#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

26:49I mean, they could be physical, but I'm wondering if anything comes to mind. There's not a long enough form for this 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 to predict trying to do that and that's why why is college not a great predictor you know I mean what's happening yeah in the NFL what do you what do you think is it something internal like their ability to learn in a certain way I've been trying to melt it down to something that people can just grab like this is the truth one thing's for sure human behavior i don't know the right way to think about it but when there's adrenaline and focus and pressure opposition i mean how many games are someone's paid to actually screw you up like physically like i'm paid to grab you and throw you to the ground and hurt you like you know i mean that's my i mean i paid millions of dollars so it's all in that moment in that kind and dynamic that you now have to ferret through.

28:01And Tim, I wish everybody who loves football could stand with a helmet on and at 6 '4", 6 '3", or whatever, 6 '2", whatever, 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 right they were processing fine in college they're processing great in high school but it's just an elevation gladly for me there's not a super pro like i would have topped out you know but it's 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 of figuring out the speed.

28:57And 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. Yeah. And how many times 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 are you at the bottom of a pile and you're like, how did it go? Like, you don't know.

29:35And you just listen for the crowd, right? Because you're like, if it's home and there's curing, you're like, it worked, you know? And otherwise, you know, 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. Right. There's memorization, but it's, there's a, you just get it. Yeah. You get it. And 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. Like their clock speed is high. And I think that's, they'd be great quarterbacks, right?

30:11That'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 don't know until you know. Well, there's also the pressure of imminent bodily harm. I think most humans, when things get more intense, the adrenaline runs. And when adrenaline runs, the brain focuses, right? It gets smaller and it gets more focused, but yet you're not as aware. And so that physiology doesn't work because in quarterbacking, you have to expand. You have to have the peripheral awareness.

30:52And the more present you are, like if you're in your backyard, not 80 ,000 people watching, and 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 that for most humans and that's why the quality is like i wish i was a test for that because i could promise you i could tell you who's going to be great 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...

31:33Oh, my. I think it was El Cap. I can't remember the exact face with no ropes. And so I interviewed him. I can't watch it. It's too... I can't. Honestly, I can't. I literally can't watch it. I want to watch it. I can't watch life and death like that. And his brain responds differently to... Exactly. ...those circumstances. 100%. And that's the only way. Because all of us watch it go, oh, no. Panic and fall. No way. That's what happens. Not every grip has to be life or death. Like, no way. Like, people think about quarterback in the NFL is like, whoa, you know, how do you do? I was like, look, talk about what you just said.

32:12This is p-knuckle. It might be like 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 hard wiring out of the box that was very helpful. But you didn't just hit the ground running in NFL and you were top of the game. There was something that improved.

32:50I'm wondering, were many things. 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 going to do it right. And as a kid, I grabbed a football and because I didn't want to be embarrassed, I wanted to spin perfectly. I would spin it out of my hand and that's how I did it. But you can't get behind to throw it hard. And you know, this was not something that was like a deep, dark secret. Some people grab it and grab a golf club, grab a football and just like, oh yeah, that's how you You must do it.

33:23That'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 to 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 oh wow you spin it it comes out and spins but now you can throw it like with all your power right right and that was you talking about what i i had to have that i mean those are those seem and i've played a bunch of sports certainly at a very level well no it's but it seems like rebuilding your swing in golf or something a little bit but it was such an unlock yeah once you felt it golf's been more complicated because you got a stick and you got this like you're a little divorced from right right 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 yeah and all of a sudden it just it came out did you realize that at byu or yes right there it was my freshman year i wish i would have written down the day it's like november 10th you know okay it was like discovering fire fire exactly we live and i all i did from that point on is throw the ball like i just want to throw it throw it everywhere throw it and what's ironic is that the coach who was the offensive coordinator at the time soon after because no one knew this is all happening i was eighth i was no one i was nobody but i had figured it out it had clocked in it was clocking right and so i think for me he pulled me aside later in the year he goes by the way i don't i don't coach 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 LaValle Edwards, the coach said, look, you're super fast, super athletic.

35:36We 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 when coach lefties took a head coaching job at San Diego state, another coach, Ted Tolner came in and I'm throwing with the quarterbacks after practice. And he goes, Steve, I thought you played quarterback. I go, I do, but they told me I'm lefty. So I have to play defense. He goes, that's ridiculous.

36:15That's stupid. I go, I know. It's insane. And then I screamed out, but I didn't learn how to throw too. Like, so I have this thing that, you know, 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 you know 30 days of practice he got two weeks for me to practice before i you know they made a decision and by the end of the two weeks because of this new gift that was it that was it what that changed everything because i was fast i could run i could throw it hard i could i could process the game wasn't too fast for me i kind of all made sense to me.

36:55I just didn't unlock that one fundamental piece of throwing the ball. You know, it's so fun having this conversation. I've been looking forward to it for so long. And before I forget, I just wanted to say again, on a very reduced junior varsity level, but I wrestled my whole life basically. Oh, I have total respect. I wrestled in ninth grade. It's a tough sport. I will never wrestle again. It is a tough sport. It is brutal. There is no good news. There's no good you you you were like i remember the first wrestling i go to just to break in your story three one minute or three minute i can't remember how and so by the first of the first one was over i was done yeah the best people are in the best shape the greatest athletes when i see wrestlers i tip my cap i walk away man i'm like it is a suffer fest it is 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.

37:57But 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.

38:47And 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? Like 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. 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?

39:29And 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, how do, what do I do? I was like, in relationships with your mom, with your siblings, the most intimate ones, can you start to recognize the complexity of that relationship, which it always is.

40:13And 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 of your contribution. Like, how can you, if you want to have an aha moment or you want to have a, read a book and change, you know, kind of inflection point, it comes from, you were open for it. You were ready for it. And I was so desperate with Stephen Covey, but it wasn't necessarily, I was looking for it. It was because it was, it resonated so truthfully. Like I'm screwing this up. I am royally screwing this up and I cannot keep screwing it up.

40:54And 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 when 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. 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 that you might be falling short in certain places.

41:31And 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. That's what happens. There's a clarity that comes like, because now everything gets fed through that truth. truth and now it comes in more authentically. Like it doesn't hit the same way. And you can go in front of 80 ,000 people and find a piece about it.

42:0980 ,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. Like 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 it might be. And like this, but as long as your brain is saying the whole point is to learn and grow, then Stephen Covey, be about it. And I think that really freed me up. 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.

42:49So 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 me love. Backhanded compliment. Yeah, yeah, I love, I just love that. So your dad is bewildered by how well. By that fact. Well, he was bewildered by how well you did at football at different levels. And then this last line is the one I wanted to ask you about. It says, honestly, Steve's personality is probably a better fit for law or business, right? As compared to professional athlete. Why would he say that? Do you think he's referring to, and I look, we should talk about it.

43:29So when I was a kid growing up, you know, first grade, second grade, third grade, I was a kid that when the first day of school, I would turn to my mom or dad and say, look, 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 seems 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 sleepovers not so much not so much but during the daytime I was killing it only for context, like all stayed in three sports, captain, straight A's, like not because I was just like, you know, tiger parents or tiger person.

44:29Like I just, 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 like existential. And it's hard to explain to people because they're like, going to college is awesome, man. What's your problem? And why you didn't unpack your bags the whole semester? And you kept telling you you're just miserable? Like, how's that possible? Well, it's how my brain worked, function. I can't really say much about that. That's about it. And I remember when I came back for Christmas, I finally got to come home.

45:05And 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 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, you know, he would call hyper focus and not fun.

45:48And 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 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 of days when I was really little at my aunt's house. And I can still smell it. I can still feel it. I can still like the terror of them walking out. And I look back and that's an insane reaction.

46:27I 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 at 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. Yeah, there's a flip side. 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 is like, I think it was an N.S. I had to have it. Yeah.

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48:29Was there a point where, I mean, this is going to be a strong way of putting it, but you know, I've experienced this in my own life and have talked about struggles. Some of it I think is hereditary with generalized anxiety, had depressive episodes, which I've seen throughout my family. and appreciate how open you've been about discussing some of this. And I'm curious at what point you realized you didn't need that kind of monkey on your back. And specifically, I'm thinking about in the course of doing research for this, reading a New York Times piece, and it mentions Dr. James Clint and Reggie, I guess, and approach you approaching Reggie at one point.

49:09I think it was after what, three sleepless nights, something like that. And I guess I'm wondering what was happening, right? For people who don't know what the context is. And then what happened afterwards that helped? It's kind of a bookend, actually tight bookends between the Stephen Covey 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.

49:48So it was like, you could deal with it. And also 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. Like you got to, you can't play. And I'm like, oh no, that's not an option like we're playing and i remember telling them as i left for the game in such a state i just probably never been quite like that so i promised him i said look if we win i'll talk to 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 an excuse 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.

50:54I pulled him aside. And I remember back in the corner of the old Candlestick Park, it was like stuff was dripping down. It's a dank, it's old school, right? And we're in the back corner 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. And as I'm explaining it, I see a big ball of a tear, like a big ball come out of his eye and then drop and then another one and he hasn't changed his face he hasn't changed anything and i'm like reggie are you crying and he's trying not to like break like he's like i dealt with so much clinical anxiety i could hardly get through medical school that's what he said that's what he said this is what he i mean as he answered with a straight like he hadn't changed his face at all i had dealt with and i watching you instinctively felt that there was something going on and i i feel like i've like malpractice that this is what's had to come to it like he felt this incredible pain as the team physician that would have and qualified maybe watch for this kind of stuff and i'm like like i was relieved yeah because i didn't know what was going to happen i was like something that was still like total vulnerability total like weakness it felt like right and he's like responding like oh i blew it and i'm like reggie don't worry about it bro but he said we're gonna get the bottom of it and it wasn't maybe two days later he sent me up to a child psychologist psychiatrist i'm not sure and they gave me a test of 10 questions it would describe things that happened in your life and that would be if you answer yes to eight of them then you're kind of undiagnosed childhood separation anxiety as an adult and so i was nine of them right like so and he said most people steve who have this going on in their life, they're like self-medicating, right?

53:05They're in the basement. They're like, you know, 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, you know, in other places. But my life was so full and amazing that I just kind of, we just made our way. And so this was a point where now book ended 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.

53:49And so was the diagnosis in itself, the treatment and the respect that you finally had a label to apply a way to yeah think about it so that it wasn't this nebulous set of worries or what allowed you i guess so it was go back it was actually super cool because i didn't think about it as a stigma like i thought about it as like oh that makes sense yeah yeah yeah and then as i told my parents and told my, then we found out that like in my mom's side of the family, this is a thing. Yeah. And explained all kinds of craziness that was going on that now everyone go, oh. Now the piece is back. So now I paid forward, you know what I mean?

54:35So in its own way, that was, the knowledge was the key. And then because I was so functioning through it, like it was helpful. Didn't make playing in front of 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? Yeah. I remember maybe it was two years ago. I wanted to do this experimental treatment. It'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.

55:15I won't bore you with all the details, but it's this medical treatment. and they had to put me through all these assessments beforehand. Is it red light? It's called 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.

55:55They 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. 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, now knowing that you got diagnosed makes it so much easier to put up with your OCT.

56:29And 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. 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 how all that part of it. But at least it all kind of like, like you said, my friends like, oh yeah, I can see that. Or, you know, my parents, like my dad's like, I keep telling you, just go have fun and you don't have any fun.

57:02Oh, now I get it. So that way it was, it was useful in that way. I feel like, again, what are we here to do? Learn and grow. It's like, that's okay. Let's go. Let's 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. Like in other words, if I worry about something that's important to me enough, I can make it happen. It's magical thinking in a way, right? Like if I worry and work and spread and something good will happen, like in my life.

57:48And 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 unfolded, like unraveling, like you 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.

58:26It could hurt for a while, but at least it's what is. It's real. Yeah. Steve, I have to ask you about the following. This is the law degree. Over the course of seven off seasons, he pursued a law degree 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? 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.

59:06he'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 sawback 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 one percent 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 him uh 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. Okay. So your dad was a lawyer. My dad was a lawyer. You know, he described law and I was like, I think I could do that.

59:43So 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, well, what's the dream, dad? You know, cause he always, he'd be like one 10, you know, like he has it in his mind. Like 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 a hundred percent now, you know? And, uh, and then he would always say, well, the average career is three years.

1:00:20And then I played for six years and he's like, well, what are you going to do the rest of your, you know, you're going to retire at 35. And then what, you know, half of your life, what are you going to do? So he just kept kind of put in my head. Dog with a bun. Yeah. Well, it wasn't, I didn't bother me because I knew it was pretty true. What he was saying, like, what are you going to do with the rest of your life? And so I got, I don't know how it got in my head. I look back on that as like, Tim, that's, that's just stupid to try to go to law school while you play. Like, that's just like, this is dumb.

1:00:50But 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 Superbowls in that time. And the Superbowl is in February, end of January, February.

1:01:30School 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, you know, whatever class, I usually do 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 on? So I'm just scrambling, trying.

1:02:08But I think I loved that in a weird way. But I look back, I was 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. Yeah, it served its purpose. Dream and plan. All right. So you're doing these seven off seasons, flying back, parade, get on a plane, fly back next morning. Mr. Young, right? So you're doing that. How do you make the hop to finance? How does that even materialize? 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.

1:03:04And it's funny now because Silicon Valley, you know, Santa Clara is the middle of it. It 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, all 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.

1:03:40You 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 the skies on Sand Hill Road for venture investing. So we started to get everything they did. We give them$50 ,000 of what they were doing. We just split it up. How did that relationship happen? We would, well. It doesn't seem like the Venn diagrams would totally overlap. Well, no, because like Doug Leone was a great guy. He was a great friend. He's one of the greats. 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.

1:04:10Come 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 of 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 marathoners. Oh, I remember. But for a single guy, it was meal replacement, not for a marathon, for day to day.

1:04:46And so I kind of got famous around the Bay Area. He asked me to be on the board. And I was like, well, I've never done that before. I'll try that. First board meeting, Larry Sonsini, one of the icons of Silicon Valley lawyers. Of Wilson Sonsini. So when I first moved, just for people who don't recognize it, So back in the day, Wilson Sunsini were kind of the connective tissue behind the scenes for Silicon Valley. They were one of the big. It was the backbone. That was the backbone. The legal backbone. And then Warren Hellman of Hellman and Freem. Warren Hellman is the icon of investing in the late 90s and really his whole life.

1:05:23He is the icon. So there's two of them, and I'm sitting on the board. I mean, your list is pretty insane. Pretty insane. Yeah. How does this happen? And so I had a guy that I'm glad this is long form. I had a friend in college who was messing around with the URLs before the internet was shut down by the government. You could go in and he had an algorithm where he'd put a geographic boundary around an internet search. And if you're old enough to know in the nineties, the internet was a mess. It was a mess. If you put in, you know, Palo Alto hammer. Yeah. You'd get like a USSR sickle. Yeah. Like you'd get like nothing made sense.

1:05:59but with this enablement you could put in palo alto hammer and get the local ace hardware store yeah so that made it useful and so we had that enablement my buddy was doing it he was like can you help me i'm like so i take it to the board meeting and i'm like hey this what do you think about this and they're like that works you need to start a business that retailers are panicked right now because their brick and mortar stores are gonna be usurped by amazon right and 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.

1:06:39They could use, you know, it's like it becomes your distribution point. And I'm like, ah, 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. What's your partner's name? Rich Lawson. 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. yes he's got 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 is a chapter on going 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 you happen to be in the epicenter 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 yeah was already here like just sitting here i actually watched the traffic get worse and worse like where's all this traffic coming from like i used to get to work in 10 minutes now i get working 30 and so it's like we made fun of the athletic brain uh 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.

1:08:05Rich 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, it still is. I mean, he's just an amazing guy. He's like, Steve, I'm a lawyer. You need to go do this. That's how it switched. Oh, I see. He said, I'm a lawyer. And he's saying that referring to... He just said, look, your EQ and the way you look at the world. And I had graduated in finance, so I was like, I knew enough to be, not even dangerous, but knew enough to know what it was about.

1:08:40He said, you need to go help people build businesses. That's kind of how it switched. And I'm looking right over your shoulder at, looks like maybe a tweet from Rich Loss and your partner. It says, very proud to break into the top 20 of 500 plus private equity firms globally in just over the decade. Okay. 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? Well, let's back up because what you're alluding to, I think, is that what we've been talking about really for the whole time is transition and the difficulties.

1:09:22Because I love football and I was very successful at it, I run into a lot of people who played in high school and loved it. The dream, like they would give their arm to be able to, or leg to be able to play in college and keep the dream going. And I always think about how when I left the game, it wasn't necessarily forced, but you do age out like it just sooner or later, even Tom Brady aged out at 45. Like it's still as a young man's game. And I remember the day I retired, I was known for this thing that I had been able to do worldwide even the next day i remember waking up and now that that's gone now what yeah yeah and what i've learned about transition it leads to rich loss and how i describe it that everyone and even the high schooler the last day they play and it has to be put away needs to recognize and treat it like a death to mourn it and go through all the steps of mourning it and burying it and actually having it as a place that you can keep referring to as a almost like a grave site because otherwise you carry it around you never transition transitioning is about actually moving from to right and so i'm really grateful my roger staubach poster on my wall i got to know him he became a friend like it's insane yeah how cool is that.

1:10:45And he famously transitioned, probably the most successful transition in history of the NFL. What did he transition to? The Stahlbach 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.

1:11:24Most 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 gonna learn and grow hey i'm slow but i'm getting there i'm only twice as dumb as that was useful what did morning football look like to you what did running from it look like and what did morning 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.

1:12:06I 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, you know, we had that business, 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 in 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.

1:12:43You got to 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, And 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.

1:13:21I 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 I, 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 I'm still, if you had 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 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 have friends of mine who run into a very similar challenge right they're the best of the best it is brutal they've been hugely invested in, not that dissimilar in some ways from top level professional athletes.

1:14:25And 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 broadly. It happens to the high schooler who never leaves football. Yeah. You're talking about there's dramatic moments that are clear, like the SEAL team, who's the elite member, like that resonates with everybody. Like, oh my gosh, that would be hard. You're right though. It happens. But the transition pattern is so common. 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.

1:15:04That is full commit. It's unbelievable. That is not a 9 to 5 check-in, check-out going 6 out of 10. And this startup 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. You know, 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. about 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 you know and officials and a clock and like that's just it's a really crazy cool environment because there's there's truth in it always like there's a purity to it so purity to it.

1:16:10But 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 spin 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.

1:16:51I really want to transition to something better. I want to learn and grow authentically, truly. You got to be about it. It has to be core because otherwise you'll, humans in entropy with gravity, and our bodies are rotting, like 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. We're definitely going to talk about transactional and we're going to get into one of your books. But I'm so curious, right? 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 why why say yes right what was the what was the pitch i mean i love honestly 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 yeah right in front like right with us so it was like businesses were literally going from nothing to public in months yeah 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 i because i understand why he would do it it's more the question of why you guys would agree to it because we just had an idea yeah i see i see you needed And he seemed like an operator.

1:18:30And really the guys that formed this and the guys that did the algorithm and the, I'm the facilitator, right? Like 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, right? Like, 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, you know, went to consulting. and then now as a big banker. And to me, he's like the expert. He's an expert, right? That's fun. The yin and yang of it all. What has made, I mean, I have quite a few friends.

1:19:09I mean, I have a lot of friends in the investing world or at 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? That was 1997. It's been a minute. Almost 30. Yeah, 30 years. Why has it worked? Because a lot don't. None do. Yeah, right. There we go. First of all, I think that there was a clarity early on that the things that he's really good at, I really am not good at. And the things that I was really good at wasn't his strongest suit. So there's a yin and yang kind of feel to it. And then there's a trust that gets built that just works.

1:19:46Like 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 were existential moments when it felt like, well, that was fun. See you later. What types, if you're able to talk about it, what types of, how do those precipitate? 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. time than the public equities or other bonds or anything else.

1:20:26And so private equity has got this fuse of capital that has to be great. And you have to be great in kind of 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. Based on your report card. Truly. 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.

1:21:19And that builds trust or scar tissue that, I mean, to me, the most interesting people in the world have lots of scars, right? And have found the bounty in it, the good in it. And so that's why I think that's how it's worked. And like 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.

1:22:03I 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 around the room and all the helmets hanging up, that's COVID. All the stuff I remember, I told you about memorabilia that I traffic in. They were in the corner, 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's like, I got to clean this place up.

1:22:38That's me. That would be me. So we hung it. I walk in after a couple of weeks, man, I'm like, what have you done? You hung up helmets around that? It looks stupid. You know? Because to me as an ex-pro athlete, like that's just dumb. Yeah. But to him, it's like, that's clean. You know? And so we have helmets. Looks pretty cool as the background with the camera facing this way.

1:23:01So HGGC, a handsome good guy company. What does that stand for? Historically, it was Huntsman Gay, global capital. At the time, back in 2008, 2007, Rich and I were the younger partners, founders, and the two older partners, John Huntsman and Bob Gay with Greg Benson. And John wanted his name on it. And Bob didn't want his name on it. So then John won. So it was 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.

1:23:40Because everything had gone crazy. And then what ended up happening is the transaction did not get funded. They broke it. There was a huge lawsuit and billion-dollar settlement. But the net of it was John Huntsman never was able to come over. So here we are raising money as Huntsman, 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 yeah, Rich Lawson and Steve Young. What do you think? Let's go. That's a much so glad I asked. That's such better.

1:24:18So much better than I would have. 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 HGGC 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.

1:24:53And Perry Pursuit, we can lock arms, strategic vision, we can go. and everyone here at HGGC. It's a lot of syllabus. So my great idea is to call it, I used to play at Candlestick Park, so it was Candlestick Ventures or Candlestick Partners, but we branded it. It's worldwide. It's everything. So now we're HGGC just because, and it's fun. It's fun. It's fun. You mentioned something that actually might be a nice segue to where I was planning on going next anyway. You said left for full-time church service. And I was going to ask about faith, the role that faith not only plays in your life now, but has played.

1:25:35Has it changed form over time? I don't know if it has or not. Yeah, I know. It always does. It should. Yeah. Learn and grow, right? I mean, that's just, as a young kid, you know, like it was formative, right? Like it gave you a sense that 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. Leviticus doesn't have a big smile on it. But it doesn't. And I was able as a young kid to kind of ferret through the things that resonated and the stuff that didn't.

1:26:16And so my theology is really wrapped into what I would call, you know, being LDS is like complex because it was a, you know, 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.

1:26:56So in that way, I tell my wife, you know, she got me started on, you know, 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.

1:27:58And 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, you know, we're talking about learning and growing, right?

1:28:54Like 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 kind of where I'm sitting. And that's when I know it works is when you get away from transactional, insular, hoveling, self-righteous judgment. Like those are all transactional words.

1:29:34You asked me a question. I'm sorry to go start riffing on it, but it's a really, I think, energizing place to be for me right now. No need to apologize. I mean, this is an exploration and I wanted to ask for a number of different reasons. one of them i mean this is a reflection of sort of the antithesis of insular also in my reading of the law of love your book which was sent to me by greg mckeon who wrote essentialism wow and ended up listening to it and oh man and i listened to it i apologize for that well no need to apologize well no it's written for my lds brothers and sisters like 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.

1:30:27And 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 in 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.

1:31:07It 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 like I'm so much better rubbing up against her every day, you know, shoulder to shoulder. Like I just, I've, she's, I always say she gets the barnacles off my boat. You know what I mean? Like, like I love her for that. And so that's, I don't even know what the question you want. I've kind of lost myself in it. 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.

1:31:51How do you, 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. I think that's where the theology really is important is how you see, how you define the crazy world that we have. You know, I mean, I just noticed the fiery orb that came through the sky again today. Amazing. How it just comes in and makes Palo Alto, you know, 67 degrees and perfect. You know what I mean? And like the things that are going on, the miracles that happen.

1:32:31I mean, I can't, you know, I had breakfast, but I don't digest my food. I don't know 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. Oh, that's okay. No, I was just asking the law of love, how you keep that in the forefront. Yeah. Typical of me, I was going to go around about. You can take the roundabout. Yeah, 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, you know, it's a body.

1:33:10There'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. divine so in that way as you start to define things that are every day how you relate with them it's in the definition is how you actually act and so if i see everyone as divine and like more eternal like it's like 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 i've they chose their way that what a bad life what about and it'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.

1:34:27Like, and cause we're, we really are related. We were all together. We all chose to take a body. And so in that theology, there's this universality. And so if you talk about the law of love, it's really just a fulfillment of the relationship that's already true. So it's not like I have to go through all kinds of mental 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 is says the full measure of what I can get out of this life cannot be a transaction.

1:35:09God 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 look in the mirror today, Tim, it's not going good, bro. Like it's going the wrong direction. So in that way, the law of love is really about saying there is a law that is decreed from like the origins of the universe that says, if I can lose the transaction, if I can lose myself and be curious about you and be curious about where you've been, there's an element that's pure in that, that you take in in a different way.

1:35:59If 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 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 is important, right? Because otherwise you'd be like, screw that. I've been curious about people and I've been hurt and I'm done with that.

1:36:32And I'm tired of being left behind. And then the victimization shows up. we have themes, right? We got, and all of a sudden it's like the world's against me and now I'm going to, you know, I'll take my part. So I'm going to take my part. Right. And as soon as you do that, yeah, there's a mitigating truth to it. Like, so it was like, it all makes sense in my brain. But it makes sense. Like there, there's just because you can identify truths in a scene or situation. It doesn't mean that by focusing on those particular truths, right? those mitigating factors that you produce any type of durable good for yourself or others?

1:37:11The idea is that the full bounty of a relationship, put a religion aside again, just put it all aside. The full bounty of a relationship is actually ironic in an unfeigned love, care, concern, even a fairly well hello, you know, just something that says I am about your well-being, your hope you have a great day. You know, in that simple statement, that's not about looking for anything. Just, I truly hope you have a great day in that element, I believe is 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 like, you can't make it about something.

1:37:58Then it all of a sudden devolves in kids, kids feel pure love. from a parent. Do you want to raise your kids in a transactional way? It works for a while, but to really love them in a way that they feel it. I'm loved and I'm a screw up and I'm going to make that bad decision. 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 from my LDS community, particularly because that's what I'm very focused on, but it's true, true everywhere. Yeah. Can it be applied? But it's the irony of it because we all who are trying to accomplish, that's what we see in front of us.

1:38:46The 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. Yeah. That's what 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 Covey quest. And I'm just chewing on it, and I'm learning about it.

1:39:24And yeah, that's it. 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. 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.

1:39:59and provide spreadsheets for. You can try, and there are ways to sort of 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 are certain questions we can't answer. And I, for a long time, was, I would say, a pessimist disguised as a realist, if that makes any sense. Sure, of course it does. Totally rational. 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 cover of the newspaper, like, yep, things are bad.

1:40:38People 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. That's fine too. Which is fine. Totally. Again, I'm curious. My dogma is very about the human interaction, right? Right. So if you have that belief and it's like, okay, people might say, well, I can't be falsified, Karl Popper, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But the point of it is, does it make things better or does it make things worse?

1:41:19And 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 nuts. It's insane. Right.

1:41:57And 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. Don't you think it's irrational? It's incredibly crazy. It's nuts. And so I, look, to me, take the, anyone that's uncomfortable talking about religion or theology and 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.

1:42:39Watch as you watch it politically. You watch what happens is over time, you have to separate, right? And the transactional path is more fundamental. So what is happening politically today? More and more fundamental, both ways, because 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. You can also look at, I mean, even, you know, we're sitting here in Silicon Valley, right?

1:43:17A 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 couple of minutes. It's a super long form. If you look at, if you look at the, if people hope the list of transactions will ultimately redeem the time that they spend on this planet in life, I've never seen it work out, right? I've never seen that work. right it's just it's testable right i've experienced the greyhound never catches the rabbit and so this self-transcendence is discussion i just more and more feel like it's so critical steve i i know you've been very generous with your time i really enjoy this is there anything else that you'd like to share or talk about before we wind to a close i will tell you tim that you're really good at this because i don't know that i've ever had a conversation like this i leave with that unsettling feeling like I've really shared, you know, like I'm like, you know, overshared possibly.

1:44:17And I'm like, oh man, but I'm at a place in my life where I just, I'm curious about, you know, about that. It's like, I'm not worried about it. I was just like, but thank you for a chance to put into words. And like, I wish I already feel like, oh, I wish I could have said that differently or I could have, you know, cause it was so raw in some ways. So So I'll get better at that. But I really appreciate that, for me, the depths 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 my story.

1:45:02I appreciate it. Thank you. I've really, really enjoyed it. But folks can find you on Instagram at Steve Young, on X at Steve Young QB. 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.com. And until next time, as I always say, folks, be just a bit kinder than is necessary to others, but also to yourself. And thanks for tuning in. Thank you, Steve. Hey, guys. This is Tim again. just one more thing before you take off. And that is five bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend between one and a half and 2 million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called five bullet Friday, easy to sign up easy to cancel.

1:45:53It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's 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.

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