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

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Tim Ferriss Show #847

Guest: Steve Young
Title: From Super Bowl MVP to Managing Billions – Hall of Fame 49ers Quarterback on High Performance, Reinvention, Faith, and How to Blend Dreams and Plans
Date: January 14, 2026
Host: Tim Ferriss

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Episode Overview

In this deeply personal and wide-ranging conversation, Tim Ferriss explores the life and lessons of Steve Young—Hall of Fame NFL quarterback, Super Bowl MVP, private equity executive, philanthropist, and author. The discussion traverses Steve’s athletic career, his battles with anxiety, his process of reinvention, the role of faith and vulnerability, and the philosophical underpinnings that fuel his approach to high performance and personal growth.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Art and Psychology of Reinvention

• Steve Young’s Career Shifts: From one of the most decorated quarterbacks in NFL history to managing billions as a private equity executive, Steve demonstrates sustained high performance and reinvention across radically different disciplines (00:55, 62:30).
• The Challenge of Transition: Steve discusses the cognitive and emotional difficulties of moving between life chapters, likening the end of his football career to a kind of “death” that must be actively mourned to make space for new growth (70:00–71:55).

2. Pivotal Encounters: The Stephen Covey Story

• Victimhood vs. Ownership: At a career low after replacing Joe Montana and feeling immense pressure, Young’s chance meeting with Stephen Covey (author of “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”) catalyzed a shift in mindset:
  • Covey “called out” Young’s victim mentality, challenging him to “be about it”—to own his circumstances and see his environment as a platform for discovering the limits of his own potential (06:11–13:14).
  • Quote: “It was as if I now knew if I was going to do anything, I was going to be about this.” (12:01)
• Long-Term Impact: Since that meeting, Steve has made a practice of daily accountability and self-authorship, turning away from mitigation and excuse-making toward radical honesty and learning (19:50–26:09).

3. Emotional & Mental Health: Anxiety and Vulnerability

• Struggles with Separation Anxiety:
  • Steve recounted early life separation anxiety that surfaced in adulthood, particularly around career transitions and high-pressure scenarios (43:24–44:13).
  • A low point led to a crucial conversation with the 49ers’ team doctor, who revealed his own experience with clinical anxiety. A subsequent diagnosis clarified generational roots and provided comfort—a story that bookends his Covey experience and underlines the power of vulnerability and shared humanity (49:24–56:41).
  • Quote: “The anxious parts have all kind of abated. But… how you achieve, how you accomplish, what’s the root of how you try to do it? And I was doing it in a fear-based way.” (56:41)

4. High Performance Mindset: Beyond Talent

• From Victim Mindset to Ownership:
  • Daily, Steve wakes up and consciously chooses to own his outcome, eschewing external validation (“I don’t need to read the paper to have somebody tell me how I’m doing… I am allowing them to do it to me because I’m not defining it right.” — 19:50–21:58).
  • Discusses the psychology of “mitigation” versus true accountability in team settings and broader life (23:22–24:52).
• Quarterbacking: Genius Under Pressure:
  • The difference between “good” and “great” quarterbacks, Steve posits, is an almost genetic ability to process information and remain aware under extreme adrenaline and pressure—akin to what Alex Honnold displays in free solo climbing (26:51–31:21).
  • Quote: “It’s a street smart. It’s not necessarily IQ for taking a calculus test… you just get it.” (29:57)
• Learnable Fundamentals:
  • Steve shares how “discovering fire” with his throwing motion in college unlocked new capabilities—an example of deliberate self-improvement and humility (32:51–34:42).

5. Blending Dreams and Plans: The Law School Years

• Dream vs. Plan: Steve’s father stressed the importance of maintaining both a dream (NFL career, “less than 1% chance”) and a sober 80% plan (law school)—a duality that provided contingency and drive (58:59–62:33).
• Law Degree While Playing: Over seven offseasons, Young completed his BYU law degree while playing in the NFL—a testament to his discipline and long-view approach.

6. From Athlete to Investor: The Silicon Valley Chapter

• Inside the Locker Room to Sand Hill Road:
  • Young capitalized on his proximity to Silicon Valley by forming relationships with top VCs (Doug Leone of Sequoia, Larry Sonsini) and starting businesses with friends from Stanford, illustrating “going where the action is” (62:47–68:26).
• The Power of Mentorship & Partnership:
  • His 30-year partnership with Rich Lawson exemplifies complementary skills, deep trust, and a willingness to weather existential risk and adversity (69:13–82:39).
  • Quote: “To me, the most interesting people in the world have lots of scars and have found the bounty in it, the good in it. And so I think that’s how it’s worked.” (80:49)

7. Philosophy and Faith: The Law of Love

• Faith as Foundation:
  • Steve articulates a faith that is curious, open, and non-transactional, distinguishing “Boy Scout theology” (performative merit) from deep relational connection (86:07–90:02).
  • Quote: “True faith can’t be cultural. It has to be rooted in something actionable that is beyond you.” (86:10)
• The Law of Love:
  • Draws from his book “The Law of Love”: the greatest good and fulfillment come not from transaction, but from self-transcendence, shared vulnerability, and seeing the divinity in others (90:07–98:39).
  • Applies this principle to relationships, teams, and even business, arguing that the greatest returns—personal or professional—come from non-self-interested, ideal-driven action.
  • Quote: “Self-interest at its core…it can’t make it. The law governing the universe, universal law for all humans, says to see the full measure of something, you have to lose the self-interest.” (90:07)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Meeting Stephen Covey (11:28):
  “He looked at me and said, ‘Then be about it.’ And I was like, oh my gosh. I realized right there that the hole I was in that I thought so many people had dug, that I had dug it... I authored this.”

• On Ownership and Failure (23:22):
  “The ball was in my hands, and now it’s in their hands. That is the truest truth. If you live in mitigation... it wasn’t authoring.”

• On High Pressure and Processing Speed (29:57):
  “It’s a street smart. It’s not necessarily IQ for taking a calculus test… you just get it.”

• On His Law Degree and Transition (62:33):
  “Now we have a dream and a plan. He [Steve’s father] was always about that... Dream and plan.”

• On Transition and Mourning (71:43):
  “Everyone... needs to recognize and treat [transition] like a death, to mourn it and go through all the steps of mourning it and burying it and actually having it as a place that you can keep referring to as almost like a gravesite because otherwise you carry it around, you never transition.”

• On Faith and Love (90:07):
  “There’s a law governing the universe, universal law for all humans, that says to see the full measure of something, you have to lose the self-interest.”

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Important Timestamps for Key Segments

• Stephen Covey Encounter and Mindset Shift: 06:11–15:08
• Ownership and Daily Practice: 19:50–26:09
• Quarterbacking Under Pressure: 26:51–31:21
• Separation Anxiety and Diagnosis: 49:24–56:41
• Dreams, Law School, and Planning: 58:59–62:33
• Entry Into Investing, Silicon Valley, Partnerships: 62:47–69:13, 79:17–82:39
• Transition—Mourning the End of Football: 70:00–71:55
• Faith, The Law of Love, and Non-Transactional Living: 85:18–98:39

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Takeaways for Listeners

• Real, sustained high performance and personal growth demand humility, vulnerability, and a daily commitment to self-examination and ownership.
• Life transitions, no matter how “successful,” must be mourned and consciously processed to avoid stagnation or bitterness.
• The deepest fulfillment and impact—in sport, business, or life—comes not from a checklist of achievements, but from transcending self-interest and seeking authentic connection and contribution.

Steve Young’s journey provides actionable lessons on how to face fear, reinvent oneself, seek deep learning, honor your past, and aim for a life rooted in something far greater than personal ambition.

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Follow Steve Young:

• Instagram: @teveyoung
• X (Twitter): @teveyoungqb
• Learn more: HGGC Website, Forever Young Foundation

For more: Visit Tim Ferriss’ Show notes for links to Steve’s books and additional resources.

Transcript

[A]

Hello boys and girls, ladies and germs, this is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss show where it is my job to deconstruct world class performers to try to break down how they have done what they've done, what you can copy and paste and test in your own lives. And it can take many different forms. This interview has been probably two years in the making. I was so happy to finally have it happen. Steve Young Also Very Timely right about now at the time of recording Steve Young is a Hall of Fame NFL quarterback who played more than 15 seasons primarily with the San Francisco 49ers. He was Super Bowl 29 MVP, earning Sports Illustrated and Sporting News Player of the year honors from 1992-94 and won the NFL MVP award in both 92 and 94. When he retired, he held the all time record for highest quarterback rating and remains the only quarterback to win four consecutive NFL passing titles. What makes him also very interesting to me is that he's a multi hyphenate. So the story did not end there. He didn't fade into obscurity. After football, Young became an ESPN analyst and a private equity executive. He co founded HGGC which manages roughly $9 billion in capital commitments and there have been some amazing, amazing profiles of him which initially piqued my interest because he seems to have been so good at reinvention and also high performance not only over decades, but in different disciplines entirely. He's also the founder and current chair of the Forever Young foundation, which supports children's charities globally. He is the author of QB My Life behind the Spiral and the Law of Love. You can find him on Instagram teveyoung and without further ado, please enjoy a very wide ranging, very in depth conversation with Steve and I would be remiss if I didn't mention one thing he requested that I include in the intro, which is that he and I seem to be journeying on parallel paths and certainly both during the interview, but after recording that seems to be the case. Not at all comparing myself to Steve. He is so many levels above me in so many ways, but nonetheless he asked me to include that, so I am doing that here. Please enjoy optimal minimalism. At this altitude I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.

[B]

Can I answer your personal question now?

[A]

It is in the perfect time. What if I did the opposite?

[B]

I am a cybernetic organism, living tissue over a metal endoskeleton. Tim Ferriss Shaw.

[A]

Steve, thank you so much for making the time.

[B]

You bet. Tim, it is so nice to see you. It's an honor, man. Hopefully I can add something to the amazing stuff that you've done for a long time. So we'll see. It's yet to be determined.

[A]

I'm sure that'll be the case. We'll first point out the pink elephant in the room. Welcome to my temple of Tim.

[B]

I love it. I love it. I bow to the logo, to the greatness.

[A]

And also, this has been, for me, two or three years in the making, sort of a slow build because a friend of mine sent me a bloom Bloomberg article about you that talked about the many chapters of Steve Young. And at that time, as is true now, I've been incredibly interested in people who successfully navigate these phase shifts. And I do not follow football. I have a lot of respect for football. God knows every time I see one of the car crashes, AKA collisions, I think that one hit and I would be done. I don't know how you guys do that.

[B]

It's insane. Even now, as I watch now, I'm like, did I actually do that?

[A]

It's just remarkable how durable players are. I have no idea how you guys do it, but what I've been hoping to dig into is psycho, emotional, spiritual, mental side of things.

[B]

Right?

[A]

That's football.

[B]

Weirdly, football. That's football. Yeah. It's crazy. We'll go on for that for a little bit, too.

[A]

We'll definitely get into that. And I thought we would start. Actually, I'll start with a wave hello. I don't think you guys know each other, but you might have had a connection decades ago. Friend of mine who's a bit of a recluse named Josh Waitzkin. He was the basis. He would hate me to introduce him this way, but he was the basis for Searching for Bobby Fischer, the book and then movie.

[B]

No way. Chess Pride.

[A]

Yes and yes. Yeah.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And he was in. Most recently, he got kind of doxxed. He didn't really want to be public about it for working with the Celtics in the last few years, really with their coach. And he is a huge fan. I mentioned he's like, hey, five minutes on the ph. He texted me this morning and I said, I can't do it. I'm preparing for a podcast with this legend. And I sent him a link and he goes, oh, I studied his game. I used to study and study and study. He's not a football guy.

[B]

But I thought you were bringing it up because that's my favorite movie.

[A]

Oh, I had no idea.

[B]

Oh, absolutely. I thought that's why you were saying it. How do they know? I must have said. Because I've said it many times. I was like, oh, that's why I had no idea. I love that. That's a movie everyone needs to watch. That's a compelling story.

[A]

Super compelling. Super compelling story. And what doesn't get put into the movie, because it couldn't have been put into the movie, given the timeframe, is that Josh, at his peak, effectively retired from chess because of all the attention that ended up landing on him after the success of the book and the movie. And he has navigated three or four very, very, very successful phase shifts.

[B]

That's awesome.

[A]

And so game recognizes game. He's like, oh, I know Steve Young. I've studied Steve Young.

[B]

That is weird. That's like a full circle for me.

[A]

Very small.

[B]

Growing up, when I was in. When I was a kid, that movie in high school, and people probably never heard, probably don't know. It's all good. I'm glad you're. Let's shout it out. Go see that. It's worth it. It's true.

[A]

It's amazing. And the book is very good. It's a fun subject. Sore subject to chat with Josh about, but I'm going to invoke a name that was very meaningful for me in terms of writing way back in the day, and that is Stephen Covey. So could you describe meeting Stephen Covey and who Stephen Covey is?

[B]

So in the 80s, 90s, even the aughts, I guess you call them, he was writing books, Seven Habits books. And really, I'd known his kids, but I never met him.

[A]

You had known his kids through the church?

[B]

Yeah. No, at school, at byu. Like, I'd met them and they played football and so. But I never really met him. I have a good little background here, so I'm playing for the 49ers. Joe Montana, we were on the same team, and we both wanted to play, and he was the king, and I was this kid that wanted to. I didn't want to just sit there, you know? And I finally got my chance to play in 1991, and it didn't go great. And I always joke about walking around town and how I describe it is telling people, no, I think he did throw an incomplete pass once. You know, I mean, I think he did lose a game. In fact, I think he's thrown an interception or two, because the memory of someone who's great is only great. And here's this kid trying to live up to all of that, and I was pouring myself into it. I was over indexed on trying to figure out how to. All I could look around was everyone who wasn't and how everything was my fault and everything. No matter what happened, I went anywhere. It's like, well, yeah, Steve Young sucks. You know, it's Steve Young's problem. I found myself middle of the season, middling around, and I noticed that I was, like, depressed, I was miserable. I felt like I was, like, at the bottom of a hole. We lost a game against the Raiders in front of 100,000 people at the LA Coliseum. Jerry Rice is open in the end zone to win the game. And I never. He's literally waving, like, you know, and I didn't see him. And it was just like the epitome of, like, everything that could go bad. And so I was miserable. I need to give you that backstory because you have to know my state of mind. I was miserable. And I got on a plane because Tuesday is day off in the NFL. So Monday night, I got on a plane, went to Salt Lake City to see my brother because he was in University of Utah med school. I was like, man, maybe he can, I don't know, help me get out of this funk. I mean, this is just terrible. I'm not sleeping well. It's just miserable. And I walk around the town with him. He's like, steve, I got two kids and broke in medical school. Your life looks sweet to me. So he didn't help very much. I had told him I didn't know how I was going to get to Christmas. So I get on the plane to come back, sit down, and Steve Covey sitting there, and he says hello. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, it's been, you know, I've always wanted to meet you. And he goes, he asks a simple question. How are you doing? And I'm in a state of mind where I was pretty vulnerable. I just told him, kind of recitated everything that I just said to you and how kind of miserable I was. I got done with it, you know, 25, 30 minutes later. And he goes, huh, wow, man, I can feel that. Like, I can feel all of that, the expectations, how tough it is to not get the help that you think that you need and things that are working against you. And, man, can I ask you a couple questions? I go, yeah. He goes, Your owner, Eddie DeBartolo, tell me about him. Oh, my gosh. He's the only owner in football that ever saw players as partners. I mean, he's amazing. And I went on about that, and then he said, what about your coach, Bill Wallace? He's like, yeah, he's like a guy that talks about hydration and nutrition and sleep and mental health, and you talk about partnership. He's like, no one's doing what he's doing. His west coast offense, that guy's amazing. He goes, yeah, I'd heard that. I'd love to meet them both, because let me ask one last question. Is Joe Montana on the team? I'm like, yeah, he's hurt, and that's kind of the problem. And he's like, well, if you had to ask him for mentorship, go ask him questions to help your game, could you do it? I'm like, yeah, I could. And he goes, all right, well, I want you to know what I do. I travel the world looking for platforms, companies, organizations that create the ability for the humans on the platform to see how good they can get and iterate and find out, because that's. That's what life should be about. And so, as I travel the world, I'm always looking for it. And I'd love to talk to those guys about their platform, but I got to step back, Steve, and tell you that from my perspective, the platform that you're on, the place that you are, I think might be the greatest one that I've ever seen. And I was like, didn't you hear me? Like, bro, this is miserable.

[A]

Things are terrible.

[B]

Things are terrible. But it stung me. It went through my heart. It was like, oh, my gosh. My first thought was, I think I might have screwed this whole thing up. Oh. Because to have him say that truth to me, he goes, let me ask you a question. Because it's scary. He goes, I always wonder if people are willing to take the chance to find out how good they are. And I'm, like, reflexive about it. I was like, yeah, of course. I'm absolutely up for that. And then he took a minute, and he's like. He looked kind of like he was little and bald and long finger. I was like a little Yoda ish. You know what I mean?

[A]

I remember the about the author photo.

[B]

Yeah. And so he took his finger, and he kind of looked at me and said, then be about it. And I was like, oh, my gosh. I realized right there that the hole I was in that I thought so many people had dug, that I had dug it. I had no idea that I dug the hole. And I had thought that everyone pushed me in, and I didn't realize that I had jumped in. And so it was that we can talk about victimization for a long time because it's such an important thing to ferret out in your own life over and over again. Never stop. It was the realization that I had played the victim and had jumped in a hole, dug it and jumped in. And I am the author of it. That's what the shock was. I authored this. And I remember getting off the plane as if I was transformed. I don't want to say it lightly. It was as if I now knew if I was going to do anything, I was going to be about this. And I remember not sleeping well that night, but for a different reason. I thought, oh, my gosh, I think I've screwed this up enough that on Wednesday mornings when you get fired in the NFL, and I'm like, I'd heard rumors about maybe getting benched. And I'm like, oh, crap, don't tell me that I have screwed this up so bad that I don't get a chance to go fix it. And I screamed down at practice the next day, as energized as ever. Like, I've got. Just please don't. Please give me another. And I didn't get benched, and I did play, and I was about it. And it was fun because it's like something that's true, like truly true, universally true. When it's that way, it doesn't waver. You don't have iterations of it. Like, it's just true.

[A]

You're not second guessing.

[B]

I don't have to worry about. And he said, people are really afraid. It's hard to find out how good you are because you might find out you're not very nearly as good as you thought you were. But you got to make that okay and that now I'm going to reiterate and find out how good I can get. It's really about fear. And if you can lose that fear, and that's basically what you're dealing with, is a fear based. You've been fear based. And I was like, oh, my gosh. And you just wanted to excise it. Now it doesn't happen overnight. But I remember soon after that season ended and the whole off season, and so the next year we're playing the Cowboys. They're the best team in the league, right? And I think to myself, this is where you find out, right? And I remember running up to Troy. We were warming up and he's a friend and he's a quarterback for the Cowboys. And I'm Like, Troy, it's so great that you're here, man, because I'm on this quest to see how good I can get, and I can only find out against the best. And so I'm so glad that you're here. And I remember Troy looking at me like, fricking weirdo. What's wrong with you? But that's what I was about. And to finish the story, I think I have to finish it kind of honestly and authentically. I was MVP of the NFL that year. And you think back to being in the bottom of a hole, running to my brother to see if I could get out of this depression. And it's just amazing to me that perspective, a truthful, universally authentic fact, can make that kind of difference in somebody's life. I owe him the greatest debt, right? Because you think about angels in your life or people that show up. It was almost like It's a Wonderful Life moment. You know what I mean? You almost think, was he really there? Or was I imagining this guy that's sitting next to me? So that's the Stephen Covey story.

[A]

What a wild sliding doors moment. Just the happenstance of that interaction and how it changed things. It's so remarkable to reflect on.

[B]

And it really never ended because it's true. I now seek out that victimization in my life, watch it for other people, try to help because it's such a nefarious common state of being and totally rationalized to. I always talk about the entropic world that we live in. It's like super transactional. Eat what you kill, sweat on your brow. It's all the conditions of the world. Victimization feels almost rational, but it's kind of death that feeds to accountability. It feeds to who authors all this. You think that someone else is authoring it, but you continue to author it and don't take it. That's what I was missing, right? And so that's why the perspective was so powerful. To this day, it gives me a little chill. It's like, I'm so grateful because I was about to walk down a path that was going to be miserable. And I would have said it wasn't fair. This is not right. I need another chance. I want a better shot. I want people who will support me more or, you know, you come up with all kinds of stuff, and that's what would have happened. And who knows where we'd be? I may be, but would have been a different life. Great. Stephen Covey, man.

[A]

Just a quick thanks to our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. Listeners have heard me talk about making before you manage for years. All that means to me is that when I wake up, I block out three to four hours to do the most important things that are generative, creative, podcasting, writing, et cetera before I get to the email and the admin stuff and the reactive stuff and everyone else's agenda for my time. For me, I need to find people who are great at managing and that is where Crescent Family Office comes in. You spell it C R E S S E T Crescent Family Office I was introduced to them by one of the top CPG investors in the world. Crescent is a prestigious family office for CEOs, founders and entrepreneurs. They handle the complex financial planning, uncertain tax strategies, exit planning, bill pay wires, all the dozens of other parts of wealth management and just financial management that would otherwise pull me away from doing what I love most. Making things, mastering skills, spending time with the people I care about. And over many years I was getting pulled away from that stuff at least a few days a week and I've completely eliminated that. So experience the freedom of focusing on what matters to you with the support of a top wealth management team. You can schedule a call [e-mail] Tim that's spelled C R R E S s e t crescentcapital.com Tim to see how Crescent can help streamline your financial plans and grow your wealth. That's crescentcapital.com Tim and disclosure, I am a client of Crescent. There are no material conflicts other than this paid testimonial. And of course all investing involves risk, including loss of principal. So do your due diligence. Many of you know how deeply I love Japan and its culture of unwavering dedication to craft, refinement, commitment to continuous improve. But why do I bring this all up? Well, the same focus on improving one thing over the span of years is found in today's sponsor, AG1. They are now unveiling AG1 Next Gen, the same single scoop once a day product that I use myself, but now with more vitamins, more minerals and five new clinically studied probiotic strains shown to support digestive and immune health. AG1 is also NSF certified for sport, one of the most rigorous independent quality and safety certification programs in the supplement industry. So check them out. Subscribe today to try the next gen of AG1. Listeners will also get a free bottle of D3K2, an AG1 welcome Kit and AG1 Travel Packs with your first order. So start your journey with AG1's next gen and experience the difference firsthand, simply go to drinkag1.com Tim that's drinkag1.com Tim so after that realization and makes me also think about there's a book called Extreme Ownership written by Jocko Willink, former Navy SEAL commander. Really also underscores this ownership being all about it. I love that, as you put it. And I'm curious to know, after that realization, after the questions about seeking out, mentorship or otherwise on the plane, what were some of the next steps? What were some of the most important changes that you made that allowed you then, a year later, to be where you were?

[B]

It's like a boat that leaves the harbor. It changed the direction that you left every morning. There's an intent. There was an aha, right? It was like, oh my, I can't believe that I almost walked down this treacherous path. And that's why I knew it was true is because every morning I wake up and say, you didn't have to doubt it. It was like, don't play the victim. Start owning and look forward to the possibility of what you can. Like, my theology is about we're here as humans to learn and grow. It can be tough and miserable. It can be all kinds of things. But that's the underpinning of what we're trying to do is learn and grow. Be about it again. Like, don't be afraid. It changed how I went to practice. Like, you might not have a great practice, but own it. You might not be as strong as you thought you were. Well, fricking own it. Like, stop dancing around the authenticity of what you're trying to do. And once I open myself to all that, it brings you to the moment. Like, it brings you to the present. Like, what can I do right now? Not what if or what possibly. It was a quest that was intentional every day to go find out. Like, it's okay if you're not as good as you thought you were. In fact, let's just know. I don't need to read the paper to have somebody tell me how I'm doing. I don't need to wait in line at the grocery store at the checkout, you know, paying. As they talk about the 49ers, waiting for the inevitable. What do you think about Steve Young? And then waiting for the answer as if it was going to define me. That's where I was. That's before it was like, oh, he sucks. I'm like, oh, I suck. It's like, you've allowed thinking that you're doing it to me. I'm allowing them to do it to me because I'm not defining it right. And that has stuck with me even today, where it's a vulnerability, it's authenticity, about accountability. Like, where is it? Where does it lie? I'm using football to describe a lot of stuff that are very important concepts, but it's like when you throw an interception, and for people who don't know.

[A]

Football, what does that mean?

[B]

So I have the ball. I'm the quarterback. I drop back to pass to win the game. The last minute, the last seconds. The crowd is screaming with anticipation. 80,000 people. You can feel the emotion of, like, it's happening. We're gonna. We're winning this game. And then I throw it, and the other team, the defense that's on the field, they intercept it, they take it. And there's this moment where 80,000 people with all this anticipation is like, oh, like, whoa, sports. Is that cool? Because it's hard to get those moments where they're like binary moments where it's like. And then the emotional swing. Like, to get that kind of a swing with 80,000 people, it's kind of crazy cool. I can't believe I'm saying that, because it wasn't that cool at the moment, but it's crazy to feel that. And I spent a long time with my teammates at that moment when they would look at me and say, hey, we watched you do this, and it felt like you threw it right to them. Like, there's an underpinning of it. Like, we know you didn't do it on purpose, but kind of looks like you did. And so as a human behavior emotion, I'm like, oh, I got to show them that this was a mess. Like, you turned the wrong way or you didn't block your guy or something else happened. Mitigation, right? That's the instinct. Mitigation.

[A]

That's the instinct.

[B]

I take the banner of mitigation and say, look at all this truth. I'm not telling you lies. I'm telling you truth. This is how it happened. Facts own the facts. But I didn't realize that. There's a truth to the mitigation, but it's not actually useful until I turn to them and say, the ball was in my hands, and now it's in their hands. That is the truest truth. If you live in mitigation, which is kind of the Stephen Covet, it's like, where I. I was living in all this truth. People saying things, people doing how I felt. It's all this. But it was Mitigating, and it wasn't authoring. And so when I started to breathe that back into the system, look, I screwed it up. No matter what happened, don't worry about mitigation right now. I screwed it up. Let's go fix it. And everyone was like, oh, yeah, let's go do that. And I'm sorry that I turned the wrong way. And so all of a sudden it's.

[A]

Like, calm is contagious in the military. Ownership is contrast.

[B]

And so it's like. And so I have to. When I talk about Stephen Covey, I have to talk about my authorship vulnerability and accountability. For me, the quest is really to be honest with yourself. And that's what I wasn't doing. And so that's when you say, what did you do? What were the aspects of it? If someone here heard this and go, I want to be about that too, how do I do it? To me, it's a state of being. It's not a list of things to do.

[A]

Right. Well, it also sounds like you were, if I'm hearing you correctly, basically out of the gate each morning. It sounds like you were reminding yourself of that underpinning truth. As you went out into practice.

[B]

It was almost like, you have to excise the victimization. Look, I don't know a ton about brain. I'm not a scientist, but what little I know is that the brain's here to keep me safe. And so many times your brain's working against you because it's playing the victim for you. And you have to retrain kind of how you think about it. So that's why I say every day you have to keep training a new thought pattern, a new way to. And it was so clear to me. It was easy. When it's not clear and muddy, it's harder. You're like, what was the point? I can't remember, and here comes the life. But for me, it was so clear and obvious that I was playing the victim, that I think for me, it was just a state of being every morning. I might suck, but it has to be okay. It has to be whatever it is so that I don't look anywhere else. It's just, you can author it, you can get better at it, but quit living in the muck of mitigation, I guess, is how I would say it.

[A]

We are going to come back to some related.

[B]

I'm sorry to riff like that. I meant to riffing on this is.

[A]

Why it's long form as a Muggle, someone who's looking at football and I don't understand all of the technicality behind it and the strategy, but I respect the athleticism. I look at a quarterback and I wonder if you were to try to explain it to someone like me, who's a layperson per se, what separates good from great quarterbacks? Are there any particular elements that you see consistently in great quarterbacks that are absent, not paid as much attention to or otherwise? I mean, they could be physical, but I'm wondering if anything comes to mind.

[B]

There's not a long enough form for this. Yeah, because, I mean, people have been searching. Because think about it. How many very, very smart people have been looking into college to predict who can be great in the NFL? And there's no worse results than trying.

[A]

To predict, trying to do that.

[B]

And that's why. Why is college not a great predictor? You know, I mean, what's happening in the NFL?

[A]

What do you think? Is it something internal, like their ability to learn in a certain way?

[B]

I've been trying to melt it down to something that people can just grab. Like, this is the truth. One thing's for sure, human behavior. I don't know what the right way to think about it, but when there's adrenaline and focus and pressure, opposition. How many games are someone's paid to actually screw you up physically? I'm paid to grab you and throw you to the ground and hurt you. I mean, I've paid millions of dollars. So it's all in that moment, in that kind of dynamic that you now have to ferret through. And Tim, I wish everybody who loves football could stand with a helmet on and at 6, 4 or 6, 3 or whatever, 6, 2, whatever. Anyone like Russell Wilson, 6, 5, 10, stand there and ferret through bodies in motion, the fastest, most athletic humans on earth, on both sides. And that's why when you talk about the difference in the NFL, it's the speed, it's the athleticism. A lot of times people's brain can't process that fast. They were processing fine in college, they were processing great in high school, but it's just an elevation. Gladly for me, there's not a super pro. I don't know. I would have popped out. But I think more than anything, the quality, because there's fundamental things. You got to be able to throw the ball, you got to be able to. But it's the process, the table six, figuring out the speed. And then because no one's in my mind, college, every receiver's open. In the pros, nobody's open. Like, that's the change you have to now figure out how to deliver it so that it's not open at the time you throw it, but by the time it gets there, it's open. And I think that's the best way to explain how. And then do it over, like every 30 seconds. And how many times do you throw it? Right at the. And then just as it leaves your hand, you get just pounded into the ground. You don't even see it. I mean, how many times do you. Bottom of a pile and you're like, how did it go? Like, you don't know. And you just listen for the crowd, right? Because you're like, if it's home and they're securing, you're like, it worked. And otherwise, if they're booing you, then it's bad. So I think it's the processing and it's a guile. It's a street smart. It's not necessarily IQ for taking a calculus test. There's memorization, but you just get it. You get it.

[A]

I think there is a speed also associated with that, even with street smarts, that I see in some of my friends in business, a certain EQ savvy. They're very fast, their clock speed is high.

[B]

And I think they'd be great quarterbacks. That's where. That's the thing. And I think you just described it very well in other fields, I see it too. But again, even when I see it in other people, I think I don't know at that speed. Because you just don't. You don't know until you know there's.

[A]

Also the pressure of imminent bodily harm.

[B]

Well, that's what I mean. I think most humans, when things get more intense, the adrenaline runs. And when adrenaline runs, the brain focuses, right? It gets smaller and it gets more focused, but yet you're not as aware. And so that physiology doesn't work because in quarterbacking, you have to. You have to have the peripheral, the more present you are. Like if you're in your backyard, not 80,000 people watching. But if this was all happening in my backyard, how would I take this in? So I've noticed that the best quarterbacks have a genetic. I think it's genetic predisposition to when adrenaline runs. It doesn't do the normal things for most humans, and that's why the quality is like, I wish there's a test for that because I could promise you I could tell you who's going to be great.

[A]

Yeah, I wonder if it's something just thinking out loud. I interviewed someone named Alex Honnold. On the podcast before he did his big run, which turned into a documentary called Free Solo. But he climbed.

[B]

Oh, my God.

[A]

I think it was El Cap. I can't remember the exact face.

[B]

And it's like, with no ropes.

[A]

And so I interviewed him.

[B]

I can't watch it.

[A]

It's too.

[B]

I can't.

[A]

I mean, my.

[B]

Honestly, I can't. Like, I can't. I literally can't watch it. I want to watch it. I can't watch life and death like that.

[A]

And his. His brain responds differently to those circumstances 100%.

[B]

And that's the only way because all of us watch it go. Oh, no.

[A]

Panic and fall.

[B]

No way. No way. Not every. Every grip has to be life or death. Like, no way. People think about quarterback in the NFL as like, oh, you know, how do you do it? I was like, look, talk about what you just said. This is pinochle to.

[A]

It might be neurologically or genetically related. Is there anything that when you look at your trajectory that was learnable or coachable that you absorbed by watching other people? Like, what did you improve most at? So there's a lot out of the box, right? I mean, you were successful as a younger athlete and read some great quotes from your dad about this, but you were successful as a younger athlete. You seemed to have some hardwiring out of the box. That was very helpful. But you didn't just hit the ground running in the NFL and you were top of the game. There was something that improved. I'm wondering, or many things.

[B]

So one fundamental thing had to happen, which was how to throw the football. It's not intuitive. Kind of like golf. Great golf swings. When you grab a club as an adult, you're not gonna do it, right? And as a kid, I grabbed a football and because I didn't wanna be embarrassed, I wanted to spin perfectly. I would spin it out of my hand and that's how I did it. But you can't get behind to throw it hard. And, you know, this was not something that was like a deep, dark secret. Some people grab it and grab a golf club, grab a football, and it's just like, oh, yeah, that's how you must do it. That's not how I did it. And so I got to college. I'd faked my way into playing college quarterbacking without really understanding it. And Jim McMahon was the quarterback at the time at BYU. Incredible. Second the highest man. Like, he was amazing, but he was righty and I was lefty. And I was like, how does. He's throwing it Different. And then I realized that you have to. Instead of spinning it out, like, to spin it, you actually go the other direction, using the tension inside your arm as you hold it, and then just go in.

[A]

Oh, wow.

[B]

You spin it, it comes out and spins. But now you can throw it with all your power.

[A]

Right, right.

[B]

And that was you talking about what? I. I had to have that.

[A]

I mean, those are. Those seem. You know, I've played a bunch of sports, certainly at a very JV level. Well, no, it's. But it seems like rebuilding your swing in golf or something.

[B]

A little bit. But it was such an unlock.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Once you felt it, golf's being more complicated because you got a stick and you got this. Like, you're a little forced from feedback. But the fact that it was in my hand, once you felt it, you're like, oh, my gosh. And then what I realized is I can now throw it as hard as I want right there. Like, it was like this gift I had that was going to go undiscovered.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And all of a sudden it just. It came out.

[A]

Did you realize that at byu?

[B]

Yes, right there. It was my freshman year. I wish I would have written down the days, like November 10th, you know?

[A]

Okay. It was like discovering fire.

[B]

Fire, exactly. We live. And I. All I did from that point on is throw the ball. Like, I just wanted to throw it, throw it everywhere, Throw it. And what's ironic is that the coach, who was the offensive coordinator at the time, soon after, because no one knew this is all happening. I was eighth string. I was nobody. But I had figured it out and it clocked in. It was clocking, Right. And so I think for me, he pulled me aside later in the year, he goes, by the way, I don't coach lefties. He said it to me. I don't coach lefties. And so I was moved to defense at the end of that season because Lavelle Edwards, the coach, said, look, you're super fast, super athletic. We have 10 quarterbacks. We want you on the field. And so I started in the winter practices, winter. As a safety in a defense holy position I couldn't stand. I hated every second of it. As soon as practice ended, the quarterbacks would throw. After practice, I'd go throw. And in the interim, that coach who told me he wouldn't coach lefties, took a head coaching job at San Diego State. Another coach, Ted Toner, came in, and I'm throwing with the quarterbacks after practice. And he goes, steve, I thought you played quarterback. I go, I do but they told me I'm lefty, so I have to play defense. And he goes, that's ridiculous. That's stupid. I go, I know, it's insane. And then I screamed out, but I learned how to throw, too. So I have this thing that. And he's like, let me go see if I can fix it. So he goes in and changes it. And that spring, spring ball was a month, 30 days of practice. He got two weeks for me to practice before they made a decision. And by the end of the two weeks, because of this new gift, that was it. That was it. What? That change everything. Because I was fast. I could run, I could throw it hard, I could process. The game wasn't too fast for me. It kind of all made sense to me. I just didn't unlock that one fundamental piece of throwing the ball, you know?

[A]

It's so fun having this conversation. I've been looking forward to it for so long. And before I forget, I just wanted to say again, on a very reduced junior varsity level, but I wrestled my whole life, basically.

[B]

I have total respect. Yeah, I wrestled in ninth grade.

[A]

Yeah, it's a tough sport.

[B]

I will never wrestle again.

[A]

It is tough. It is brutal.

[B]

There is no good news.

[A]

No, there's no good news.

[B]

You work like. I remember the first wrestling. Go to this just to break in your story. 3. One minute or three minute, I can't remember how long. And so by the first of the first one was over, I was done.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

The best people are in the best shape. The greatest athletes. When I see wrestlers, I tip my cap. I walk away, man.

[A]

I'm like, it is a suffer fest. It is brutal no matter what. And I was just a brief digression here, but I spent a year abroad in Japan in high school, which was my first time, really, outside of the United States, from Long island to Tokyo, which changed my whole life. But I competed in judo while I was there. Then I came back for my final year of wrestling in high school, and I was doing really, really well. But I hit a wall. And the reason I'm bringing this up is not at all to compare apples to apples, but I somehow found a book called Mental Toughness Training for Sports by a guy named James Lair, spelled L O E H R, who Josh Waitzkin actually also knows. And I read that book, and the key piece of that, it talked about different approaches to mental toughness, but it had an assessment, and it asked you to give this assessment to close friends, coaches, teammates, and it just made all of your strengths and weaknesses had them rate you on all of these different aspects of toughness, performance, resilience, et cetera, psychology. And once I had those report cards from all of these people and I was able to see and accept strengths and weaknesses. And I don't think this is unique to me. There really was a before and after. Right. The next practice was different. And that's when everything hockey sticked and ended up having just an incredible season. But to people who are listening and haven't experienced what, say, Steve experienced on that plane ride or what I've experienced with that book, there really can be that flash boil before and after.

[B]

Like, that's kind of what self help stuff does and tries to get you. And the problem is it doesn't all time land because I get the idea, right? And so I read the book. Oh, I'll go read the book. You read the book. Oh, okay. But the flashpoint is really, to me, the vulnerability that. That's the hard part. The hard part is to open up and take the risk truly internally. And I was living this life where it's like, I want to be great, I want to be great, I want to be great. And anyone who tells me I'm not, I don't know what to do about it. And it feels like I can't overcome it. And it's like, you have to become vulnerable. That's how you take it in. And so people are like, what do I do? I was like, in your relationships with your mom, with your siblings, the most intimate ones, can you start to recognize the complexity of that relationship, which it always is, and however you've defined, it's probably been not a great, authentic, vulnerable place. Can you start by opening up to your accountability, to your, your part in it, your controversy. If you want to have an aha moment or you want to have a read a book and change kind of inflection point it comes from. You were open for it, you were ready for it. And I was so desperate with Stephen Covey, but it wasn't necessarily I was looking for it. It was because it resonated so truthfully, like, I'm screwing this up. I am royally screwing this up, and I cannot keep screwing it up. And I think a lot of people at that moment go, oh, I'm going to keep screwing it up because I don't want to face the other side of that. That's what Stephen Covey, remember what he said? A lot of people don't want to know how good they are. It makes sense to my brain that unless you get to that space, you really can't change.

[A]

Well, the vulnerability also seems to me fundamentally accepting the possibility, almost the certainty that you're making mistakes. And part of accepting how good you are is not necessarily accepting how excellent you inevitably are, but accepting the possibility of that you might be falling short in certain places.

[B]

And then also the grace in it. Right where what's the point? Is the point to be regarded by people. Why it resonated with me is because my own theology was like, we're here to learn and grow. Let's do it. And part of learning and growing is I suck right now, but I'm not going to suck tomorrow. And once you can start to get into that mode of like, that's what I'm about to, that's what happens. There's a clarity that comes because now everything gets fed through that truth and now it comes in more authentically and it doesn't hit the same way. And you can go in front of 80,000 people and find a piece about it. 80,000 people could boo you mercilessly. It is hard to what I'm talking about. But you can be authentically say, look, I'd boo me too. In fact, I might just boo with you. It's okay. And you get into that place. But you're not going to boo me. I'm going to try not to get booed tomorrow. But might be. But as long as your brain is saying the whole point is to learn and grow, then Stephen Covey be about it. And I think that really freed me up.

[A]

It seems like such an important tectonic plate underneath everything else. I want to ask you about one of those quotes from your dad that I was alluding to earlier. So this is from the Bloomberg piece and the URL has in it, Steve Young is an athlete who's actually good at finance, which I just. Part of. Yeah, I just love that. So your dad is bewildered by how.

[B]

By that fact.

[A]

Well, he was bewildered by how well you did at football at different levels. And then this last line is the one I wanted to ask you about. Says, honestly, Steve's personality is probably a better fit for law or business as compared to professional athlete. Why would he say that?

[B]

Do you think he's referring to. Look, we should talk about it. So when I was a kid growing up, first grade, second grade, third grade, I was a kid that when the first day of school I would turn to my mom or dad and say, look, I'm not going. And they're like, why? It's super fun. And I'M like my brain was processing it in fear and a new place, new people. And that seemed super scary. And that's, I think clinically would be called separation anxiety. And I think people listening, I'm sure they know somebody probably that had that as a kid. And so that didn't really show up in my life because I realized very young that I was not going to be like, going on vacation with my friends and I was going to be home.

[A]

Sleepovers, not so much.

[B]

Not so much. But during the daytime, I was killing it. Only for context. Like all stayed in three sports, Captain Straight A's, not because I was tiger parents or tiger person. The day was awesome. I can't wait. It's going to be great. And at night it's like, I'm home. And I didn't realize how much I had of this is when I went to college and had to go through a process of geography change that was existential. And it's hard to explain to people because they're like, going to college is awesome, man. What's your problem? And you didn't unpack your bags the whole semester and you kept telling me you're just miserable. How's that possible? Well, it's how my brain worked function. I can't really say much about it. That's about it. And I remember when I came back for Christmas, I finally got to come home and I remember walking through the door and going, oh, wow, I kind of want to go back to school. And I realized that that was a huge shift for me. You know, you live in your own private Idaho. Like, all the things that you're feeling, all the things you don't really share, you don't really. You know, it's like some of it you're afraid to even share. And it's like all of a sudden I realized it's going to be all right because now I have two homes. And that was a shift that I needed. What my dad's describing is generally when I had to go play, there was a pattern of focus that was like he would call hyper focus and not fun. And so he's like, he's built for something else. I think that's what he's referring to, but I think it comes from the roots of that, what I would call clinical part of my life. Another little internal battle. Because now I. I see the world and I'm like, oh, can't wait to discover it. At some point, it just flipped. The thing that was so constrictive and difficult and threatening. My parents left for a couple days when I was really little at my aunt's house. And I can still smell it, I can still feel it. I can still like the terror of them walking out. And I just, like, I look back and like, that's an insane react. I can still hear my brothers and sisters outside laughing with all my cousins. But that was me. Part of the authenticity has come to a place where we can look that in the eye too. I think that explains my dad's comment, that part of me. But what he doesn't realize is that part of me drove the intensity and the focus. So it's like, it's not all bad.

[A]

Yeah, there's a flip side.

[B]

There's a flip side. And so I would say to my dad, well, the way you're looking at it, I can see why you say that. But the way I'm looking at it, it's like I think it was an I had to have it. Yeah.

[A]

Just a quick thanks to our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. It has been a wild year for money in the markets, but managing your cash doesn't have to be a guessing game. Wealthfront has a simple solution to help you cut through all the chaos and manage your money with confidence. With the Wealthfront Cash account, your cash can earn 3.25% variable annual percentage yield from partner banks. You get instant fee free withdrawals to eligible accounts 24 7. Your money is always accessible when you need it. When you're ready to invest, transferring funds into one of Wealthfront's expert built investing portfolios is easy peasy. For a limited time, Wealthfront is offering my listeners that's you guys, an additional 0.65% boost over the base rate for three months, which means you can get up to 3.9% APY on your first $150,000 in deposits. More than 1 million people trust Wealthfront to help build their wealth. Go to wealthfront.comtim to receive the boosted APY offer and start earning up to 3.9% variable APY today. This is a paid endorsement of Wealthfront. Wealthfront Brokerage isn't a Bank. The base APY is as of December 19, 2025 and subject to change. For more information, see the episode description. Was there a point where, I mean, this is going to be a strong way of putting it, but I've experienced this in my own life and have talked about struggles. Some of it I think is hereditary with generalized anxiety. Had depressive episodes, which I've seen throughout my family and Appreciate how open you've been about discussing some of this. And I'm curious at what point you realized you didn't need that kind of monkey on your back. And specifically, I'm thinking about in the course of doing research for this, reading a New York Times piece, and it mentions Dr. James Clint and Reggie, I guess, and you approaching Reggie at one point, I think it was after, what, three sleepless nights? Something like that. And I guess I'm wondering what was happening for people who don't know what the context is, and then what happened afterwards that helped.

[B]

It's kind of a bookend, actually. Tight bookends between the Steve McCovey story and the Jim Clint story, because just before that. And maybe that's what leads to the vulnerability in the depth of what I just described and where I was in a hole and victimized. And there was a game that I just starting, like, Thursday night. The good news about all of that anxiousness around playing, I always slept, so it was like you could deal with it. And all of a sudden I wasn't. And so it was a game where people that I was near were like, you're a mess. You got to talk to them. You can't play. And I'm like, oh, no, that's not an option. We're playing. And I remember telling them as I left for the game in such a state, I just probably never been quite like that. So I promised him. I said, look, if we win, I'll talk to the team doctor. Just tell him, like, I'm not. Something's going on, you know, but if we lose, I can't. There's no place to be able to. Like, you can't.

[A]

An excuse.

[B]

Yeah, that's just the way my brain was working. So we won. I played pretty well. Like, I don't suggest, by the way, that that's how you prepare. But after the game, I'm sitting in the training room, towel, ice pack, and I see Reggie. You know, he's been around. He'd been around all the Super Bowls. He was somebody that. I promised my friends that I would do this, but I didn't want to. And we won. So, like, we're good for a little while, right? But I did. I pulled him aside. And I remember back in the corner, the old Candlestick park, it was like, stuff was dripping down. It's a dank. It's old school, right? And we're in the back corner, and I get kind of move away from everybody, and I'm kind of almost nose to nose, and I'm like, Reggie, I'm going through this thing. I don't know what's wrong. And I kind of explained it all. And as I'm explaining it, I see a big ball of a tear, like a big ball come out of his eye and then drop and then another one. And he hasn't changed his face, he hasn't changed anything. And I'm like, Reggie, are you crying? And he's trying not to break. He's like, I dealt with so much clinical anxiety, I could hardly get through medical school.

[A]

That's what he said.

[B]

That's what he said. This is what he, I mean, as he answered with a straight, like he hadn't changed his face at all, I had dealt with. And I, watching you instinctively felt that there was something going on. And I feel like I've malpractice, that this is what's had to come to it. He felt this incredible pain as the team physician that would qualify to maybe watch for this kind of stuff. And I'm like, I was relieved because I didn't know what was going to happen. I was explaining something that was so total vulnerability, total weakness, it felt like. And he's responding like, oh, I blew it. And I'm like, reggie, don't worry about it, bro. But he said, we're going to get the bottom of it. And it wasn't. Maybe two days later he sent me up to a child psychologist, psychiatrist, I'm not sure. And they gave me a test of 10 questions that would describe things that happened in your life. And that would be if you answer yes to eight of them, then you're a kind of undiagnosed childhood separation anxiety as an adult. And so I was nine of them, right? And he said, most people, Steve, who have this going on in their life, they're like self medicating, right? They're in the basement. They're like, but you're the MVP of the NFL, so I think we're just going to let you keep rolling, you know what I mean, and find your way through it. And I did find solace in the knowledge because until that point I had subconsciously always known that I didn't like being at other people's houses when I was a kid or in other places. But my life was so full and amazing that I just kind of, we just made our way. And so this was a point where now bookended with Stephen Covey maybe three weeks later. These are pretty vital big changes that happened that I think allowed me the place to kind of find peace about it all.

[A]

And so was the diagnosis in itself, the treatment in the respect that you finally had a label to apply, a way to think about it so that it wasn't this nebulous set of worries or what allowed you, I guess, to go back to sleep.

[B]

It's actually super cool because I didn't think about it as a stigma. I thought about it as like, oh, that makes sense. And then as I told my parents and told my. Then we found out that in my mom's side of the family, this is a thing, and explained all kinds of craziness that was going on, that now.

[A]

I go, oh, now the piece is.

[B]

So now I paid forward. You know what I mean? So in its own way, the knowledge was the key. And then, because I was so functioning through it, it was helpful. Didn't make playing in front of 80,000 people and trying to be a great player. It didn't make it simple. But I think it was a piece to the puzzle for me to recognize that what I experienced as a kid then you could kind of put into context. And knowledge is power, right?

[A]

Yep. I remember maybe it was two years ago. I wanted to do this experimental treatment that's actually not so far from where we're sitting. Right. We're sitting here in Palo Alto, and they're in Sunnyvale. But I was doing something called Accelerated tms. I won't bore you with all the details, but it's this medical treatment, and they had to put me through all these assessments beforehand.

[B]

Is it red light?

[A]

It's called Acacia Clinic, and they apply a magnetic coil basically to your brain or to your skull. And the long and short of it is it produces a type of stimulation that is remarkably effective for generalized anxiety, in some cases, depression, ocd. And part of them checking the boxes for me to be able to pursue this, not just for myself, but to interview scientists about this on the podcast and hopefully present more tools to people who might be suffering. They took me through all these different tests, and at one point, after an hour or two, they took this big pause, and they said, you know, Tim, based on all of this, you seem to qualify for moderate to severe ocd. And then he paused, and the doctor was kind of nervous, and he's like, I know this is a lot to take in if we need to take a break and come back tomorrow. And I was like, are you kidding me? I was like, it makes perfect sense. None of my friends would be surprised.

[B]

Down the middle here.

[A]

It was just like, in retrospect. Yeah, it makes a lot of things click together. Even one of my friends later, he's like, oh man. Knowing that you got diagnosed makes it so much easier to put up with your oct. And I was like, okay. And it was really. I think there's a risk that maybe you over define yourself by the label. But in my case, I was just like, oh, okay, that's great. Now I have a shorthand way to piece these things together.

[B]

That's exactly how it felt. It was like, I got a job to do. I'm about it. I didn't realize how victimized I had become and how inauthentic I'd become and all that part of it. But at least it all kind of like you said. My friend's like, oh, yeah, I can see that. My parents, my dad's like, I keep telling you, just go have fun. And you're not having any fun. Oh, now I get it. So that way, it was useful in that way. I feel like, again, what are we here to do? Learn and grow. That's okay, let's grow through it, right? And I still to this day find myself. The anxious parts have all kind of abated. But the pattern as a kid, I'm realizing now how you achieve, how you accomplish, what's the root of how you try to do it? And I was doing it in a fear based way. In other words, if I worry about something that's important to me enough, I can make it happen. It's magical thinking in a way. If I worry and work and fret and something good will happen in my life. And if you think about all the good in your life, did it come because you worried about it? Probably that's the wrong dynamic. But it takes again this vulnerability and authenticity to kind of say, over my life. I've now realized watching good things happen and like, I didn't even worry about it. Something good happened and I didn't have to author it. And so it's like life is so crazy amazing in that way where the onion unfold, like unraveling, like you're just learning is so powerful to your life. And again, you can't get there unless you're willing to say it's okay. It could sting, it could hurt. It could hurt for a while, but at least it's what is.

[A]

It's real.

[B]

At least it's real.

[A]

Steve, I have to ask you about the following. This is the law degree. Over the course of seven off seasons, he pursued a law degree at byu. Side note, this is from the Bloomberg piece. His great, great, great grandfather was Brigham Young himself. That's wild. I mean, I've spent a lot of time in Utah. That's maybe a whole separate chapter for another time. But why the law degree? Why did you pursue that?

[B]

My dad, when I was growing up, because I had a picture of Roger Staubach, who was a famous quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys, on my wall. He'd tell me, what do you want to be when you grow up? And I'd be like, I want to be a quarterback like Roger Staubach. Look at my. You know. And he'd go, well, that's a great dream, son. That's a great dream. And dreams are less than 1% chance, you know, but dreams are important. Like, have a dream. Like, I love it. Have it. But that's very unlikely. I need you to make a plan that's 80% chance. And so I would tell them 80% chance. I'll fake it and tell you that I'll go to college, and then I'll go to law school like you, dad, and I'll be a lawyer.

[A]

Okay, so your dad was a lawyer?

[B]

My dad was a lawyer. He described law. And I was like, I think I could do that. So then I would tell him that. He goes, you know, I think there's an 80% chance that you can do that. So that'll be the plan. That's the plan. And now we have a dream and a plan. He was always about that. Even he turned 90 in February. And I recently asked him, like, so what's the dream, dad? Because he always goes, like, 110. Like, he has it in his mind. That's the dream. So then I had a dream and a plan. So then I go to college, and I end up going pro, and the dream comes true, right? I'm like, dad, so much for 1%, bro. It's 100% now, you know? And then he would always say, well, the average career is three years. And then I played for six years. And he's like, well, what are you going to do the rest of your. You're going to retire at 35, and then another half of your life? What are you going to do? So he just kept kind of putting.

[A]

My head dog with a bone.

[B]

Yeah, well, I didn't bother me because I knew it was pretty true what he was saying, like, what are you gonna do with the rest of your life? And so I don't know how it got in my head. I look back on that as like, tim, that's just stupid to try to go to law school while you play. That's just like. This is dumb. But I figured it out with the aba, with the law school. Cause they're. The first semester in law school is in the fall, nationwide. The first year curriculum is sequential. You can't cheat it. And they worked it out where I could audit the second semester one winter, if I pass the classes cold, then that would qualify me to come back and take the second semester, blah, blah, blah, blah. So over seven years, six for credit semesters, I went back. And what was funny now but wasn't funny at the time is we went to three Super Bowls in that time. And the super bowl is in February, end of January, February. School starts right after the new year. So I'm showing up a month late. And no one in law school cares. You still got to do the work. So I remember going to parade down Market street in San Francisco and jumping on a plane, the Delta plane, back to Salt Lake City at evening. And then the next morning in class. And every class, the five first, whatever class. I usually five or six classes, every class at Socratic Method, they walk in and they say, Ms. Jones, can you please brief us on blah, blah. The whole day was, Mr. Young, could you please brief us? So I'm just scrambling, trying. But I think I loved that in a weird way. But I look back and it's like, what are you doing, man? What are you doing? But my dad was right. I'm now 25 years in private equity. And the only way I was able to cut the line being late to the party was because I had an advanced degree. That's how I did it. And so he was right.

[A]

Yeah. It served its purpose.

[B]

Dream and plan.

[A]

All right, so you're doing these seven off seasons, you're flying back parade, get on a plane, fly back next morning. Mr. Young, right, so you're doing that. How do you make the hop to finance?

[B]

How does that.

[A]

How does that even.

[B]

Okay, so you got to remember, the 49ers, 1988, were given land in Santa Clara by the city of Santa Clara, because there's nothing going on down there to build a training facility and try to attract more business. And that's funny now, because Silicon Valley, Santa Clara, middle of, is the epicenter of Silicon Valley. And so that's where I worked all the years. And so as we worked and watched the explosion of Silicon Valley and technology, we're sitting in the locker room and there's five or six of us, the lunch group that we would figure out, okay, look, how do we get in on all this venture investing and all this stuff that's going on. These businesses guys were leaving Stanford Business School literally in the middle of class, would get a text or something and they would take the CEO job of a new startup and walk out, you know what I mean? And so how do we get in the middle of it? So we started trading access to the locker room from this guys on Sandhill Road for venture investing. So we started to get everything they did. We gave them $50,000 of what they were doing. We'd spread it out.

[A]

How did that relationship happen? It doesn't seem like the Venn diagrams would totally overlap.

[B]

Well, no, because Doug Leone was a great guy.

[A]

Doug Leone, he's one of the greats.

[B]

He was one that said, look, we didn't make a trade. It wasn't a transaction. It was more like, hey, we'd love a relationship, come in the locker room, be a part of our life and let us be a part of your life, essentially. And he was somebody that I think really appreciated the complexity of what we were doing and the high function that we were doing. And then we obviously appreciated the high function and complexity what he was doing. And so we shared in that. And I think that that started a process. I was asked by Brian Maxwell, who's now passed away, but he started Power Bar. That was a meal replacement for marathons.

[A]

I remember back in the day, but.

[B]

For a single guy it was meal replacement, like not for a marathon, for life. Day to day life. And so I kind of got famous around the Bay Area that I was Power. He asked me to be on the board and I was like, well, I never done that before. I'll try that first board meeting, Larry Sonsini, one of the icons of Silicon Valley lawyers.

[A]

So when I first moved just for people who don't recognize. So back in the day, Wilson Sonsini were kind of the connective tissue behind the scenes for Silicon Valley. They were one of the big.

[B]

It was the backbone.

[A]

That was the backbone, the legal backbone.

[B]

And then Warren Hellman of Hellman and Free. Like Warren Hellman's like the icon of investing in the late 90s and really his whole life he is the icon. So there's two of them and I'm sitting on the board.

[A]

I mean, your list is pretty insane.

[B]

Pretty insane. How does this happen? And so I had a guy, I'm glad this is long form. I had a friend in college who was messing around with the URLs before the Internet was shut down by the government. You could go in and he had an Algorithm where he'd put a geographic boundary around an Internet search. And if you're old enough to know, in the 90s, the Internet was a mess. It was a mess. If you put in Palo Alto Hammer, you'd get a USSR sickle. Nothing made sense. But with this enablement, you could put in Palo Alto Hammer and get the local Ace hardware store. So that made it useful. And so we had that enablement. My buddy was doing it. He was like, can you help me? I'm like, so I take it to the board meeting. And I'm like, hey, what do you think about this? And they're like, that works. You need to start a business that retailers are panicked right now because their brick and mortar stores are going to be usurped by Amazon in the late 90s. Like, it's 10 years before the time. But people are thinking about it. Take this enablement to them. They can query their inventory real time, and they can drop ship it that day and someone can pick it up. They could use. You know, it's like it becomes your distribution point. And I'm like, oh. So we went and did that. And my longtime partner, 30 years together, left his banking job at Morgan Stanley to be the CEO of this business called found.com?

[A]

What'S your partner's name?

[B]

Rich Lawson.

[A]

How did you meet this? I just love these stories. And I want to just take a quick sidebar for folks, because this is a great example of going to where the action is in this sense. I just had a conversation with Bill Gurley, legendary venture capitalist, a book that might be out by the time this is published, but it's coming out soon, called Running Down a Dream. And in it he has a chapter on going to where the action is. Bob Dylan going from Minnesota to New York City. And you can kind of go down the list. And in this case, it's like you happen to be in the epicenter.

[B]

And again, I wish I was Bob Dylan and had the smarts to go from Minneapolis to the action in Silicon Valley. But I actually, luckily was already here. Like, just sitting here. I actually watched the traffic get worse and worse. Like, where is all this traffic coming from? Like, I used to get to work in 10 minutes, now I get to work in 30. And so it's like we made fun of the athletic brain. It's like, took a little while to kind of get it going, but in the end, we were in the middle of it and I found myself. So to finish that story, we start a business. Rich is the CEO I'M the chairman backed by Excel, KKR and Bain. And it was all of that. And so that's when Warren and Larry Sonsini. Larry became a very close friend of mine, a mentor. Still is. I mean, really is. Still is. I mean, he's just an amazing guy. He's like, steve, I'm a lawyer. You need to go do this. That's how it switched.

[A]

Oh, I see. He said, I'm a lawyer. And he is saying that referring to.

[B]

He just said, look, your EQ and the way you look at the world. And I had graduated in finance, so it was like I knew enough to be not even dangerous, but knew enough to know what it really was about. He said, you need to go help people build businesses. That's kind of how it switched.

[A]

And I'm looking right over your shoulder at looks like maybe a tweet from Rich Lawson, your partner says, very proud to break into the top 20 of 500 + private equity firms globally in just over the decade. Okay, so I mean, you've had these multiple chapters. How did you connect with Rich Lawson? That's actually, you can see Rich Lawson right there. So perfect timing. How did you manage to.

[B]

Well, let's back up because what you're alluding to, I think is that we've been talking about really for the whole time is transition and the difficulties. Because I love football and I was very successful at it. I run into a lot of people who played in high school and loved it. The dream they would give their arm to be able to or leg to be able to play in college and keep the dream going. And always think about how when I left the game, it wasn't necessarily forced. But you do age out just sooner or later. Even Tom Brady aged out at 45. It's a young man's game. And I remember the day I retired, I was known for this thing that I had been able to do worldwide. Even the next day I remember waking up and now that that's gone.

[A]

Now what?

[B]

Yeah. And what I've learned about transition that leads to rich loss and how I describe it, that everyone, and even the high schooler, the last day they play and it has to be put away, needs to recognize and treat it like a death, to mourn it and go through all the steps of mourning it and burying it and actually having it as a place that you can keep referring to as almost like a grave site because otherwise you carry it around, you never transition. Transitioning is about actually moving from to right. And so I'm really grateful. Roger Staubach poster on my wall. I got to know him. He became a friend. It's insane.

[A]

Yeah. How cool is that?

[B]

And he famously transitioned, probably the most successful transition in history of the NFL.

[A]

What did he transition to?

[B]

The Staubach company was a real estate business that he was hugely successful. And I remember asking him towards the end of my career, roger, give me some tips. He goes, run. I'm like, run, run. Where he goes, just run away. That was his tip because he said, the game will never leave you, but you need to leave it. You need to move on. And I thought that was just simple but really important. And I tell people today, and I really want to write a book about transition because everybody is constantly transitioning, whether they like it or not, most of it forced. If there's an authentic, vulnerable way to transition and bury and mourn, you can wake up the next day, realize, I was great at something, and now I'm not even good at anything else. But you know what? I'm going to learn and grow. We're going to learn and grow.

[A]

I'm slow, but I'm getting there. I'm only twice as dumb as I was. What did morning football look like to you? What did running from it look like? And what did morning look like?

[B]

It's funny. So you lead to Rich. So as we built this business and I was still playing, I was getting ready to run, and I was already running away from it even before it was over. I think there was a fear based, which is not necessarily the best way to do this, that if I didn't run really fast, that it would somehow keep me from getting really clear of it all. And so I just started. We had that business and we just running. And so he was a banker at Morgan Stanley. We took this idea that Warren and Larry had said, great. My buddy Jim Herman, and he said, as we went to go get financing for this business, we ran into Rich, who was a very successful banker and Morgan Stanley, but young, recognizing everything that's going on. He says, you need a CEO. And I'm like, yeah, you're right, we do. You gotta be in the late 90s in technology. He's like, I'm walking out of Morgan Stanley. I'm going to be the CEO. And so we've been together ever since then. And so the transition you're talking about, as far as I think, because of that energy around great mentors, I mean, I'm very, very lucky. I didn't have to do it raw. I didn't have to do it Alone, that would be super difficult. I had all this mentorship, all this modeling, all this example from Roger, from everybody. So to me it was just, can you just go enact what is obvious to go do? And I really appreciate it because the game never does leave you. I traffic in memorabilia for our golf tournaments for Forever Young Foundation. And so we need constant signatures from jerseys, from players and hockey players and or Hollywood. And so to this day, you can't imagine how many signatures that I do that as part of the memorabilia company and they pay me in stuff so we can use it for the tournaments. You know what I mean? And if you'd have told me in 2025, I'd still be signing my name on Steve Young jerseys or helmets, it blows the mind. But we're still trafficking in it because it funds the foundation and we have great golf tournaments and we make a lot of good things happen. So it's like a virtuous cycle that we got going.

[A]

It seems also really fortunate. We were chatting briefly and we won't get into the details of that, but about some of the former military kind of tier one operators who are friends of mine who run into a very similar challenge, right. They're the best of the best.

[B]

It is brutal.

[A]

They've been hugely invested in, not that dissimilar in some ways from top level professional athletes. And then they go from being the best at what they do to question mark or feeling they're not good at anything. And that happens to gold medalists, or I should say just Olympians.

[B]

Broadly, it happens to the high schooler who never leaves football. That's a great point you're talking about. There's dramatic moments that are clear, like the SEAL team, who's the elite member, that resonates with everybody. Like, oh my gosh, that would be hard.

[A]

You're right, though. It happens in so many other ways.

[B]

But the transition pattern is so common.

[A]

Yeah. And I was thinking how incredibly fortunate it seems to me that you happen to be here because startups are a full contact sport, right. Like that is full commit, right. That is not a 9 to 5 check in checkout. Going 6 out of 10. This startups is in a way. It just seems like a good fit in a sense, for someone who's been in sixth gear for so long.

[B]

I think there's a little bit of drug in it, right? Where the action. I talk about this with other quarterbacks that played a long time. What do you miss? And you miss the opportunity to pour yourself into something. Like I always say, there's physical athleticism, that's part of it. There's emotional athleticism. That's part of it. There's psychological val like it's. Every part of you is necessary to be poured in to be even good at this, if not great. And so that rigor, even business can't provide that. It's nothing like it in front of 80,000 people with a score and officials and a clock. And that's just. It's a really crazy cool environment because there's truth in it always.

[A]

There's a purity to it.

[B]

Purity to it. But even in the purity of it, going back to the truest truth of accountability, you can still try to fake that it wasn't you. Even in the most True Clear witnessed 80,000 witnesses just watched it. And you can listen to quarterbacks after the game, especially losing quarterbacks, when they ask them what happened, try to spin what 80,000 people just witnessed, bro. Like, come on. And so in that way, it just tells me about human nature that if you try to spin what just happened on a football field, what are you going to try to spend in business or in your personal life or in your family? And that's what I say when people say, look, I really want to change. I really want to transition to something better. I want to learn and grow authentically. Truly, you got to be about has to be core. Core. Because otherwise humans in entropy with gravity and our bodies are rotting. Things are going to like, it's just truth. We'll go along with that rationale. And that is a transactional path that. Yeah, you're right, it's a rotten path. And people, we live it all the time.

[A]

We're definitely going to talk about transactional and we're going to get into one of your books. But I'm so curious. So you've got this Morgan Stanley banker named Rich Lawson and he's like, you're going to need a CEO. Furthermore, I'm the guy.

[B]

Why.

[A]

Why say yes, right? What was the. What was the pitch? I mean, I love Tim, honestly.

[B]

Well, I mean, think about it. This is the. I don't know how I try to explain stuff. It's always my dad goes like. Or my wife is like, steve, get to the point. But industrial revolution 100 years, technology revolution 20 years. Right. Like, like so, like it was happening.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Right in front like with us. So it was like businesses were literally going from nothing to public in months that were now being valued at a billion. Like it was insane time. So you have to put yourself in there. So why Would Rich turn and see this?

[A]

Because I understand why he would do it. It's more the question of why you guys would agree to it.

[B]

Because we just had an idea.

[A]

Yeah, I see, I see. You needed an. He seemed like an optimal.

[B]

And really the guys that formed us and the guys that did the algorithm and the. I'm the facilitator, right. I want to be in business. I'm energized by the human complex calculus in business. And so I was drawn to it. I still have imposter syndrome a little bit, but back then I definitely felt like I'm kind of faking my way through it. And here's a guy that was classically trained at Harvard, went in business, went to consulting, and then now is a big banker. And to me, he's. He's expert.

[A]

Yeah, right.

[B]

That's fun. The yin and yang of it all.

[A]

What is made? I mean, I have quite a few friends. I mean, a lot of friends in the investing world writ large, but I have quite a few in the private equity world as well. And I mean, how long have you guys been partners now?

[B]

That was 1997, so it's been a minute. Almost 30.

[A]

Yeah, 30 years. Why has it worked?

[B]

Right.

[A]

Because a lot don't. None very. Yeah, right. There we go.

[B]

First of all, I think that there was a clarity early on that the things that he's really good at, I really am not good at and the things that I was really good at wasn't his strongest suit. So there's a yin and yang kind of feel to it. And then there's a trust that gets built that just works. It either does or doesn't. And it gets tested. I mean, the times that in 30 years. You got to be kidding me. I remember sitting in the corner, there are existential moments when it felt like, well, that was fun. See you later.

[A]

What types of. If you're able to talk about what types of. How do those precipitate.

[B]

Private equity, if you think about it, is a really unique business because you go globally to find investors, to believe that you can go now, deploy capital in businesses to return significantly more over a period of time than the public equities or other bonds or anything else. And so private equity's got this fuse of capital that has to be great and you have to be great in 10 year increments so that as you go out and you raise the money and you go do it every few years, you're going to have another referendum on whether you're in business or not.

[A]

Based on your report card, truly.

[B]

And you could be out of business. And so it's a crazy world to now try to build continuity from fund to fund. And a business that reflects the values that you want in the middle of the truth of it is like there's a referendum every few years and it might go away when you're getting started. Like any startup, there are existential moments that feel. I look back and it probably wasn't truly existential, but it felt it. And that builds trust for scar tissue that to me, the most interesting people in the world have lots of scars and have found the bounty in it, the good in it. And so I think that's how it's worked. And we had our holiday party yesterday, last night, and there we are sitting together, chopping it up, like, amazing what's happened, but yet what we can do, you know, so it's just Henry Kravitz and George Roberts both. I've had the pleasure and the honor of knowing and knowing them. And that's one of the great partnerships of all time. Two cousins that have just. And they're still humble gentlemen, sincere. I mean, I just, I'm inspired by both of them. And so in that way, I'm now getting old enough where we can talk about these generational relationships that are super cool. We all had the same office. We never had separate offices. He's like, I'm Oscar. He's Felix. Like the old odd couple you look at around the room with all the helmets hanging up. That's Covid. All the stuff I remember I told you about the memorabilia that I traffic in. They were in the corner in a big pile. It was just a pile of crap that just keeps getting cycled through. And during COVID he couldn't take it. He like, I gotta clean this place up.

[A]

That's me.

[B]

That would be me. So we hung it. I walk in after a couple weeks being I'm like, what have you done? You hung up helmets around that. That looks stupid, you know, because to me, as an ex pro athlete, like, that's just dumb. But to him, it's like, that's clean, you know, and so we have helmets.

[A]

Looks pretty cool as a background with the camera facing this way.

[B]

There you go.

[A]

So. So hggc, a handsome good guy company. What does that stand for?

[B]

Historically, it was Huntsman Gay Global Capital at the time. Back in 2008, seven Rich and I were the younger partners founders and the two older partners, Jon Huntsman and Bob Gay with Greg Benson. And John wanted his name on it and Bob didn't want his name on it, so. But then John won. So it's Huntsman Gay Global Capital. But then John was selling his Huntsman Chemical business. But in the 2008 credit crisis. You can read the story. It's an amazing story where Leon Black at Apollo had bought it, signed it, but then didn't fund it because everything had gone crazy. And then what ended up happening is the transaction did not get funded. They broke it. There was a huge lawsuit and billion dollar settlement, but the net of it was Jon Huntsman never was able to come over. So here we are raising money as Huntsman Gay Global Capital and we don't have John. And then Bob left for full time church service three years later. And so then we go to fund two and it's like we're Huntsman Gay Global Capital. No John Huntsman, no Bob Gay. But you have Rich Lawson and Steve Young. What do you think? Let's go. So that's.

[A]

I'm so glad I asked. That's such better. So much better than I ever.

[B]

So then we have a decision to make in 2012. What do we name ourselves? Because we can't stay with that name. And there's a little panic. Like again, existential crisis. Can we even raise, can we raise a fund? Let's melt it down. So at least it's a reflection of something that was existing. And I honestly and everyone around the firm knows this. I can't stand our name because HTTC is hard to say. So you stand up in a very formal setting and you're trying to express the values and this incredible partnership culture that you've built off of the back of my previous life in football and how you have to come together. And Perry Passu. We can lock arms. Strategic vision. We can go and you know, everyone here at hgc, you know that's a lot of syllables.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So my great idea is to call it. You know, I used to play Candlestick park, so it's Candlestick Ventures or Candlestick Partners. But we've said we branded it. It's worldwide, it's everything. So now we're hggc just because. And it's fine. It's fun. It's fun.

[A]

You mentioned something that actually might be a nice segue to where I was planning on going next. Anyway, you said left for full time church service. And I was going to ask about faith. The role that faith not only plays in your life now, but has played. Has it changed form over time? I don't know if it has or not.

[B]

No, it always does. It should learn and grow, right? I mean that's just. As a young kid, it was formative, right? It gave you a sense that God's with you, cheering you. As a kid I always felt like even in the hardest times, like, no, God's cheering you on. I never felt this wrathful when I read the Old Testament, I'm like, eh, not really. That doesn't make sense.

[A]

Leviticus doesn't have a big smile.

[B]

And I was able as a young kid to kind of ferret through the things that resonated and the stuff that didn't. And so my theology is really wrapped into what I would call being lds, is complex because it was a, we claim this kind of restoration. So it was a restart. And in the restart there's, I mean, you look back at the history in the last 200 years, it's pretty chaotic. And so for me, I don't have to carry all that, right? But the things that resonate, the things that are beautiful, are really rooted in that event. So it's like to me it's always resonated, it's always been something that. And I don't have to carry what I see as kind of the chaotic parts of a young organization. So in that way I tell my wife, she got me started on really questioning and challenging the culture as a cultural experience. Because true faith can't be cultural, right? It has to be rooted in something actionable that is beyond you. And so I find myself more energized than ever around faith and around the potential of organized religion and its beauty, yet recognizing how devastatingly painful and difficult and all the other parts of it. So ferreting through all that, I find myself more energized than ever at how I feel around faith and connection and relationship. I learned somewhere in there that if you're not careful, you go back to what we talked about around entropy and rotting and transaction and like, if you're not careful, religion becomes what I call Boy Scout theology. Kind of go get a merit badge, do the work. It's good work. It's not bad work. Go get a merit badge, put it on your sash and then wear it around town so that everyone knows what an amazing Boy Scout you are. You know what I mean? Does that make sense? It does make sense. So that theology is productive, it's like performative. There's good things that come out of it, but the relationship can't last because it's transactional, it is self interested at its core, and it can't make it so I'm super energized by the roots that really kind of like, I don't know. I find myself every day enjoying as I chew on the ideals of my faith, like how it keeps resonating in a way that is. We talk about learning, growing, right? Like I find myself always refining and spiritually kind of that light that I feel that I want to be around. And it doesn't necessarily. It comes from everywhere I find my organized religions. It's not hoveled, it's not insular. It's not like it makes me more curious. Like I can't wait to hear when you tell me about something that you're doing. I'm like, tell me more about that man. Because that's informative to where I'm sitting. And that's when I know it works, is when you get away from transactional, insular, hoveling, self righteous judgment. Those are all transactional words. You asked me a question. I'm sorry to start riffing on it, but it's a really, I think, energizing place to be for me right now.

[A]

No need to apologize. I mean, this is an exploration and I wanted to ask for a number of different reasons. One of them, I mean, this is a reflection of sort of the antithesis of insular. Also in my reading of the Law of Love, your book, which was sent to me by Greg McEwen, who wrote Essentialism.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

And ended up listening to it.

[B]

Oh man.

[A]

And I listened to it.

[B]

I apologize for that.

[A]

Well, no need to apologize for.

[B]

Well, no, it was written for my LDS brothers and sisters. We're in a place where our roots are incredibly non transactional and yet have allowed for the rational, I shouldn't say infection, but allowing for the transactional to actually lead in places that it needs to be kind of excised. And so that's the book is about, is that there's a law governing the universe, universal law for all humans that says to see the full measure of something, you have to lose the self interest. And I was brought here by Bill Walsh, my coach and the 49ers who used to talk about every year he'd stand in front of the team and say, I don't care what play we call, I don't care what defense we run, we're going to win because we have shared common experiences amongst each other and an element of love for each other. And it was like, that's how we're going to win football games. And it was actually true all the way to just all Elements of my marriage, my family, my relationships. It was all as I sought, the higher ground, I guess you would call it. It just started to resonate and I wanted to write about it. It was my journey, led by my wife, who I just think I'm so much better rubbing up against her every day, shoulder to shoulder. I always say she gets the barnacles off my boat. You know what I mean? I love her for that. And so that's. I don't even know what question you are. I kind of lost myself in it.

[A]

But I'll pick up where you just left off with respect to keeping this. It's not the loss of self interest. It's also this love of the collective. That might not be the best way to phrase it, but self transcendence maybe would be one way to put it. How do your wife, how do you guys, your family, keep it at the forefront? Maybe it's a question for you. How has that become more important? How do you keep it like you did, the accountability after that plane ride, something that you have as a lens on a daily or weekly basis.

[B]

I think that's where the theology really is important, is how you see how you define the crazy world that we have. I mean, I just noticed a fiery orb that came through the sky again today. Amazing how it just comes in and makes Palo ALTO, you know, 67 degrees and perfect. You know what I mean? Like, the things that are going on, the miracles that happen. I mean, I can't. I had breakfast, but I don't digest my food. I don't know what vitamins and minerals that body needs. Like, there's just this intelligence that's out there that is universal and. Dang, I forgot your question because I. Oh, that's okay.

[A]

No, I was just asking the law of love, how you keep that.

[B]

Oh, in the forefront.

[A]

In the forefront, yeah.

[B]

Typical of me, I was going to.

[A]

Go around about, you can take the roundabout.

[B]

But I think what I was trying to say is that again, it's an intent, and it's really about recognizing and defining kind of the conditions of our life that I think God authored. Like the whole. It's a body, there's agency, choices to make, there's opposition everywhere. And so with that kind of as an ingredient, that's our laboratory. It goes back to learning and growing. That's the laboratory. So in that laboratory, as we define each other, how are we related? And so my theology is that God, Mother and Father, we are durable spirits inside of us that are not from this place. We take a Body for learning and growing. But then when we die, there's this physical entity of spirit that's durable and that it's divine, like, so that every human is divine. So in that way, as you start to define things that are every day, how you relate with them, it's in the definition as how you actually act. And so if I see everyone as divine and more eternal, it's not just like you see someone on the street and you say, oh, they're in a bad spot. I mean, that's terrible. They chose their way. What a bad life. What a. And he's like, no, let's back out and recognize that there's a broad big spectrum of experience and let's see. And have the curiosity for how to help those around us learn and grow as well. Because we really are related. We were all together, we all chose to take a body. And so in that theology, there's this universality. And so if you talk about the law of love, it's really just a fulfillment of the relationship that's already true. So it's not like I have to go through all kinds of mental machinations to make myself see others as literal family. It's in the roots, it's in the dirt. You and I are related in that way. You're divine, we're both divine. So let's be about it. And so in that way, the intent of the law of love says the full measure of what I can get out of this life cannot be a transaction. God cannot be Santa Claus as much as Santa Claus is a cool idea and that, like, if I'm super good, I get a gift. At its root, it's self interested and it can't last if there are durable spirits inside of us that are more in perpetual. The law that leads us cannot be self interested because it will rot. It will rot like everything around us is decaying. I looked in the mirror today, Tim. It's not going good, bro. Like, it's going the wrong direction. So in that way, the law of love is really about saying there is a law that is decreed from the origins of the universe that says if I can lose the transaction, if I can lose myself and be curious about you and be curious about where you've been. There's an element that's pure in that, that you take in in a different way. If you and I have a transactional relationship, it's going to feel that way. And there's a lot of bounty in it, a lot of profit, there's a lot of money running around the world, there's a lot of fame, there's a lot of everything. There's a lot of goodness in many ways. But in the end, if it's purely transactional, if my marriage is purely transactional, at some point it's going to break. It has to, in self interest. And so if you ask me the intent or how do you live it, to me the definition's important, right? Because otherwise you'd be like, screw that. I'm. I've been curious about people and I've been hurt and I'm done with that and I'm tired of being left behind. And then the victimization shows up. We have themes, right? And all of a sudden it's like the world's against me and now I'm going to look out for number one, so I'm going to take my part. Right. And as soon as you do that, yeah, there's a mitigating truth to all makes sense in my brain, but it makes sense.

[A]

Just because you can identify truths in a scene or situation, it doesn't mean that by focusing on those particular truths, those mitigating factors, that you produce any type of durable good for yourself or others.

[B]

Now the idea is that the full bounty of a relationship. Put a religion aside again, just put it all aside. The full bounty of a relationship is actually ironic in an unfeigned love, care, concern, even a fare thee well hello. Just something that says I am about your well being. Hope you have a great day in that simple statement. That's not. I'm not looking for anything, just I truly hope you have a great day in that element, I believe, unlocks an irony of how you actually receive a great day, if that makes sense. And so you can't say I hope you have a great day because then you can help me have a great. You can't make it about something, then it all of a sudden devolves. Even kids. Kids feel pure love from a parent. Do you want to raise your kids in a transactional way? It works for a while, but to really love them in a way that they feel, they feel it. I'm loved and I'm a screw up and I'm going to make that bad decision. I don't know, but I know I'm loved. And that changes people because it hits in a different place. And so the book is really around what I believe is the universal truth. That is true for my LDS community, particularly because that's what I'm very focused on. But it's true everywhere.

[A]

Can it be Applied.

[B]

But it's the irony of it because we all who are trying to accomplish that's what we see in front of us. The better the life is, the more accomplishments. Right. That's how you show a great life. It's irrational to the world that we live in today. It's irrational. Yet I think it's the unlock. That's the way I would put it. Because people could tell me, screw you, Steve. That's just ethereal, weird, crazy stuff. I know what I need to do to be happy and I'm getting it right now. That's fine. What I'm describing is irrational to all of that and I'm chewing on it. Tim, I am not an expert. I've been brought to it because of a quest, another Steve Cubby quest. And I'm just chewing on it and I'm learning about it and yeah, that's it.

[A]

I'm so deeply curious about this. I did not grow up religious. I went to an Episcopal boarding school for a period of time. But I mean, that was non denominational. So yeah, we sat in a chapel and they gave announcements, sure. But besides that, it wasn't terribly religious. And I don't identify as religious in the sense of having an organized religion. I adhere to. But there are also so many things that our current, let's say, breadth of science can explain. And there are also a lot of questions that are really important. And there are things that we can feel like love that are very hard to put under a microscope and provide spreadsheets for. You can try. And there are ways to torture some of these things into conforming to numbers. But at the end of the day, there's a lot we don't know. There's certain questions we can't answer. And I, for a long time was, I would say, a pessimist disguised as a realist, if that makes any sense.

[B]

Sure, of course it does. Totally rational.

[A]

Yeah. Being grown up, being raised around a lot of the glass is half empty type of thinking, that was justified and reasoned and it made sense to me. I'd look out at the world, look at the COVID of the newspaper like, yep, things are bad, people are bad, and therefore A, B and C. However, as I've gotten older, I've realized that, for instance, if you have a base assumption, let's just say a belief that humans are divine, there's some aspect of every human that is divine. And divine is a word that'll make some people squirm who are listening.

[B]

That's fine too.

[A]

Which is fine.

[B]

Totally Again, I'm curious. My dogma is very about the human interaction.

[A]

So it's like if you have that belief and it's like, okay, people might say, well, I can't be falsified, Karl Popel blah, blah, blah, blah. But the point of it is, does it make things better or does it make things worse? And that, I'm not saying that everybody should adopt every fairy tale that they want. But at the same time, there is some latitude in how you choose to view things. And if you start to entertain something that is ever present, intangible, you could call it divine, you could call it something else, sublime, you could call it wonder, you could call it awe. I mean, there are different ways to put it. I'm not saying those are all equivalent. But you begin to get more curious and you begin to see, like you said, the fact that plants eat sunlight to produce energy. It's completely insane.

[B]

It's insane.

[A]

And when you start to really re. Familiarize yourself with beginner's eyes, looking at how incredibly improbable it is that you and I are sitting here experiencing more or less the same reality, it is irrational. Yeah, it's wild.

[B]

Don't you think? It's irrational. It's incredibly crazy.

[A]

It's nuts.

[B]

And so look to me, take the. Anyone that's uncomfortable talking about religion or theology, put it aside for a second. Let's just think about, take the universal truth that I believe is universal because it's universal. Forget about all of that. Just take it as a lived experience, the rational transactional life that is in front of us and the results of it. Watch as you watch it politically, you watch what happens is over time you have to separate, right? Because. And the transactional path is more fundamental. So what is happening politically today, more and more fundamental both ways. Because there's no. Nobody is looking for. The law of love is not part of the calculus. No one's curious, no one's open. So it's like forget about religion for a second. Just politically, I've never seen a more divisive transactional time led by the most divisive transactional people. It's not that complex.

[A]

You can also look at, I mean, even we're sitting here in Silicon Valley, right? A lot of very wealthy people. And if the hope is that the list of successful transactions, and we're going to land the plane in just a.

[B]

Couple of minutes.

[A]

If people hope the list of transactions will ultimately redeem the time that they spend on this planet in life, I've never seen it work. Out. I've never seen that work.

[B]

It's just, it's testable. Right? I've experienced it.

[A]

The greyhound never catches the rabbit. And so this self transcendence discussion, I just more and more feel like it's so critical. Steve, I know you've been very generous with your time. I have really enjoyed this. Is there anything else that you'd like to share or talk about before we wind to a close?

[B]

I will tell you, Tim, that you're really good at this because I don't know that I've ever had a conversation like this. I leave with that unsettling feeling like I've really shared. I'm overshared possibly. And I'm like, oh man. But I'm at a place in my life where I'm curious about that. It's like I'm not worried about it. I'm just like. But thank you for a chance to put into words. And I already feel like, I wish I could have said that differently or I could have because it was so raw in some ways. So I'm going to. I'll get better at that. But I really appreciate for me the depth of how you took me to places that I really appreciate. I will not listen to it because it's just too much. But I'll get responses from people. But thank you for the gift of vulnerability and the gift of expressing kind of my story. I appreciate it.

[A]

Thank you. I've really, really enjoyed it. Folks can find you on Instagramteveyoung on x teveyoungqb. You've got the hggc.com website, of course. Also, people should check out Forever Young foundation and we'll link to many other things in the show. Notes for everybody at Tim Blog Podcast. And until next time, as I always say, folks, be just a bit kinder than is necessary to others, to yourself. And thanks for tuning in. Thank you, Steve. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between 1 and a half and 2 million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically, basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading books, I'm reading albums, perhaps gadgets gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests. And these strange esoteric things end up in my field and then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short. A little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. Something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to Tim Blog Friday, Type that into your browser. Tim Blog Friday. Drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. Many of you know how deeply I love Japan and it's called Shadow of Unwavering Dedication to craft, Refinement, Commitment to Continuous Improvement. But why do I bring this all up? Well, the same focus on improving one thing over the span of years is found in today's sponsor, AG1. They are now unveiling AG1 Next Gen, the same single scoop once a day product that I use myself, but now with more vitamins, more minerals and five new clinically studied probiotic strains show known to support digestive and immune health. AG1 is also NSF certified for sport, one of the most rigorous independent quality and safety certification programs in the supplement industry. So check them out. Subscribe today to try the next gen of AG1. Listeners will also get a free bottle of D3K2, an AG1 welcome Kit and AG1 Travel Packs with your first order. So start your journey with AG1's next generation and experience the difference firsthand. Simply go to drinkag1.com Tim that's drinkag1.com Tim Listeners have heard me talk about making before you manage for years. All that means to me is that when I wake up I block out three to four hours to do the most important things that are generative, creative, podcasting, writing, etc. Before I get to the email and the administration stuff and the reactive stuff and everyone else's agenda for my time. For me, I need to find people who are great at managing and that is where Crescent Family Office comes in. You spell it C R E S S E T Crescent Family Office. I was introduced to them by one of the top CPG investors in the world. Crescent is a prestigious family office for CEOs, founders and entrepreneurs. They handle the complex financial planning, uncertainty, tax strategies, timely exit planning, bill pay wires, all the dozens of other parts of wealth management and just financial management that would otherwise pull me away from doing what I love most. Making things, mastering skills, spending time with the people I care about and over many years I was getting pulled away from that stuff at least a few days a week, and I've completely eliminated that. So experience the freedom of focusing on what matters to you with the smart support of a top wealth management team. You can schedule a call [e-mail] Tim that's spelled C-R E S S E T CrescentCapital.com Tim to see how Crescent can help streamline your financial plans and grow your wealth. That's crescentcapital.com Tim and disclosure, I am a client of Crescent. There are no material conflicts other than this paid testimonial. And of course, all investing involves risk, including loss of principal. So do your due diligence.