177: Why Commitment Is Your Most Valuable Skill | Shawn Johnson & Andrew East

I sat down with my wife Stef, Olympic gold medalist Shawn Johnson East, and former NFL player Andrew East to dig into their new book, The Courage to Commit. We talk about why this generation is running from commitment, how defining your family values creates real peace, the collateral damage that comes from being committed to the wrong things, what Shawn and Andrew learned about commitment after their elite athletic careers ended, and why the deepest joys come after, not before, you plant your flag and go all in. ORDER SHAWN & ANDREW'S BOOK HERE: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0FRR3HBJ5?tag=randohouseinc7986-20 FOLLOW THEIR PODCAST: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfo5aZL8pvt8j6UYYkkyz5A ORDER MY BOOK HERE: ⁠https://www.amazon.com/Go-One-More-Intentional-Life-Changing/dp/1637746210 FOLLOW BPN: Become a BPN member FOR FREE - Unlock 25% off FOR LIFE ⁠ https://www.bareperformancenutrition.com/collections/performance-nutrition IG: ⁠instagram.com/nickbarefitness/⁠ YT: ⁠youtube.com/@nickbarefitness This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered legal [health or profession] advice. Bare Performance Nutrition (BPN) is not responsible for any losses, damages, or liabilities that may arise from the use of this podcast. This podcast is not intended to replace professional medical advice. This podcast may not be republished without the written consent of Bare Performance Nutrition (BPN)

• 0:06Speaker 00

  All right, ladies and gentlemen, today on the podcast, we have Shawn Johnson East, Andrew East, and my beautiful wife, Stephanie Bear. I was, I was, I was literally just thinking, and I told you guys, I never expected to be the four of us sitting in this podcast, you know, having a conversation.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  We've always come to you. Yes.

• 0:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 0:28Speaker 03

  It was due time.

• 0:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 0:30Speaker 03

  It was time.

• 0:30Speaker 00

  How long are you in town for?

• 0:32Speaker 03

  Um, six hours.

• 0:33Speaker 01

  About six hours.

• 0:34Speaker 00

  Oh, wow.

• 0:34Speaker 02

  They got babies, that's why.

• 0:35Speaker 01

  I know. We've been gone for three full days, so it's time to go back to our babies.

• 0:40Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 0:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 0:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:41Speaker 02

  No, we get that. I like the three-night rule. I feel like after that.

• 0:45Speaker 01

  It's too long.

• 0:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's too much.

• 0:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:47Speaker 02

  It's too much.

• 0:47Speaker 00

  Uh huh. It's a book tour.

• 0:49Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 0:51Speaker 00

  How's it going?

• 0:52Speaker 03

  Writing the book was a blast. The book tour, I mean, this is fun. This is the best part of it. But like, leaving the kids and then doing, you know, other media, like newspaper interviews. It's like, all right, I don't know about this, but writing the book was great.

• 1:06Speaker 01

  I will say too, I don't know what it is, but like, Andrew and I are very passionate about like, helping other people sell beautiful products that we really believe in, and we do a good job at that. When it comes to selling something that we've done, it feels so much harder. Cause I'm like, yeah, we kind of wrote a book. Like, it's, it's fine. We love our book. We poured our heart and soul into it. It took us four years to write.

• 1:27Speaker 02

  I was gonna ask, when did you start the process?

• 1:29Speaker 01

  Four years ago.

• 1:30Speaker 02

  It was four years ago.

• 1:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's, it's not a fluff piece. Like, it took so much time and energy and research and like, trying to perfect it, but I think because of that, the book tour is, it makes us sweat, cause we're like, oh gosh.

• 1:43Speaker 03

  I hope people like it.

• 1:44Speaker 00

  You guys should be really proud of it.

• 1:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't say that to pump your tires by any means, like, I'll be honest, when I started reading it, I was like, how do you write a whole book on commitment?

• 1:58Speaker 01

  I know.

• 2:00Speaker 00

  And I went into it with that, that approach. And before I started reading it, I, I listened to your podcast, you guys did. Steph sent it to me, I think it was episode like 302, where you talk about the book and the book writing process. And I love that you shared that you guys brought on someone to help write the book.

• 2:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:18Speaker 02

  That transparency.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:20Speaker 02

  But a lot of people don't do that, though.

• 2:21Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:22Speaker 03

  I mean, there'd be so many misspelled words if it was us writing it, you know? Like, nobody wants that.

• 2:27Speaker 00

  But as I dove into it,

• 2:30Speaker 00

  it is very well-written. And the content is, it's really impressive.

• 2:36Speaker 02

  The format is awesome.

• 2:39Speaker 00

  There's some, like, gold nuggets in there. Like, as I was reading, it took me a long time to read through it because I kept making all of these notes.

• 2:48Speaker 00

  I literally just sent this one to the team today, the brand team, because well, part of our, our mission at BPN is we say we are for the committed. And oftentimes, you can think of, in the sense of, of sports nutrition and athletics, for the committed being a race or a competition. And at the beginning of the year, we shifted our narrative to commitment has no finish lines. And I pulled this piece from the book and I shared it with the brand team because what we're trying to do is make commitment, I don't say more approachable, but more broadly accepted outside of just these fitness preps. And you guys said, "Real commitment is about creating an ecosystem

• 3:32Speaker 00

  that makes the right choices irresistible. It's about designing your life so the path of least resistance leads toward the thing that matter most." And that was spot-on, that showcases how commitment can be applied to everyone. And, you know, I'm in the season of life, we're in the season of life where it requires focus and intentionality and saying no to a lot of things. And that is just one of the, the ingredients of commitment, as you talk about.

• 4:05Speaker 02

  I don't even know where to start. Um, well, thank you.

• 4:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, I just wanted to say like, very well written.

• 4:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, last night we were in bed talking about it and he was like, this is gold. Thank you. Truly, like, yeah. He reads a lot of books, so that means a lot for sure.

• 4:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, I appreciate you taking the time and, um, I mean, I admire and respect both of you so much. So it's great to be here and I don't know how you have felt. You've been doing YouTube for what, nine, 10 years now?

• 4:32Speaker 00

  12 years.

• 4:32Speaker 03

  12 years, okay. So, writing the book was really fun because I'm sure at some point it's hit you that people are listening to the advice that you're sharing. People are watching your content and implementing it into their life. And so as we were discussing, how do we write a book about the stories that people want to hear from us? And in a way that has some meaningful and encouraging takeaway? That's not just for people who are athletes or wanting to be NFL players or Olympic gymnasts. It's like, you can apply it in so many areas of your life. And so, we try to approach it, you know, with sober responsibility and with that in mind. And it is a big topic of commitment. It's kind of, it's kind of like obvious on the one hand, but then as we were digging into it,

• 5:18Speaker 03

  it's really, it's hard to break down, like, okay, what is worth committing to? At what point do you jump in and fully dig your heels into something? At what point is a time to uncommit from something, you know, because there's always a time that you might need to prune something from your life to make room for other commitments? You and your fitness journey, you know, it's like, that was a good 10-year run that you had, going heavy into fitness. I just came, like, this year, I'm closing that chapter too of just a competitor's mindset. And it's like, I gotta prune that to make room for higher priorities. So it was a really good challenge and, uh, and I feel like it, I feel like it can apply to so many different areas of life, whether it be athletics for sure. It's like,

• 6:03Speaker 03

  the great thing about endurance sports is, pretty much, anyone can do it. Like, you don't have to have... To be, you know, the world champion, you have to have some genetic capabilities. But to be running a marathon and finishing it, you just have to show up every day. Yeah, so it applies to that area of life. It applies to podcasts and the media. It's like, if you publish more than 10 podcasts, you're in an elite pool. Like, a lot of people start a podcast, not a lot of people make it 10 episodes. And then I was, we were, we were looking at our relationship too. And it's like, dude, you just gotta, how do you, how do you have a lifelong marriage? Well, you stack one day at a time and you show up one day, you go one more. You have another, you know, another day, whether it's a good one or a bad one. You, you like, you, you close that day, you open another one.

• 6:46Speaker 03

  You're like, all right, game on, let's learn and let's get better. So, uh, it was a really fun topic and I think we learned a lot in the process as well.

• 6:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, we spent a really long time trying to make it

• 7:00Speaker 01

  worth someone's while to read and not just get it done. I mean, it took us almost a year just to find a third writer because we wanted to find someone who was truly aligned with what it was we were wanting to put out. We had a lot of people wanting to just share fluff pieces of our life that people get to see. And we had no intention of like wanting to share that. We just wanted to share something purposeful. And when we found Jimmy, who's the third writer, he was a godsend. And his like research, um, background and his research writing was so perfect for what we wanted to show. We wanted to bring in science elements to actually show that this is a proven concept and not just an idea that maybe if you do it, it works out. Yeah, we're just really proud of how it turned out.

• 7:41Speaker 00

  It could have definitely been a book filled with fluff.

• 7:44Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 7:45Speaker 00

  And I read a lot of, like Steph said, I read a lot of self-help books.

• 7:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:50Speaker 00

  So I expected some fluff, but there was no fluff. So hats off to yes.

• 7:56Speaker 01

  Thank you, and we read self-help books as well.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  And we really wanted to teeter this line of not being a self-help book. Because I do feel like there's a lot of self-help books that try to hack a system that you really can't hack. And kind of like you said, how do you write an entire book about commitment? We found that struggle on the first day. We're like, well, just commit. Just stick with something. But then how do you like dissect that into really teaching somebody the ins and outs and like the whys of it? And for us, it was, let's show, let's lay it out on paper for someone to actually interpret. And so we're not teaching you that this is the hack system for purpose in your life, but we're actually just like, if you read it, you can take your own things away and maybe do implement something in your life to change.

• 8:43Speaker 00

  Yeah. You mentioned

• 8:48Speaker 00

  the responsibility of influence. And it instantly made me think of John Maxwell's book, The Twenty-One Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. I've read that like four times this past year. I've had our whole team read that book. And it talks about how leadership is influence and what true influence is, not being an influencer. Having true influence is having the ability to create behavioral change. And that's like what this book has the ability to do is truly create behavioral change, which is influence, which is leadership. So there's a lot of power and a lot of responsibility in it as well.

• 9:29Speaker 02

  I like what you said, though. You're right. There are no hacks in here. There's no shortcuts or AI'd versions of, you know, definitions. Because that's what this world is. That's what you guys opened the book up with is this is not self attacks. This is not a how-to in this many days. And I think that's what everybody is used to getting, you know?

• 9:51Speaker 01

  We've gotten a little nervous, just in our interviews, even explaining a lot of it to people who haven't read it yet, in thinking like, we kind of un-romanticize a lot of the fantasy of the world of, if only I find the perfect job or the perfect person, it'll be easy and I'll have purpose and fulfillment overnight and whatever it is. And we kind of make it very un-romantic and say, that's really not how it works. You actually have to work to find that. And nobody really wants to hear that, but it is the truth. And I think being able to present that, hopefully people will be able to see that it's worth like working for.

• 10:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:31Speaker 00

  I'm curious like how you guys ended up on commitment being the foundation of this book.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:39Speaker 00

  Because, you know, I see it as being a business owner and leading especially younger people.

• 10:48Speaker 00

  You know, you say in the book, commitment is not about having more options, more flexibility and more open doors. That will somehow lead you to greater happiness. And you know, you mentioned it in the text, but

• 11:04Speaker 00

  we look at like our parents and our grandparents who worked for the same organization for their entire career.

• 11:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:11Speaker 00

  Like they were loyal and committed to an organization. And it's rare to find someone who lasts more than eighteen months in a job anymore. And everyone says they're loyal. Everyone says like, I'm here, but then the next opportunity shows up.

• 11:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:30Speaker 00

  And so like people always have one foot in, one foot out to be available for the next opportunity. So all that being said, I'm curious like how you guys ended up on commitment and what you were seeing in the world or

• 11:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:43Speaker 00

  or culture that drove that.

• 11:47Speaker 03

  I don't know if you've heard of the book Anxious Generation, but it's like

• 11:51Speaker 00

  I've heard of it, but I haven't read it.

• 11:53Speaker 01

  Oh, you have.

• 11:53Speaker 02

  I've started, it's a lot. It's a

• 11:55Speaker 01

  I mean, it's also hard to read as a parent, so prepare yourself.

• 11:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:59Speaker 03

  It kind of just talks about the side effects of technology and like, you know, there's an app for everything. Everything's customized to you. It's a, it's the swipe right culture and you know, you read it. It just talks about what happens as a result of technology and what has happened psychologically. And then it kind of ends it with some prescriptions for what like schools can do to alleviate this for kids. But we were looking at it and we're like, okay, well, we're parents who have kind of lived through this. What takeaways are there for us to, you know, fight against this, this anxious generation as we are raising our kids at home? What can we do as parents to fight against the anxious generation? And I, I, uh,

• 12:40Speaker 03

  I mean, I think marriage is such a powerful analogy in so many different ways, but like when you are committed to something as you've been with your business, as you've been with your marriage, or you've been with so many things in your life. Like in our marriage, try as I might, I cannot change Sean, right? I can't force that. And if I'm committed to the marriage, I can't change the marriage. So then, the only thing left to change is me. And we kind of live in this world on Instagram where it's like, you know, the self-improvement, wake up, take an ice bath every day at 4:00 a.m. That's how you're gonna get better, that's how you're gonna grow, challenge yourself.

• 13:23Speaker 03

  It's like, the commitment of marriage and some of these higher worthy things in life, that is the, I mean, that's the most challenging, most self-help, self-improvement thing. Because I gotta look at Sean every day and say, "Okay, I can't change you, we're not changing the marriage. So what can I do to bring us into alignment here?" And I think that's a really amazing way to approach life, where it's like, "Okay, like, I can improve. That gives me some agency to make change and to improve things, to steward the things in my life, because I can show up and say, "What can I do today to be better?" And you've seen it in your time in the service, like, you know, we gotta play pretend Navy SEALs for 10 days on that special forces show.

• 14:08Speaker 02

  Do we have to talk about that?

• 14:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, we gotta talk about that at some point.

• 14:11Speaker 03

  Oh, don't even.

• 14:12Speaker 00

  That's the biggest fan.

• 14:15Speaker 02

  You guys, when I, we'll get to it. Okay, so good.

• 14:18Speaker 03

  When a Marine shows up to the recruiter's office and signs a paper, he's a Marine, technically, you know? He gets to wear the uniform and call himself a Marine. But there is a gap between who he is and what the heart of a Marine is, you know? And so, it's this process of commitment. You're on this path to slowly close that gap of like, "Hey, this is where you are, this is where you want to be, and it's up to you to make that change, to slowly bring that into alignment, day by day by day." And it's like, to me, that is the antidote to the anxious generation, where you're like, "Man, there is so much excitement in the variety of life, of like, oh, the next shiny object, the next cool business opportunity,

• 15:03Speaker 03

  the next place to travel." But if you can't enjoy what's in front of you right now, you'll never be able to enjoy that other stuff, you know? You'll never be content. And I think it's like, you put your head down, you change your definition of freedom from "I can do anything I want" to "I can do the things that mean the most to me", that's a good place to be.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  I think you said it beautifully. I think we landed on commitment because we're seeing in all the numbers, the largest amount of people who have anxiety and depression, and they feel lost, and there's so many options, and there's just more noise in the world than ever before. And I think people don't know how to find direction. And we have shared, and we have ourselves gone on a mission for the past 10 years to find some of the greatest thought leaders and mentors and therapists and psychologists and who specialize in that area. And we did it for ourselves and for our marriage and for our family. And when people started asking us or saying in comments, they'd be like, "If only I found a guy like Andrew, I would have a good marriage." Or, "If only I won an Olympic medal,

• 16:10Speaker 01

  I'd have a beautiful life like you guys have." And we just kind of got tired of saying, "That's not how it works." So we wanted to take all the resources that we've learned and map it out and say, "This is what worked for us. And maybe it might work for you." And the through line was always from every therapist in the world and every thought leader, it was, "You should probably just stick with this and figure out how to make that work. And you're going to find the joy and the fulfillment on the other side of that hard work."

• 16:36Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah, coming from like your younger selves, being, you know, an Olympian and professional football player, you obviously applied commitment to like your early careers to achieve such high success.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 16:59Speaker 00

  But then after those careers, did you fall into these rhythms and habits of lack of commitment, like wanting spontaneous and flexibility? Like, what was the awakening moment of, "Hey, I think we got this wrong"?

• 17:16Speaker 01

  Oh, a hundred percent. I feel like I wandered aimlessly through life for probably ten years before I started rebuilding my life back together. And I think it was, I was so rigid and I had so much direction, I had so much commitment for so many years. When I was done with that, I was like, I don't want that anymore. I don't need that to be happy in life. And so I tried to prove myself wrong, like if I have the freedom and the whimsy to just do what I want on a daily basis. It can be fun.

• 17:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  And you can still have a beautiful life. But I think we both kind of did that after our careers for a while. And I will never forget, we've talked about it on podcasts before, but a couple of years into marriage, we sat down on like January first to write down our goals in life. And I thought it was interesting that we both had these blank pieces of paper and we wrote down every category of our life of like our personal goals, our marriage goals, you know, goals with friends and business and finances. And everything that we wrote out looked completely different than the life we were living. Like completely different. We wanted such different lives than the beautiful lives we were having, which were fun. And we were, you were playing the NFL and there was so much stuff. And it made us think that this aimless wandering wasn't actually leading to the life we wanted.

• 18:27Speaker 01

  Cause we would look at paper and be like, how do we get that? And so when we intentionally started redirecting our life and our choices on a daily basis to go in that direction, it seemed like we were feeling more fulfilled, more purpose driven, more joy. And then the commitment kind of started getting easier because on a daily basis, we'd start saying no to things that seemed more like a distraction to the overall urging goal than it was just like an impulsive way to have a little fun that day.

• 18:55Speaker 02

  I wrote down one of my favorite quotes, this is the very beginning. You guys wrote, "A lot of people see settling down as settling for less."

• 19:02Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:03Speaker 02

  And I'm like, oh yeah, I talked to so many, just like. Young women who I hear, like, we have a neighbor and she's, she's so sweet. She's nineteen and she's like, I wanna settle down. She goes to TCU and she's just like, she's such a light and she's ready. She's so mature and beyond her years and she's like, I just wanna settle down, but all of these guys like, they're like, ah, you know, when I'm forty.

• 19:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:27Speaker 02

  And I feel like that's such a trend right now. And if I could change anything, I wouldn't because our life is beautiful. But if I could change anything, it'd be that I would find, I would have found him sooner.

• 19:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:37Speaker 02

  Right?

• 19:38Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 19:38Speaker 02

  So we could have just started building this sooner, like, why wait? If you find your person, if you find your passion, like, explore it together. Um, but I think that is just so good because I, I think nothing could be further than the truth. Like, settling down, I think, is everything.

• 19:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 19:53Speaker 02

  Um, not settling for less.

• 19:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's, uh, I, I highly resonate with that. I still have some friends who are like in the, in the dating world and it's a tough time to do that. And, uh, I mean, for me, I think in my career, when, when I have failed to commit well, it was my rookie year in the NFL where in college, I was like so dialed in, all through high school and college, I was dialed in on like, this was my focus in life was to be the best I could be and, and juice every ounce of potential I had in football. And then I got to NFL and I just wigged out and I like had to, I just distracted myself with as many things as possible and spoiler alert, it did not work out well for the first four years.

• 20:35Speaker 03

  Um, and, and I was, I was making a mistake, not because I had made like the wrong choice. It was just because I, I wasn't making any choice at all and I was like, I was kinda just, you know, doggy paddling, treading water through life and that's not a, it's not a good way to be, I think, in that dating world.

• 20:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:54Speaker 03

  People will say, oh, I'm not ready yet to settle down and. I'm not trying to force you into anything that like, you know, people say that with kids too. Oh, we're not ready to have kids yet. It's like, well, the readiness doesn't come after the commitment.

• 21:06Speaker 01

  You'll never be ready.

• 21:08Speaker 03

  The readiness does not come before the commitment. The readiness comes after the commitment, you know? It's like, you say, we're doing this, this is the path we're walking. And then you start the preparation process and it's like.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  You figure it out.

• 21:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, and yeah, I think that's, that to me is just such a missing ingredient where people are like, I'm not ready. I don't have, I don't have the career I want yet or haven't traveled the world yet. It's like, dude, you get to travel with this person. We get to be together all the time now and that like, that is so much more fun than the whimsy or the, you know, trying to wait for me to explore all these different things before we settle down.

• 21:50Speaker 01

  I did an interview with a younger girl yesterday who is probably in her twenties. So technically the different Gen Z. And she was all bought in on everything. And she's like, but how do I know that whatever I choose, I'm not settling in that whole thing? And I remember telling her, I was like, I think that's just like this weird fear mongering trend that people are trying to preach.

• 22:13Speaker 02

  Agreed.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  Because whatever you choose, you can make it incredible. But you have to be okay with then like tuning out the rest of your choices and saying, I chose this one, now I need to make it great.

• 22:25Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 22:26Speaker 01

  Because she's like, how do I know that if I choose this guy and not that one, that that one was the right one? I was like, neither of them are the right one.

• 22:34Speaker 02

  Right.

• 22:34Speaker 01

  You have to make the right one and you have to figure out how to do that.

• 22:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:38Speaker 01

  But it's, I think it's just the cultural way of speaking about things that people are really trying to preach that you have to wait for the perfect one and that's, that's just a lie.

• 22:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, I forget what I was reading and I heard this quote. It was talking about how people are having, they're waiting to get married until later and waiting to have kids until later because they view those commitments as the capstone to life.

• 23:05Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, Justin.

• 23:07Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, it was Justin.

• 23:08Speaker 03

  Early?

• 23:09Speaker 00

  Early.

• 23:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:10Speaker 00

  Right, he's one of those. And people view that as the capstone to life, but it's actually the cornerstone to life. And I even took a note of this of what you were just talking about.

• 23:25Speaker 00

  Um, or ask couples that have been together for decades and they will tell you that the deepest joys often come after the commitment.

• 23:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:33Speaker 00

  Not before.

• 23:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:35Speaker 00

  And that wronged true to me a lot. And something you you mentioned a little bit ago of like when you're you're struggling in a relationship, you you often ask yourself the question, what's wrong with them? What's wrong with the relationship? What's wrong with the marriage? Instead of like, what's wrong with me? How do I change instead of expecting change from?

• 23:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:58Speaker 00

  Them or or us? And if I'm I'm being very honest, like that, when you said that, that wronged true to me because that used to be me. Like, we'd be struggling in in our our marriage.

• 24:08Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, but same.

• 24:09Speaker 00

  And I think, why doesn't she change?

• 24:12Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 24:12Speaker 00

  Why doesn't this marriage change? Instead of, why don't I change?

• 24:15Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 24:16Speaker 00

  Because I was prideful and lacked humility in in that situation. But when you said that, I was like, oh, I feel that one.

• 24:26Speaker 02

  That can anybody, if they're honest with themselves, we can all say that we felt that.

• 24:31Speaker 01

  And we all still do.

• 24:32Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 24:33Speaker 01

  I mean, we're not here to preach that we have figured everything out.

• 24:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:36Speaker 01

  These are like on our best days, the things that we we do in practice. And we still find ourselves doing that. Where I'm like, why can't you just not do whatever? Put your nasty socks on my dining table. Okay?

• 24:48Speaker 03

  Yeah. The the Justin Early, that's such a good way to put it. The it's not the capstone, the cornerstone. Um, I had the opportunity to go back to school and and I did this dissertation, this study on um, how becoming a parent actually influences positively your productivity in business. Like, there's all these theories out there where if you're if you are able to do home life well, like if you have if you have a marriage that's thriving, if you have a a family that's thriving, there's certain things that prepare you for the business world. You can communicate well, you can manage well, you can schedule well, you can you can prioritize well. And it's like, these are all transferable skills to business. And I think a lot of young guys out there are like, oh, well.

• 25:31Speaker 03

  You know, I, I gotta, they, they don't understand that it's a, it's a preparation to, like, when you are learning deeply one thing, which I think family is a great place to start, then it positively affects so many different things in your life.

• 25:49Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 25:49Speaker 03

  And it's amazing.

• 25:51Speaker 01

  I have to brag on my husband. That was something else that he did solely for this book and for like,

• 25:57Speaker 01

  just wanting to make it as good as possible. He went and got his doctorate in psychology just to write the book.

• 26:02Speaker 02

  Casually?

• 26:03Speaker 01

  He's like, I think I'll, I'll be able to understand how to write the, the psychology side of this better. And I was like, who does that?

• 26:09Speaker 02

  That's amazing.

• 26:09Speaker 03

  That's awesome. Yeah, it was fun. It was fun.

• 26:11Speaker 00

  Did you enjoy that process?

• 26:13Speaker 03

  It was good. I mean, it was, it was, it was based out of this maybe like deep insecurity that, oh my gosh, people are listening to me and I better, I don't want to just be slinging hot takes online. So like, let me, let me get this and like dig in a little bit. Um, so, you know, learning how to cite studies and all the statistical side of it, it was really good. Um, so I'm glad I did it.

• 26:32Speaker 01

  You wrote basically a second book on the side of it though. The amount of stuff you wanted to put in the book, which was impressive.

• 26:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, there is a long list of things that didn't make the cut, but.

• 26:41Speaker 00

  I don't mean to keep quoting your own book to you, but.

• 26:43Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 26:44Speaker 00

  Uh, like as you bring that up, it reinforces mastery and depth of commitment. Like this, this writing this book obviously was a commitment.

• 26:58Speaker 00

  And we oftentimes think that if I commit to this one thing, there's an opportunity cost of, well, I'm an expert here, but it doesn't have practical application to X, Y, and Z.

• 27:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:09Speaker 00

  And, you know, as you guys are talking about mastery, you say, deep mastery can offer you a sharpened set of mental tools, such as attention control, pattern recognition, and resilience that can support learning and problem solving across new unfamiliar territory.

• 27:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:25Speaker 00

  I've experienced that myself. I like deep mastery in fitness or training in entrepreneurship has been very applicable to. Marriage and parenting and leading young men.

• 27:42Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 27:42Speaker 00

  Um, so you you'll become like a one trick pony with mastery and depth. But you truly can become like this Swiss army pocket knife.

• 27:51Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I think if you if you find mastery in something and you do unlock that kind of depth in one thing, it shows you this whole other side of a world that almost gives you the motivation to then go find it somewhere else. And if you can figure out those tools of like learning mastery in something, which is such a gift,

• 28:16Speaker 01

  it becomes, for lack of a better word, a drug to find somewhere else because it's it's really special.

• 28:23Speaker 03

  I I there there's kind of two competing things going on here. You have like, I don't know if you've ever heard of the Dunning Kruger effect where it's like this mistaken. If oh, you're an expert at one thing and you assume that you're an expert at everything.

• 28:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:36Speaker 03

  So that's like the the counterpoint to this. But there's another another thing called far transfer, which is what you're talking about. Like the the ability to to understand that if you know one thing deeply, in some ways you have a toolkit to know many things deeply. Like you have the the practice of knowing things well. And it's like, you know, there's advice out there where it's like, instead of reading a hundred books, you read one book a hundred times, like, you know, that that's a great approach to the Bible. Or I think a Kobe Bryant too, he he was talking about like, when you when you really focus on your craft, the world becomes your library and like you start seeing that so many things relate to, for him, basketball.

• 29:18Speaker 03

  For me, it was football and it's like, oh, my gosh, I see that that ballerina and how how graceful they are and their movements, how smooth they are, like, oh, maybe I can incorporate that into how I'm moving around a defender. Or I'm understanding this artist and how how he's thinking about this problem of like communication. And it's like, OK, now I can take that into the huddle. And it's like, you start being able to connect so many different things when you know one thing well. And I think a lot of people don't get like, they don't understand that that you're building a toolkit as you're as you're building depth.

• 29:48Speaker 00

  Yeah. And one of the things we always say is the way you do one thing is the way you do everything.

• 29:53Speaker 03

  Hundred percent.

• 29:54Speaker 00

  And I had DJ Shipley on the podcast a few weeks ago.

• 29:59Speaker 00

  Navy SEAL, Dev Gru operator, the tip of the spear. And I asked him a question, what separates tier one operators from everyone else? And he said, commitment to the craft. Like, these guys have committed to their one craft. And you would think like, oh, these, these tier one operators are only good at going in and conducting a raid and pulling this high value target out of the middle of nowhere, where he's trying to hide from. The last, the last place you would look. But you look at Navy SEALs and everything they touch after they're time in the military is like, it's gold.

• 30:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:43Speaker 00

  Because the way they do one thing is the way they do everything. There is crossover application.

• 30:48Speaker 03

  That's so true. Yeah.

• 30:51Speaker 02

  I wrote down here, I think this kind of applies to this, but y'all said in the book that choosing one path creates a shocking sense of peace, which I related to that. Because for me personally, I don't necessarily think I'm a master at one specific thing, like you three. But.

• 31:08Speaker 01

  You are.

• 31:08Speaker 02

  But I will say, I, I've spent probably the last decade since we've been together, when I'm married to someone like this, right? I'm like, well, I gotta find, how many times have you heard me say, I have to find my one thing? I have to find my one thing. And it's been a conflict in our marriage because he's like, no, you don't. Like, you can be multi-passionate, like, just, you don't, you don't. But I fought against it so hard. And I've tried so many different things that haven't ended up working out. And it's been insecurity of mine. But I will say, I'm in a season right now where I feel like the Lord put something on my heart for me in the future. And I'm really excited about it. Spin Studio, a worship based spin studio, which I'm really excited about. And yeah, it's, it's gonna be awesome.

• 31:51Speaker 02

  But it kind of came to me, um, a few months ago when I was kind of in a motherhood rut. I'm like, I'm, I'm bored, you know, like four and a two-year-old, like, there's gotta be something for me outside of this, you know? Sometimes it doesn't feel like enough, it just, you feel guilty about it. And I was just in prayer one day, asking God, like, well, what do you have for me? You know that I love to be creative, like, just give me something. And he gave me this awesome vision of the spin studio, but in that, I feel like he was telling me, right now, like.

• 32:19Speaker 02

  Focus on your kids. Like that's your one thing. Like be a mom and pour into your family, serve your family. And since I heard that, it's like God knows me so well, right? He knows I need something, like a little, like low hanging fruit in the future to get me through. But instead of focusing on the studio now, I'm focusing on being a mom. And since I've made that, just like, that's my lane right now, so much peace, so much more clarity. And I think there was something else in the book you guys said about, um, every, yeah, every choice I didn't have to make was like dropping a heavy bag I didn't realize I've been carrying. And I felt that too. It's like, once I'm like, okay, no more pressure to figure it out right now. My one thing is being a mom and just being there, being in that, so much peace. So that really resonated with me.

• 33:05Speaker 01

  I'm glad.

• 33:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:07Speaker 01

  That it's taken us a long time to figure that out too.

• 33:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  I feel like that's also the pressure of just social media and all the noise. We hear so many people preach to us every single day that you should keep your options open.

• 33:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:18Speaker 01

  You should constantly be looking for the grass is greener, the thing that's gonna be better.

• 33:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:21Speaker 01

  One foot in, one foot out. And you see these people navigating what looks to be a hundred different things on social media, like flawlessly, when embracing one thing that you love.

• 33:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:33Speaker 01

  And just saying, this is my thing for right now. And being able to like tune everything out truly feels like freedom.

• 33:39Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 33:39Speaker 01

  Like it is the greatest feeling in the world to not have those distractions.

• 33:43Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 33:43Speaker 01

  And when you can so easily say no to all of the extra distractions, it makes life feel a lot more peaceful.

• 33:50Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 33:52Speaker 03

  The word conviction comes to mind too, where it's like, uh, like, only Stephanie can know, i- is this the right thing? Is this the right thing for you to build the spin studio right now?

• 34:04Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 34:05Speaker 03

  Or not? And it's like, may- maybe it is. There's no right or wrong answer, but it seems like you now you have a high amount of conviction that like you are right where you want to be with your family. And I, I look at the change in the two of you. It's like,

• 34:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:18Speaker 03

  That doesn't happen without Stephanie's conviction in what she's doing and like showing up every day and, and focusing on that one thing. So it's pretty exciting to think about, but like,

• 34:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:27Speaker 03

  I, I, I do think a lot of people get persuaded and like thrown off course because they're like, oh, well, you know, I'm, I'm doing the family thing. And then someone's like, well, let me, let me see if I can hire you or here's an opportunity and like that. They, they don't have enough conviction to just say, no, I'm planting my feet right here.

• 34:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:41Speaker 03

  And, and I don't know, almost having. The awareness or have thought through like, okay, I'm doing this for maybe to fix amount of time, or maybe it's to the kids are a certain age. But it's like, you gotta be able to defend your choices and like, and then say, no, this is right where I need to be.

• 34:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:00Speaker 00

  Steph's probably gonna say, I've said this a million times on a podcast before, but it's actually very applicable to this. It's the power of having a vision and values. And I read a book, I think, two years ago. It's called Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0. And chapter four is the vision chapter. And it has three sections of the vision. It's your core values, your purpose, and your goals. Your core values don't change more than once every 100 years. And then your goals are like 10, in a business case, 10 to 15 year targets.

• 35:43Speaker 00

  But the reason the core values are so important is because it makes saying yes and no to things very easy. We guys talk about this in the book, the power and importance of values. And since we have laid out our family values, which are, I've done this, we've done it in the family and in the business. It's made what we say yes to, a very easy yes, but also what we say no to, a very simple no. There's no gray. And it's made life simpler, not necessarily easier, but simpler. And I take, for the first time in over a decade, I've actually experienced peace in

• 36:26Speaker 00

  this past year, which has been, I know, it's like, I haven't had this amount of lightness or just like shoulders coming down, and she can probably attest to it, in a long time. But it's taken a long time to get here. Um, but it's so values are not like these lofty terms that I used to, you know, and someone's like write a business plan.

• 36:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:50Speaker 00

  Uh, Google business values.

• 36:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, 100%.

• 36:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:53Speaker 00

  Integrity, yeah, honesty. Um, which was like part of the military army values.

• 36:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:59Speaker 00

  But then like you've actually get into the, the importance and granule, granular like level of true values.

• 37:06Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 37:06Speaker 00

  And they're game changers.

• 37:07Speaker 03

  Yeah. What are your family values?

• 37:10Speaker 00

  All rooted in Christ.

• 37:11Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 37:12Speaker 01

  Love it.

• 37:12Speaker 00

  Following Christ.

• 37:13Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 37:14Speaker 00

  Uh, I mean, we were just looking, you guys talk about how like January 1, you make like your, your goals for the year. We were, we were just looking back at, was it last year's?

• 37:23Speaker 02

  Uh, no, I think what I found 2023 is they were silly.

• 37:27Speaker 00

  2023, like family goals and they were like so different than what they'd be right now.

• 37:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:34Speaker 00

  Um, but all of our values and purpose and mission is, is now rooted in following Jesus Christ. And it has shaped the trajectory of our lives and, and we, but me more specifically, don't walk around with like white knuckles. And trying to just hold everything.

• 37:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:52Speaker 00

  It's palms up and you know, I just had Pastor Noah Heron from Wade Church in Nashville on the podcast. And he talked about the difference between a manmade mission and a God given assignment.

• 38:06Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 38:07Speaker 00

  He said, when you're on a God given assignment, it feels like you're running downhill.

• 38:10Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 38:11Speaker 00

  Where like it's still hard.

• 38:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:14Speaker 00

  But it's a little bit easier. Things are just falling into place. And I feel like things are just falling into place in our life right now.

• 38:22Speaker 03

  It kind of comes through with how you're talking to, I feel like just like even the presence of, of how you're communicating is different. Uh, and you're just like, you're more. Here. I'm born again, brother.

• 38:35Speaker 03

  What a time.

• 38:35Speaker 01

  I will say when we, we did like this intensive a few years ago, is that after Drew or is that after Jet?

• 38:41Speaker 03

  Jet.

• 38:42Speaker 01

  Okay, so three years ago, four years ago, and we defined our family values, it changed our whole household. Because like you said, everything became simpler when it came to, is this aligned with how, like, what we truly believe in? Or not? And when we stick to that, it feels peaceful.

• 39:02Speaker 03

  I think people can get confused though, as I did, before we've done so many sit down sessions with counselors and workshops and online courses about this. Cause for me, it was always confusing in business. People were like, ah, the most important thing you gotta understand is like what your, what your values are. What does your company stand for? And that's like, okay, sweet. People say that about family too. It's like, you gotta come up with your family values. And I kinda thought it was this Googling process of what, what values should I choose? Like it's a kind of obligation of, oh yeah, these are, honesty is a good term. You know, I like that one. Let me pick that one.

• 39:39Speaker 03

  But I've since come to understand that the values are like what makes Nick Nick and Stephanie Stephanie and Sean Sean and Andrew Andrew. And then as a family, it's like, what is our identity? Like what makes our culture different than anybody, any other family? It's like what makes an east an east. And so our, our values are faithfulness, togetherness, curiosity, generous stewardship and playfulness.

• 40:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:05Speaker 03

  And it's like, now when I think about those five words, I'm like, that is, that's, those are descriptors of who we are. Like that's our operating system. It's not, it's, it's yes, part aspirational of what we're striving to be.

• 40:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:19Speaker 03

  Because like we could always, you know, have a little more awareness that, that draws us closer to playfulness, you know? And, and like when we're being playful, it means that we're, we're not white knuckling things. We can always be a little more curious. So it's something to strive for, but it's also literally. Who God made us to be and like not everybody shares that. People used to get so annoyed at me in the locker room because like Andrew's always messing around. Like I would do the work, but I would be playful through it all. And it's like, not everyone's like that. You don't need to be like that. That's, that's how I was made and you're different, you know? And it's kind of like this process of uncovering who God made you to be. And it's really exciting. It takes a while to build that awareness, but once you do, it's like, oh, sweet baby.

• 41:03Speaker 03

  Now I get it. Like this is who I'm made to be.

• 41:07Speaker 02

  That's going to raise strong, competent kids too. I feel like confused parents will raise confused kids.

• 41:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:14Speaker 02

  So I think, yeah, because until you have kids, like I don't know if we would have sat down and like had the conversation. What does our family stand for?

• 41:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, we serve others, but let's go deeper with that. Like, what does that mean? Who do we serve? Why do we serve them?

• 41:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:27Speaker 02

  And I think if you can lay that out so clearly, that brings so much clarity to your kids. You know, and that's, that's our why.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  Even the uniqueness in our household with like our values, like what makes our, our five unique has already rubbed off on our kids.

• 41:43Speaker 02

  That's awesome.

• 41:43Speaker 01

  So much so that like we, we host part of like generous stewardship and like togetherness. We host people at our house five times a week.

• 41:53Speaker 03

  Soon to be the bear.

• 41:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, you have to come over. But so much so that now our kids, if someone's not at our house, they're like, well, who's coming? Like what can I, what can I get for them and what can, and they're just so used to hosting and they love it so much that it's now become a gift that they cherish.

• 42:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:09Speaker 01

  And if someone's not coming over, our kids will even start going through lists and they're like, well, mom, call them. Call those people, call, call the neighbors that we met yesterday. And it's really sweet to see how things that we value are now getting passed on.

• 42:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's, that's a win.

• 42:24Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 42:25Speaker 02

  That's awesome.

• 42:26Speaker 01

  It's fun. Yeah.

• 42:27Speaker 00

  It's like in, uh, in Justin Early's book, he talks about the difference between hosting and entertaining.

• 42:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, huge.

• 42:33Speaker 00

  And that like really resonated with us.

• 42:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:36Speaker 00

  We love hosting. We love having people over.

• 42:40Speaker 02

  In the past, it's been, we call it hosting, but in, in the past, I feel like it has been entertaining. It's like, clean the house, table set.

• 42:48Speaker 01

  Oh, you'll see that's not us anymore.

• 42:49Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. No, we, we get it now. And now we almost like it when we show up at places and it's not perfect.

• 42:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:54Speaker 02

  You know, that's hosting. That's opening your home and just letting people into your world.

• 42:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:00Speaker 01

  We do pasta night every Saturday and we do burger night or like grill out night every Sunday.

• 43:03Speaker 02

  Y'all did, was it for Easter? What was it? It was a dinner y'all did. You were sitting on the ground.

• 43:09Speaker 02

  What was that?

• 43:10Speaker 01

  Um.

• 43:10Speaker 02

  What was that for?

• 43:10Speaker 01

  Christmas, Andrea.

• 43:11Speaker 02

  Christmas.

• 43:12Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, the Bethlehem dinner.

• 43:13Speaker 01

  The Bethlehem dinner.

• 43:15Speaker 02

  That was amazing.

• 43:16Speaker 01

  I can't take any credit for that.

• 43:17Speaker 02

  But it was so cool. I must, we need to steal that.

• 43:19Speaker 01

  So she recreated basically how they would have eaten dinner, you know, in Bethlehem and she did all these like baskets, pretty much. And she would line up and covered with a napkin and then all of, everybody just eats with their hands.

• 43:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:32Speaker 01

  And it was all candlelit and it was, our kids thought it was the most magical day.

• 43:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:38Speaker 01

  It was like so simple.

• 43:39Speaker 00

  I fit right in. I always eat with my hands.

• 43:43Speaker 00

  Like you were just at dinner the night and I got a steak and baked potato and they rolled my steak out and it was, it was cooked or it was, it was cut, you know, sliced.

• 43:52Speaker 02

  Oh, I mean.

• 43:53Speaker 00

  I didn't touch the whole baked potato, steak, like I eat all my food with my hands.

• 43:57Speaker 03

  You ate the baked potato just right there?

• 43:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's torn in half and I ate it like a sandwich. Dude, I got a steakhouse, good baked potato.

• 44:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's amazing.

• 44:05Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 44:06Speaker 01

  Where are you from?

• 44:07Speaker 00

  Pennsylvania originally.

• 44:09Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 44:10Speaker 00

  Central Pennsylvania.

• 44:10Speaker 01

  I'm from Iowa. I was like, not many people love baked potato, but I love a baked potato.

• 44:15Speaker 00

  We had this place in central Pennsylvania called Haas's.

• 44:18Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 44:19Speaker 00

  Have you guys ever been to Haas's?

• 44:20Speaker 01

  No.

• 44:21Speaker 00

  It's like one of those spots where you go, you get like the salad bar, it's nine ninety-nine and you can add a steak on for like two ninety-nine.

• 44:27Speaker 01

  Add a steak on?

• 44:28Speaker 02

  Add a steak for two bucks.

• 44:29Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. But you had to get a salad bar to be able to get the two ninety-nine steak. This was like post-church Sunday lunch all the time.

• 44:39Speaker 00

  So you guys live, obviously, very structured lives.

• 44:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:44Speaker 00

  You talk a lot about in the book, joy. My question is, how do you make space for joy? And.

• 44:53Speaker 02

  Someone asked you all that.

• 44:53Speaker 00

  Someone asked you this at, within the audience, at one of your tour events.

• 44:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:59Speaker 00

  How do you make space for joy?

• 45:02Speaker 00

  I'd love for you guys to touch on that, but even more specifically, Sunday's Day of Delight. I'm very curious about this day and how it's structured and how you guys live and pursue it.

• 45:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, we kind of, we kind of catch some slack every now and then because people are like, ah, you're so rigid and so structured. There's no spot in eighty. And are you worried that you're losing the whimsy of life? And I used to be so unstructured. And I realized that I was so irresponsible with my time when I didn't have it scheduled out and intentional. I'm on my phone, I'm scrolling through Netflix, I'm like, you know, just messing around. And you do enough of that, you look back on it, and you're like, wow, I accomplished nothing. I did not get any closer to my goals. What, what did I just do with the three months of my life? That's like when I got released from the Chiefs for the first time, that's when I sat on the couch for three months and I watched TV. I was like a sad guy.

• 45:57Speaker 03

  And then, and then at some point, I was like, oh, this is not the way to live. And so now it is, it is our goal to have as full a day as possible. I want my schedule to be not busy, not crazy, but full. Like I want from start to finish, wake up at five thirty, work out for an hour. Like that's on my, my calendar. Date night on Thursday night on our calendar. It's like, be intentional with how you're spending your time. And for me, putting it on our little like phone calendar. Allows me to slowly progress through the day, doing the things that I want to accomplish. And we have daily rhythms, weekly rhythms, monthly rhythms,

• 46:38Speaker 03

  and annual rhythms that have like slowly compounded into getting us closer to the life we want. And um.

• 46:45Speaker 01

  You can have spontaneous moments though with structure. Cause like on our calendar, every Friday night, we keep open for like a big family activity.

• 46:56Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 46:56Speaker 01

  We don't schedule what that is. But we know each week, it's like, oh, what are we gonna do? We get so excited about this block of time that's been protected because we've actually structured it that way.

• 47:06Speaker 03

  It's family time.

• 47:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:08Speaker 00

  What are some of the things you guys do?

• 47:09Speaker 01

  Like we'll go, right now, the rodeo's in town in Nashville. And so we're so excited, we saw it today, and we're so excited to take our kids to the rodeo. That we're like, they're gonna love it. But like, we know that that was a protected, we know we're free on Friday, you know, for that. Um, we'll stay at home and do nothing, or have a movie night, or go get ice cream. Or it's random, very random things, but you never know what it is. And so you can find spontaneity there. And even with date night, on our calendar, it just says date night.

• 47:37Speaker 02

  That's how we are too.

• 47:38Speaker 01

  And so there's spontaneous moments in that, cause we're like, what are we gonna do for that? What do you, what do you wanna do? We have the next five hours or four hours or whatever we've blocked off. So I don't think structure gets rid of it. I think structure actually protects it.

• 47:53Speaker 02

  I love that.

• 47:54Speaker 03

  The romance, I mean, again, back to marriage as an analogy, it's like, date nights aren't like, it, it's not on the calendar because it's like scheduled as romance time. But putting it on the calendar gives you the possibility of there being some

• 48:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:10Speaker 03

  romantic connection, you know, of whatever level. And so it's like, it's, it's all about unlocking your, your calendar and, and giving space to give things a possibility to happen, whether that be a breakthrough in business, like, hey, I'm gonna work, you know, these hours as, as I run my own business, or um, you know, let's, let's give our family time to have fun moments together. So every night we do family dinner, like Sean said, every Friday night is family time, whatever happens. It's like, that's just, we're, we're giving it space to have potential for all these magical moments that people think come from whimsy, but rather come from routine.

• 48:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:49Speaker 00

  What do you think some of the negatives of commitment are that no one talks about? Like some of the things I wrote down as I was reading the book was like, there is sacrifice and opportunity cost that comes with commitment. Uh, but like, I'd say even more specific to me, and I'm curious, where you guys stand on this. If you aren't careful, commitment can create collateral damage to other parts of your life. So from me, for me, for example, I've for years committed to these fitness preps. And people praise me, like dude, you are so disciplined, you are so structured, you are so committed to everything you do.

• 49:34Speaker 00

  And they see the early wakeups and the nutrition dialed in and the training, but they don't see, you know, what it's doing to me and my relationship, my marriage and the family. So how do you navigate the collateral damage that can come with commitment if you aren't careful?

• 49:54Speaker 01

  There's sacrifice to every yes. And you have to, you have to figure out what those are and try to figure out what those are potentially before you make a commitment. A lot of that will kind of unfold after you commit to something. But I think that's kind of, the progression of our book starts at values. So that if you can figure out on the front end, what your priority list is, then by the time you're making a commitment and looking at what those sacrifices are, you could potentially forecast that, is this commitment going to jeopardize my list of priorities? Is this feeding the number one priority or the number 10? And if it is number 10, how can I protect one through nine?

• 50:38Speaker 01

  And I do think within the, the process of the book, we tried to emphasize.

• 50:46Speaker 01

  Protecting your priorities and your values over everything and making sure your commitments align. So I would say that would go into the chapter where we talk about like necessary endings or pruning, where make sure your commitments align with everything else. And if they're not, those are ones that we look at and say, is it worth what the sacrifices are and the collateral damage?

• 51:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 51:10Speaker 01

  And if it is, great, you know, you're aligned with the values of what you're doing. If it's not, you should probably look at it and not reconsider, but figure out either how to fix that

• 51:23Speaker 01

  or look at pruning it.

• 51:27Speaker 03

  I mean, I, uh, there are a lot of good ways to live a good life, you know?

• 51:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:30Speaker 03

  And I don't think everyone needs to, you know, be married and have kids and do all that. I think that's been so fruitful for us, but I understand that, that some people aren't tilted that way, which is great. What is important, there's a saying that goes, everyone ends up somewhere in life. Some people end up there on purpose. And it's like, okay, so go through the core value thing, walk through your priorities. Maybe those change slowly over time. That's fine. But we also talk about this idea of mentorship and surrounding yourself with people who understand what your priorities are, what you're, what you're trying to build in your life. And they could say, hey, Nick, you, uh, like, first of all, you're married, like you know that and you have kids and we know that's a priority for you.

• 52:13Speaker 03

  And we're going to hold you accountable to that. It looks like you're training seven hours a day on your bike and maybe you're only with your kids 20 minutes a day. It's like that, that might be worth reevaluating. You have outside perspective, kind of poking around, challenging you on a frequent basis. Mentorship for me has been massive and I have a men's group to me who always challenges me and it's like, they kind of can slowly redirect as I'm airing and that's, that's huge.

• 52:39Speaker 01

  We've also, I would say approaching things like that too. Understanding that you can, I don't want to say change your priorities because like our priorities should be concrete, but we can go through phases of life where we say, this is actually worth the sacrifice for.

• 52:57Speaker 01

  X period of time. Is that a month? Is that 10 years? Is that whatever it is?

• 53:02Speaker 00

  Could be like a sprint.

• 53:03Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 53:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:04Speaker 01

  But you can also say, if you go to your values, just to give you an example, right? If we're talking through that. If you go through your values and you say, my family is top priority, like God and family are my top priorities. So then I'm really interested in doing this. And that means my priority is my family. We should have a conversation with our family.

• 53:23Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 53:24Speaker 01

  And say, is this commitment now worth every family's person's buy in? And if it is.

• 53:32Speaker 00

  I failed there many times.

• 53:33Speaker 02

  But we've gotten it right recently. Absolutely.

• 53:36Speaker 01

  But we've all taken on, we've all taken on things where, and I think that's where you learn. And that's where we have learned. And we try to openly communicate this in the book is we have both taken on commitments that sacrifice priorities.

• 53:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:49Speaker 01

  And it wasn't until we were all the way in it that we were like, this, something doesn't feel right and I don't know what it is. And it takes a lot of self reflecting and a lot of time to figure out. I think my scales got unbalanced. And how can I protect it next time? Cause I remember our first year of marriage. I went on tour. I was on the road for months. He was bouncing around the NFL. We were both just driving like full steam ahead. Our ambitions and our careers and didn't realize until four months in, we're like, this doesn't feel right.

• 54:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:21Speaker 01

  We're newly married, not spending any time together. I can't support you. Like this is really difficult. And so I think by learning trial and error, you figure out the scales went a little too far on one side. How can I protect it next time?

• 54:34Speaker 00

  Yeah. Necessary Endings by Dr. Henry Cloud.

• 54:38Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 54:39Speaker 00

  Is maybe my favorite book of all time.

• 54:42Speaker 02

  I think that's probably your most recommended book. I hear you recommend it to people so much.

• 54:47Speaker 00

  I read that book when we were living in Nashville in 2023.

• 54:52Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 54:53Speaker 00

  And it was a very challenging time.

• 54:55Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 54:55Speaker 00

  For our family and business.

• 54:59Speaker 00

  With people and I don't even remember how I came across the book, but I started reading. There's certain books I read where I'm like, I needed this right now in my life. And then I read Trust, Why I'm Next. I was like, this is exactly the book I needed next. So you talked about necessary endings and pruning. Like, I know for a fact this is a hat tip to Dr. Henry Cloud.

• 55:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, it makes me think of how I operate. And I am terrible at saying no because I feel like, oh, man, I love the opportunity. I love the excitement. I love the challenge. I love like, hey, you want to run a marathon? Heck, yeah, I do. Yes, I do. But the best way that I found.

• 55:43Speaker 02

  Energy, everything.

• 55:46Speaker 03

  The most effective way for me to say no, though, is to say, I'm sorry, I can't. I'm already committed to something, you know? And it's like, back to the awareness and the conviction of that. It's like, for me, as I hang up the cleats in this season from competition, it's like, man, I'm committed to. I got three kids, age six, four, and two. They are changing so much every day, and I think that change will slowly plateau. And I want to be as present as possible in these next four or five years. And so I'm already, I can't do the marathon. I'm already committed to this in this phase. And it's, to me, it like brings so much clarity and simplicity to saying, oh, no. Like, the opportunity is exciting, yes, but I can say no to this because I know where my priorities lie.

• 56:31Speaker 00

  Yeah. Here's a quote that really resonated with me in the book. It's on that note. There's a difference between being in the pros and being a pro. Between occupying a roster spot and owning the responsibility that comes with it. One is about presence. The other is about posture, mindset, and daily habits. I read that like three times in a row. So spot on.

• 56:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, I was in the pros. I was not a professional football player. You look at a guy like Tom Brady and they talk about their daily routine. I just had the opportunity to hear Drew Brees talk and he's like, every aspect of his life. Beside like, so his priorities are dialed in and his schedule reflects that. He's a man of faith, he's a family man. But then he was walking through his work schedule during the season. And everything is oriented around football. And I look at how I was, I look at how I was and I was not that way. I was just in the pros and it's such a different mindset. And it's like, uh, I, I think you can apply that to, to the family life too. It's like, are you just showing up? Are you just in survival mode? Like, are you just on the roster of your family?

• 57:41Speaker 03

  Or are you engaged with the thing? Are you orienting your life and your schedule around where you're at? And, um, I, I have tried not to be passive again ever since I learned that lesson.

• 57:53Speaker 00

  Is that a commitment issue? Or is that a, I just don't care enough? Like this is not my thing issue?

• 58:01Speaker 03

  I think, I mean, I think it was a, a commitment issue where like I, I at some point was more committed to other things in life. Like, oh my gosh, I love making videos. I was learning about how to edit and the, you know, what cameras to use and digging into the. I was so committed to YouTube in 2015 during my rookie year. Uh, that like it came with the sacrifice of football commitment, you know? And I ultimately had to rebalance those scales through a painful process. But, uh, yeah, I, I mean, and I didn't do it well.

• 58:33Speaker 01

  I think it was, I think it was both. I think it was a commitment issue because the passion and the joy wasn't there. You fell out of love of football. You liked the idea of making it in the league for 15 years. You had a dream of playing, but there was a passion that had exited. And I think in our chapter that fully inspired by Dr. Henry Cloud. We had, uh, we wrote that after interviewing him.

• 59:07Speaker 01

  I think it was after you started realizing that you were having a hard time committing to football. And the scales were being tipped in a different direction. You took a step back and you're like, why am I doing this?

• 59:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, you might have more insight on that than I do in some ways.

• 59:24Speaker 01

  As like, it's, I think it takes a lot of time to reflect on things like that, but as a viewer, you loved college football. You had a joy about you. And that light went away in the NFL. It became, you became, you're overthinking. That's when your yips came out. That's when you started spreading yourself more thin and having plan Bs and not committing to it. And I think those types of signs are where you need to step back and say, why am I not committing to it? Am I just afraid of failure? Am I afraid of rejection? Do I still love this? If I do, I need to figure out how to commit to it fully. But if the joy and the full, like, love of whatever that hobby is, is gone,

• 1:00:08Speaker 01

  that's when you need to reflect and say, maybe it's my time to move on to something else.

• 1:00:12Speaker 03

  I appreciate that.

• 1:00:15Speaker 00

  That's good.

• 1:00:16Speaker 01

  The amount of times I had conversations, I was like, we know sports psychiatrists. We need to dial in this routine, baby.

• 1:00:23Speaker 00

  What are you on fire for right now? What's lighting you up?

• 1:00:29Speaker 03

  Well, we got chickens now.

• 1:00:34Speaker 00

  Do you eat the eggs?

• 1:00:35Speaker 01

  We're about three weeks away from their eggs. We had them since they were born.

• 1:00:40Speaker 00

  Nice.

• 1:00:42Speaker 01

  I

• 1:00:43Speaker 00

  What about a Highland cow? Are you guys gonna get a Highland cow?

• 1:00:45Speaker 03

  Don't say it, Nick.

• 1:00:49Speaker 00

  You got to.

• 1:00:51Speaker 01

  I learned that they're, they have to have a friend, otherwise they're too lonely. Yes, we're getting these. We're getting goats too.

• 1:00:57Speaker 00

  Nice.

• 1:00:58Speaker 01

  All of them. I'm just so excited about our kids right now. I'm just like, I feel like we're in that phase of life right now where I just want to be home with my kids.

• 1:01:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:07Speaker 02

  Your kids are at awesome ages.

• 1:01:09Speaker 01

  Oh, it's the best.

• 1:01:10Speaker 02

  I mean, ours are too, but we're still a little in it. And then we want to have a third, so we're gonna go back in it. But yeah, I feel like y'all are out of diapers. Are you?

• 1:01:19Speaker 01

  We're in the process.

• 1:01:21Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:01:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:22Speaker 02

  I can't believe.

• 1:01:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. What are we gonna do? We're not buying a million diapers.

• 1:01:28Speaker 02

  That is gonna be a weird day. Coming not surely for us, but okay, really quickly, I want to talk about special forces. This book was written a long time right before y'all were on the show. I love this show so much.

• 1:01:44Speaker 01

  I love this show.

• 1:01:45Speaker 02

  I loved it before y'all were on it and I made him watch it with me and I was like, he's a military guy. He's not gonna like this show. You liked it.

• 1:01:52Speaker 00

  It's great. It's great.

• 1:01:52Speaker 02

  Yes. And when I saw that y'all were gonna be on it, I'm like, they're going to the end and you both did. You made it to the last episode, right? Interrogation, you guys crushed it. So if you had to add a section in this book about your time, did anything perspectives on commitment change from your time on that show like, oh, that was so fun to watch you guys.

• 1:02:14Speaker 01

  I love that show. I think the coolest part about that show that you you don't get from even watching it.

• 1:02:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:20Speaker 01

  Is the the four special forces guys that like lead it. They run the show. It is not a show. It is an experience that's filmed.

• 1:02:31Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:02:31Speaker 01

  So the cameras cannot intervene at any point. A lot of it is filmed by security footage and GoPros, but it is, they are in full instructor mode. And they don't show the hard stuff, which is funny, which is frustrating.

• 1:02:48Speaker 03

  Bro, I got annihilated. Oh, my gosh, dude, I got crushed physically and mentally and emotionally. Yeah, in all different ways.

• 1:02:55Speaker 02

  And it was what 10 days?

• 1:02:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:02:57Speaker 01

  Ours was 10. Yeah. We did, we did, the last day, again, they don't show it. It was 18 hours of interrogation.

• 1:03:07Speaker 02

  That's the part that scares me the most. No way.

• 1:03:10Speaker 01

  With no brace.

• 1:03:12Speaker 03

  But to answer your question, um, I, I think if, if I was gonna add a section to the book, it was really fascinating because they try to make you quit, you know, and they're doing hard, physical challenges. They're yelling at you. They're all up in your face. They're putting you in uncomfortable situations where that'd be, you know, in the tent with rats or the ridiculous bathroom situation was like.

• 1:03:34Speaker 01

  They don't show it.

• 1:03:34Speaker 02

  A tent with rats?

• 1:03:35Speaker 01

  Oh, they don't show.

• 1:03:36Speaker 03

  Oh, no, no, like that's where we slept.

• 1:03:37Speaker 01

  Like where we slept.

• 1:03:38Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:03:39Speaker 01

  Like in the, in the bar.

• 1:03:40Speaker 02

  Okay, I'm sorry.

• 1:03:42Speaker 03

  No, that's, that's a crazy idea, though.

• 1:03:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was like that is next level torture. Okay.

• 1:03:46Speaker 03

  But it was like. If you just stayed and you didn't get swayed by those different distractions that they were throwing your way. It's like, they're not gonna, they really don't kick you off the show. Like, it's a, you stay until you tap out.

• 1:04:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, everyone could win, right?

• 1:04:04Speaker 01

  Everybody.

• 1:04:04Speaker 02

  Everybody could stay.

• 1:04:05Speaker 01

  And they actually want you to, like, the four instructors try very hard to, they exploit, they figure out your weakness on day one. They're very good at that. And they exploit it as hard as possible individually for each person. But it's just to stay. I think the big thing that I noticed from day one, different amongst everybody, was the people who went into it saying, "I'm here for 10 days." And the people who said, "Should I leave today, or should I leave tomorrow, or am I going to make it to day three?" Or, they just tormented themselves.

• 1:04:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:39Speaker 01

  Having even the option to leave, we took away from ourselves. We just said, "We're here for 10 days, baby."

• 1:04:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:48Speaker 01

  "I'll see you on day 11."

• 1:04:50Speaker 02

  That's what got you there.

• 1:04:51Speaker 00

  That mindset is so powerful. I did this race in 2023. It was a last man standing race.

• 1:04:57Speaker 01

  No, no, no.

• 1:04:58Speaker 00

  And from the beginning, there was this guy, here there were rumors that he ran Moab 240 the year before. You could just tell he was a stud. And I ran up to him early on in the race, and you're trying to figure out like who's gonna go the furthest. I said, "Hey, man, like, how far are you trying to go in this race?" And he just looks at me very calmly and says, "The whole way, brother."

• 1:05:23Speaker 03

  I love that.

• 1:05:23Speaker 00

  And instantly, I was like, "I'm out."

• 1:05:27Speaker 00

  It crushed, it crushed my confidence. This dude is, he's going to die out here.

• 1:05:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:05:35Speaker 00

  So I got to 100 miles and I dropped down. He ended up winning it.

• 1:05:39Speaker 01

  100 miles?

• 1:05:40Speaker 00

  He went like, "Well, we just hosted a race, a last man standing race on our ranch in April." And they went 306 miles.

• 1:05:49Speaker 03

  Insane.

• 1:05:49Speaker 00

  Over 73 hours.

• 1:05:51Speaker 01

  Straight?

• 1:05:52Speaker 02

  Yep. Every hour on the hour, 4.2 miles.

• 1:05:56Speaker 02

  It's like an e-mom.

• 1:05:57Speaker 01

  It would take me an hour.

• 1:05:58Speaker 02

  Finish, if you finish an hour or minute forty-eight, you get twelve minutes of rest until the next loop. It's crazy.

• 1:06:03Speaker 01

  It would take me an hour to turn four and have fun.

• 1:06:05Speaker 02

  I don't think I would make the cutoff.

• 1:06:07Speaker 03

  I got your next event to host. This is my favorite thing I ever did, my favorite athletic competition.

• 1:06:11Speaker 01

  The one?

• 1:06:12Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. It was called the Eternal Run. Okay. There was no starting line and no finish line. They gave you a pace to run at based off of some benchmarks, like you ran a mile and then they measured your heart rate and they like kind of understood your threshold.

• 1:06:25Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:06:26Speaker 03

  So they gave you a pace per mile to run.

• 1:06:28Speaker 01

  It was, I think it was forty percent or fifty percent?

• 1:06:31Speaker 03

  Of your mile time. My, my mile time that I couldn't go slower than was like nine.

• 1:06:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:36Speaker 03

  Nine oh five, maybe. So like pretty reasonable, but then the race is on the Utah salt flats. And so you're just in this abyss. And you can run anywhere you want. There's no course, there's no path. It's just who can, who can stay out there the longest? And hold this pace.

• 1:06:53Speaker 01

  You don't get a watch. You don't get music, you don't get nothing. The only thing is they had, every athlete had an IFB. And base camp would tell them when they started dropping under their pace. And you had three warnings. You, you had a watch that told you your pace because you had to stay with your pace.

• 1:07:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:07:11Speaker 01

  But it didn't track your time.

• 1:07:13Speaker 03

  It was locked on that screen.

• 1:07:14Speaker 01

  That's crazy.

• 1:07:16Speaker 03

  I ended up going sixteen miles and, but I was like, so we're on the salt flats and it's like a really soft, sandy, kind of like crunchy. You'd sink every, like every step you took, maybe like you'd sink an inch. And so it's like super energy consuming. But having that mindset of like, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna quit until my muscles literally cramp. Like it, it's, it's a, it's a dope way to approach life where it's almost the opposite of like the day traders of the stock market where they're riding every second that's a high, low, oh my gosh, we're up, we're down. I'm like, you know, you're, you're like so urgently attached to what's happening. And it's like, okay, we're, we're crushing it. Yeah, I'm on, I'm riding that high. Or no, we're crashing, we're low.

• 1:08:00Speaker 03

  It's like, no, I'm looking at the long game. You zoom out and the trend is gonna be up, you know? And it's like, don't, don't stop until you, until the game is over or like I'm going the whole way. Yeah. It's like, it, it takes the edge off of some things. And I think about that in our, in our marriage. It's like, okay, the, this, we just had another argument and am I gonna be shook by that and say, oh no? Is this the end? Or am I gonna say, oh no, like, I'm gonna zoom out, we're trending up, like, this ain't over until, until we're both dropped on the ground, you know, so.

• 1:08:31Speaker 01

  That race was really fascinating because it was a sports psychology data research event.

• 1:08:38Speaker 01

  And the interesting part was, since there was no course of any kind, and there were no markers, and there was no start line, and there was no finish line, and there was no way to measure what you were doing. He didn't know how many miles he was running. You could only know your pace, and that was the only marker to know. A lot of the guys were trying to measure based off of like the sunrise and sunset, how long it had been. Nobody's talking to you, you can't listen to anything, it's like, how long can you just be in your mind?

• 1:09:07Speaker 03

  It's horrible.

• 1:09:08Speaker 01

  I think the lady, it was a lady who ran, she was a long,

• 1:09:11Speaker 03

  An ultra runner.

• 1:09:12Speaker 01

  Ultra marathon runner. I think she went like 12 hours.

• 1:09:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:09:17Speaker 01

  But, it was mentally the craziest thing I've ever seen.

• 1:09:21Speaker 00

  I believe it. I mean, the race I did, that last man standing race, was of all the races and competitions I've done, mentally the hardest. But it's the definition of commitment.

• 1:09:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:32Speaker 00

  Because there is no finish line.

• 1:09:34Speaker 01

  That, I, that is, I can't.

• 1:09:36Speaker 00

  But like, the run that you did, like, you have to go to a certain headspace and mindset of, I don't know when this is gonna end. Say you do a marathon. Okay, I have 20 miles left.

• 1:09:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:51Speaker 00

  I have 15 miles left, I have 10 miles left. It's like, that provides some sense of peace and satisfaction, okay, I'm getting closer. But, in the race you did, like, you don't have that. That mentally is so challenging.

• 1:10:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a fun challenge, though, you know? The whole way, brother.

• 1:10:13Speaker 00

  No, the whole way. The whole way, brother, I'll never forget that.

• 1:10:15Speaker 03

  That is so epic.

• 1:10:16Speaker 00

  Instantly, I was like, oh. That hurts.

• 1:10:20Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:10:21Speaker 00

  Well, guys, I really appreciate it. You guys come on the show, super excited about your book.

• 1:10:27Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:10:28Speaker 00

  As we've already shared, we're very impressed.

• 1:10:31Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:10:32Speaker 00

  And I think it's going to be a leadership piece. Like I said, that- Influences behavioral change for all the right reasons.

• 1:10:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:42Speaker 00

  Well done.

• 1:10:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I feel like this is kingdom work you guys are doing because I feel like even though this wasn't a faith-based book, my mind kept going to it because it aligns with the Bible. The Bible is all about commitment and faithfulness and endurance, and so much of that was in this book. So, well done. Seriously, we're excited for you guys.

• 1:11:02Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 1:11:03Speaker 02

  It was awesome.

• 1:11:03Speaker 03

  Appreciate that.

• 1:11:04Speaker 00

  Until next time.