{"id":12259,"date":"2026-01-16T20:56:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-17T00:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/the-tim-ferris-show-transcripts-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-pla\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T20:56:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T00:56:08","slug":"the-tim-ferris-show-transcripts-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-pla","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/the-tim-ferris-show-transcripts-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-pla\/","title":{"rendered":"The Tim Ferris Show Transcripts: Steve Young, from Super Bowl MVP to Managing Billions \u2014 Hall of Fame 49ers Quarterback on High Performance, Reinvention, Faith, and How to Blend Dreams and Plans (#847)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/hop.clickbank.net\/?affiliate=infohatch&amp;vendor=J1R2C\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10614 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px.png\" alt=\"Profit Gen\" width=\"400\" height=\"217\" srcset=\"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px.png 400w, http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px-300x163.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Please enjoy this transcript of <a href=\"https:\/\/tim.blog\/2026\/01\/14\/steve-young\/\">my interview with <strong>Steve Young<\/strong><\/a> (<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/steveyoung\/\">@steveyoung<\/a>), Hall of Fame NFL quarterback; cofounder of <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hggc.com\/\">HGGC<\/a>, a private equity firm managing more than $6.9B in capital commitments; founder and current chair of the <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/foreveryoung.org\/\">Forever Young Foundation<\/a>, an organization deeply involved in supporting children\u2019s charities globally; and the author of <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/QB-My-Life-Behind-Spiral\/dp\/1328745724\/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20\"><em>QB: My Life Behind the Spiral<\/em><\/a> and <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Law-Love-Steve-Young\/dp\/1639930310\/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20\"><em>The Law of Love<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/tim.blog\/2026\/01\/14\/steve-young\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>Full bio<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/tim.blog\/2026\/01\/14\/steve-young\/#:~:text=SELECTED%20LINKS%20FROM%20THE%20EPISODE\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><strong>Products, resources, and people mentioned in the interview<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/tim.blog\/2026\/01\/14\/steve-young-transcript\/#steve-young-legal-conditions-transcript\"><strong>Legal conditions\/copyright information<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"podcast-player\">\n<div class=\"podcast-player-inner-wrap\">\n<p>Steve Young, from Super Bowl MVP to Managing Billions \u2013 Hall of Fame 49ers Quarterback on High Performance, Reinvention, Faith, and How to Blend Dreams and Plans<\/p>\n<p><noscript><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.art19.com\/shows\/58dacbdc-646e-4585-9914-19c3de11d1ba\/episodes\/e37f258a-8fb2-4abc-b42f-f67439f86162\/embed?type=micro\" style=\"width: 100%; height: 30px; border: 0 none;\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/noscript><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Additional podcast platforms<\/h3>\n<p><strong>Listen to this episode on\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/847-steve-young-from-super-bowl-mvp-to-managing-billions\/id863897795?i=1000745123496\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Apple Podcasts<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/episode\/4Q7XqxGmp0cxXOEncOX1wb?si=mgpng1dFQKy-8pPZVLrL7A&amp;nd=1&amp;dlsi=d2d9ab1a89b045ba\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Spotify<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/overcast.fm\/+AAKebtgfB_s\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Overcast<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/podcastaddict.com\/podcast\/2031148#\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Podcast Addict<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/pca.st\/timferriss\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Pocket Casts<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/castbox.fm\/channel\/id1059468?country=us\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Castbox<\/a>,\u00a0<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/music.youtube.com\/playlist?list=PLuu6fDad2eJyWPm9dQfuorm2uuYHBZDCB\">YouTube Music<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/music.amazon.com\/podcasts\/9814f3cc-1dc5-4003-b816-44a8eb6bf666\/the-tim-ferriss-show\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Amazon Music<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.audible.com\/podcast\/The-Tim-Ferriss-Show\/B08K58QX5W\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Audible<\/a>, or on your favorite podcast platform.<\/strong><\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n<p>Transcripts may contain a few typos. With many episodes lasting 2+ hours, it can be difficult to catch minor errors. Enjoy!<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Steve, thank you so much for making the time.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>You bet, Tim.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>It is so nice to see you.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>It\u2019s an honor, man. Hopefully I can add something to the amazing stuff that you\u2019ve done for a long time. So we\u2019ll see. We\u2019ll see. It\u2019s yet to be determined.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>I\u2019m sure that\u2019ll be the case and I have to give you \u2014 well, first point out the pink elephant in the room. Welcome to my Temple of Tim.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>I love it. I love it. I bow to the greatness.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>And also, this has been, for me, two or three years in the making, sort of a slow build because a friend of mine sent me a <em>Bloomberg<\/em> article about you that talked about the many chapters of Steve Young, and at that time, as is true now, I\u2019ve been incredibly interested in people who successfully navigate these phase shifts. And I do not follow football. I have a lot of respect for football. God knows, every time I see one of the car crashes, AKA collisions, I think that one hit and I would be done. I don\u2019t know how you guys do it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>It\u2019s insane. Even now as I watch now, I\u2019m like, \u201cDid I actually do that?\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>It\u2019s just remarkable how durable players are. I have no idea how you guys do it. But what I\u2019ve been hoping to dig into is the psycho, emotional, spiritual, mental side of things and \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Right. That\u2019s football, weirdly.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>That\u2019s football.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Yeah. It\u2019s crazy. We\u2019ll go on for that for a little bit too.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah, we\u2019ll definitely get into that. And I thought we would start \u2014 actually, I\u2019ll start with a wave hello. I don\u2019t think you guys know each other, but you might have had a connection decades ago. A friend of mine who\u2019s a bit of a recluse named Josh Waitzkin. He was the basis \u2014 he would hate me to introduce him this way, but he was the basis for <em>Searching for Bobby Fischer<\/em>, the book and then the movie, the chess prodigy, and most recently he got kind of doxxed, he didn\u2019t really want to be public about it, for working with the Celtics in the last few years with their coach. And he is a huge fan. I mentioned, he\u2019s like, \u201cHey, do you have five minutes on the phone?\u201d He texted me this morning and I said, \u201cI can\u2019t do it. I\u2019m preparing for a podcast with this legend,\u201d and I sent him a link and he goes, \u201cOh, I studied his game. I used to study and study and study.\u201d He\u2019s not a football guy.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>I thought you were bringing it up because that was my favorite movie. <em>Searching for Bobby Fischer<\/em> was like \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Oh, I had no idea.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Oh, absolutely. I thought that\u2019s why you were saying it. It\u2019s like how do they know? Because I\u2019ve said it many times, and I was like, \u201cOh, that\u2019s why.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>No, I had no idea.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>I love that. That\u2019s a movie everyone needs to watch. It\u2019s a compelling story.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Super compelling, and what doesn\u2019t get put into the movie, because it couldn\u2019t have been put into the movie, given the timeframe, is that Josh, at his peak, effectively retired from chess because of all the attention that ended up landing on him after the success of the book and the movie, and he has navigated three or four very, very, very successful phase shifts, and so game recognizes game. He\u2019s like, \u201cOh, I know Steve Young. I\u2019ve studied Steve Young.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>That is weird. That\u2019s like a full circle for me. Growing up when I was a kid, that\u2019s a movie in high school. And people probably don\u2019t know it. I\u2019m glad you\u2019re \u2014 let\u2019s shout it out. Go see that. It\u2019s worth it. It\u2019s really \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>It\u2019s amazing and the book is very good. It\u2019s a fun subject\/sore subject to chat with Josh about. But I\u2019m going to invoke a name that was very meaningful for me in terms of writing way back in the day, and that is Stephen Covey. So could you describe meeting Stephen Covey and who Stephen Covey is?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>So yeah, in the \u201980s, \u201990s, even the aughts, I guess you\u2019d call him, he was writing books, <em>7 Habits<\/em> books. And really I\u2019d known his kids, but I never met him, and I was \u2014 I\u2019ll give a little background \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>And you had known his kids through the church?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>No, at school at BYU. I\u2019d met them and they played football, but I\u2019d never really met him. I have a good little background here. So I\u2019m playing for the 49ers. Joe Montana and I had been \u2014 it\u2019s not worth going through all that, that\u2019s a long story, but we were on the same team and we both wanted to play and he was the king and I was this kid that wanted to \u2014 I didn\u2019t want to just sit there. And I finally got my chance to play in 1991 and it didn\u2019t go great, and I always joke about walking around town and how I describe it is telling people, \u201cNo, I think he did throw an incomplete pass once. I mean, I think he did lose a game. In fact, I think he\u2019s thrown an interception or two,\u201d because the memory of someone who\u2019s great is only great, and here\u2019s this kid trying to live up to all of that, and I was pouring myself into it.<\/p>\n<p>I mean, I was over-kind-of-indexed on trying to figure out how to \u2014 and all I could look around was everyone who wasn\u2019t, and how everything was my fault and everything \u2014 no matter what happened, I went anywhere, I was like, \u201cWell, yeah, Steve Young sucks. That\u2019s Steve Young\u2019s problems.\u201d I found myself, middle of the season, middling around and I noticed that I was depressed, I was miserable, and I felt like I was at the bottom of a hole. And so we lost a game against the Raiders in front of 100,000 people at the L.A. Coliseum. Jerry Rice is open in the end zone to win the game and I never \u2014 he\u2019s literally waving and I didn\u2019t see him. And it was just like the epitome of everything that could go bad. And so I was miserable.<\/p>\n<p>I need to give you that backstory because you have to know my state of mind. I was miserable. And I got on a plane because Tuesday is day off in the NFL. So Monday night I got on a plane, went to Salt Lake City to see my brother because he was in University of Utah Med School. I was like, \u201cMan, maybe he can, I don\u2019t know, help me get out of this funk. I mean, this is just terrible. I\u2019m not sleeping well. It\u2019s just miserable.\u201d And I walk around the town with him, he\u2019s like, \u201cSteve, I got two kids and broke in medical school. Your life looks sweet to me.\u201d So he didn\u2019t help very much. I told him I didn\u2019t know how I was going to get to Christmas.<\/p>\n<p>So I get on the plane to come back, sit down, and Steve Covey\u2019s sitting there and he says, \u201cHello,\u201d and I\u2019m like, \u201cOh, my gosh, I\u2019ve always wanted to meet you.\u201d And he asks a simple question, \u201cHow are you doing?\u201d And I\u2019m in a state of mind where I was pretty vulnerable. I just told him, kind of recited everything that I just said to you and how kind of miserable I was, and I got done with it 25, 30 minutes later and he goes, \u201cHuh. Wow. Man, I can feel that. I can feel all of that, the expectations, how tough it is to not get the help that you think that you need and things that are working against you. And man, can I ask you a couple questions?\u201d And I go, \u201cYeah.\u201d He goes, \u201cYour owner, Eddie DeBartolo, tell me about him.\u201d \u201cOh, my gosh, he\u2019s the only owner in football that ever saw players as partners. I mean, he\u2019s amazing,\u201d and I went on about that.<\/p>\n<p>And then he said, \u201cWhat about your coach, Bill Walsh?\u201d And he\u2019s like, \u201cYeah, he\u2019s like a guy that talks about hydration and nutrition and sleep and mental health. And you talk about partnership, no one\u2019s doing what he\u2019s doing. His West Coast offense, that guy is amazing.\u201d He goes, \u201cYeah, I\u2019d heard that. I\u2019d love to meet him both, because \u2014 let me ask one last question. Is Joe Montana on the team?\u201d I\u2019m like, \u201cYeah, he\u2019s hurt and that\u2019s kind of the problem,\u201d and he\u2019s like, \u201cWell, if you had to ask him for mentorship, go ask him questions to help your game, could you do it?\u201d I\u2019m like, \u201cYeah, I could.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And he goes, \u201cAll right. Well, I want you to know what I do. I travel the world looking for platforms, companies, organizations that create the ability for the humans on the platform to see how good they can get and iterate and find out because that\u2019s what life should be about. And so as I travel the world, I\u2019m always looking for it and I\u2019d love to talk to those guys about their platform, but I\u2019ve got to step back, Steve, and tell you that from my perspective, the platform that you\u2019re on, the place that you are, I think might be the greatest one that I\u2019ve ever seen,\u201d and I was like, \u201cWait, didn\u2019t you hear me? Bro, this is miserable. Things are terrible.\u201d But it stung me. It went through my heart. It was like, oh my gosh. My first thought was, I think I might\u2019ve screwed this whole thing up. Oh, because to have him say that truth to me.<\/p>\n<p>He goes, \u201cLet me ask you one last question, because it\u2019s scary.\u201d He goes, \u201cI always wonder if people are willing to take the chance to find out how good they are,\u201d and I\u2019m reflexive about it. I\u2019m like, \u201cYeah, of course. I\u2019m absolutely up for that.\u201d And then he took a minute and he looked kind of like \u2014 he was little and bald and like a little Yoda-ish, you know what I mean?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah, I remember the <em>About the Author<\/em> photo.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Yeah, and so he took his finger and he kind of looked at me and said, \u201cThen be about it,\u201d and I was like, \u201cOh, my gosh.\u201d I realized right there that the hole I was in, that I thought so many people had dug, that I had dug it. I had no idea that I dug the hole, and I had thought that everyone pushed me in and I didn\u2019t realize that I had jumped in. And so it was that\u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>We can talk about victimization for a long time because it\u2019s such an important thing to ferret out in your own life over and over again, like never stop. It was the realization that I had played the victim and had jumped in a hole, dug it and jumped in, and I\u2019m the author of it. That\u2019s what the shock was, like I authored this. And I remember getting off the plane as if I was transformed, and I don\u2019t want to say it lightly. It was as if I now knew if I was going to do anything, I was going to be about this.<\/p>\n<p>And I remember not sleeping well that night, but for a different reason, I thought, \u201cOh, my gosh, I think I\u2019ve screwed this up enough that on Wednesday mornings when you get fired in the NFL,\u201d and I\u2019d heard rumors about maybe getting benched, and I\u2019m like, \u201cOh, crap. Don\u2019t tell me that I have screwed this up so bad that I don\u2019t get a chance to go fix it.\u201d And I screamed down at practice the next day as energized as ever like, \u201cJust please don\u2019t \u2014 please give me another\u2026\u201d And I didn\u2019t get benched and I did play and I was about it, and it was fun because it\u2019s like something that\u2019s true, like truly true, like universally true. When it\u2019s that way, it doesn\u2019t waver. You don\u2019t have iterations of it. It\u2019s just true.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>You\u2019re not second guessing.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>I don\u2019t have to worry about it. And he said, \u201cPeople are really afraid. It\u2019s hard to find out how good you are because you might find out you\u2019re not very nearly as good as you thought you were, but you\u2019ve got to make that okay and that now I\u2019m going to be iterate and find out how good I can get.\u201d And so it\u2019s really about fear, and if you can lose that fear, and that\u2019s basically what you\u2019re dealing with is a fear-based \u2014 you\u2019ve been fear-based. And I was like, \u201cOh, my gosh.\u201d And you just wanted to exorcize it. Now it doesn\u2019t happen overnight, but I remember soon after that season ended and the whole off-season, and so the next year we\u2019re playing the Cowboys, they\u2019re the best team in the league, and I think to myself, \u201cThis is where you find out, right?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And I remember running up to Troy Aikman and we were warming up and he\u2019s a friend and he\u2019s a quarterback for the Cowboys, and I\u2019m like, \u201cTroy, it\u2019s so great that you\u2019re here, man, because I\u2019m on this quest to see how good I can get and I can only find out against the best, and so I\u2019m so glad that you\u2019re here.\u201d And I remember Troy looked at me like, \u201cFreaking weirdo. What\u2019s wrong with you?\u201d But that\u2019s what I was about.<\/p>\n<p>And to finish the story, I think I have to finish it kind of honestly and authentically, I was MVP of the NFL that year. And you think back to being in the bottom of a hole running to my brother to see if I could get out of this depression, and it\u2019s just amazing to me that perspective, a truthful, universally authentic fact can make that kind of difference in somebody\u2019s life. I owe him the greatest debt because you think about angels in your life or people that show up. It was almost like <em>It\u2019s a Wonderful Life<\/em> moment, you know what I mean? You almost think, was he really there or was I imagining this guy that\u2019s sitting next to me? So that\u2019s the Stephen Covey story.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>What a wild <em>Sliding Doors<\/em> moment, right? Just the happenstance of that interaction and how it changed things. It\u2019s so remarkable to reflect on.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>And it really never ended. Because it\u2019s true, I now seek out that victimization in my life, watch it for other people, try to help because it\u2019s such a nefarious common state of being and totally rationalize to \u2014 I always talk about the entropic world that we live in. It\u2019s like super transactional, eat what you kill, sweat of your brow. It\u2019s all the conditions of the world. Victimization feels almost rational, but it\u2019s kind of death, and so that\u2019s the thing that I watch in my own \u2014 I swear, and that feeds to accountability. It feeds to who authors all this? You think that someone else is authoring it, but you continue to author it and don\u2019t take it \u2014 that\u2019s what I was missing, right? I\u2019m actually \u2014 and so that\u2019s why the perspective was so powerful.<\/p>\n<p>To this day, it gives me little chills. I\u2019m so grateful because I was about to walk down a path that was going to be miserable and I would have said, \u201cIt wasn\u2019t fair. How could anyone \u2014 this is not right. I need another chance because I want a better shot and I want people who will support me more,\u201d or you come up with all kinds of stuff and that\u2019s what would have happened and who knows where it may be. But yeah, great Stephen Covey, man.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>So after that realization and makes me also think about \u2014 there\u2019s a book called <em>Extreme Ownership<\/em> written by Jocko Willink, former Navy SEAL Commander, which really also underscores this ownership, being all about it, as you put it. And I\u2019m curious to know, after that realization, after the questions about seeking out mentorship or otherwise on the plane, what were some of the next steps? What were some of the most important changes that you made that allowed you then, a year later, to be where you were?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>It\u2019s like the boat that leaves the harbor, it changed the direction that you left every morning. There was a aha. It was like, \u201cOh, my. I can\u2019t believe that I almost walked down this treacherous path.\u201d And that\u2019s why I knew it was true is because every morning I wake up and say \u2014 you didn\u2019t have to doubt it. It was like, \u201cDon\u2019t play the victim. Start owning and look forward to the possibility of what you can\u2026\u201d My theology is about we\u2019re here as humans to learn and grow. It can be tough and miserable, it can be all kinds of things, but that\u2019s the underpinning of what we\u2019re trying to do is learn and grow. Be about it again. Don\u2019t be afraid.<\/p>\n<p>It changed how I went to practice. You might not have a great practice, but own it. You might not be as strong as you thought you were. Well, freaking own it. Stop dancing around the authenticity of what you\u2019re trying to do. And once I open myself to all that. It brings you to the moment. It brings you to the present. What can I do right now? Not what if or what possibly. And then it became a quest that was intentional every day to go find out, like it\u2019s okay if you\u2019re not as good as you thought you were. In fact, let\u2019s just know. I don\u2019t need to read the paper to have somebody tell me how I\u2019m doing. I don\u2019t need to wait in line at the grocery store at the checkout with the clerk and the lady with the paying, as they talk about the 49ers, waiting for the inevitable, \u201cWell, what do you think about Steve Young?\u201d And then waiting for the answer as if it was going to define me.<\/p>\n<p>But that\u2019s where I was, right? Before it was like, \u201cOh, he sucks.\u201d I\u2019m like, \u201cOh, yeah. I suck.\u201d It\u2019s like you\u2019ve allowed \u2014 thinking that you\u2019re doing it to me, I\u2019m allowing them to do it to me because I\u2019m not defining it. And that has stuck with me even to today where it\u2019s a vulnerability, it\u2019s authenticity about accountability. Where is it? Where does it lie?<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m using football to describe a lot of stuff that are very important concepts, but it\u2019s like when you throw an interception.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>And for people who don\u2019t know football, what does that mean?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>So I have the ball, I\u2019m the quarterback. I drop back to pass to win the game, the last minute, the last seconds, the crowd is screaming with anticipation, 80,000 people, you can feel the emotion of like, \u201cIt\u2019s happening. We\u2019re winning this game,\u201d and then I throw it and the other team, the defense that\u2019s on the field, they intercept it, they take it. And there\u2019s this moment where 80,000 people with all this anticipation is like, \u201cOh.\u201d Sports is that cool because it\u2019s hard to get those moments where they\u2019re like binary moments where it\u2019s like \u2014 and then the emotional swing, like to get that kind of a swing with 80,000 people, it\u2019s kind of crazy cool. I can\u2019t believe I\u2019m saying that because it wasn\u2019t that cool at the moment, but it\u2019s crazy to feel that.<\/p>\n<p>And I spent a long time with my teammates at that moment when they would look at me and say, \u201cHey, we watched you do this and it felt like you threw it right to them.\u201d There\u2019s an underpinning of it like, \u201cWe know you didn\u2019t do it on purpose, but kind of looks like you did it.\u201d And so as a human behavior emotion, I\u2019m like, \u201cOh, I\u2019ve got to show them that this was a mess. You turned the wrong way or you didn\u2019t block your guy or something else happened.\u201d Mitigation. Mitigation. I take the banner of mitigation and say, \u201cLook at all this truth. I\u2019m not telling you lies. I\u2019m telling you truth. This is how it happened. Facts. Own the facts.\u201d But I didn\u2019t realize that there\u2019s a truth to the mitigation, but it\u2019s not actually useful until I turn to them and say the ball was in my hands and now it\u2019s in their hands. That is the truest truth.<\/p>\n<p>Again, if you live in mitigation, which is kind of the Stephen Covey\u2019s \u2014 where I was living in all this truth, people saying things, people doing that, how I fell, it\u2019s all this, but it was mitigating and it wasn\u2019t authoring. And so when I started to breathe that back into the system, \u201cLook, I screwed it up no matter what happened. Don\u2019t worry about mitigation right now. I screwed it up. Let\u2019s go fix it,\u201d and everyone was like, \u201cOh. Yeah, let\u2019s go do that. And I\u2019m sorry that I turned the wrong way. I\u2019m sorry that I\u2026\u201d And so all of a sudden \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>It\u2019s like calm is contagious and the military ownership was contagious.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>And so when I talk about Stephen Covey, I have to talk about my authorship, vulnerability and accountability for me and being \u2014 the quest is really to be honest with yourself, and that\u2019s what I wasn\u2019t doing, and so that\u2019s \u2014 when you say, \u201cWhat did you do? What were the aspects of it?\u201d If someone here heard this and go, \u201cI want to be about that too, how do I do it?\u201d To me, it\u2019s a state of being, it\u2019s not a list of things to do.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Right. Well, it also sounds like you were, if I\u2019m hearing you correctly, basically out of the gate each morning. It sounds like you were reminding yourself of that underpinning truth as you went out into practice.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>It was almost like you have to exorcize the victimization. Look, I don\u2019t know a ton about the brain, I\u2019m not a scientist, but little I know is that the brain\u2019s here to keep me safe and in so many times your brain\u2019s working against you because it\u2019s playing the victim for you and you have to retrain kind of how you think about it.<\/p>\n<p>So that\u2019s why I say every day, you have to keep training a new thought pattern, a new way to \u2014 and it was so clear to me, it was easy. When it\u2019s not clear and muddy, it\u2019s harder. You\u2019re like, \u201cWhat was the point? I can\u2019t remember,\u201d and here comes the life. But for me, it was so clear and obvious that I was playing the victim that I think for me, it was just a state of being every morning. I might suck, but it has to be okay. It has to be whatever it is so that I don\u2019t look anywhere else. It\u2019s just you can author it, you can get better at it, but quit living in the muck of mitigation, I guess, is how I would say it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>We are going to come back to some \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>I\u2019m sorry to riff like that. I know I can go on and on and on.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>I love riffing. This is why it\u2019s long-form. And as a muggle, for someone who\u2019s looking at football and I don\u2019t understand all of the technicality behind it and the strategy, but I respect the athleticism, I look at a quarterback and I wonder if you were to try to explain it to someone like me who\u2019s a layperson per se, what separates good from great quarterbacks? Are there any particular elements that you see consistently in great quarterbacks that are absent, not paid as much attention to or otherwise? I mean, they could be physical, but I\u2019m wondering if anything comes to mind.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>There\u2019s not a long enough form for this, because I mean, people have been searching \u2014 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\u2019s no worse results than trying to predict that. And that\u2019s why college is not a great predictor.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>What do you think? Is it something internal, like their ability to learn in a certain way? What is it?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>I\u2019ve been trying to melt it down to something that people can just grab, like this is the truth. One thing\u2019s for sure, human behavior, human mind, I don\u2019t know what the right way to think about it, but when there\u2019s adrenaline and focus and pressure and opposition \u2014 I mean, how many games are someone\u2019s paid to actually screw you up physically? I\u2019m paid to grab you and throw you to the ground and hurt you. I\u2019m paid millions of dollars. So it\u2019s all in that moment, in that kind of dynamic, that you now have to ferret through. And Tim, I wish everybody who loves football could stand with a helmet on, and at 6\u20194\u2033, 6\u20193\u2033, or whatever, 6\u20192\u2033, whatever anyone like L. Russell was, 5\u201910\u201d, stand there and ferret through bodies in motion, the fastest, most athletic humans on Earth on both sides, and that\u2019s why when you talk about the difference in the NFL is the speed, it\u2019s the athleticism.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>A lot of times people\u2019s brain can\u2019t process that fast. They were processing fine in college, they were processing great in high school, but it\u2019s just an elevation. Gladly for me, there\u2019s not a super pro. I would have topped out, but I think more than anything, the quality \u2014 because there\u2019s fundamental things. You\u2019ve got to be able to throw the ball, you\u2019ve got to be able to \u2014 but it\u2019s the process of figuring out the speed and then because no one\u2019s \u2014 in my mind, college, every receiver\u2019s open, in the pros, nobody\u2019s open. That\u2019s the change. You have to now figure out how to deliver it so that it\u2019s not open at the time you throw it, but by the time it gets there, it\u2019s open, and I think that\u2019s the best way to explain how \u2014 and then do it over every 30 seconds. And how many times do you throw it right at the \u2014 and then just as it leaves your hand, you get just pounded into the ground. You don\u2019t even see it.<\/p>\n<p>I mean, how many times do you hit bottom of a pile and you\u2019re like, \u201cHow did it go?\u201d You don\u2019t know, and you just listen for the crowd because you\u2019re like \u2014 if it\u2019s home and there\u2019s cheering, you\u2019re like, \u201cIt worked,\u201d and otherwise, if they\u2019re booing you, then it\u2019s bad. So I think it\u2019s the processing and it\u2019s a guile. It\u2019s a street smart. It\u2019s not necessarily IQ for taking a calculus test. There\u2019s memorization, but there\u2019s a \u2014 I don\u2019t know. You know what I mean? You just get it, you get it and \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>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\u2019re very fast, like their clock speed is high.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>And I think they\u2019d be great quarterbacks. That\u2019s 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, \u201cI don\u2019t know, at that speed\u2026\u201d Because you don\u2019t know until you know.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Well, there\u2019s also the pressure of imminent bodily harm.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Well, that\u2019s what I mean. I think most humans, when things get more intense, the adrenaline runs. And when adrenaline runs, the brain focuses. It gets smaller, and it gets more focused, but yet you\u2019re not as aware.<\/p>\n<p>And so that physiology doesn\u2019t work, because in quarterbacking, you have to expand.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>You have to have the peripheral awareness.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>And it has to be the more present you are. Like, if you\u2019re in your backyard, not 80,000 people watching, if this was all happening in my backyard, how would I take this in?<\/p>\n<p>So I\u2019ve noticed that the best quarterbacks have a genetic, I think it\u2019s genetic, predisposition to when adrenaline runs, it doesn\u2019t do the normal things for most humans.<\/p>\n<p>And that\u2019s why the quality is like, how do I test \u2014 I wish I could test for that, because I could promise you I could tell you who\u2019s going to be great.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah. I wonder if it\u2019s something \u2014 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 <em>Free Solo<\/em>, but he climbed \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Oh, my.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>\u2014 I think it was El Cap, I can\u2019t remember the exact face, with no ropes.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>That was. It\u2019s insane.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>And so I interviewed him.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>I can\u2019t watch it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>It\u2019s too \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>I can\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>My hands are sweating just talking about it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>I literally can\u2019t watch it. I want to watch it. I can\u2019t watch life and death like that.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>And his brain responds differently to \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Exactly.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>\u2014 the circumstances.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>100 percent. And that\u2019s the only way because all of us watch it go, \u201cOh, no.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Panic and fall.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>No way.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>That\u2019s what happens.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>No way. Every grip has to be life or death. No way. People think about quarterback in the NFL is like, \u201cWhoa. How do you do it?\u201d I was like, \u201cLook.\u201d Talk about what you just said, this is pinochle to \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Might be neurologically or genetically related. Is there anything that, when you look at your trajectory, that was learnable or coachable that you absorbed by watching other people, what did you improve most at? So there\u2019s a lot out of the box. You were successful as a younger athlete and read some great quotes from your dad about this, but you were successful as a younger athlete. You seemed to have some hardwiring out of the box that was very helpful. But you didn\u2019t just hit the ground running in the NFL and you were top of the game. There was something that improved, or many things.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>One fundamental thing had to happen, which was how to throw the football. It\u2019s not intuitive. Kind of like golf. You think great golf swings when you grab a club as an adult, you\u2019re not going to do it right. And as a kid, I grabbed a football and because I didn\u2019t want to be embarrassed, I wanted to spin perfectly. I would spin it out of my hand and that\u2019s how I did it. But you can\u2019t get behind to throw it hard. And this was not something that was a deep, dark secret, but in Greenwich, Connecticut \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And some people grab it and grab a golf club, grab a football and it\u2019s just like, \u201cOh, yeah, that\u2019s how you must do it.\u201d That\u2019s not how I did it.<\/p>\n<p>And so I got to college. I\u2019d 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 Heisman, he was amazing.<\/p>\n<p>But he was righty and I was lefty and I was like, \u201cHow does \u2014 he\u2019s throwing it different.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And then I realized that you have to \u2014 instead of spinning it out to spin it, you actually go the other direction using the tension, inside your arm as you hold it, and then just go in.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Oh, wow.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>You actually spin it. It comes out and spins, but now you can throw it with all your power.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Right, right.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>You\u2019re talking about what I \u2014 I had to have that.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Those seem \u2014 and I\u2019ve played a bunch of sports certainly out of JP level.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Seems like that\u2019d be table stakes, right?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Well, no, it seems like rebuilding your swing in golf or something.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>A little bit, but it was such an unlock.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Once you felt it, and it wasn\u2019t \u2014 golf\u2019s even more complicated because you\u2019ve got a stick and you\u2019ve got \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>You\u2019re a little divorced from feedback.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Right, right. But the fact that it was in my hand, once you felt it, you\u2019re like, \u201cOh, my gosh.\u201d And then what I realized is, \u201cI can now throw it as hard as I want right there. It was this gift I had that was going to go undiscovered and all of a sudden it came out.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Did you realize that at BYU?\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Yes, right there.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Okay.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>It was my freshman year, about \u2014 I wish I would\u2019ve written down the date. It was like November 10th.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Okay. It was like discovering fire.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>I was like, \u201cOh, fire.\u201d Exactly. \u201cWe live!\u201d All I did from that point on was throw the ball. I just wanted to throw it, throw it everywhere, throw it \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And what\u2019s ironic is that the coach who was the offensive coordinator at the time, soon after, because no one knew, this is all happening. I was eighth string. I was nobody. No one knew mine, but I had figured it out, and it had clocked in. It was clocking.<\/p>\n<p>And so I think, for me, he pulled me aside later in the year, and he goes, \u201cBy the way, I don\u2019t coach lefties.\u201d He said it to me. \u201cI don\u2019t coach lefties.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And so I was moved to defense at the end of that season because LaVell Edwards, the coach, said, \u201cLook, you\u2019re superfast, super athletic. We have 10 quarterbacks. We want you on the field.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And so I started in the winter, practice is winter as a safety and a defense, cornerly positioned. I couldn\u2019t stand. I hated every second of it. As soon as practice ended, the quarterbacks would throw after practice, I\u2019d go throw.<\/p>\n<p>And in the interim, that coach who told me he wouldn\u2019t coach lefties, took a head coaching job at San Diego State. Another coach, Ted Tollner, came in, and I\u2019m throwing with the quarterbacks after practice. And he goes, \u201cSteve, I thought you played quarterback.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>I go, \u201cI do, but they told me I\u2019m lefty, so I have to play defense.\u201d And he goes, \u201cThat\u2019s ridiculous. That\u2019s stupid.\u201d I go, \u201cI know. It\u2019s insane.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And then I screamed up, \u201cAnd I learned how to throw too.\u201d So I have this thing that \u2014 and he\u2019s like, \u201cLet me go see if I can fix it.\u201d So he goes in and changes it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Wow.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>And that spring, spring ball was a month, 30 days of practice, he got two weeks for me to practice before they made a decision. And by the end of the two weeks, because of this new gift, that was it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Wow.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>That was it. With that change, everything, because I was fast, I could run, I could throw it hard, I could process. The game wasn\u2019t too fast for me. It kind of all made sense to me. I just didn\u2019t unlock that one fundamental piece of throwing the ball.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah. It\u2019s so fun having this conversation. I\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Oh, I have total respect. I wrestled in ninth grade.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah. It\u2019s a tough sport.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>I will never wrestle again.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>It is a tough sport.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>It is brutal. There is no good news.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>No, there\u2019s no good news.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>I remember the first wrestling \u2014 just to break in your story, it\u2019s like three one minute or three minute \u2014 I can\u2019t remember how long. And so by the first one was over, I was done.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>People are in the best shape, the greatest athletes. When I see wrestlers, I tip my cap. I walk away, man. I\u2019m like \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>It is a sufferer fest \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>It is brutal.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>\u2014 no matter what. 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.<\/p>\n<p>But I competed in judo while I was there. Then I came back for my final year of wrestling in high school, and I was doing really, really well.<\/p>\n<p>But I hit a wall, and the reason I\u2019m bringing this up is not at all to compare apples to apples.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>No, no, but I get it. Respect.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>I somehow found a book called <em>Mental Toughness Training for Sports<\/em> by a guy named James Loehr, spelled L-O-E-H-R, who Josh Waitzkin actually also knows.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>It had them rate you on all of these different aspects of toughness, performance, resilience, et cetera, psychology. And once I had those report cards from all of these people, and I was able to see and accept strengths and weaknesses, and I don\u2019t think this is unique to me, there really was a before and after.<\/p>\n<p>The next practice was different, and that\u2019s when everything hockey sticked and ended up having just an incredible season.<\/p>\n<p>But to people who are listening and haven\u2019t experienced what, say, Steve experienced on that plane ride or what I\u2019ve experienced with that book, there really can be that flashboil before and after.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>That\u2019s kind of what self-help stuff does and tries to get you \u2014 and the problem is, it doesn\u2019t, all the time, land because \u2014 I get the idea. And so I read the book \u2014 \u201cOh, I\u2019ll go read the book.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>And you read the book and go, \u201cOh, okay.\u201d But the flashpoint is really, to me, the vulnerability. That\u2019s the hard part.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>The hard part is to open up and take the risk truly, internally. And I was living this life where it\u2019s like, \u201cI want to be great. I want to be great. I want to be great.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And anyone who tells me I\u2019m not, I don\u2019t know what to do about it, and it feels like I can\u2019t overcome it. It\u2019s like you have to become vulnerable. That\u2019s how you take it in.<\/p>\n<p>And so people are like, \u201cWhat do I do?\u201d I was like, \u201cCan you start 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? However you\u2019ve defined it, it\u2019s probably been not a great, authentic, vulnerable place. Can you start by opening up to your accountability, to your\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Your part in it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Yeah.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Your contribution.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>If you want to have an aha moment, or you want to read a book and change kind of inflection point, it comes from you were open for it, you were ready for it.<\/p>\n<p>And I was so desperate with Stephen Covey, but it wasn\u2019t necessarily I was looking for it. It was because it resonated so truthfully, like, \u201cI\u2019m screwing this up. I am royally screwing this up, and I cannot keep screwing it up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And I think a lot of people at that moment go, \u201cOh, I\u2019m going to keep screwing it up because I don\u2019t want to face the other side of that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And that\u2019s what Stephen Covey \u2014 remember when he said, a lot of people don\u2019t want to know how good they are.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>I hope I\u2019m describing it. It makes sense to my brain that unless you get to that space, you really can\u2019t change.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Well, the vulnerability also seems to me fundamentally accepting the possibility, almost the certainty that you\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>And then also the grace in it, where what\u2019s the point? Is the point to be regarded by people, or is the point to see how good you \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s why it goes back. Why it resonated with me is because my own theology was like, \u201cWe\u2019re here to learn and grow. Let\u2019s do it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>And part of learning and growing is, \u201cI suck right now, but I\u2019m not going to suck tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>And once you can start to get into that mode of, \u201cThat\u2019s what I\u2019m about,\u201d that\u2019s what happens. There\u2019s a clarity that comes because now everything gets fed through that truth, and now it comes in more authentically, and it doesn\u2019t hit the same way.<\/p>\n<p>And you can go in front of 80,000 people and find a piece about it that \u2014 80,000 people could boo you mercilessly.<\/p>\n<p>It is hard, what I\u2019m talking about, but you can be authentically say, \u201cLook, I\u2019d boo me too.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Mm-hmm. Yeah.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>\u201cIn fact, I might just boo with you.\u201d And it\u2019s okay and you get into that place. I\u2019m going to try not to get booed tomorrow, but it might be. But as long in your brain is saying the whole point is to learn and grow, then, Stephen Covey, \u201cBe about it.\u201d And I think that really freed me up.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah. It seems like such an important tectonic plate underneath everything else.<\/p>\n<p>I want to ask you about one of those quotes from your dad that I was alluding to earlier. So this is from the <em>Bloomberg<\/em> piece and the URL has in it, \u201cSteve Young is an athlete who\u2019s actually good at finance,\u201d which I just \u2014 part of me loved.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Backhanded compliment.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah, yeah. I just loved that. So your dad was bewildered by how well \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>By that fact.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>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, \u201cHonestly, Steve\u2019s personality is probably a better fit for law or business as compared to professional athlete.\u201d Why would he say that, do you think?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>I think he\u2019s referring to \u2014 look, we should talk about it.<\/p>\n<p>So when I was a kid, growing up first grade, second grade, third grade, I was a kid that, when the first day of school, I would turn to my mom or dad and say, \u201cLook, I\u2019m not going.\u201d And they\u2019re like, \u201cWhy? It\u2019s super fun.\u201d And my brain was processing it in fear, and a new place, new people, and that seemed super scary. And that\u2019s, I think, clinically would be called separation anxiety, and I think people listening, I\u2019m sure they know somebody probably that had that as a kid. And so that didn\u2019t really show up in my life, because I realized very young that I was not going to be going on vacation with my friends. I was going to be home.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Sleepovers, not so much?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Not so much. But during the daytime, I was killing it. Only for context, all-state in three sports, captain, straight A\u2019s, not because I was tiger parents or tiger person. The day was awesome. I can\u2019t wait. It\u2019s going to be great.<\/p>\n<p>And at night, it\u2019s like, I\u2019m home. And I didn\u2019t realize that how much I had of this is when I went to college and had to go through a process of geography change that was existential. And it\u2019s hard to explain to people, because they\u2019re like, \u201cGoing to college is awesome, man. What\u2019s your problem? You didn\u2019t unpack your bags the whole semester, and you kept telling me you\u2019re just miserable? How\u2019s that possible?\u201d Well, it\u2019s how my brain worked, functioned. I can\u2019t really say much about that. That\u2019s about it.<\/p>\n<p>And I remember when I came back for Christmas, I finally got to come home, and I remember walking through the door and going, \u201cOh, wow, I kind of want to go back to school.\u201d And I realized in my life, that was a huge shift for me in my \u2014 you live in your own private Idaho, all the things that you\u2019re feeling, all the things you don\u2019t really share, you don\u2019t really \u2014 it\u2019s like some of it you\u2019re afraid to even share. And it\u2019s like all of a sudden I realized, \u201cIt\u2019s going to be all right, because now I have two homes.\u201d And that was a shift that I needed.<\/p>\n<p>What my dad\u2019s describing is generally when I had to go play, there was a pattern of focus that was like, he would call hyper focus and not fun. And so he\u2019s like, \u201cHe\u2019s built for something else.\u201d I think that\u2019s what he\u2019s referring to. But I think it comes from the roots of that, what I would call clinical part of my life, and another little internal battle, because now I see the world and I\u2019m like, \u201cI can\u2019t wait to discover it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>At some point it just flipped. The thing that was so constrictive and difficult and threatening, I remember my parents left for a couple days when I was really little at my aunt\u2019s house, and I can still smell it, I can still feel it, the terror of them walking out. I look back, and how do you explain \u2014 that\u2019s an insane reaction.<\/p>\n<p>I remember I can still hear my brothers and sisters outside laughing with all my cousins, but that was me. Part of the authenticity is come to a place where we can look that in the eye too. That\u2019s that.<\/p>\n<p>So I think that explains my dad\u2019s comment, like that part of me, but what he doesn\u2019t realize is that part of me drove the intensity and the focus and the \u2014 so it\u2019s like it\u2019s not all bad.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah, there\u2019s a flip side.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>There\u2019s a flip side. And so I would say to my dad, \u201cWell, the way you\u2019re looking at it, I can see why you say that, but the way I\u2019m looking at it is like, I had to have it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Was there a point where \u2014 this is going to be a strong way of putting it, but I\u2019ve experienced this in my own life and have talked about struggles. Some of it, I think, is hereditary with generalized anxiety. I\u2019ve had depressive episodes, which I\u2019ve seen throughout my family, and appreciate how open you\u2019ve been about discussing some of this.<\/p>\n<p>And I\u2019m curious at what point you realized you didn\u2019t need that kind of monkey on your back. And specifically, I\u2019m thinking about in the course of doing research for this, reading a <em>New York Times<\/em> piece, and it mentions Dr. James Klint and Reggie, I guess, and you approaching Reggie at one point.<\/p>\n<p>I think it was after, what, three sleepless nights, something like that. And I guess I\u2019m wondering what was happening, for people who don\u2019t know what the context is, and then what happened afterwards that helped?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>So that\u2019s interesting. It\u2019s kind of a bookend, actually type bookends between the Stephen Covey story and the Jim Klint story, because just before that, and maybe that\u2019s what leads to the vulnerability, in the depth of what I just described and where I was in a hole and victimized and depressed, there was a game starting Thursday night.<\/p>\n<p>The good news about all of that anxiousness around playing, I always slept. So it was like you could deal with it. And all of a sudden I wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p>And so it was a game where people that I was near were like, \u201cSteve, you\u2019re a mess. You\u2019ve got to talk to them. You can\u2019t play.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>And I\u2019m like, \u201cOh, no, that\u2019s not an option. We\u2019re playing.\u201d And I remember telling them as I left for the game in such a state, I\u2019d probably never been quite like that. So I promised him, I said, \u201cLook, if we win, I\u2019ll talk to the team doctor, just tell him something\u2019s going on. But if we lose, there\u2019s no place to be able to make an\u2026\u201d You can\u2019t \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Make an excuse.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Yeah. That\u2019s just the way my brain was working. We won. I played pretty well. I don\u2019t suggest, by the way, that that\u2019s how you prepare.<\/p>\n<p>But after the game, I\u2019m sitting in the training room, towel, ice pack, and I see Reggie, and he\u2019s been around. He\u2019d been around all the Super Bowls. He was somebody that \u2014 I promised my friends that I would do this, but I didn\u2019t want to, and we won. So we\u2019re good for a little while.<\/p>\n<p>But I did. I pulled him aside, and I remember back in the corner of the old Candlestick Park, stuff was dripping down. It\u2019s dank, it\u2019s old school. And we\u2019re in the back corner, and I kind of move away from everybody, and I\u2019m kind of almost nose to nose.<\/p>\n<p>And I\u2019m like, \u201cReggie, I\u2019m going through this thing. I don\u2019t know what\u2019s wrong.\u201d I kind of explained it all. And as I\u2019m explaining it, I see a big ball of a tear, like a big ball come out of his eye and then drop. It was kind of like, \u201cDid I see\u2026\u201d And then another one.<\/p>\n<p>And he hasn\u2019t changed his face, he hasn\u2019t changed anything. And I\u2019m like, \u201cReggie, are you crying?\u201d And he\u2019s trying not to break. He\u2019s like, \u201cI dealt with so much clinical anxiety, I could hardly get through medical school.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>That\u2019s what he said.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>That\u2019s what he said. As he answered with a straight \u2014 he hadn\u2019t changed his face at all.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI had dealt with, and I, watching you, instinctively felt that there was something going on and I feel like I\u2019ve \u2014 like malpractice, that this is what\u2019s had to come to it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He felt this incredible pain as the team physician and qualified to maybe watch for this kind of stuff. And I\u2019m like \u2014 I was relieved. Because I didn\u2019t know what was going to happen. I was explaining something that was total vulnerability, total weakness it felt like.<\/p>\n<p>And he\u2019s responding like, \u201cOh, I blew it.\u201d And I\u2019m like, \u201cReggie, don\u2019t worry about it, bro.\u201d But he said, \u201cWe\u2019re going to get the bottom of it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And it wasn\u2019t maybe two days later, he sent me up to a child psychologist, psychiatrist, I\u2019m not sure, and they gave me a test of 10 questions that would describe things that happened in your life. And that would be, if you answer yes to eight of them, then you have undiagnosed childhood separation anxiety as an adult.<\/p>\n<p>And so I was nine of them. And he said, \u201cMost people, Steve, who have this going on in their life, they\u2019re self-medicating. They\u2019re in the basement. But you\u2019re the MVP of the NFL, so I think we\u2019re just going to let you keep rolling and find your way through it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And I did find solace in the knowledge, recognizing what had happened. Because until that point, I had subconsciously always known that I didn\u2019t like being at other people\u2019s houses when I was a kid or in other places where \u2014 but my life was so full and amazing that we just made our way.<\/p>\n<p>And so this was the point where, now bookended with Stephen Covey maybe three weeks later, these are pretty vital big changes that happened that I think allowed me the place to kind of find peace about it all.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>And so was the diagnosis in itself the treatment and the respect that you finally had a label to apply, a way to think about it so that it wasn\u2019t this nebulous set of worries, or what allowed you, I guess, to go back to sleeping?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>It was actually super cool because I didn\u2019t think about it as a stigma. I thought about it as, \u201cOh, that makes sense.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah, yeah, yeah.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>And then as I told my parents and told my \u2014 then we found out that in my mom\u2019s side of the family, this is a thing and explained all kinds of craziness that was going on that now we go, \u201cOh.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Now the pieces fit.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>It paid forward, you know what I mean? So in its own way, the knowledge was the key. And then because I was so \u2014 functioning through it, it was helpful. Didn\u2019t make playing in front of 80,000 people and trying to be a great player, it didn\u2019t 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 it into context.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>For sure.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Knowledge is power, right?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah. I remember maybe it was two years ago, I wanted to do this experimental treatment that\u2019s actually not so far from where we\u2019re sitting.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019re sitting here in Palo Alto, and they\u2019re in Sunnyvale, but I was doing something called accelerated TMS.<\/p>\n<p>I won\u2019t bore you with all the details, but it\u2019s this medical treatment, and they had to put me through all these assessments beforehand.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Is it red light?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>It\u2019s called Acacia Clinic, and they apply a magnetic coil basically to your brain or to your skull.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>They took me through all these different tests, and at one point, after an hour or two, they took this big pause, and they said, \u201cYou know, Tim, based on all of this, you seem to qualify for moderate to severe OCD.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And then he paused, and the doctor was kind of nervous, and he\u2019s like, \u201cI know this is a lot to take in. If we need to take a break and come back tomorrow\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And I was like, \u201cAre you kidding me?\u201d I was like, \u201cIt makes perfect sense.\u201d None of my friends would be surprised.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Down the middle here.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>It was just like, in retrospect, yeah, it makes a lot of things click together.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Yeah.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>And even one of my friends later, he\u2019s like, \u201cOh, man, knowing that you\u2019ve got diagnosed makes it so much easier to put up with your OCD.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And I was like, \u201cOkay.\u201d I think there\u2019s a risk that maybe you overdefine yourself by the label, but in my case, I was just like, \u201cOh, okay, that\u2019s great.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Now I have a shorthand way to piece these things \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>That\u2019s exactly how it felt. It was like, \u201cI\u2019ve got a job to do. I\u2019m about it. I didn\u2019t realize how victimized I had become and how inauthentic I\u2019d become and how all that part of it. But at least it all kind of, like you said, my friend was like, \u201cOh, yeah, I can see that.\u201d My parents, my dad\u2019s like, \u201cI keep telling you just go have fun and you\u2019re not having any fun.\u201d Oh, now I get it. So that way it was useful in that way.<\/p>\n<p>But look, I feel like again, what are we here to do, learn and grow? That\u2019s okay. Let\u2019s grow through it. And I still and to this day find myself, the anxious parts have all kind of abated, but the pattern as a kid, I\u2019m realizing now how you achieve, how you accomplish, what\u2019s the root of how you try to do it. And I was doing it in a fear-based way.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Right.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>In other words, if I worry about something that\u2019s important to me enough, I can make it happen. It\u2019s magical thinking in a way. If I worry and work and fret that something good will happen in my life. And if you think about all the good in your life, did it come because you worried about it? Probably that\u2019s the wrong dynamic. But it takes, again, this vulnerability and authenticity to kind of say, over my life, I\u2019ve now realized watching good things happen and I didn\u2019t even worry about it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Something good happened and I didn\u2019t have to author it by some crazy amount of \u2014 and so it\u2019s like life is so crazy amazing in that way where the onion unfolded, unraveling. Learning is so powerful to your life. And again, you can\u2019t get there unless you\u2019re willing to say, \u201cIt\u2019s okay.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>It could sting.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>It could hurt. It could hurt for a while, but at least it\u2019s what is.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>It\u2019s real. At least it\u2019s real.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Yeah.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>So Steve, I have to ask you about the following. This is the law degree. \u201cOver the course of seven off seasons, he pursued a law degree at BYU.\u201d Side note, this is from the Bloomberg piece, \u201cHis great, great, great grandfather was Brigham Young himself.\u201d That\u2019s wild. I mean, I\u2019ve spent a lot of time in Utah. That\u2019s maybe a whole separate chapter for another time. But why the law degree? Why did you pursue that?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>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. And he\u2019d tell me, \u201cWhat do you want to be when you grow up?\u201d And I\u2019d be like, \u201cI want to be a quarterback, like Roger Staubach.\u201d And he\u2019d go, \u201cWhat? That\u2019s a great dream, son. That\u2019s a great dream. And dreams are less than one percent chance, but dreams are important. Have a dream. I love it, have it, but that\u2019s very unlikely. I need you to make a plan that\u2019s 80 percent chance.\u201d And so I would tell him, \u201c80 percent chance I\u2019ll fake it and tell you that I\u2019ll go to college and then I\u2019ll go to law school like you dad, and I\u2019ll be a lawyer.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Okay. So your dad was a lawyer.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>My dad was a lawyer.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>All right.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>And I kind of liked what \u2014 he described law and I was like, \u201cI think I could do that.\u201d So then I would tell him that and he goes, \u201cYou know, I think there\u2019s an 80 percent chance that you can do that. So that\u2019ll be the plan. That\u2019s a plan and now we have a dream and a plan.\u201d He was always about that. And even he turned 90 in February and I recently asked him like, \u201cWell, what\u2019s the dream, Dad?\u201d Because he\u2019s always like \u2014 and he\u2019d go like, \u201c110.\u201d He has it in his mind, that\u2019s the dream. So then I had a dream and a plan.<\/p>\n<p>So then I go to college and I end up going pro and I\u2019m like, the dream comes true, right? I\u2019m like, \u201cDad, so much for one percent, bro. It\u2019s 100 percent now.\u201d And then he would always say, \u201cWell, what? Average career is three years.\u201d And then I played for six years. And he\u2019s like, \u201cWell, what are you going to do the rest of your \u2014 you\u2019re going to retire at 35 and then what? You\u2019ve got another half of your life. What are you going to do?\u201d So he just kept kind of putting in my head.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Dog with a bone. Yeah.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Yeah. Well, it didn\u2019t bother me because I knew it was pretty true what he was saying like, \u201cWhat are you going to do with the rest of your life?\u201d And so I don\u2019t know how it got in my head. I look back on that as like, Tim, that\u2019s just stupid to try to go to law school while you play. This is dumb. But I figured it out with the ABA, with the law school, because the first semester in law school is in the fall nationwide. The first year curriculum is sequential. You can\u2019t cheat it. And they worked it out where I could audit the second semester one winter. If I passed the classes cold, then that would qualify me to come back and take the second semester, blah, blah, blah, blah.<\/p>\n<p>So over seven years, six for credit semesters, I went back and what was funny now, but wasn\u2019t funny at the time, is we went to three Super Bowls in that time, and the Super Bowl is in February, end of January, February. School starts right after the new year. So I\u2019m showing up a month late, and no one in law school cares. You still got to do the work.<\/p>\n<p>So I remember going to the parade down Market Street in San Francisco and jumping on a plane, the Delta plane back to Salt Lake City [in the] evening, and then the next morning in class. And every class, the five first, whatever class, usually five or six classes, every class is Socratic method, they walk in and they say, \u201cMs. Jones, can you please brief us on blah, blah, blah.\u201d The whole day was, \u201cMr. Young, could you please brief us on\u2026\u201d So I\u2019m just scrambling, trying \u2014 but I think I loved that in a weird way, but I look back and it was like, \u201cWhat are you doing, man? What are you doing?\u201d But one of the great \u2014 my dad was right. I\u2019m 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\u2019s how I did it. And so he was right.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah, it served its purpose.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Dream and plan.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>All right. So you\u2019re doing these seven off seasons, you\u2019re flying back, parade, get on a plane, fly back next morning, \u201cMr. Young,\u201d right? So you\u2019re doing that. How do you make the hop to finance? How does that even materialize?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>You\u2019ve got to remember the 49ers 1988 were given land in Santa Clara by the city of Santa Clara because there was nothing going on down there to try to build a training facility and try to attract more business. And that\u2019s funny now because Silicon Valley, you know Santa Clara, it is the epicenter of Silicon Valley. And so that\u2019s where I worked all the years.<\/p>\n<p>And so as we worked and watched the explosion of Silicon Valley and technology, we\u2019re sitting in the locker room and there\u2019s 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\u2019s going on with these businesses? Guys, we\u2019re 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. They\u2019d walk out, you know what I mean? And so how do we get in the middle of it? And so we started trading access to the locker room from those guys on Sand Hill Road for venture investing. So we started to get everything they did, we gave them $50,000 of what they were doing. We\u2019d split it up.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>How did that relationship happen?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Well, it was \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Because it doesn\u2019t seem like the Venn diagrams would totally overlap.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Well, no, because Doug Leone, who\u2019s a great guy, great friend.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Doug Leone, he\u2019s one of the greats.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>He was one that said, look, we didn\u2019t make a trade. It wasn\u2019t a transaction. It was more like, \u201cHey, we\u2019d love a relationship, come in the locker room, be a part of our life and let us be a part of your life,\u201d 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 started a process. I was asked by Brian Maxwell, who\u2019s now passed away, but he started PowerBar. That was a meal replacement for marathoners.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>I remember back in the day.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>But for a single guy, it was meal replacement, not for a marathon, for day to day. And so I kind of got famous around the Bay Area that I was \u2014 the PowerBar, he asked me to be on the board and I was like, \u201cWell, I\u2019ve never done that before. I\u2019ll try that.\u201d The first board meeting, Larry Sonsini, one of the icons of Silicon Valley lawyers.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>This is out of Wilson Sonsini. So when I first moved, just for people who don\u2019t recognize. So back in the day, Wilson Sonsini were kind of the connective tissue behind the scenes for Silicon Valley. They were one of the big \u2014<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>It was the backbone of \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>That was the backbone.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>The legal background. And then Warren Hellman of Hellman &amp; Friedman, Warren Hellman\u2019s like the icon of investing in the late \u201990s and really his whole life. He is the icon. So there\u2019s two of them, and I\u2019m sitting on the board.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>I mean, your list is pretty insane.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Pretty insane.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>How does this happen? And so I had a guy, I\u2019m 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 do \u2014 he had an algorithm where he\u2019d put a geographic boundary around an internet search. And if you\u2019re old enough to know in the \u201990s, the internet was a mess.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>It was a mess.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>If you put in \u201cPalo Alto hammer,\u201d you\u2019d get a USSR sickle. Nothing made sense, but with this enablement, you could put in \u201cPalo Alto hammer\u201d and get the local Ace Hardware store. So that made it useful. And so we had that enablement. My buddy was doing it. He was like, \u201cCan you help me?\u201d So I take it to the board meeting and I\u2019m like, \u201cHey, what do you think about this?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And they\u2019re like, \u201cThat works. You need to start a business that \u2014 retailers are panicked right now because their brick and mortar stores are going to be usurped by Amazon.\u201d And late \u201990s, it\u2019s 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. It\u2019s like it becomes your distribution point. And I\u2019m like, oh. So we went and did that. And my longtime partner who almost 30 years together left his banking job at Morgan Stanley to be the CEO of this business called Found.com.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>What\u2019s your partner\u2019s name?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Rich Lawson.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>How did you meet \u2014 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.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Yeah. Yes.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>And he\u2019s got a book that might be out by the time this is published, but it\u2019s coming out soon called <em>Runnin\u2019 Down a Dream<\/em>. And in it, he has a chapter on going to where the action is, Bob Dylan going from Minnesota to New York City. And you can kind of go down the list. And in this case, it\u2019s like you happen to be right in the epicenter.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>And again, I wish I was Bob Dylan and had the smarts to go from Minneapolis to the action in Silicon Valley, but I actually, luckily was already here just sitting here. I actually watched the traffic get worse and worse. Like, where\u2019s all this traffic coming from? I used to get to work in 10 minutes, now I get to work in 30. And so you made fun of the athletic brain. It 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 \u2014 so to finish that story, we start a business. Rich is the CEO. I\u2019m the chairman backed by Accel, KKR and Bain and it was all of that. And so that\u2019s when Warren and Larry Sonsini, Larry became a very close friend of mine, a mentor, still is. And I mean, really, still is. I mean, he\u2019s just an amazing guy. He\u2019s like, \u201cSteve, I\u2019m a lawyer. You need to go do this.\u201d And that\u2019s how it switched.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Oh, I see. He said, \u201cI\u2019m a lawyer.\u201d And he\u2019s saying that referring to \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>He just said, \u201cLook, your EQ and the way you look at the world\u2026\u201d And I had graduated in finance, so I was like, I knew enough to be, not even dangerous, but new enough to what it really was about. He said, \u201cYou need to go help people build businesses.\u201d And that\u2019s kind of how it switched.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>And I\u2019m looking right over your shoulder at, looks like maybe a tweet from Rich Lawson, your partner, that says, \u201cVery proud to break into the top 20 of 500 plus private equity firms globally in just over the decade\u2026\u201d Okay. So I mean, you\u2019ve had these multiple chapters. How did you connect with Rich Lawson? That\u2019s actually, you can see Rich Lawson right there. So perfect timing. How did you manage to \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Well, let\u2019s back up because what you\u2019re alluding to, I think, is that what we\u2019ve been talking about really for the whole time is transition.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah, exactly.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>And the difficulties because I love football and I was very successful at it, I run into a lot of people who played in high school and loved it. The dream, 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\u2019t necessarily forced, but you do age out. It just sooner later, even Tom Brady aged out at 45. It\u2019s a young man\u2019s game. And I remember the day before, 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\u2019s gone.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Now what?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Yeah. Yeah. And what I\u2019ve learned about transition that leads to Rich Lawson, how I describe it, that everyone, and even the high schooler, the last day they play and it has to be put away, needs to recognize and treat it like a death, to mourn it and go through all the steps of mourning it and burying it and actually having it as a place that you can keep referring to as almost like a grave site. Because otherwise you carry it around and it never gets \u2014 you never transition. Transitioning is about actually moving from to, right? And so I\u2019m really grateful, Roger Staubach, the poster on my wall, I got to know him. He became a friend. Like it\u2019s insane.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah. How cool is that?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>And he famously transitioned, probably the most successful transition in the history of the NFL.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>What did he transition to?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>The Staubach Company was a real estate business that he was hugely, hugely successful. And I remember asking him towards the end of my career, \u201cRoger, give me some tips.\u201d And he goes, \u201cRun.\u201d I\u2019m like, \u201cRun? Run where?\u201d He goes, \u201cJust run away.\u201d That was his tip. Because he said, \u201cThe game will never leave you, but you need to leave it. You need to move on.\u201d And I thought that was just simple, but really important.<\/p>\n<p>And I tell people today, and I really want to write a book about transition because everybody is constantly transitioning, whether they like it or not. Most of it forced, right? But if there\u2019s 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\u2019m not even good at anything else, but you know what? I\u2019m going to \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Learn and grow.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>We\u2019re going to learn and grow.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>I\u2019m slow, but I\u2019m getting there. I\u2019m only twice as dumb as I was.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>It\u2019s useful.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>What did mourning football look like to you? What did running from it look like and what did mourning look like?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>It\u2019s 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. And I think there was a fear based, which is not necessarily the best way to do this, that if I didn\u2019t run really fast, that it would somehow keep me from getting really clear of it all. And so I just started \u2014 we had that business and we were 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 Herrmann, and he said, as we went to go get financing for this business, we ran into Rich, who\u2019s a very successful banker in Morgan Stanley, but young, recognizing everything that\u2019s going on, and says, \u201cYou need a CEO.\u201d And I\u2019m like, \u201cYeah, you\u2019re right. We do.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And he says, \u201cI\u2019ll leave\u2026\u201d You\u2019ve got to be in the late \u201990s in technology. He\u2019s like, \u201cI\u2019m walking out of Morgan Stanley. I\u2019m going to be the CEO.\u201d And so we\u2019ve been together ever since then. And so the transition you\u2019re talking about as far as how it \u2014 I think because of that energy around great mentors, I mean, I\u2019m very, very lucky. I didn\u2019t have to do it raw. I didn\u2019t have to do it alone. I didn\u2019t have to \u2014 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 not \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>And I really appreciate it because the game never does leave you. I traffic in memorabilia for our golf tournaments for Forever Young Foundation. And so we need constant signatures from jerseys, from players and hockey players or Hollywood. And so I, to this day, you can\u2019t imagine how many signatures that I do as part of the memorability company and they pay me in stuff so we can use it for the tournaments. You know what I mean? And if you told me in 2025 I\u2019d still be signing my name on Steve Young jerseys or helmets, it blows the mind, but we\u2019re 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\u2019s like a virtuous cycle that we\u2019ve got going, but \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>It seems also really fortunate. We were chatting just when we took a break briefly, and we won\u2019t get into the details of that, but about some of the former military kind of tier one operators who are friends of mine who run into a very similar challenge. They\u2019re the best of the best.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>It is brutal.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>They\u2019ve been hugely invested in, not that dissimilar in some ways from top level professional athletes.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>100 percent.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>And then they go from being the best at what they do to question mark or feeling they\u2019re not good at anything. And that happens to gold medalists, or I should say just Olympians broadly.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>It happens to the high schooler who never leaves football.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah, that\u2019s a great point.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>You\u2019re talking about, there\u2019s dramatic moments that are clear, like the SEAL team who\u2019s the elite member, that resonates with everybody like, oh my gosh, that would be hardcore.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>You\u2019re right though. It happens in so many other ways.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>But the transition pattern is so common.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>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.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>It\u2019s brutal.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>That is full commit, right?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>It\u2019s unbelievable.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>That is not a nine to five check-in, check-out, going six out of 10. This startup\u2019s, is in a way, it just seems like a good fit in a sense, for someone who\u2019s been in sixth gear for so long.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>There\u2019s a little bit of drug in it where the action \u2014 look, I talk about this with other quarterbacks that have played a long time, \u201cWhat do you miss?\u201d And you miss the opportunity to pour yourself into something. It demands. I always say there\u2019s physical athleticism, that\u2019s part of it. There\u2019s emotional athletism, that\u2019s part of it. There\u2019s psychological. It\u2019s every part of you is necessary to be poured in to be even good at this, if not great. And so that rigor, nothing else, even business can\u2019t provide that. It\u2019s nothing like it, in front of 80,000 people with a score and officials and a clock. And that\u2019s just \u2014 it\u2019s a really crazy, cool environment because there\u2019s truth in it always.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>There\u2019s a purity to it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>There\u2019s a purity to it. But even in the purity of it, going back to the truest truth of accountability, you can still try to fake that it wasn\u2019t 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. 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?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Or in your family.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Or your family. And that\u2019s what I say when people say, \u201cLook, I really want to change. I really want to transition to something better. I want to learn and grow authentically, truly.\u201d You\u2019ve got to be about it. It has to be \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Core.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Core because otherwise humans in entropy with gravity and our bodies are rotting, things are going to \u2014 it\u2019s just truth. We\u2019ll go along with that rationale and that is a transactional path that \u2014 yeah, you\u2019re right. It\u2019s a rotten path and we live it all the time.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>So we\u2019re definitely going to talk about transactional and we\u2019re going to get into one of your books, but I\u2019m so curious, right? So you\u2019ve got this Morgan Stanley banker named Rich Lawson, and he\u2019s like, \u201cYou\u2019re going to need a CEO. Furthermore, I\u2019m the guy.\u201d Why say yes? What was the pitch? I mean, I love the chutzpah of it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Well, I mean, think about it. I don\u2019t know how I try to explain stuff. It\u2019s always my dad goes, or my wife is like, \u201cSteve, get to the point.\u201d But Industrial Revolution, 100 years. Technology Revolution, 20 years.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>This is his dad answer.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>It was happening right in front, right with us.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>You could see it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>So it was like, businesses were literally going from nothing to public in months that were now being valued at a billion \u2014 it was an insane time. So you have to put yourself in there. So why would Rich turn and see this \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>I understand why he would do it. It\u2019s more the question of why you guys would agree to it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Because we just had an idea.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah, I see. I see. You needed an \u2014 and he seemed like an operator.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>And really, the guys that formed this and the guys that did the algorithm and the \u2014 I\u2019m the facilitator, right? I want to be in business. I\u2019m energized by the human kind of complex calculus in business, and so I was drawn to it, but I knew I was \u2014 I still have imposter syndrome a little bit, right? But back then, I definitely felt like I\u2019m kind of faking my way through it. And here\u2019s a guy that was classically trained at Harvard, went into business, went to consulting, and then now is a big banker. And to me, he\u2019s like \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>He\u2019s got all the pedigree.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>\u2014 the expert. He\u2019s expert, right? And it\u2019s fun, the yin and yang of it all.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>What has made \u2014 I mean, I have quite a few friends. I mean, I have a lot of friends in the investing world writ large, but I have quite a few in the private equity world as well. And I mean, how long have you guys been partners now?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>That was 1997.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>It\u2019s been a minute.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Almost 30.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah, 30 years. Why has it worked? What are the \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Oh, it\u2019s interesting.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Right? Because a lot don\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>None do.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah. Right. There we go.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>First of all, I think that there was a clarity early on that the things that he\u2019s really good at, I really am not good at. And the things that I was really good at wasn\u2019t his strongest suit. So there\u2019s a yin and yang kind of feel to it. And then there\u2019s a trust that gets built that just works. It either does or doesn\u2019t, and it gets tested. I mean, the times that in 30 years \u2014 you\u2019ve got to be kidding me. I remember sitting in the corner, there were existential moments when it felt like, \u201cWell, that was fun. See you later.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>If you\u2019re able to talk about it, what types of \u2014 how do those precipitate?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Well, private equity, if you think about it, it\u2019s a really unique business because you go globally to find investors to believe that you can go now deploy capital in businesses to return significantly more over a period of time than the public equities or other bonds or anything else. And so private equity\u2019s 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\u2019re going to have another referendum on whether you\u2019re in business or not.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Based on your report card.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Truly. And you could be out of business. And so it\u2019s 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\u2019s a referendum every few years and it might go away. And so when you\u2019re getting started, like any startup, there are existential moments that feel \u2014 I look back and it probably wasn\u2019t truly existential, but it felt it, and that builds trust or scar tissue that, to me, the most interesting people in the world have lots of scars and have found the bounty in it, the good in it. And so I think that\u2019s how it\u2019s worked. And we had our holiday party yesterday, last night, and here we are sitting together chopping it up, amazing what\u2019s happened, but yet what we can do.<\/p>\n<p>So it\u2019s just Henry Kravis and George Roberts both, I\u2019ve had the pleasure and the honor of knowing and knowing them, and that\u2019s one of the great partnerships of all time. Two cousins that have just \u2014 and they\u2019re still humble gentlemen, sincere. I mean, I\u2019m inspired by both of them. And so in that way, I\u2019m now getting old enough when we can talk about these generational relationships that are super cool. And we all had the same office. We never had separate offices. He\u2019s like, I\u2019m Oscar, he\u2019s Felix, like the old couple.<\/p>\n<p>You look around the room and all the helmets hanging up, that\u2019s COVID. All the stuff I, remember I told you about the memorabilia that I traffic in, they were in the corner in a big pile. It was just a pile of crap that just keeps getting cycled through. And during COVID, he couldn\u2019t take it. He\u2019s like, \u201cI\u2019ve got to clean this place up.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>That\u2019s me. That would be me.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>So I walk in after a couple of weeks being like, \u201cWhat have you done? You hung up helmets around that. They all look stupid.\u201d Because to me, as a ex-pro athlete, that\u2019s just dumb. But to him, it\u2019s like that\u2019s clean. And so we have helmets.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>It looks pretty cool as a background with the camera facing this way. So HGGC, Handsome Good Guy Company, what does that stand for?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Historically, it was Huntsman Gay Global Capital. At the time, back in 2008, \u201907, Rich and I were the younger partners, the founders, and the two older partners, Jon Huntsman and Bob Gay with Greg Benson. And Jon wanted his name on it, and Bob didn\u2019t want his name on it. And so, but then Jon won, and so it was Huntsman Gay Global Capital.<\/p>\n<p>But then Jon was selling his Huntsman chemical business, but in the 2008 credit crisis, you can read the story, it\u2019s amazing story where Leon Black at Apollo had bought it, signed it, but then didn\u2019t fund it because everything had gone crazy. And then what ended up happening is the transaction did not get funded. They broke it. There was a huge lawsuit, and it was a billion-dollar settlement, but the net of it was Jon Huntsman never was able to come over. So here we are raising money as Huntsman Gay Global, and we don\u2019t have Jon. And then Bob left for full-time church service three years later. And so then we go to fund two and it\u2019s like, we\u2019re Huntsman Gay Global Capital. No Jon Huntsman, no Bob Gay, but you have Rich Lawson and Steve Young, what do you think? Let\u2019s go.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>I\u2019m so glad I asked. That\u2019s so much better than I would \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>So then we have the decision to make in 2012, what do we name ourselves because we can\u2019t stay with that name? And there\u2019s a little panic like, can we even raise a \u2014 I mean, again, existential crisis.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Can we even raise?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Can we raise a fund? Let\u2019s melt it down so at least it\u2019s a reflection of something that was existing. And I, honestly, and everyone around the firm knows this, I can\u2019t stand our name because HGGC is hard to say. So you stand up in a very formal setting, and you\u2019re trying to express the values and this incredible partnership and culture that you\u2019ve built off of the back of my previous life in football and how you have to come together. And pari passu, we can lock arms, strategic vision, we can go. And everyone here at HGGC.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>That\u2019s a lot of syllables.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Yeah. 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\u2019ve said, we branded it. It\u2019s worldwide.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>It stuck. It stuck.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>It\u2019s everything, so now we\u2019re HGGC just because. And, it\u2019s fine. It\u2019s fun. It\u2019s fun.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>So you mentioned something that actually might be a nice segue to where I was planning on going next anyway. You said left for full-time church service. And I was going to ask about faith, the role that faith not only plays in your life now, but has played. Has it changed form over time? I don\u2019t know if it has or not, but \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>It always does \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>But \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>And it should.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>It\u2019s learn and grow, right?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Mm-hmm.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>As a young kid, it was formative. It gave you a sense that God\u2019s with you, like cheering you on. As a kid, I always felt like even in the hardest times, no, God\u2019s cheering you on. I never felt this wrathful. When I read the Old Testament, I\u2019m like, \u201cMeh.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>It\u2019s pretty rough.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Not really. That doesn\u2019t make sense to me.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Leviticus doesn\u2019t have a big smile on it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>And I was able as a young kid to fare it through the things that resonated and the stuff that didn\u2019t. And so my theology is really wrapped into what I would call \u2014 being LDS is complex because it was a \u2014 you know, we claim this kind of restoration. So it was essentially a restart. And in the restart, there\u2019s \u2014 I mean, you look back at the history in the last 200 years, it\u2019s pretty chaotic. And so for me, I don\u2019t have to carry all that. But the things that resonate, the things that are beautiful are really rooted in that event. So it\u2019s like to me, it\u2019s always resonated. It\u2019s always been something that \u2014 and I don\u2019t have to carry what I see as the chaotic parts of a young organization.<\/p>\n<p>So in that way, I tell my wife, she got me started on really questioning and challenging the culture As a cultural experience because true faith can\u2019t 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. Because I learned somewhere in there that if you\u2019re not careful, you go back to what we talked about around entropy and rotting and transaction. And if you\u2019re not careful, religion becomes like what I call Boy Scout theology, kind of go get a merit badge, do the work. It\u2019s good work. It\u2019s 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?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>It does make sense.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>So that theology is productive.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>It\u2019s like performative.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>There\u2019s good things that come out of it, but the relationship can\u2019t last because it\u2019s transactional. It is self-interested at its core and it can\u2019t make it. So I\u2019m super energized by the roots that really kind of like \u2014 I don\u2019t 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 \u2014 we\u2019re talking about learning and growing, right? I find myself always refining and spiritually kind of that light that I feel that I want to be around, and it doesn\u2019t necessarily \u2014 it comes from everywhere.<\/p>\n<p>I find my organized religions kind of \u2014 it\u2019s not hoveled. It\u2019s not insular. It makes me more curious. I can\u2019t wait to hear when you tell me about something that you\u2019re doing, I\u2019m like, \u201cTell me more about that, man, because that\u2019s informative to where I\u2019m sitting.\u201d And that\u2019s when I know it works is when you get away from transactional, insular, hoveling, self-righteous judgment, those are all transactional words that I\u2019ve just \u2014 you asked me a question. I\u2019m sorry to start riffing on it, but it\u2019s a really, I think, energizing place to be for me right now.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Well, this is 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, and this is a reflection of the antithesis of insular also in my reading of <em>The Law of Love<\/em>, your book, which was sent to me by Greg McKeown, who wrote <em>Essentialism<\/em>, and ended up listening to it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Oh, man.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>And I listened to it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>I apologize for that.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Well, no need to apologize, but \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Well, no, it was written for my LDS brothers and sisters. We\u2019re in a place where our roots are incredibly non-transactional and yet have allowed for the rational \u2014 I shouldn\u2019t say infection, but allowing for the transactional to actually lead in places that it needs to be excised. And so that\u2019s the book is about, is that there\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>And I was brought here by Bill Walsh, my coach in the 49ers who used to talk about every year he\u2019d stand in front of the team and say, \u201cI don\u2019t care what play we call, I don\u2019t care what defense we run, we\u2019re going to win because we have shared common experiences amongst each other and an element of love for each other.\u201d And I was like, \u201cThat\u2019s how we\u2019re going to win football games?\u201d And it was actually true, right? All the way to just all elements of my marriage, my family, my relationships. It was all, as I sought the higher ground, I guess you would call it, just started to resonate and I wanted to write about it. It was my journey. It was led by my wife who I just think I\u2019m so much better rubbing up against her every day, shoulder to shoulder.<\/p>\n<p>I always say she gets the barnacles off my boat, you know what I mean? I love her for that. And so that\u2019s, I don\u2019t even know what the question you are. I kind of lost myself in it, but \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Well, I\u2019ll pick up where you just left off with respect to keeping this \u2014 not necessarily. It\u2019s not the loss of self-interest. It\u2019s also this collective, this love of the collective that might not be the best way to phrase it, but self-transcendence maybe would be one way to put it. How do you, how do your wife, how do you guys, your family, keep it at the forefront? Maybe it\u2019s a question for you. How has that become more important and 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?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>I think that\u2019s where the theology really is important, is how you see, how you define the crazy world that we have. 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 67 degrees and perfect, you know what I mean? The things that are going on, the miracles that happen, I mean, I had breakfast, but I don\u2019t digest my food. I don\u2019t know the vitamins and minerals that body needs. There\u2019s just this intelligence that\u2019s out there that is universal and \u2014 dang, I forgot your question because I lost \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Oh, that\u2019s okay. No, I was just asking the law of love, how you keep that \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Oh, in the forefront \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>In the forefront.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Yeah. So typical of me, I was going to go around about \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>You can take the roundabout, the signature.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>But I think what I was trying to say is that again, it\u2019s an intent and it\u2019s really about recognizing and defining, that\u2019s where I was going, is defining the conditions of our life that I think God authored. It\u2019s a body, there\u2019s agency, choices to make, there\u2019s opposition everywhere. And so with that as an ingredient, that\u2019s our laboratory for learning and growing. It goes back to learning and growing. That\u2019s 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\u2019s this physical entity of spirit that\u2019s durable and that it\u2019s divine so that every human is divine. So in that way, as you start to define things that are every day, how you relate with them, it\u2019s in the definition as how you actually act.<\/p>\n<p>And so if I see everyone as divine and more eternal, it\u2019s not just like you see someone on the street and you say, \u201cOh, they\u2019re in a bad spot.\u201d I mean, that\u2019s terrible. They chose their way. What a bad life. And it\u2019s like, no, let\u2019s back out and recognize that there\u2019s a broad, big spectrum of experience and let\u2019s see and have the curiosity for how to help those around us learn and grow as well. And because we really are related, we were all together, we all chose to take a body. And so in that theology, there\u2019s this universality. And so if you talk about the law of love, it\u2019s really just a fulfillment of the relationship that\u2019s already true. So it\u2019s not like I have to go through all kinds of mental machinations to make myself seek others as literal family. It\u2019s in the roots, it\u2019s in the dirt.<\/p>\n<p>You and I are related in that way. You\u2019re divine. We\u2019re both divine, so let\u2019s be about it. And so in that way, the intent of the law of love says the full measure of what I can get out of this life cannot be a transaction. God cannot be Santa Claus.<\/p>\n<p>As much as Santa Claus is a cool idea, and that if I\u2019m super good, I get a gift, at its root, it\u2019s self-interested, and it can\u2019t 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 else in the \u2014 everything around us is \u2014 I look in the mirror today, Tim, it\u2019s not going good, bro. It\u2019s going the wrong direction. So in that way, the law of love is really about saying there is a law that is decreed from the origins of the universe that says, if I can lose the transaction, if I can lose myself and be curious about you and be curious about where you\u2019ve been, there\u2019s an element that\u2019s pure in that, that you take in a different way. If you and I have a transactional relationship, it\u2019s going to feel that way.<\/p>\n<p>And there\u2019s a lot of bounty in it, a lot of profit, there\u2019s a lot of money run around the world, there\u2019s a lot of fame, there\u2019s a lot of everything. There\u2019s a lot of goodness in many ways, but in the end, if it\u2019s purely transactional, if my marriage is purely transactional, at some point it\u2019s going to break. It has to, in self-interest. And so if you ask me the intent or how do you live it, you have to define \u2014 to me, the definition\u2019s important, right? Because otherwise you\u2019d be like, screw that.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve been curious about people and I\u2019ve been hurt and I\u2019m done with that and I\u2019m tired of being left behind and then the victimization shows up. We have themes, right? And all of a sudden it\u2019s like, the world\u2019s against me and now I\u2019m going to \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Look out for number one.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>So I\u2019m going to take my part, right? And as soon as you do that, yeah, there\u2019s a mitigating truth to it. It all makes sense in my brain, but that\u2019s \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah, it makes sense. Just because you can identify truths in a scene or situation, it doesn\u2019t mean that by focusing on those particular truths, those mitigating factors, that you produce any type of durable good for yourself or others.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>And the idea is that the full bounty of a relationship, put a religion aside again, but 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, just something that says, \u201cI am about your wellbeing, hope you have a great day.\u201d In that simple statement that\u2019s not, \u201cI\u2019m not looking for anything. Just I truly hope you have a great day.\u201d In that element, I believe unlocks an irony of how you actually receive a great day, if that makes sense.<\/p>\n<p>And so you can\u2019t say, \u201cI hope you have a great day because then you\u2019re going to help me have a great\u2026\u201d You can\u2019t make it about something, then it all of a sudden devolves. Even kids, kids feel pure love from a parent. Do you want to raise your kids in a transactional way? It works for a while, but to really love them in a way that they feel, they feel it. I\u2019m loved and I\u2019m a screw-up and I do make that bad decision, but I know I\u2019m loved and that changes people because it hits in a different place. And so the book is really around what I believe is the universal truth that is true for my LDS community, particularly because that\u2019s what I\u2019m very focused on, but it\u2019s true everywhere.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah. Can it be implied?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>But it\u2019s the irony of it because we all who are trying to accomplish, that\u2019s what we see in front of us. The better the life is, the more accomplishments, right? That\u2019s how you show a great life. And so it\u2019s irrational. It\u2019s irrational to the world that we live in today. It\u2019s irrational, yet I think it\u2019s the unlock.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>That\u2019s what I would put it, because people could tell me, \u201cScrew you, Steve. That\u2019s just ethereal, weird, crazy stuff. I know what I need to do to be happy and I\u2019m getting it right now. It\u2019s fine.\u201d What I\u2019m describing is irrational to all of that. And I\u2019m chewing on it. Tim, I\u2019m not an expert. I\u2019ve been brought to it because of a quest, another Steve Covey quest, and I\u2019m just chewing on it and I\u2019m learning about it and yeah, that\u2019s it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>I\u2019m 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\u2019t terribly religious. And I don\u2019t 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\u2019s say, breadth of science can explain. And there are also a lot of questions that are really important and there are things that we can feel like love that are very hard to put under a microscope and provide spreadsheets for it. 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\u2019s a lot we don\u2019t know. There\u2019s certain questions we can\u2019t answer. And I, for a long time, was, I would say, a pessimist disguised as a realist, if that makes any sense.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Sure, of course it does. Totally rational.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah, 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 look out at the world, look at the cover of the newspaper, like, yep, things are bad, people are bad, and therefore A, B, and C. However, as I\u2019ve gotten older, I\u2019ve realized that, for instance, if you have a base assumption, let\u2019s just say a belief that humans are divine, there\u2019s some aspect of every human that is divine. And divine is a word that\u2019ll make some people squirm who are listening to this.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>That\u2019s fine too.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Which is fine.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Totally. Again, I\u2019m curious. I have no \u2014 my dogma is very about the human interaction, right?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Right. So if you have that belief and it\u2019s like, okay, people might say, \u201cWell, I can\u2019t be falsified, Karl Popper, blah, blah, blah, blah.\u201d But the point of it is, does it make things better or does it make things worse? And that I\u2019m not saying that everybody should adopt every fairytale 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\u2019m 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\u2019s completely nuts.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>It\u2019s insane.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Right. And when you start to really re-familiarize yourself with beginner\u2019s eyes, looking at how incredibly improbable it is that you and I are sitting here experiencing more or less the same reality \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>It is irrational.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah. It\u2019s why.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Don\u2019t you think it\u2019s irrational? It\u2019s incredibly crazy.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>It\u2019s nuts.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>And so look, to me, anyone that\u2019s uncomfortable talking about religion or theology, put it aside for a second. Let\u2019s just think about take the universal truth that I believe is universal because it\u2019s universal. Forget about all of that. Just take it as a lived experience, the rational, transactional life that is in front of us and the results of it. Watch as you watch it politically, you watch what happens is over time, you have to separate because, and the transactional path is more fundamental. So what is happening politically today? More and more fundamental both ways because nobody is looking for \u2014 the law of love is not part of the calculus. No one\u2019s curious. No one\u2019s open. So it\u2019s like, forget about religion for a second. Just politically, I\u2019ve never seen a more divisive transactional time led by the most divisive transactional people. It\u2019s just, it\u2019s not that complex.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah. And you can also look at, I mean, even we\u2019re sitting here in Silicon Valley, right? A lot of very wealthy people. And if the hope is that the list of successful transactions, and we\u2019re going to land the plane in just a couple of minutes.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>This is super long form.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>If people hope the list of transactions will ultimately redeem the time that they spend on this planet in life, I\u2019ve never seen it work out, right? I\u2019ve never seen that work. It\u2019s just \u2014\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>It\u2019s testable, right? I\u2019ve experienced it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>The greyhound never catches the rabbit. And so this self-transcendence discussion, I just more and more feel like it\u2019s so critical.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Steve, I know you\u2019ve been very generous with your time. I have really enjoyed this. Is there anything else that you\u2019d like to share or talk about before we wind to a close?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>I will tell you, Tim, that you\u2019re really good at this.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Thank you.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Steve Young: <\/strong>Because I don\u2019t know that I\u2019ve ever had a conversation like this. I leave with that unsettling feeling like I\u2019ve really shared, I\u2019m like overshared, possibly. And I\u2019m like, \u201cOh, man.\u201d But I\u2019m at a place in my life where I\u2019m curious about that. It\u2019s like I\u2019m not worried about it. I was just like, \u201cBut thank you for a chance to put into words.\u201d And I already feel like, oh, I wish I could have said that differently or I could have, because it was so raw in some ways. So I\u2019ll get better at that, but I really appreciate that for me, the depth of how you took me to places that I really appreciate. I will not listen to it because it\u2019s just too much, but I\u2019ll get responses from people. But I just thank you for the gift of vulnerability and the gift of expressing my story. I appreciate it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tim Ferriss: <\/strong>Yeah. Thank you. I\u2019ve really, really enjoyed it. Folks can find you on Instagram @SteveYoung, on X @SteveYoungQB. You\u2019ve got the hggc.com website, of course. Also people should check out Forever Young Foundation and we\u2019ll link to many other things in the show notes for everybody at tim.blog\/podcast. And until next time, as I always say, folks, be just a bit kinder than is necessary to others, but also to yourself. And thanks for tuning in. Thank you, Steve.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"steve-young-legal-conditions-transcript\">DUE TO SOME HEADACHES IN THE PAST, PLEASE NOTE LEGAL CONDITIONS:<\/h3>\n<p><em>Tim Ferriss owns the copyright in and to all content in and transcripts of The Tim Ferriss Show podcast, with all rights reserved, as well as his right of publicity.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>WHAT YOU\u2019RE WELCOME TO DO:<\/em>\u00a0<em>You are welcome to share the below transcript (up to 500 words but not more) in media articles (e.g.,\u00a0<\/em>The New York Times<em>,\u00a0<\/em>LA Times<em>,\u00a0<\/em>The Guardian<em>), on your personal website, in a non-commercial article or blog post (e.g., Medium), and\/or on a personal social media account for non-commercial purposes, provided that you include attribution to \u201cThe Tim Ferriss Show\u201d and link back to the tim.blog\/podcast URL. For the sake of clarity, media outlets with advertising models are permitted to use excerpts from the transcript per the above.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>WHAT IS NOT ALLOWED:<\/em>\u00a0<em>No one is authorized to copy any portion of the podcast content or use Tim Ferriss\u2019 name, image or likeness for any commercial purpose or use, including without limitation inclusion in any books, e-books, book summaries or synopses, or on a commercial website or social media site (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) that offers or promotes your or another\u2019s products or services. For the sake of clarity, media outlets are permitted to use photos of Tim Ferriss from\u00a0<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/tim.blog\/media\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><em>the media room on tim.blog<\/em><\/a><em>\u00a0or (obviously) license photos of Tim Ferriss from Getty Images, etc.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><script async defer src=\"https:\/\/platform.instagram.com\/en_US\/embeds.js\"><\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/hop.clickbank.net\/?affiliate=infohatch&amp;vendor=J1R2C\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10614 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px.png\" alt=\"Profit Gen\" width=\"400\" height=\"217\" srcset=\"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px.png 400w, http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/profit-gen400px-300x163.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><\/a><br \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Please enjoy this transcript of my interview with Steve Young (@steveyoung), Hall of Fame NFL quarterback; cofounder of HGGC, a private equity firm managing more [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12248,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-growth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/parmaks.com\/Resources\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}