've known one another. And by going a little longer, brother, sorry, it's just so good. I love it. But the last part I want to ask you about is your faith. Because your center, say by the grace of God, just like I am, I don't want anybody thinking either one of us are perfect people because we're not. And neither one of us have all the answers. I don't people sell the time. You just got all the answers that I said, no, I have all the mistakes. And I can save you on your life with all the mistakes I've made, more than those more than I just some, you know, the Yoda of answers. But my faith has been central in my life. It's given me the most comfort. I love it. The first thing you say as God still loves me. How important is that to you in your life? Overall, pre and post your fight career. Just curious. I mean, it's the most important part because it's the well-sprung by which everything else flows from. You know? I think the overarching theme of this entire talk that we've had, we've been having, even though we haven't even said the word, the actual word too much, but the word is gratitude, you know? Operating in gratitude, realizing the gifts that I've been given, realizing that to give anything less than my best every single day is to sacrifice these amazing life that God has given to me. Man, I got every single thing. I don't have a lot, but I'm not missing the dang thing. You know, I'm not missing the thing in my life that I need. And all of that is by the grace of God. All of that is when I think about the young Michael Chandler coming from high-risk Missouri, God, every single person, every single setback, every single up, every single down, every single door that stayed closed, every single door that opened, God had me in the palm of his hand all the way through it in the entire time. And if you can, and I do do, I do this often too, even just visualizing the hand of God. It looks just like my hand, right? Because we were made in the image of an Almighty God. But I see myself, a young Michael Chandler, the middle school Michael Chandler, the high school Michael Chandler, who had all his doubts and insecurities, and then the college and high school wrestler Michael Chandler, who just wanted to win medals and wanted to put on the top of that podium. And then now the fighter Michael Chandler, the father Michael Chandler, the husband Michael Chandler, all of these things I can see, and I can see him all the way through my entire life knowing that there's so much comfort and there's so much rest in God having me in the palm of his hand. And it's such a humbling feeling. And I think when you really pull yourself back from a 30,000 foot view of man, there's been some tough times and man, there's been some tears shed and man, there's been a lot of dark sleepless nights and there's been some rough roadblocks. But all of those things, Romans 828, everything worked out for the good of his people. You know, and it's like, as you said, I by no means any better than you or anybody else listening, but we are centers saved by the grace of God. And it's that humbling feeling of knowing that you don't get what you do deserve and you do get what you don't deserve every single day and every single season. And now arguably, you know, every single thing, I've accomplished so many of the things that I want to set out to accomplish and I still have so many things left to accomplish and all of them are tied to my faith. And a faith in an Almighty God who is merciful enough to see me through the tough times and he is gracious enough to continue to bless me even when I look and say, man, why the heck did this workout for me? You know, and it's just such a beautiful thing and I'm just so grateful for the opportunity that I've been given. I feel like I can take this thing to the top only because I live in a constant state of gratitude. And truthfully, if I can just help other people live with a little bit more gratitude knowing that they're best days and their blessed days are out ahead of them because a guy like me who comes from a small town who I was taught to do small things or somehow I've touched every corner of the globe somehow because God's going to be some amazing gifts that hopefully a few people can be inspired by my story and all of it ties back to my faith. I'm so grateful for you, bro. And I'm really proud of you. This has been an absolutely remarkable conversation. I knew that when you and I got together and did this in front of everybody that it would be special, but I mean this. I just want you to know I'm so proud of you. I'm so grateful for you. I'm grateful that I got to share this man with the millions of people that I love so much in my audience. I started out by saying that I'm a special athlete but you're a special man and everybody saw that on full display today. Your calling is even beyond fighting. It's this. It's this platform that's going to get bigger and bigger and bigger and then someday it's going to be all of this based on that platform. But you stepped into a state today, brother. That was a championship level state. And so thank you, man. Very short intermission here folks. I'm glad you're enjoying the show so far. Don't forget to follow the show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. Now onto our next guest. Hey everybody, Ed Mylett. I'm so excited to be back with you today with another program on the Max out show. We bring you people all the time that have maxed out areas of their life of the best in the world and the gentleman to my left. The reason I've been after him to do this show for so long is because I think he's maxing out multiple areas of his life. The obvious area is that this is one of the greatest boxers of the last two decades and you might even argue in the history of the sport. So the gentleman on my left here is retired this last year to be a year ago this week. 32 and 0. 32 and 0 has not lost a fight since he was 14 years old and was an Olympic gold medalist went on to win the Super 6 tournament in the Super Middleweight division and was a light heavyweight champion of the world. And so this is one of the greatest athletes, but I think one of the great men in the United States. So Andre Ward, thank you for being here today. Thanks for stating that. Thanks for having me. This is going to be awesome. So I wish as some interviews, I wish we were recording the pre interview because it's been so good. So thank you so much. Man, I'm happy to be here. Talk just for a second. I'm just curious because I didn't know I'd go there. Virgil, did he play a role in your life in any other way other than boxing? In terms of your confidence or any other stuff? Even your demeanor to some extent. And watching him in interviews, he's got sort of a, I'm sure he burns ranges on the end. He's got kind of a cool, calm exterior about him that I see in you too. Go ahead and speak to that. No, I mean, I have a lot of my father in me and I also have a lot of, a lot of virginity. It's hard not to have their imprint on me, you know, when I've been around them and spent so much time, you know, we spend so much time together. And that, again, that's probably something throughout the course of my life as a fighter and just as a man that has separated me is like, they came, you know, Virgil, my dad came from the old school. Like, they didn't come in the social media area where, you know, a lot of athletes today, they'll show you the hard work and you really don't know how much work they're putting in behind the scenes. Like we really got it the hard way. And one thing that they always, like we didn't just go to the gym and work the body. They always were working my mind. Whether I was on my way to a rem that morning, didn't really want to be there and was dragging, getting ready as a 11, 12 year old kid or going to a big tournament where I wasn't touted to really do anything. Like the mentor reps, him being in my ear, year after year, day after day telling me, listen son, you're meant to be here. I'll give you an example. Athens, Greece in 2004 had not fought the upper echelon of international competition. Had fought Puerto Rico, Mexico, but never the Cubans, never the Russians. Those were the countries that dominated boxing. They were really professional boxers in the amateur ranks. They do it full time. And most of the time, unless they come over to America, they don't turn pro. All right, I love when you guys send messages out on social media about the show. And lately, been getting a few of these messages about my wardrobe. 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These statements have not been evaluated by the food and drug administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. A smaller guy I fought at 178 pounds. Should have been at the lower weight class of 165 pounds, but I had a cousin that during the Olympic trials was trying to make it. I said, okay, I don't want us to fight. I think I'm going to grow anyway. So let me go up. Are you kidding me? You took a different weight class. I didn't grow like I was like I thought I was. So I'm weighing in every morning at 170, 171, maybe 72 on a good day. I'm drinking waters and gave away the power is just to just to be respectable when I get on the scales. And the weight master they were looking inside your little. Your smile should be lower. And I just kind of point to the sky. I had a burner phone that they gave us. And Verge had a burner phone and he would just call me and he's staying in my ear. It looks like you're here for a reason. God didn't bring you this far for nothing. And those types of words like would just cause me to be emboldened. You know, when we first got the draw and I found out what bracket I was in, I got the toughest bracket. If you get any Mac and Renko, the two-time world champion from Russia was going to be my second fight if I won my first fight. And everybody's kind of like, you know, everybody on the US team was like, oh my God, you know, that's like it was a death like man, Jerry got a tough draw and missing that. And Verge said that's the way it's supposed to be. That mentality that he had, those types of words, that type of faith and belief has been something that has been ingrained in me and still didn't be drilled in me since I've been a kid. Well, that's gold. The couple of gold things one is just having somebody in your life that you can find and seek out that's feeding you all of these, you know, these beliefs, this confidence you have, finding that mentor in your life. And then also the part that you shared earlier, I just want to make sure we reiterate too about if your dad had it his way in the very beginning, you probably wouldn't have even gone crazy. And that's true for me and my career. I think if my family had it their way in the very beginning, I'd have been working at, you know, some employee job and paying my bills. And so, so many of you out there listen to these voices you have in your family. These people who love you, but they don't necessarily have the vision or the wisdom to know exactly where you're supposed to go in your life. I think God that you got Virgil in your own beliefs in yourself. That was a great conversation. And if you want to hear the full interview, be sure to follow the Ed Mylet show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. Here's an excerpt I did with our next guest. Welcome back to the program, everybody. I'm so fired up today. I have some man I've admired from a distance for so many years. He is one of the great leaders in American sports. He just is. And he does it with a style that is all his own. And it's one that I've admired from a distance. Some of our mutual friends have confirmed what a good man he is for me. And let me tell you, 140 and 33, while he's been at Clemson, the head football coach there, but he started to get better and better and better. Last three years, only lost three games, undefeated in 2018, two national championships. The list goes on and on. And this is from a guy who was a walk on at Alabama, by the way, which is even more ironic that you went to Alabama now. You coach at Clemson. But I am honored to have Dabo Sweeney on the program that I coach. Thank you for being here. Thank you. It's good to be with you, man. This is a great, great treat to be on this podcast or show and an opportunity to meet you. Yeah, my pleasure, coach. So we're going to go all over the place. We're going to talk leadership, recruiting, culture, all these different things. But as I was reading about you, you walked on in college and then you end up, you went on national championships of player too. A lot of people don't know that. So you've done a lot of winning in your life. But you get this job. And I heard you say that they rated you a D plus hire because you were like the interim coach. But is this true? Because I want everyone to get this. A lot of you that are listed as your entrepreneur, as your leaders, maybe you're a little bit young in some cases too. This man was 38 years old when he takes over this program. Is it true that when they hired you, you went like literally into a closet, like a physical closet and we're talking to yourself? Is that actually true? That is true. So, so what happened is I just, you know, came to work on October 13th, 2008. I was an assistant in my 60 year here as an assistant and middle of the season, three and three. We were coming off a tough loss and they decided to make a change at head coach. The head coach position and, you know, I had no, I mean, absolutely no idea. We had a 7 a.m. staff meeting that morning and it was actually my day to do the devotional. Kind of rotates around the room and just happened to be my day that day. And it was just business as usual. As a Monday, we were going to play Georgia Tech that weekend and at our staff meeting, like we always do, went on in our offensive meetings, offensive coach. And so we're in our planning and about mid-morning, about 10, 30 or so, the operations guy walks in and says, hey, the coach's bound and he needs to see the whole staff in the staff room. Well, that never happens. We'd already had staff meeting that morning, so it was really kind of odd. So we all got in there, knew something was going on. He walks in and he basically just, you know, he was, didn't have a lot of words. He just said, you know, I much appreciated us and, and hey, this is something that's going to happen. We're going to make it, they're going to make a change. And he said, you know, hey, look, I'm good. He said, I just, you know, we're about all you guys. I'm going to visit with you individually in due time. But right now, the AD wants to step in and say a few words. So you're, you're sitting there, you know, you got a lot going through your mind. I'm a young guy. I got a young family, you know, people going on AD steps in. AD was not a man of many words either. Old school guy from Arkansas. He basically just said, hey, look, you know, this is something that I wanted to happen. I, but he did tell Coach Boughton he was going to make a change into the year regardless of what happened and, and Coach Boughton, and they revisited later on that morning and said, you know what, this is going to be a negative seven weeks. You know, why don't we just make a change here and let's let Davo be the interim. And Coach Boughton, the head coach, he kind of, you know, said, hey, would you consider Davo being the interim and AD said, absolutely. He said, you know, and so anyway, next thing you know, he walks in and he says, a, here's what's happening, you know, I know it's a tough business. I expect y'all to just continue to do your job. We got a bunch of kids is counting on us and, and he said, uh, Davo, you're now the head coach and I need to see him office in five minutes and walked out. And so you know, he walks out, we're in there. It was this weird moment kind of slamming pins and notebooks and, and then all of a sudden they got dead quiet. And everybody in the room is looking at me. I mean, I'm in sweatpants. I mean, this is Monday's or Long days in our world and, and just, you know, I didn't really know what to say, but it was just, I mean, I was like having an out of body experience, you know, but I just said, you know what? Hey, guys, you know, look, let me go meet with him. We'll, we'll get back together a little bit. I didn't really know what to say. And I went and got to my office and grabbed a notebook and a pen called my wife on the way to his office and said, hey, you know, we just got let go. They just fired Tommy. Oh my God. I said, well, it gets worse. I'm the interim. And I said, I don't know when I'll talk to you, Kath. And so I, so I go around and take a deep breath and walk in his, in his office. And I really went in with the mindset of, this is going to be a miserable with six games left and an open date. So seven weeks, this is going to be a miserable seven weeks, you know, and, but I'm thinking he's probably going to tell me, hey, do a good job. I'll try to get the next guy to keep you or something, you know, along those lines. But just the opposite happened. There's such great lessons that came out of that and I still tell people to this day when I go speak. So I walk in this man's office and I sit down and he looks at me and he said, he said, that, but let me tell you something. I know a unit of spot here. He goes, but here's what I want you to know. And he kind of told me how it all kind of came about. He goes, but here's where we are. He said, for the next seven weeks, I want you to be the head coach. I don't want you to be the interim head coach. For the next seven weeks, I want you to do whatever you think you need to do to fix us. He said, if you need to fire the whole staff, fire the whole staff. He said, whatever you think you need to do, I, for the next seven weeks, you have my full support. That was a mistake on his part, okay? But that's what he tells me. And then he goes, he said, for five and a half years, I've watched you. I've watched how you led your players, how you handled yourself in the community. I watch you with your family. He said, I see these kids in your office. I've seen how you handled discipline and recruiting. And he said, Dabo, I'm going to be honest with you. I've done this a long time. He said, I personally, he said, I think you're what we need here at Clemson. He goes, he goes. So what I want you to know is when this thing's over, you're going to get an interview for the job. He said, he goes with you, win them all or lose them all. He said, I'm going to give you an interview for this job. He goes, now I'm going to hire the best coach. I'm going to go all over. I'm going to, I'm going to hire the best coach. He goes, but I'll say it again, I think you're what we need at Clemson. He goes, it sure would help if you could win a few ball games. All right. And then he goes, and then he kind of sits back. He says, you got any questions? And I'm like, I mean, my whole mind, so now my mind is racing. So I leaned up and I said, so you're, you know, I said, well, I appreciate that. And I said, you're telling me that, like I can be the head coach. And for seven weeks, he said, I'm telling you, whatever you think we need to do, you need to do to fix us, you got my full support. And I'm like, and so, so I walked out of this office and I've had a notepad and my mind is racing. Yeah. And I, you know, because I went in there with one mindset and I came out with a different mindset. And the lesson that I got from that was number one, you never know who's watching. So just be great at whatever you do. You know, I mean, whatever it is you're doing, just be great at it. So many people, especially in this business, they're chasing things. They want this title or they're this and that. And the grass is green where you're watering it, right? You know, just just be great where you are. Just be great where your feet are. Blue more your planet is what I always say. You don't know who's watching, but I know this. If you're great at what you do, people will notice that. Amen. So that was a lesson and I, and I, and I learned that as a player, same thing happened to me as a player. I, a sophomore, I'm a walk on, I come to a Tuesday practice. Boom, they said, hey, we're going to give you a shot. You know, and I didn't even know he was paying attention. Next thing, you know, I let her three years, I get a scholarship, win a national championship. But, but the second part of that lesson is you got to be prepared for your opportunity. You know, you got to be prepared for your opportunity. You may not, you may not ever get it, but, but right, better be prepared, you know, anyway. So what did you do coach to be prepared? Like, yeah, so, so, so, you want to shoulder, you're ready? Did you think you were ready? Absolutely. So, so, say answer that. So when I walked out of there, I went in a closet. I literally, I went in like a, yeah, that's a true story. I had janitor clause that have been, and I just closed the door, and I just sat in there and for 45 minutes, I just started writing. I just started writing, and it was all over the place. You know, I'm thinking recruiting, I'm thinking discipline, how I want to change practice. What would I want to do this week? How am I going to meet with the team? I got to meet with the staff. Is there anybody I need to make a change with? You know, I'm going to run the offense. I'm going to, you know, I had all these things going on, and I'm just scribbling 100 things, you know, for that moment. Yeah. But as I, and so, so I go through that, but the second part of it is from the time I got in the coaching in 1993, I was preparing to be a head coach. All right. I didn't know if I'd ever get a chance to be a head coach, but I was just, I love what I do. I love what I was doing. I love my, I mean, I'm just trying to be the best at whatever it was, but I started kind of building a book, started putting a, a head coach book together in 19, I mean, literally right out of the gate. Things I liked, things I didn't like, you know, academic stuff, philosophy of offense, philosophy of defense, philosophy of recruiting, philosophy of special teams, you know, who I would want to hire, you know, what would be my staff expectation, you know, whatever, how I would run practice, you know, and I started putting all this, just building this all over the years and all the years, I, oh, man, I like that. Throw it in the book. Or, you know, a lot of times, so I coached eight years at Alabama when I finished playing. I played five coached eight. And a lot of times we learn more from the bad than we do the good, you know, and that's called experience, you know, when we touch that hot stove and we get that big, you know, we learn, right? Yes. But the wise man learns from other people's experiences. So, so we all learn from our own, that's just life. But man, I just spent a lot of time learning from other people and I do that when I play here, see this, to this day, I send them stuff from all over the country all the time, you know, whether it's something good or something bad, you know, to learn from others. And so I just was started going through things and I spent the first seven years, I spent all seven years of coach Stalin's career at Alabama with him. And then all of a sudden I start working for other people, getting exposed to different things and I start going up, well, I know why he did it that way, you know, and so I started having things reinforced. And then I started, you know, growing into my own as far as, yes, my beliefs, my philosophy, and I started putting all this together and what happened to me, this was a great, great turning point for me. In 2000, I think it was 2006, they were starting a football program at the University of South Alabama, the Jaguars down in Mobile and they're good program, but they were starting football there. And they reached out to me to come interview for the job. And I'm like, you know what, you know what, and it was, it'd be quite honest with you and I only told this to my wife, if I had gotten the job, I wouldn't have taken it. But I told Kath, I said, you know what, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to prepare for this job like it's the University of Alabama. Like it's the job. And so it forced me to take all those years of stuff and I put it together and I organized and I went after that job like it was the greatest job. I mean, I had Jaguar Nation, we fixed in the rule of the world, man, I had everything in there. And so I had, I was prepared and you know, and I finished like second or third on the job, they didn't offer me the job. But I finished second or third on the job, but I really wouldn't have taken it if they had offered it, but it was a great process. And so all of a sudden, two years later, I'm the interim head coach at Clemson. And so when I'm getting interview, so I'm in the middle of the season, I'm in chaos, I'm making changes. I got all this stuff going on. And but when that season was over, you know what I did, I walked in, I had the president, I had the AD, the assistant, and I had them all a book and I said, hey, this is who I am. This is what we're going to be. This is what we're going to do. This is what our philosophy is. This is how we're going to run the program. This is the staff I want to hire. This is, you know, our discipline policy policy. This is what I believe in. And you know, bam, here we go. To me, as like, I've coach, I feel like we just did the whole show. Like, I hope everybody got this and goes all the way back. All this stuff about blooming where you're planted, the grass is greener where you water. And I've actually never heard it said that way before. But this idea that he was blooming where he was planted, being the best and great at what he did, but preparing for the future all the time. It's amazing to me, even entrepreneurs that even will listen to the show. They'll write down little keys, but are you watching how the guest says it? How they phrase it? How they position it? How they tell a story? How I do it? Where you work right now. If you're, you know, an employee somewhere, are you prepping to be a business owner someday, studying what works and what you said to about what doesn't work? Are you keeping that binder that coach kept, of keeping these notes and experience allows you to anticipate too. If you don't have experience, I think you're constantly reacting. Yes. And I think what happened was when you got this job, a lot of guys get that opportunity. They didn't prepare like you. Now they're just reacting, recruiting this problem, the boosters. We just had this loss. Oh my gosh, our centers hurt. And they're reacting all the time. This allowed you, I think would you agree with me, coach, that preparation allows you to anticipate situation sometimes that you wouldn't get if you weren't prepared. You got a plan. You know, Abraham, one of my favorite quotes from Abraham Lincoln's Lincoln was, if Abraham Lincoln said, you give him six hours to chop down a tree. He's going to spend the first four hours sharpening the axe. You know, I mean, it's all about preparation. This isn't my world. And what we do, we only play about 3% of the time. We prepare 97% of the time. Yes, what you're doing when nobody's watching, that's what separates people. You know, you didn't get here. I don't know your whole background, but I guarantee you didn't get here doing this show. You didn't just show up. I mean, it's what you're doing. Championships are one when nobody's watching. They're when the stands are empty. And it's the same thing with people. Champions are made when what you do when nobody's watching. You know, so it's that 97% of the time. You know, we all work. We have jobs, but it is all about preparation and having a plan. And so having a vision. You're not able to articulate that vision. You're going to deal with young people today. Number one, they better know that you care. Number two, you better be able to communicate why. All right. And so, and you've got to be able to articulate a vision and get people to buy in and get behind that. I don't care if you're running a company or whatever it is, but the other key thing, this is very important because, you know, especially in my world, and I deal with a lot of young people, and I deal with a lot of young coaches now. You know, and I've been, I've been, I've been a, I've been an 18 to 22 year old. And I have a PhD in 18 to 22 year olds because I've spent my entire life with that group for my whole life. Right. And in fact, I was at a convention a couple years ago. And I had this young couple of young guys. I'm going up. We were in Louisville. And I'm going up to going back to my hotel room. And I'm stand over by the elevator and these couple of these young guys came up to me. They were like GAs at grad assistants somewhere. I don't know if they were Baylor or where. Some school. And they came up to me. I coached me. I just wanted to introduce myself. I'm nice to meet you guys. And I'm literally standing there at the elevator and they're like, they're like, you know, coached me and he listened. We just, you know, we just want to, you know, they wanted me to give them like, you know, 30 years of stuff and knowledge and a minute here. And they want to go, they want to go from G8 to head coach. And I just, and they'd listen. And I said, well, here's what I will tell you guys. All right. And this is exactly what I just said. I said, be great. What do I, whatever you're doing? If you're the GAB, the best G A and the history of GAs, if your job's to go get the coffee, man, you bring the best coffee that anybody's ever got. You get that coffee, man, everybody's going to manage. You get that call. This guy's unbelievable. All right. People noticed that I said, I can't tell you how many people I've hired that they don't have some fancy resume. What they got is they got an unbelievable work ethic and attention to detail. And they're just so focused being great at what they're doing. They don't get distracted. So that's number one. Prepare, but you need to hear me on this. Guys, I'm about to get on this elevator and I'm going to hit 14 because I'm on the 14th floor. And when the door's open, I'm on the 14th floor. Well, let me tell you this. You got to take the steps. All right. There's no elevator to being a head coach. There's no elevator to being the CEO. There's no elevator to greatness. You got to put the work in and take the steps. Period. And you know what? Enjoy it. Yeah. Enjoy it. It's not about, because I've been to the top. I tell our guys all the time, I've been to the mountain top. And it's awesome. We love it. We climb a mountain every year at Clemson. That's kind of our thing. How you climb a mountain one step at a time. We love that. And we start out based. You know, and the top of the mountain is awesome, but that's not what it's all about. That's just a moment. What you will cherish more than anything is the journey that it took to get there. Like, man, what it took to get there, the people you were with, the relationships that you developed along the way, the failures that you had, the mistakes that you made that you learned from, that you grew from. That's what you cherish more than anything. Everybody looks and they see the grand moments, you know, Tom Brady winning a Super Bowl. That's great. You know what, Tom Brady's going to remember more than anything, man, those practices. You know, getting together with the guys, the bus rides, the plane rides, the, the, when nobody's watching the preparation on a bus. That's what it takes. I'm getting goose bumps, y'all. Like, you've got to fall in love with that. You got to embrace the suck, right? There's a lot of it that just sucks and you got it. You got to fall in love with that part. If you're going to, if you're going to, you know, do anything great in life, it's not going to just happen. So the preparation and falling in love with the preparation, all the great players that I've been around, that's what separates them. They love the preparation. Everybody loves to play. Yeah. But it's falling in love and embracing the suck along the way. That's, that's what separates us. Oh my gosh. Very rarely I'm in the middle of one of these shows. I'm like, this is freaking great. You know, we're in the first quarter just because it's a, I just want you, I just want to keep going. But I just got to say this to you. I just gave a talk this week in bunch of entrepreneurs, very high entrepreneurs. And so I'm going to give you overall business philosophy. It's going to surprise you. I said, here's what it is. Everybody you encounter wants to feel this from you that you love them. Care about them. Believe in them. They're going to feel a little bit better. That's it. And they're saying, help me. You said it of young people, but it's true. I think coach of all people, as you said. And then this notion, I just want to review. I'm not going to review everything he says, but he says so many good things. This idea of the love of the preparation, I promise you, that's true across the board of the athletes I've worked with too. But in addition to that, being able to create a vision that you can articulate that people buy into is like, you're listening to this man talk. There's a rhythm. There's a, it's so easy to listen to him. He wasn't born with that. That's something that he's worked on over time. Before we start the interview with my next guest, just want to remind you all that you can subscribe to the show on YouTube or follow the show on Apple or Spotify. We have all the links in our show notes. You'll never miss an episode that way. Now on with the show. Welcome back to Max Out with Ed Mylett. Gentlemen of my left does not need an introduction. This is Terrell, El Dorado Owens. Not my full name. Otherwise known as T.O. to most of you out there. And newly elected NFL Hall of Famer T.O. So congratulations on that. And welcome to the program. Appreciate it. Max out. Max out. Exactly. We're going to max out the day here today. So let's talk about that for the career for a second. I'm curious because this small town guy, not a big time school, now you're in camp with the Niners. You're a rookie year. Okay. Jerry Frickin Rice is there. Yeah. Probably your hero growing up, right? You got to be. I never, like I said, my grandmother's so strict. I didn't get to do a whole lot. I didn't watch a lot of TV. That's crazy. The only TV shows that I really got to watch was Willa Fortune. I got to watch the Channel 6, Channel 12 news. Really? I got to watch the Cosby show. Get out. Really? For real? But did you know who Rice was? No, not until like my junior year in college. Oh my gosh. That's bananas. You need to know who Jerry Rice was till your junior year in college. Junior year in college. Okay. I had no idea because I never followed football like that. Okay. So I never really was a football fan. So you go to camp though. I know a little bit about the history. So Jerry Rice is there. There's a number one pick in front of you, Stokes at UCLA. You got drafted the year before 1995. Right. You did four. So they got a number one. They invest a third round picking you. Right. What was that like? Did you have to earn a roster spot? Like were you the first thing like I got to make the spot? Oh yeah. Well, absolutely. Again, not really knowing and being aware of what the draft consists of. What it encompasses. I mean, I thought, okay, you drafted. You're on the team. I mean, I didn't know you had no, yeah, I didn't know you had to go through the pros. You got to make the team. So like I said, that was kind of how clueless I was to really me playing beyond the collegiate level because I never thought that I would play beyond the collegiate level. Awesome. We mentioned basketball. I played three years of basketball. I mean, the program wanted me not to play my senior year understanding that had an opportunity to play professionally. Okay. Football. So, but I, my love was so great for basketball. And I was like, no, I'm not going to forego my senior year of playing basketball to concentrate on football when that was never really on my radar. But yeah, I was drafted. Ward number 15 in camp. My coaches Larry Kerchie at the time, they drafted me on potential based on my physical attributes and what I could probably add to the game. They thought that I could learn under Jerry Rice, JJ Stokes, and then I got to be there and saw guys like Nate Singleton, these are veteran receivers, Chris Thomas, and a lot of other free agents that were on the team at the time. Yeah. So I'm looking around. I'm like, I'm number 15. I don't get an 80 number. I don't, you don't get an 80 number, a legit number until you make the team. I didn't know that. So 15 was, was my number going all the way through preseason and asked as, yeah, as this preseason unfolded, you started to see the cuts break down as we get closer to the season. So I saw guys that I felt in my mind were better than I was. Really? They were getting cut. So I mean, it's natural. Natural instinct. If you know that your skill set is not where theirs are, you're like, okay, well, I'm next. You're next, yeah. That's the same. I was a realist about my abilities when I was in high school in college. I knew that there were guys that were better than me. That's crazy to hear. I knew in college, I knew that there were guys that were bigger, faster and stronger than me. But that's what prompted me to get the key. Not only did I work out in my spare time when I was in high school those 30, 45 minutes, I didn't go home during the summer after my first minute saw more year of school. So I got the key from the strength and conditioning coach. I did the same thing. Got the key to the weight, man. There we go. Did the same thing. I would go into, that's how I got stronger because I was in there by myself. So I had to lift off by myself. I had to be careful because I was in there by myself. Nobody spotting me. So that's how I got stronger. So these are some of the things that I did, unbeknownst to the world out there in terms of how I made it. This is so good because you outworked everybody. It's also the things you do when no one's watching. Like when you played, one of the things everyone would say, ah, it's physique, it's physique. Right. Now you know where this comes from. It doesn't happen overnight. That's awesome to hear. I hope everyone's hearing these lessons, business, sports, you name it. And then again, this running theme of you taking advantage of opportunity, right? So during that season, Rice gets hurt. That's second. Second season. Is that when you had your breakthrough? It was really the second season. Yeah, I played sparingly. Yeah. My rookie year, I played a lot of special teams. Yes. But what you got your couple passes there? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I think I had my, I don't know how many yards I had. No, I think I had like four touchdowns in my rookie year. But again, I started kind of just familiarized myself with the playbook, Steve Young. Yeah. Just the culture of professional football in itself. Okay. And so I go in my second year, again, going into the off season, I'm preparing myself. Yeah. Just to be a vital part of value to the team. And so we go into my second season, first game, we go down to Tampa. Uh, Jerry Rice, I think he runs a reverse or something and, and more and more. I think just beat our defensive end, gotten from behind and he tears as ACL. And that point on, I mean, I get thrown into the fire. Here we go. And so that's where that preparation, you know, that I, and, and, and just me familiarizing everything that I had done my, my rookie year leading up to my second year, I was preparing myself for this moment. I love it. And if I wasn't prepared, then I wouldn't have been able to, to add value to the scene, to, to the team. You see, I didn't say success because I hadn't, I hadn't, there was no level of success at that point. Wow. I was still trying to add value. I was trying to add value to, to the Jerry Rice's, to the Steve Young's, to the J.J. Stokes, to the organization, to the team itself. Wow. So I hadn't really experienced any success at this point. I was still trying in that, in that mode of proving myself that I could play at the professional level. What a great distinction. So when did the, by the way, one thing, just off the whole thing. I turn on a football game. It's a playoff that's you guys against Green Bay. The best catch I've seen in the clutch moment in my entire life is that catch you made in the end zone. That's a lot. Here was that though. 99. Okay, we're going to feed this in right here. You're going to watch this guy come across, it's the middle and you get obliterated and hold onto this football, right? Yeah. Like, that's the kind of stuff about, like you added value, added value, added value, and then it was like, oh my god, this guy's special, right? It's, it's literally like where I caught the ball, it's like, it's equitably going in between to, to, to cars. Unreal. Or going to, to the eye of a hurricane or a tornado. It's because Steve Young, he put that pass where nobody else could catch it, but me. How much time was left in the game? I think at that time when I called it about eight seconds left. It's eight seconds left in the game, right? So I think things like that start happening. So you took advantage of your opportunity. Then there's these special moments and you start going, wait a minute, maybe I got something here, right? Maybe I'm special. When did you have the, this guy, just so you know, this man had 20 catches in a single football game. So I'm curious, did you know going into that game, like whoever the corner was that we all might eat this dude up or, or was that just the game kind of fell in your direction? Well, for everybody that don't know about that, this is Jerry Rice's last home game. Okay. I didn't know that. So yeah, this is Jerry Rice's last home game. We planned the Chicago Bears. Okay. We go into this game with the game plan and the mindset of, we're trying to send this guy off into the sunset, you know, we're trying to send him off into something like this. Right. You know, me. So our first 15 plays, scripted or 20 plays, they were, if it was, I think it was 15. Okay. I guarantee 13, 98% of the past plays, 13 to 14 of the past plays on the plays in general or for Jerry. Okay. We're trying to send the greatest receiver of all time out the best way possible. Got you. But not only did we know that, but the world knew that the Chicago Bears do that. The defense knew that. So they tried to prevent and they did a great job of taking him out of the game. Taking the win, which opened up for you. What did you just mention? They went into this by saying, me taking advantage of opportunities. So that's what I did. So Jeff Garcia, the quarterback at the time, he had to be smart going through his progression progressions, knowing that, okay, I can't imagine what Jeff was like. We trying to get the greatest receiver of all time. We trying to get him off. And he's, so he has to be smart about the game plan, not to force anything. So he goes through his progressions and Jerry been the number one receiver. And you could have said that me and JJ again, depending on the receiver sets, on formations, we're two and three in a progression. So I was just basically running my routes to win, to be open, to be that secondary receiver. If Jeff goes through one option and Jerry's not there, he goes to two or he goes to three. I was on the receiving end of 20 of those passes. It's interesting. This is like the most telling part of the interview, just so you know, because the perception of you, I think sometimes is that, and it's completely opposite. I'm going to bring another example up in a minute. I think like the ultimate team player on the field, I just asked you about a record you had for a long time and you credited Jerry with it. You literally just said that he created opportunities for me, right? It really was. That's what a team person, actually most team guys would not even say that. So that's incredible. And I ask you about a record you hold. You basically give credit to Rice for moving coverage his way and opening things up for you and to your quarterback by the way, too. I'm curious because now you become the Jerry Rice the rest of your career. One of the things that's unique you guys when you're at a high level of sports is that, you know, you see the records he's got. But you have to understand something. Every football game this man went into for about a decade or more. The defense on that Monday when they got together was how do we stop 81? Right. You understand the whole, the whole structure of the defense is how do we take away their best weapon? This was their best weapon. What's that like? I'm curious like all week. You got to be so good. You're going to face their best corner, right? Or they're going to slant coverage your way. You're going to get double cover most of the time. Whatever it is. What's it like? No one a whole team is scheming against you. And how did you end up prevailing week after week after week, beating coverage like that? Was it your, was it your, was it your ability to run the route? Was it your film study? All of it? Like what was it? It's just my preparation. Understanding what they're going to give me. Understanding my coaching. Helping me, they were helping me perfect the craft will become a receiver. Coming out of Chattanooga, I had no idea of, really, I wasn't faced with the level of competition that I was going to be facing in the pro. So I had to work on these things, you know, day in and day out after practice. I'm working with my hands, working with my feet. My physical part that was a given. I mean, I could run through a guy all day, all day. But I knew in order for me to progress and get to the level of Jerry Rice. Then I had to add some tools to my toolbox. I probably had a toolbox, but I probably had maybe two or three tools in there. Wow. You know what I mean? So I was lacking. So I had to add some tools to my repertoire into my box in order to really perform at the level that I knew that I could once I started to grasp what I could do on the football field. So the separator was that extra preparation, those extra tools again. You have average, you have good and you have great football players. Yeah. You see that there's only the margin of with good and great is very, very slim. And what separates those guys, when you think about in football, you think about the Jerry, you think about the Tom Brady's, your Steve Young, all of us, you know, Hall of Fame, Caliber, or Talent Guys. In basketball, you think about the Colbert, you think about the Michael George, you think about the LeBronz, and what they're doing later on in their careers is because they realize that there is something that separates them from good to go from good to great. Coming out of high school, I wasn't that great coming out of high school, but these guys, when you think about Colby's, the Kevin Garnet's, the LeBronz, they're projected to be great. But it'll be a big disappointment and failure if they don't exceed or live up to those expectations. But you think about what Colby did, he took the blueprint of what Michael Jordan did. You think about what LeBron has done, not only you can't just pinpoint and characterize him with one particular player. He possesses so many abilities from all these great players that are paid the way from him. He realizes that and he took advantage of the opportunities. So he takes the time to play 15 seasons. And now you feel like you look at this guy, play, he can play 15 more because he's invested in himself, he believes in himself. And that's what I had to do too. I knew that I wasn't good at that at one point. I was average. I started from average and I worked my way to good. And then once I saw him like, okay, I'm a pretty decent athlete. What can I do to take me to the next level? I utilize the resources around me from my personal trainer to my coaches. I listen, when I would be on the football field and I would see Steve Young talking to Brent Jones or he would be talking to the quarterback coach Matt Kavanaugh or when he was being washed and me walk on the field or he's talking to Jerry Rice. These are conversations that they had. I was in ear shot distance. I would be paying attention. So there was something that he and Steve, Steve and Jerry are trying to get on the same page with. I knew that he's talking to him, but I'm being taught at the same time. So I'm taking all this into account and into consideration because I may be in that situation one day and ultimately I was because I had some big shoes to feel. I was a scared. Honestly, I was afraid to be average. I was afraid to be good. I wanted to be great. I wanted to be better than good. And so that's what enabled me to do the things that I did in the football field. When I saw smaller guys, you know, squirt through defenses, how quick they were, how agile they were, I knew as a big body in order for me to get to that level, I had to work on these things. Wow. This is awesome. Like maybe my, some of my favorite three or four minutes in the history of doing this, because this is like inside the inside of the inside of a hall of favor of anything. Same as true for any of you guys in business, you get to that level where you're good, you want to get to that level where you're being great. It's fighting for these little extra things, those extra mentors, extra conversations, extra preparation, extra tool in your toolbox to communicate or close or product or whatever the heck it is. It's awesome. Curious, this is a football question. Toughest corner you had to go up against in your career. A NIS Williams. A NIS Williams from the Cardinals. Was he the Cardinals? Yeah. First, he was with the Los, the St. Louis Rams. Yeah, Rams and then cards, right? Because we played I was in the NFC West, we played them twice a year from my first three and four years. And so he was a big corner. I was a big receiver. So again, I'm sure he did film study. Just like I had to do film study and guys that did film study to try to minimize you. Like you said, they gave me playing, how do you stop this guy? Yes. I was just a young book 81. How do you stop? How do you stop this young kid? They won. Yeah, you stop this young kid. Yeah. So I did film on what I did good, what I did decent, what I did poorly. And he probably tried to minimize those things, eliminate those things. What I did, great. A good at that time. And so it was tough getting off bump and run because it went to a small school. Yes. I wasn't faced with a lot of that. So everybody probably wanted to get physical with you at the line of scores, but very few guys had the capacity to do it because you were so strong, right? And then they didn't weigh him. Right. And the thing is, especially for him, he was just my size. So he could, there was some room for error for him to make up. But if it's a smaller guy, if they mess around and they slip, I use my physicality or my quickness to get by, they know it's a rap. They know it's a rap. So they didn't come up and impress me as much. Got you. He was the guy that forced me. I'm like, man, I got to get better because I can't only just get by with getting, having some success against these other corners. They're going to be other big corners in the lead. They're going to look at him. Like, okay, he stopped T.O. So let me see how he did it. So I had to prepare myself for any in every situation. I love hearing this. The other thing about you as a player, then we'll move off this. But I want to say one thing is, I think people underestimate how tough you were. First off, the best of ability is availability. You're available all the time. You were durable, like LeBron. It's one of the great things about LeBron, Jane. Nutrition. Nutrition. Take care of your body. Right. You're getting hit the one year with his knee, but this dude plays football, right? Like he's available. It's how you rack up these numbers, right? And help your football team bring value. You were tough, though. And so I'm a Patriot fan. So I just want to talk about this one situation. You know what I'm going to say, right? Super Bowl 39. Super Bowl 39. So this man gets to the Super Bowl. And the truth is, a few weeks prior to that, he basically breaks his leg and has a screw in your leg. Is that not your thing in your foot? Yeah, two screws. In my ankle, I draw a lot of the ligaments in my ankle. Okay. On the diagnosis, once I got my MRI, the following day. A lot of ligaments torn. I didn't know my leg was broken till I got an X-ray because they MRIed my whole leg because I went to sleep that night and my leg was really, it was aching so bad. Not my ankle. I got iceded. Yep. But I was throbbing throughout the course of the night up by my knee. Okay. So I told the radiologist, I was like, my leg was aching throughout the course of the night. All right. Cool. We'll just, we'll just X-ray the whole leg or whatever and see what's going on. This is one of the most under reported stories. Seriously, I think in the history of the NFL, right? This man played in the Super Bowl. No one thought he was going to play. They weren't sure the game planned for it, but no one thought he was going to play. This man played with a recently broken leg in the Super Bowl. This is something that no one talks about. There was even a slight limp when you would watch him warm up and then he flat early in the game. I'm watching the game. I go, oh God, Owens is going to kill us. The only reason I'm not being negative about anybody. I want you to talk about playing with that injury, playing through some pain because you had to be in some pain or some discomfort or you weren't at your best. But I'll be honest with you, I watched that Super Bowl. If they'd have continued to get you that football in that game, there would have been a different result in that football game. I remember that last couple of drives you had were taken forever. I'm like, thank God it's taken forever. They're not getting them all to T.O. They literally, if they just kept feeding you the football, they could not cover you. You were like a man on a mission in that football. I'm not saying that because you're sitting here either. It's a standout moment for me in sports. I coach a lot of athletes. I know that you weren't at your best and you came in again. The greatest opportunity of your career was this Super Bowl to shine and you shine. Had they won the football game, it would have been a legendary story people would tell forever because you played so hurt. So that was a great conversation. Be sure to follow the Ed Mylet show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. You'll never miss an episode that way. Here's an excerpt I did with our next guest. Welcome back everybody. My guest today played 12 years in the major leagues. Let me just tell you something. He could flat mash. This dude could hit. I used to watch him going. That's the natural. They should call him the natural. But then the more I got to know his story turns out it wasn't natural that he worked really hard to build this incredible swing three time all star and I'm just telling you guys any of you that know baseball this dude could flat out hit. But today we're going to talk about, you know, you got someone here that played in the big leagues and the major leagues that long. There's a mental aspect to what they did and how they live and what they do now that got them there. So we're going to talk about peak performance today and overcoming adversity. All kinds of incredible stuff with Sean Casey Casey. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me on. It was so fired up to be here. So came all the way in. Flu from Pennsylvania to be here today. So thank you for being here. I know you got a lot of family stuff going right now. Dude, I just wanted to say to like before we get going like listening to your podcast day, like who's the guy? Who's the voice of like? Welcome to. Who is that guy? The guy that does like he introduces his show. He used to do. It's credible. Yeah, he used to do something for the NFL and I heard his voice. Oh, it's way back in the day. It's so funny. Seven years ago, I'm like, I told my team. I don't know who that dude is. I want that voice saying my name. And what's funny about that thing is too is that even to this day, he still can't say my let correctly. It's welcome to the end. My let's still isn't even say my name right. But his voice is so good. I'm like, okay, he can just say my he says my name wrong on my own show. But he says it was such a great voice. I'm like, let's just leave it. Every time he does the take, so I'm like, can you get him to say my let? And like, no, it's my let. Whatever. Anyway. So I want to go back to the kind of the beginning with you. So Michael Jordan's got this amazing story. Everyone throws around it. You know, he ends up being the greatest of all time, but he didn't even, you know, make his varsity team a sophomore year. There's this great story. And it's a great story. But the guy went to North Carolina had a bunch of scholarship offers. You on the other hand, when I say this guy could hit, I mean, I, I, other big league baseball players, envied your swing and just were, you know, you just a remarkable hitter and player. But in high school, we go back like, you didn't really have any juice. No one wanted you. That high school, you couldn't even get a scholarship. You couldn't even get someone to look at you. I want you to think about this. They're listening. Wherever you are in your life right now, you're like, no one knows me. Nothing's happening. This dude couldn't even get someone to come scout him. Never mind him offer you money. No one even come look, right? Is that true? No. I mean, you know, it's funny. We were talking about you. You're out in California. You got, you got, hey, we had nine dudes from high school get drafted. Like what? I could, I haven't seen, I haven't seen nine scouts in my life. Pittsburgh. I mean, it was incredible. So, you know, it's a great story. And as I look back and I think we were talking earlier like my dad's in a place right now where he's gone through two open heart surgeries and all this stuff. So even more like he and I have connected and we've kind of gone back down memory late. And, you know, it's funny when I look back at when I look back at growing up in Pittsburgh. Like, you know, I was one of the better players, probably 10, 11, 12. You know, that goes then you go to the bigger fields, 13, 14. So I remember being 14 years old and I wasn't, I didn't play it all freshman year. And I'm like, man, why am I not playing it all? Like you didn't play it. Like I played a little bit. I was like, hey, you get in there and pinch hit and I'm like, what? You know, so yeah, so didn't really play much, played a little bit here and there. And I remember like a few games into the year going to my dad and being like, hey, dad, help me out here. You know what I mean? Like, you know how good I am. You saw me hitting bombs and I was 12. I was like, 20 and a gap. You know what I mean? Like dominate. And I'm like, you know, and I, you know, you know that I should be starting as a freshman, you know, freshman baseball. And he's like, and I was like, do you think you could talk to the coach? Because I would, you know, that'd be, that'd be just helping me out. You know what I mean? We go, get your dad to kind of snow plow in there and there. Yeah. A lot of guys do do that. Well, that's what I mean exactly. And I think back now as a dad and I know you do to Ed is the conversation you have with your kid like, man, am I enabling my kids? You know, I feel like you disable people when you enable them. You know, am I enabling my kids sometimes? Am I making it too easy? And do I say no enough to maybe sometimes for a lesson, right? And like, so when I look back at this conversation, having my dad gone and talked to the coach, we're not even talking. Yeah, and that incredible. We're not even talking. So he says no. So my dad says no. He's like, you know what, Sean? I'm not going to talk to the coach. He goes, he goes, but he goes. One thing I will say is the kid that's playing ahead of you. I don't think he's better than you. You're not glaringly better than him. You're not glaringly better than him. And he goes, if you want to start playing, then you've got to start taking accountability for who you are as a player and for you, who you are as, you know, putting in the work. He goes, there's a bad occasion just open up in the town next to us. He goes, I'll make you a deal. He goes, I'll buy you as many tokens as you want as long as you hit every day. As soon as you stop hitting the deals off. I love your dad. Yeah, it was incredible. And I said, you know what? You got to deal that. He goes, you got to start being accountable for who you are and putting in the work. And Ed, dude, I started falling in love. I went to the cages. I went to this bad occasion. It was a grand slam USA. And, yeah, you remember, grandson, you got to first came out and I look back like things you're grateful for. I literally my gratitude journal recently was like, I'm so grateful that that guy, Dick Thomas decided to put a grand slam USA in the town next to me in Pittsburgh. Wow. You know, it's incredible when you think back of your life. Yeah. So I ended up meeting a guy on Tuesday nice name Frank Porco. Never played, never played, never ever played college baseball, but he was a hitting instructor. I wanted to ask you that. So this guy that helped you, didn't even play college baseball, didn't play college baseball just like high school and he was making some money on the side. But Ed, talk about the vine intervention. This guy knew hitting this guy knew hitting and all the years I played in the big leagues and all the, you know, hitting coaches I've been around, I still feel like Frank Porco and Bethel Park, you know, Pennsylvania was the best coach. So I would go to him every Tuesday night. My dad didn't make a lot of money. He was a chemical salesman, making like 33 grand a year, you know, so I knew those tokens were a big deal. Yeah. I didn't take that for granted. I knew those tokens. I knew the deal was a big deal, right? So I would go every Tuesday night, hit with Frank Porco for 30 minutes, 536 clock, 20 bucks. You know, it's a lot more now. It's not 20 bucks. Yeah, right. And then I would just stay, man, and I became obsessed with the mechanics of a swing all because I wanted to play JV baseball. That's pretty long because I want to start my sophomore year really, right? And it's just, when I look back and like, you know how you talk about just like the compound pounding and the marginal gain is like, I could see myself getting like a little bit better every time I'm like, oh, man, my front shoulder staying a little better. I'm really driving off my backside. So next year it comes along and my dad was right. He's like, man, this is going to work. So sophomore year I start JV, right? And I'm like, wow, this is working. My dad's right. Like, it's that, you know, and then he was always telling me, you want to put, and I was like, well, I'm college baseball one day. And he has like, all right, preparation meeting opportunity, like, be ashamed one day, Sean, if you came, if the opportunity came along and you weren't prepared, I'm like, and I kind of took that stuff to heart. It was just such great lessons. So my sophomore year hitting every day still. I didn't play any other sports. I did play some football basketball, but my sophomore year was just playing baseball. But I hit every day, hit every day after school. Next year, you know, I'm junior year, I'm starting varsity and I'm senior year, I'm starting varsity. Now I'm a good here, though, man. Now I'm like, this works. Yeah. Doing stuff every day, like, you know, that invisible, those invisible games, he really do work. And I was driving balls all over the park. So we get to my senior year, man. And, you know, kind of another, just a great lesson from my dad. He had just started a new company called Casey Chemical. I've been waiting to do it. He's 50 years old now. He's like, you know what, I'm going to, I'm going to start it. It was, you know, he was like a middleman for like, you know, for selling surfactant chemicals, right? And so I could, I saw how much he grinded. I saw like the work ethic that he put in and I could see now what he was talking about four years earlier. So and every, every month I'd come home to school and he would, he, hey, time to send out the network marketing. He's like, we got 5,000 letters, Shawnee, get those, get those lips ready because you're going to be licking those envelopes and sending them off. And we would send them out. He would say, hey, listen, if we get three or four people to come back, we got a sale, we're going to pay the bills. And that was like the kind of thought process, right? So during my senior year, I had no college scholarship offers, not division one, division two, division three, right? Just like they weren't there. And you know, remember back in high school, you'd go to those trial, it's where like, yes, you know, the big league teams would come and then you'd run the 60 and that's why you got, and you're getting drafted because like, this is my leg to fly. You know what I mean? They're like, this case, you like this, he has, does he have a disease? We don't know about that. That looks like he's ice skating quicksand. You know what I mean? So I run the 60s, 747, I come back, he had to try it on the whole, yeah, when we did a hit, they're like, all right, these guys are coming back for day two. Yeah. They'd go down the list and they'd be like, and I'm like, Casey, I think you left off Sean case like, no, you're not on the list. 745, we'll see you next time. Go to the Royal Shroud next week. I'm like, so dude, it was like so frustrating because I'm like, is this a track tryout? Are we going to hit it? And I can hit it, right? So, so, so my dad at that point, I was getting not many looks. And my dad said, you know what Sean? I sat down with him, I said, that really want to play college baseball, but no one's coming. And he goes, no one is going to come. He goes, no one's coming, Sean. He says, you want to make, you want to go play college baseball? You got to start playing offense, not defense. Quit waiting for somebody to come. He's like, how about tomorrow? You come home from school, you come up to my office, Casey Chemical. You sit down with me. We're going to write 30 letters. You're going to write the 30 schools that you want to go to. Division two, division three, wherever you want to. So, I come home from school that day, I'm kind of fired up. I got a guy, I got a game plan. I sit down with my dad, he goes, here we go. So, bam, I went to the first one at Penn State, next one at Clemson. Then I'm writing a college of rooster, Mary, I'm writing whoever, whoever will listen. I just opened my mind. I'm like, I'm going to play in the big leagues one day, but I got to get to a college. Why do your face change when you started to talk about your dad writing the letter? I'm just curious, like, your face changed a little bit. You know what? Because it fires me up. I'm so grateful. I'm so grateful. I'm just, you know, I'm 48 now. So, you're grateful for those, you're grateful when you look back when you're 18 years old, 17 years old, and you know, you've got a dad that's willing to stand next to you when you're grinding. You know what I mean? You know, when it's not, you know, when everyone tells you you're too slow, you're this and that, you know, you've got the guy next to you and say, you can do it. Yeah. Why not you? You know, I told you the truth, too, right? Like, hey, no one's coming. Hey, bro, no one's coming. And I think that's the reality of it. That was the reality of it. Like, and I was like, when you're in a fight with the reality, you only lose 100%. I'm like, they're not. Yeah. So, we sit down and write these 30s. 30s. Amazing. I just got to tell you, like, you're getting me, like, I don't know why my eyes are watering. But like, I know that that was a, like, you're not here if you don't write those letters. You're not, you're not going to hear it in a minute, like, you're not here if your dad doesn't stand by you. You're not here if you don't play offense. He doesn't tell you no one's coming, Shiny. No one's coming. No one's coming. No one's coming. It's just amazing how moments in life can define us, right? That's what I mean. Like, even when my kids are like, kind of, I hope I'm staying the right. Me too. Do we go, do we feel that? Yes. I hope I'm giving the right lessons. I hope I'm not just snow plowing, you know, the road for them and making sure everything smooth, you know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I really think I can play there. You know, you know, I mean, boom, boom. So, bam. Season goes on, dude. And I'm still hitting every day after school. And I'm having a great year. We ended up winning the championship that year. And my school, I purcing. But with four games, the go, brother. It's incredible. How this, how this works. First of the bad. I remember a player. Our team called Montaur. I get a pitch middle away. Bam. Rocket left center. You know, I'm like, no, it's go. A couple of libi. You know. Next. Next. Next. You know and and and four doubles and you know bro like You you probably look back at your high school career college career and you know the games. Yeah, there's a handful of them where you like Absolutely, that was yeah, that's a crap. Yeah. Yeah That was my greatest high school game ever. Yeah hands down no doubt about it 100% So Jerry Malarkey who's the who's the coach of a percent Clarem? I'm running out to play first for the seventh inning. We're dominating his team. He's like hey case He's like a fat heck of a game He goes how many hits you got like a four hits man? He goes how many ribbys he got eight ribbys Jerry He goes yeah, you know what that's great You see the guy behind the backstop right there. That's Mark McQueen Just for six hours from the University of Richmond to come see you play And I was like are you serious? He's like yeah, he wants to talk to you after the game. Oh my god So after the game I went over preparation my opportunity Reparation meeting opportunity. I remember thinking to my dad. I bet that was this preparation meeting opportunities Are you BS in here because I don't see any opportunities right right? But he's like what he always he was always adamant was one's gonna come One's gonna show up You know and I went over to Mark McQueen's sugar's Andy said hey, man. He's like really like your swing You know he goes I mean get back to you tomorrow So he went back to coach Atkins back in Richmond called me off me a thousand dollars scholarship I think at the time rich was like 30 grand my dad made 33 grand was like dad What are we gonna do? He's like we'll figure it out We'll take a second Morgan's on the house. We'll get some financial aid. So what's the University of Richmond brother on the only offer that I had from those letters that I sent out because Playing offense and not defense right oh my gosh. Yeah incredible. I go to University of Richmond Are you are you all hearing this just so you know the end of the story is this man plays 12 years in the major leagues Is one of the greatest hitters over a decade in the major leagues multiple all-star teams this dude got no looks No, look you if you feel like you're missing your like are you hearing this he gets a thousand dollar and all do respect the University of Richmond I'll do respect, but this is not like Arizona state either right? It's a major right exactly like like it's incredible. Go ahead. It's incredible So I go to University Richmond Hadn't even seen the school show up first day my buddy Jay Adam's hey nice campus You're taking 45 visits and my let me get him This guy's gonna be leading off for us in three years. We've got boom boom boom pack 10 SEC Great campus. Yeah, and I'm interviewing you now Yeah, so you know and you're the one who played 12 years in the big league So it works out okay You're on my show time about your big league career. It's incredible. It's incredible I like works out so true. So I go to University of Richmond bro I end up starting my freshman year have a good good freshman year freshman all-American like you know Me and that leading on you know But I'm still developing as a player my sophomore year I do well and I go to Cape Codley and you obviously know That's your ticket if you get to the Cape You know in that year Todd Hilton was there during nurse that was there Michael Olson good players right have a really good summer Hit like 340 with the wood bat, you know almost you know Leave League and RBI's and all the reason I say that is because it's the part of the story I go back my junior year and I be and I and I and I hit 461 and I'd led and see division one NCAA baseball and in batting 461 and crap So I think back to three years early or six years or seven years earlier I'm asking my dad to go talk to the freshman high school coach because I'm not playing and he just gives me the Lesson of you got to work harder you got to put the timing you got to start being accounted for what you do set new routines What are your habits after school all that stuff and then for me it then all started to develop like I look back Seven years later gosh with the with like you talk about the compound pounded Pinyata effect of the invisible games all that stuff seven years later on the NCAA division That is freaking incredible and I get become a second-round pick of the Cleveland very short intermission here folks I'm glad you're enjoying the show so far don't forget to follow the show on Apple and Spotify Links are in the show notes now on to our next guest art Ed. It's so great to have you here on the learning leader show welcome Pleasure to be here and you know I told him the fan of your work for a while so it's great to finally join you That means a lot to me The feeling is mutual going back to earlier in your life Your athletic career so we have that in common right at college sports and your athletic career I can tell looking you just jacked and instilled amazing shape, but your career was cut short by an injury Can you share more about what athletics meant to you and then how you felt when it got cut short based on getting hurt? Yeah athletics for me was the only place man where I felt Any confidence when you're raised with anxiety or you know dysfunction your family dysfunction could be they didn't love you Didn't tell you they loved you enough they didn't give you enough water You know fighting divorce bankruptcy You know one version of child neglect is a parent not chasing their dream It's a form of neglect. It's an insidious one that most people don't appreciate But a parent not living their full potential Installs that software and that child that's a form of neglect if you're a parent and so when my career ended It probably ended something that would have ended anyway, you know quite frankly It's a hidden blessing, but the time it was devastating because it was my only dream and it ended and I was really lost for quite a long time Sort of flailing away trying to find who I was because the mistake I made This is true for a lot of executives listen to this too. I had linked to my identity to what I did My identity was what I did or what I accomplished or what I had It's a very dangerous way to live because that stuff changes and sometimes it goes away and Now I learned my identity is who I am As a man the decisions I make the way I live my life The way I treat other people and I'll never again allowed I'm you know become pretty wealthy guy and got jets and houses and islands and all this stuff But I'll never allow my identity be tied to things I do because that's fleeting and I know many many people have climbed the corporate ladder They finally get that position. They finally get that influence. They're like wow. I thought I'd feel differently I thought it was be more. I thought it would be better And that's because their identities tied to what they do and that's a shallow way to live your life And that's something I had to learn in that moment when my identity disappeared which was baseball Now if you fast forward and see that you've gained immense wealth like you said the planes the cars the houses the islands You got the Richard Branson type stuff going on But even I noticed like you think as you know this is a podcast host You learn a lot in the first few seconds when you meet somebody prior to pressing record and Sometimes people flip a switch and kind of go into character once it when you hit your chord You have been the same guy from the second we started and one thing I noticed too is an immense amount of humility Which I'm not gonna lie like I was pleasantly surprised Ed because you could have easily Not have that based on all of the other stuff that you've accomplished How do you how do you think about that? I'm curious of of humility in the role of not just like fake humility Which we all have seen some I'm talking to genuine real hey man It's good to get this good to know you have listened to your show like you can tell like this is real and that to me is like a really a key Cog when I think about your future It's like how does it not continue to go like this when you have this humility about you Thank you by the way great question It's one of the most important things in my life with people I want around me is humility Well one I'm a faith-based person so I'm not I don't think that everything that's happened in my life is just me that does not Mean I've busted my tail, but I know there's an element of blessing quite frankly. There's been a little luck too Right I've made my own luck, but there's a little bit of luck The second thing is I know how you know fragile it is it could go away and so I don't really catch up too much in that stuff But the big thing is this the people that I like the most like I try to surround myself with also have a ton of self confidence by the way I think there's a nuance I want people that nuance this line and it's not an easy way to To live I mean it's difficult to find this balance tremendous self confidence with humility Because we all know really it's self-confident people that don't have any humility what happens they have they're not curious They don't grow They usually finally flame out make mistakes because they believe their own press clippings right then we also have friends that are really really humble with no Self confidence and you're dragging their butt through life all the time right come on man We can do this you're not there. It's not you're not a victim So I try to have a lot of self confidence With the degree of humility and most of the people I surround myself with have that as well I like curious people. I want to grow What a ridiculous way to live to not be curious to not want to learn like I People go why do you even do your show? It's not a financial win for me right I love people. I love learning from people. I love I'm watching you your level of preparation I'm like all right. I got up my game a little bit How's he know about these index cards with my dad like that's not a very public thing So I'm always trying to grow I get in an uber you can ask my wife Do you always have limo drivers? No, I take a lot of ubers. Why I want to meet real people man and Automatically everyone will tell you if I have a server in a restaurant Tell me your story. What's your story? I had a guy drive me yesterday really quick guys from Lebanon right driving it It's got a kid at Harvard a kid at Yale and a kid at Stanford He's driving an uber to put them through school And I'm like tell me about your family. How do they get the well? Education's important Tell me about Lebanon. I didn't want to get out of the car. It was like a 20-minute ride I'm like can we I'm like extending the drive you know I wanted to learn more about this man What a fascinating man you didn't know who they asked guys probably to make an e3 two kids in an ivy league and another one at Stanford What a remarkable man and like tell me about your wife you must have an amazing wife to have these three kids Lighting up about his wife. We met when we were 14. I said oh man I'm at my wife in kindergarten. We started dating when I was 14 That's the juice of life is to have humility. It's where you learn and and you reach people You