Couple Things with Shawn and Andrew - Jeremy Bloom

Episode Date: December 5, 2024

Today we sat down with our friend, Jeremy Bloom, an entrepreneur, philanthropist, and the first dual-sport athlete to ski in the Winter Olympics and be drafted into the NFL. You guys, Jeremy has the craziest stories ever! We knew we wanted to have him on our podcast to share more about his life because it’s truly unbelievable. We hope you’re just as fascinated with Jeremy’s story as we are and enjoy this episode! Love you guys,  Shawn and Andrew Find out more about Jeremy ▶ https://jeremybloom.com/ Follow our Podcast Instagram ▶  https://www.instagram.com/shawnandandrewpods/?hl=en Follow My Instagram ▶ https://www.instagram.com/ShawnJohnson Follow My Tik Tok ▶ https://www.tiktok.com/@shawnjohnson Shop My LTK Page ▶ https://www.shopltk.com/explore/shawnjohnson  Like the Facebook page! ▶ https://www.facebook.com/ShawnJohnson Follow Andrew’s Instagram ▶ https://www.instagram.com/AndrewDEast Andrew’s Tik Tok ▶ https://www.tiktok.com/@andrewdeast?lang=en Like the Facebook page! ▶ https://www.facebook.com/AndrewDEast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When you're with Amex Platinum, you get access to exclusive dining experiences and an annual travel credit. So the best tapas in town might be in a new town altogether. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at Amex.ca. what's up everybody welcome to couple things interview edition that's right we got a new show name we have now converted second cup into couple things interviews you'll see this on the feed for couple things it'll also have its own designated feed and they'll both be on the shot on ended podcast youtube channel so

just a heads up on that but today we sit down with jeremy bloom who has been a mentor to us for years and he legitimately changed our life yes i always call him big brother because he truly took me under his wing and both of us then under his wing and has kind of like led us through our entire business journey. He's really been incredibly generous to us and we haven't done nothing to deserve it. But let me read you Jeremy's bio.

Which is ridiculous. Yeah, it's pretty impressive. Jeremy is an American former skier and football player and at age 15, Jeremy was the youngest male freestyle skier to make the U.S. Olympic team. And he then went on to become a three-time world champion. Two-time Olympian, 11-time World Cup gold medalist, and the youngest freestyle skier to be inducted into the United States

Skiing Hall of Fame. And if that wasn't enough, he was also an All-American in football. At the University of Colorado, he was also drafted as a wide receiver and return specialist for the 2006 Philadelphia Eagles. Jeremy has since retired from athletics and become a business mogul. The guy is so fascinating. So well connected. And I think you'll enjoy this conversation.

Jeremy's whole family is actually really impressive. So he has an older brother who's like Harvard-trained doctor. And his sister, Molly, had a movie made about her called Molly's Game. It's also a book, phenomenal, would read and watch that. His dad's a psychology professor. Yeah. Is he a psychiatrist or a psychology? I think he's a psychiatrist and a professor of psychology.

Okay, no, I think you're right. You're right. Anyway, needless to say, we really enjoyed this conversation. We talked about his family, what his upbringing was like, his achievements, his philosophy and perspective on life. We're grateful that Jeremy gave us this time. And if you want to learn more about Jeremy and what he's up to, we'll link his information now below. But we hope you enjoy this one with Jeremy Bloom. Jeremy Bloom, last time we saw you was at Disneyland and Paris.

And it was pouring rain the entire time. It was a big, long day. We had the kids with us. It was a blast. I think it might have been Jeremy's favorite day of his entire life. It's a forever memory. Is that sarcastic? Yes.

I love Disneyland. Yeah. But here we are now. How have you been since then? Things are good. It's always great to see you guys. Happy to be here. We have so much shared history amongst the three of us.

And you two are just like two of my most favorite people in the entire world. And I'm happy to jump on here and say hello. Well, we appreciate your time. Honestly, when Sean and I look back at our lives and big milestones and maturing, the year was 2017. The setting and the context was in a SUV in Moab, Utah, driving to whatever destination we were doing for adventure capitalists. And by we, I mean, everyone on the call besides myself. So you and Sean. and I remember sitting here with you an ex-NFL guy as I was struggling to make my football

career work and hearing your like zest for life dude and then what you've built and how you did it so authentically from your interest and like from your story and I was like that was a that was a pivotal moment in my life for me to take off like my football hat and trying to force that to saying, hold on, there's other things at play here. So all that to say, I want to start by saying thank you because we really do view you as a mentor and you've continued to be that for us in our life. But that was a pivotal conversation. And I don't know if anyone ever provided that role for you, but you've done that for us. So, love it. Enjoyed every moment of that show, especially when we weren't filming and you, Andrew, you and I

we're just catching up on life and football and sort of the art of the transition, right? Because at some point, we all go through these big transitions in life. But when you're a professional athlete, you go through a really big one because you're sort of defined by the thing that you did, whether you're a gymnast like Sean or a football player like you. And for the most of your life, you've sort of been defined by that. And redefining who you are is a very difficult and tricky thing to do. You guys have done it so great.

And I'm blessed to sort of been able to redefine my. myself as well, but I always look back at those moments during Adventure Capitalist, filming with the NBC and hanging with you guys with fond memories. So fun. How did you redefine yourself? When was your official retirement for each sport, and how did you handle the transition following? And it would be helpful for those watching who are watching, you see the ski jacket in the background, but give us some background for those not watching as you answer that question.

Yeah, give you some, just a quick background nugget. I'll get into sort of how I thought about, you know, developing my framework for transitioning. But when I was 10 years old, I told my parents I wanted to ski in the Olympics and play in the National Football League. And those were just my two biggest dreams in the world. And, you know, both my parents sort of had a healthy disregard for what is quote unquote impossible. And so they said to me, hey, man, you can go accomplish that, but you got to put your mind to it and you got to go attack it. You really got to attack it with everything that you had. And, you know, I'm the youngest of three, and so I spent the first 10 years of my life losing to my brother

and sister at everything, and that really, you know, programmed my drive, and programmed sort of my grit and tenacity to realize that, you know, if I wanted to be good in this world, at anything, I had to work harder, and I had to not quit when others would quit, just keep going, sort of waking up every day and taking one step forward. And, you know, through a lot of great luck and circumstance of working hard, great coaches, was able to do that, ski to two Olympics for the United States, won three world championships, 11 World Cup gold medals into the Hall of Fame. And then it was drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles.

Got to play with Donovan McNabb and Annie Reed and Brian Dawkins. And then later with the Pittsburgh Steelers with, you know, Mike Tomlin and Ben Rothesberger and Heinz Ward, those guys. So, you know, sort of lived my dream, so to say, in sports. It was incredible. But it was really my time in the Eagles that helped to build a little bit of a bridge to what was next. I went to Wharton, which is the business will pen through an NFL program, and I really learned

about tech startups there. One of my professors was a sort of a seed investor, and he allowed me to come into his office after practice and learn from him and raise capital and listen to other entrepreneurs come in and pitch their ideas, and I fell in love with the space, and I said, well, hey, well, you know, whenever my athletic career is over, this is what I want to do. I want to dive in. I don't know anything about this world, but I want to learn. and see if I could build something interesting in the tech space.

So that was really the catalyst that sort of lit the fuse for me to say, all right, I'm not just a football skier guy. I'm going to be a tech guy and, you know, jump in with both feet and see what I could do. And you did it really well. Did you, I feel like mostly athletes go through an identity crisis at some point. Did you find yourself hitting a low at any point or did you like transition it to the obsession of being the tech guy? I didn't really feel like it was an identity crisis for me because I sort of jumped right back down to the bottom of the mountain. And I just, you know, I wanted to be a beginner again.

So, you know, as I started to raise capital for this idea, you know, I certainly showed up as the football ski guy. And, you know, granted, some venture capitalists probably took the meeting just to talk about what it was like to play for Andy Reid or what was like to ski in the Olympics. And they weren't really interested in, you know, sort of my idea really betting on me. but what I found out in life is you can get a hundred nose, which I did. All you need is one yes. All you need is one person, one firm to say, we believe in you. And we're not sure what you're going to build yet, but we're going to back you. And that's what happened to me with Foundry Group here in Boulder, Colorado, Seth Levine, who took our board seats.

Seth just believes in me. And so we locked arms and built a business over a decade that is doing some great things. And it's a great business. It was not an easy ride. I'll tell you that. It was not an overnight success. It took many years to sort of find product market fit and grow the business and to where it is today. And where it is today is you've sold the company.

You're still involved with it, but you've sold it. So it's been a tenure process. And what is your involvement now with integrate? Yeah, the business was acquired in 2021 at the end of 2021. And, you know, it was just a wonderful outcome for Seth and our investors and our operating team. And it was very fulfilling. You know, on a lot of levels, and private equity bought us. And so I'm the CEO.

The business is called Integrate. We're a B-to-B enterprise marketing company. Our biggest customers are like Microsoft, Dell, H.P. Cisco. And we do all kinds of wonderful things for their marketing departments. And, you know, we're just at a bigger phase. We're, you know, 550 people across the world and, you know, relatively big company now. And, you know, inside of private equity and sort of really enjoying that ride. You mentioned you wanted to jump back to the bottom of the mountain, I think, is how you phrased it.

Is that like just an inherent programming that you have, that maybe some others don't, or is that something that you've trained? Or where does that desire and willingness to restart and relearn something come from? You know, Andrew, it was a thought for me. I just didn't want to sort of be stuck as the athlete my whole life. life and go into coaching or just go into broadcast or do the natural pass. I felt relatively young, you know, in life, 27-ish. And, you know, I just wanted to sort of jump into something new.

And I felt like I had a whole life ahead of me to learn how to become a better operator. The thing I love about building businesses is you just get better and better and with age, you get better, more experience, you get better. And, you know, in sports, no matter how good you are, you're sort of shelf life is pretty young in the average lifespan of a human being. So I thought this would be a great, great area to sort of dive into and learn. Beginners mindset, my buddy Apollo Ono, who I know you guys know well, he always sort of imparts on this beginner mindset, this idea that no matter who you are or what you've done in life, there's always people who will know more and you don't

need to be the smartest person in the room. You just need to learn faster than everybody else. And so I've just tried to approach life and in my personal life, my business life with the beginner's mindset of being a student of a topic, but never an expert of it. And I've never really been afraid to, you know, fail or for it not to work. I think failure or adversity helps sort of recalibrate our compass towards success in a way that no other event does, certainly not winning. Winning doesn't really recalibrate that or get us back on the path we need to be. And so because of that, I've, you know, been able to take big risks in my life. And, you know, most of them have paid off.

But if I was afraid to sort of jump in or afraid it didn't, what if it didn't work out or what if I was, you know, looked at as a failure? I probably wouldn't have pursued a lot of the dreams that I've had. Has that perspective changed now that you're married and have two babies? Oh gosh, Sean. I mean, so much has changed as you guys know, you know, as an athlete and you're trying to be the best in the world. It's all about yourself. I mean, you have to be an, you live an incredibly selfish lifestyle because you're trying to get that one centimeter more than your next best competitor. And it's really hard. And then you go and have a family, I have a three and a half and a one and a half now. And your priorities totally shift. I do everything for them. And I think about, life differently. I think about building differently. I think about my time management, you know, differently. But it truly is, and you hear this a lot as a parent, and you just don't really fully understand it until you live it. It is the most fulfilling and rewarding and incredible journey I have ever been on, is being a father to a daughter and a son. And, you know,

seeing the world to their eyes, you know, even when we were at Disney World in Paris, you know, just to see, you know, our kids light up together and have shared experience. with the magic of Disney and, you know, it's fun. It brings you back to your childhood a little bit. It gives you that childlike wonder again that certainly I lost, you know, later in life that is fun to get back. But yeah, that's priority number one for sure is the fam and the kids and, you know, imparting some of the things I've learned along my journey to help shape theirs.

Do you remember you said at 10, you told your parents you want to be a professional football player and a skier um and then you mentioned this like you didn't want that to be the end of the road and there was something more for you out there what is the trajectory of a dream like that where it is like this yeah as a kid it's like this all-consuming thing that you want to go to practice and you want to be the best and then there was it felt like in in my personal story there was like a transition of oh maybe this has seen it's it's time but what was it like for you Yeah, for me, I would watch teammates in skiing, teammates in football, lose the love. Just keep going.

And maybe it was because of fear of, you know, transitioning or the fear of the unknown or whatever. For me, I was always very prescriptive with myself. As soon as I don't love to show up an hour earlier than everybody else and stay an hour later and do all the things necessary to try to be the best in the world. And, you know, if I never had, I didn't have love in the starting gate or, at kickoff that I would need to move on. And that's what I did. I mean, you know, I had a great ski career, but I only skied four years on the World Cup tour. I mean, most people ski, you know, three Olympic cycles. I skied one. So, you know, in football, I just didn't love it anymore.

I didn't want to show up anymore. I didn't want to do the, you know, the 5 a.m. workouts and stay until 9 p.m. And, you know, I didn't know what I wanted to do after that. I had an idea I wanted to get in tech, but I had no idea how to start a company or raise capital or find product. mark a bit. But I retired before the Vancouver Olympics because I just didn't love it anymore. So, you know, it was scary, but every, you know, every change in our lives is scary, you know, and, you know, I just try to settle into that energy and use it to my advantage and try to redefine myself. Wow. And you wrote a book all about this called Recalibrate, which I feel like you didn't kind of fill me in enough on the fact that you like just wrote this thing, dude. You just wrote a book.

and you did it. That's a huge deal. Congratulations. Thank you. You guys know how, you know, difficult it is to write a book. And I think the hardest part is like when your publisher, editor is like, hey, we, you know, we got to launch this book. And I go, wait, it's not done. It's never done. It's never perfect, you know, and there's always things you sort of want to change. But, you know, I've really been always a student, a passionate student of the topic of recalibrating. And really what that means to me is no matter who you are and think about the most successful people in the world, you can think of Michael Jordan, who was cut twice in high school, had to recalibrate, right? How many kids would continue playing basketball being cut from the varsity team twice in high

school? You think about Walt Disney, talking about Disneyland Paris. I mean, before he started Disney, he was fired for, quote, lack of imagination at his first media gig. And he had to recalibrate. He had to use that input to sort of, you know, recalibrate his compass to success or Steve Jobs, who was fired from Apple and started Pixar and then went back and returned Apple to greatness. So I've always been sort of obsessed with like, how did they do that? Because I think often what separates the champions from people who got close or didn't continue pursuing is having a framework to deal with these moments. Because sometimes people allow adversity to allow them to splat on the floor and crumble into a million pieces. And other people have a framework to allow

that inertia and bounce, like bouncers and splatters and bounce with that experience. Great. Let's use this to sort of, you know, get smarter about where I go next. And so that's really the backdrop of the book as anecdotes from, you know, very successful people that I respect, like the ones I mentioned and also anecdotes from my life. And the hope is to really, you know, elicit thoughts or ideas on folks of how they could build their own framework to recalibrate because it's not one size fits all. It's not like read the book and there's your model. Everybody's a little bit different. But I think there's a lot of great, you know, stories and lessons, things that I've learned, things that others share that, you know, can really set

somebody off to be able to build a strong framework for dealing with adversity. Okay. Humor me for a second because I feel like I know a lot about you, but there's a couple of things that I don't know if I have them, like, fully correct. Remind me, your dad is a professor of psychology. Yeah, he's a professor, and he's at a private practice. He's a practicing psychologist for the past 40 years. And then your sister, Molly Bloom, if you haven't seen the movie, please go watch it. It's a phenomenal movie.

Called Molly's game. Called Molly's game. What does she do now, and if you would like to give? a recap of that would be great sure yeah my sister she's the oldest in the family she's always been the trailblazer she's always been thoughtful and creative and smart and you know she went to school here out in colorado and had some opportunities to go to law school and you know through a curveball for the family and said i'm not going to law school moving to l.A and i don't know what i'm going to do there but you know i just want to live in l.a and over a 10 year period my sister built the

largest underground poker game in American history. And it was every Tuesday night. She only allowed six or seven players. It was like Toby McGuire and Leonardo Capria, it was just all kinds of incredible people. And it was really successful. And she was, of course, making a lot of money, had a lot of influence. And then the game sort of blew up in L.A. She moved it to New York. And that's when it sort of turned ugly because it sort of came from really cool players that you'd love to hang out with a high five and maybe take a picture with to like the Russian mafia. And it turned pretty dark in New York. And that, you know, one thing led to another and the FBI raided the game, arrested my sister. She was federally indicted by the United States

government, all kinds of different charges. And her life really fell apart. She went from the top of the mountain to the bottom of the mountain overnight. And, you know, the story sort of, you know, plays out. Aaron Sorkin was the writer, the director, the producer. He's, you know, he's such an incredible mind. And I, you know, I think he put together just a great script and put together an awesome movie. And so it's called The Molly's Game. And it's definitely worth checking out, even if you don't like poker. I think the story is really compelling. And it's a story well told. It is. It is a wonderful movie. I love the movie. And even watching it, I was like, I can't believe this is Jeremy.

So your brother, he's a doctor. Is he a surgeon? Yeah. Yep. So my brother also went to school here at Colorado State University, and, you know, his path to becoming a doctor started at probably eight or nine because he had a hernia and he got surgery at eight or nine, and he came home. And he had this stuffed animal by the name of Sir Dog, and he gave the Sir Dog, the

hernia surgery himself. And so, like, he knew at that point, like, that was his dream. My dream was football and skiing. He told my parents that age. He's like, I want to be a surgeon. And he went to medical school at Jefferson in Philadelphia, did really well at medical school and got into Harvard to do his master's in public health and did his residency at Mass General. And now is taking over the cardiac thoracic surgery division at Mass General, which is really, you know, top, top three hospital in the entire world. So he's doing a great. He's doing great. He's, you know, he's the only one in the family saving lives. And, you know, I love my brother. I respect the heck out of him. I've learned a tremendous amount from both my brother and sister.

We've all sort of had these, you know, different, very different paths, but somehow have found success in, you know, sort of all three very different, you know, journeys in life. so the reason what I was getting at is your father and all three of you I would say are at a very very elite level in their fields took everything to an extreme to a very professional Olympic cardiac surgery the largest most successful underground you know poker ring like everything is so extreme with each one of you and I guess my question is how did how was that fostered in your family life as a kid was everything always was success promoted or was like that mentality of obsessiveness just something that was showcased that kind of got passed on yeah no I get the question a lot I'd come back to what I've sort of said earlier about what my parents told me at 10 they said you got to put your mind to it and you got to go attack it. You know, and so in my family, no matter what you did, you did it to be the best in the

world. So it was an intense family. It was a super competitive family too. And not just because of my parents, my brother and sister were really competitive kids as well. And that's why as the youngest, getting beaten by them, by everything you can imagine, I became pretty competitive as well. But I think, you know, the parenting differed quite a bit between my mom and my dad. My dad was all about winning. My dad was all about not making excuses. My dad was all about pushing the level of comfort. He never wanted us to feel comfortable. He always wanted us to ski the run that scared us a little bit, or do the thing that sort of scared us a little bit and pushing us past our comfort level. He was really good at that. And my mom was the softer side. My mom was a world-class

mother. She really, an Olympic-level mother. She was incredible 24-7. She was the shoulder. her to cry on. She was the one that cared less about the color of the metal and more about how we were doing and how we were treating other people. And so I think the sort of complementary nature of a hard driving, passionate father who sort of taught us that excellence is important or at least reaching for excellence is important with the softness of my mom to like when we didn't win or when we didn't accomplish our goals or when we stumbled and fell down, she was always there to pick us up and give us a kiss and tell us how much she loved us. And that sort of blend parenting worked really well. Did it jeopardize your relationship with your father?

Yeah, not at all. And the only thing that I was disappointed in my sister's movie and Aaron Sorkin knows this and, you know, anybody who's willing to listen, I would tell, like, you know, Kevin Costner played my dad in the movie. And when we found out that's who Aaron cast to play And my dad, of course, we were all, like, pretty fired up. It's Kevin Costner. But the role that he played in that movie was not accurate to who my father was. My dad was also very loving and also very present and a huge instrumental part in all of our lives, not just in sports or ventures. And so our bond, all three of our bonds with our father is as deep as it is with our mother. And he was, you know, he wasn't that guy in that movie. And, you know, Aaron would tell you,

that, hey, it wasn't a documentary. It was a Hollywood script. And you know, you got to have a protagonist in that film. So, you know, we all get it. But no, it didn't jeopardize any of our relationships with our dad. I mean, my dad is, is one of my biggest heroes in life to this day, one of the sharpest and smartest guys I've ever met. He's the first person I go to when I need life support, life guidance. And he's a big reason why I think I've had a level of success in my life that I've had is because of my relationship with him. are you more like your mom or your dad more like my dad yeah no i i got a lot of that you know hard charging show up early grit tenacity put your put your shoulders through the wall and just figure

it out you know in me but as soon as i look in the eyes of my three and a half year old daughter i turned right into my mom so like i it's funny because like my you know my daughter's at the age where i learned a ski and so we went up to the mountains and you know so excited to put her on snow got the boots got the outfit got the whole thing and I'm like yes I can finally ski with my daughter and you know as soon as I started putting on the boots it was like a full on meltdown like crying tears the whole deal and and I just I wasn't willing to push her like I'm like okay we're going to try another day like you know and I didn't take her the rest of that so I think I have a lot of my mom in me I'm not going to be able to do the things that my dad did this sort of push us past our

comfort level hopefully I get a little bit more footage down the line because I do think it's important, but right now I'm just like, I can't, I can't push my, you know, my daughter to tears to go skiing. But I do think this year she's more excited about it. She keeps talking about it, so we'll see. From your upbringing and from your father in watching your siblings and yourself, now looking at your daughter, do you think that level of success can be taught? Or do you think it's built, like within you? nature versus nurture type of question. Like, are you born with it or can you be taught? I think it's, I don't want to give you the cop-out answer. I think it's probably a combination of both. But what I do

believe is as parents or as mentors to kids, we can absolutely provide a framework to increase the likelihood of someone being successful. And I think it comes back to pretty basic principles. If you can ingrain the idea into a child's brain that you have to, you have to be able to, to work a little bit harder than everybody else if you want to be exceptional at anything. I think that's a skill and a trait that will translate to no matter what they want to do. It's like the quote, the harder I work, the luckier I get. You know, and I really believe there's a lot of truth to that. And I think, you know, beyond that, it's teaching them to keep going, you know, when others

would quit, keep going. You know, just wake up that next day, take one step, you know, further. and you know I've heard other athletes sort of relate this by saying never quit on a bad day you know you had a bad day and you want to quit it's like don't quit on the bad day wait until the next day that you know you're on top of the podium and if you're on top of the podium and you still want to quit then okay but you know the idea of like never quitting on a bad day I think is a good way to summarize it so we have you to thank for this tradition that we have borrowed from you of sitting down with each of our kids on their birthday and asking them a series

of questions we first heard that from you your dad did that to you all on your birthday or was it christmas or was it birthday birthdays man every year from sort of cute two to 16 17 he'd ask us a series of questions what do you want to be when you grow up who's your best friend what are you into do you have a girlfriend um and and you know i remember us talking about that and of course we're doing it with our kids too it's just a fun such a fun tradition it's fun for me to go back and look at you know myself at the age of my daughter or the age of my son or you know it's going to be fun to see the evolution of of them and you know what's your guys's experience been been with it so far you guys you guys having fun with it it's amazing yeah it's like one of our favorite things to do

and to look back on and it really has been a part of this uh i think it was like a big push for us to get into this, I heard someone say if you could be as strategic in your marriage and family life as you are in business, you'll have done something right. And it was like, okay, so that was one thing where I was like, it's really hard to quantify or like have these moments. Like you have holidays naturally are kind of like the big family moments. But what other things can I do in our family? So this was one of them. But I'm curious in the Bloom fan. family. What other traditions like that maybe did you do? Is there anything that stands out? Because I'd be curious to hear what else you guys have going on. That's the big one as far as

like interviews go. I mean, my wife's big on holidays. Our house is already decked out for Halloween. And it's like the beginning of September. So, you know, she goes really big. She's from Brazil and family and holidays is sort of the top 10 priorities in her life. And like number 11, it's hard to see. And I'm not sure what it is. So we like to go big on holidays. And, you know, I always, I don't know how you guys feel about this, but I've always had this productive paranoia in my life. And the way it's played out in business, it's like, yeah, we could be doing good, but what's around the corner? Like, we're not doing enough. We're not working hard enough. I had it in my athletic career. And now I have it as a dad because everyone will tell you it goes so fast and you

only have little kids to what for maybe five, six years. And I spend an amazing amount of time in my day thinking like, are we maximizing? Are we doing everything? Are we doing the interviews? Are we curating the right journey? And gosh, there's just no sort of playbook for that, is there? Like you can read what other people do. But a lot of it's sort of self-discipline. discovery and building the bottle of a parent you want to be. But I do have this healthy sort of paranoia that my kids are going to go to college like next year. It's going to feel like it's going to go so fast. And I'm going to be so sad as an empty nest or parrot. And it does, it sort of weighs on me a lot. There's so many things that we could talk about, including you

being one of the first kind of NIL cases and your voice in that, your wish of a lifetime, charity, how I accidentally crashed a drone into you. Oh my God. I am curious, because I know you were a part of the conversation with NIL. Can you share that story and then your perspective on it with college athletes? Yeah, I was a two-sport athlete. And my first Olympics was my senior year of high school. And so I hadn't enrolled yet in University of Colorado. And that year, I had a great year.

Went to the Olympics ended that season as the number one ranked skier in the world. had some endorsements and those types of things to pay for my season and then enrolled in the University of Colorado football team. And to my surprise, the NCAA called up and said, hey, wait a second, you can't play college football here. You have endorsement money. But I'm like, yeah, but endorsement money from skiing. This is goggle sponsors and those types of things. And they said, well, we don't care because we own your name, image, and likeness. So you want to come to school here, you want to play football here.

We own you. And you can do nothing to sort of commercialize or monetize your ability, even in another sport. And I felt the time and still feel to this day that that was just simply archaic, archaic thinking. And I knew at some point I'd be on the right side of history. Anyway, I sued the NCAA in Boulder District Court. The win that came out of that was that this was the first judge in the history of college athletics that concluded that student athletes were in fact third-party beneficiaries of the NCAA contract, which was huge because it gave student athletes rights in the contract, which laid the foundation

for all the subsequent lawsuits to come back and, you know, eventually sort of like ship away at this archaic notion of what amateurism is today. But I, you know, testified it in Congress on this topic. I've been very active in it, and it finally caved, you know, a year and a half ago when the Supreme Court came out and unanimously said that college athletes should own their own name image and like this, and that the NCAA shouldn't own that. And so I'm very happy and delighted with the fact and the ruling and the outcome, I'm super disappointed that over the last 50 years, the NCAA had so much time to think about the fact

that this was inevitable, that this would happen, and to have some common sense structure for the world today, and there's none of it. So there's no leading organization figuring it out. There's no, you know, United States Olympic Committee or NGBs, the way that the Olympics have organized in such a beautiful way where you have the NGB of skiing, you have the ngb of swimming and then you have the umbrella you know you'd say it's Olympic

committee you can say well they didn't do that they spend every single dollar every single amount of time fighting in the court system to block you know this from happening and then when when it did happen they got caught flat-footed so it's a little bit of the wow wow west and i think it's interesting to see how it's you know eventually going to normalize over the next couple of years and you were also part of the team that hired uh dion at colorado right Yeah, I, look, Colorado football was having some pretty tough years. We were sort of the bottom of relevancy. Like, we were the worst team in, you know, major D1 college football.

And so when Rick George, the athletic director, let go of Carl Derell, I just called him and said, you've got to go hire Dion Sanders. Because the only thing I knew about Dion, other than I love him as a player, is he would bring talent to Colorado. And that's what he's done. And, you know, look, they're not winning yet. They got to win. He's a polarizing figure.

people love them or people hate them. There's plenty of people on both sides of those equations. But he's brought a lot of talent to Boulder. He's brought a lot of revenue, attention, eyeballs to Colorado. And, you know, I hope he does well. And I hope the program does well. It's a program, of course, I love with my heart and soul and, you know, want to see you well.

It was absolutely genius. It was genius to why. Well, we'll see. We'll see how it plays out. No, straight marketing side. It was genius. Everybody in the world is watching Colorado. And he was on 60 minutes twice.

Like the first five games of 2023 season for y'all was like revolutionary. But here's what I love about what he's done is because I don't like in the college system right now, like the kind of half, halfway doing the NIL stuff where it just, it feels like this weird gray zone. What I loved about how Dion did it and what his players have. adopted and I'm sure maybe there's like some collaboration there between the player and coach but they actually have like creators on their team like Travis Hunter these guys are like making YouTube videos and they're like it's like a whole thing it seems like it's kind of part of the team culture and the and the team image as opposed to what's so frequent now of these collectives just kind of coming up with an excuse to pay the players like it feels

different because of the intentionality behind what Dion has done at Colorado. But anyway. Yeah, no, it's true. And they've been intentional about that. I mean, Dion says, hey, our kids want attention. And I'm going to give me attention. And he has. And to your point, you know, Travis Hunter's got his own YouTube channel. The entire program has its content creating team, a bunch of influencers led by Dionne Son, Dion Sanders Jr. And they've done a wonderful job. And they put out great content and it's a lot of eyeballs but at the end of the day a football team is is not you know these are not influencers you got to win on the field if you want to remain relevant you want to remain important and you want you don't want the wheels to fall off the bus so to say winning solves everything and

you know we'll see if the experiment was you know sort of you know paid off in the wins and lost columns not not necessarily like you know the clicks and in videos but But I hope you can get there. I really do. Do you remember when we almost started a company together? All right. So I should say this. I mentioned Jeremy providing perspective,

but you also really helped, like, tangibly guide me because I was like just looking for something to do. We had actually just started our content creation journey, which ended up, like, consuming all of our time. But this was back before, oh, shoot, bird scooters and what is it? Lime. Before line scooters, before Burt, scooters, before. You and I saw a market opportunity.

We're like, hey, who wants to take Uber under one mile? Like nobody. There's all these cities. Micro-transportation is going to be a big thing. Like, that's the next big thing in transportation completing the last mile. So you and I got together. We, you know, came up with a name. I even talked to some venture.

E-Rides. I think it was E-Rides. Yeah, E-Rides. Yeah, it was E-Rides. You start with scooters and you build out other electrical vehicles. and Andrew, we had a great idea. I know. It was a great idea.

We were too busy in the rest of our lives to really go execute it. But it was an idea, man, before all those were out. Oh, my gosh. I still think one of the greatest joys in life, if you have not ridden an e-bike or an electric scooter of any kind, do it. Because that's what we do on date nights, dude. We just go on e-bikes or scooters. It's the best. It is best.

anyway um final questions what we've covered a lot no i have we've four hours to talk about all these things i said we're going to talk about no do we book him for four hours no he didn't he's a busy guy uh these will be somewhat long-winded so i apologize but going back to what andrew said at the very beginning i also will never forget you changed our entire perspective on just like business in general and life and probably taught from your father as well But I remember you were asking us, like, what our goals and whatever they were in life. And I remember telling you at the time what it is we were working on. Maybe even, like, how much money we were making, which we've shared.

And I remember you just, I don't want to say laughing because you truly are like a big brother. So that might sound bad to people listening, but it was in the most perfect way. And you said, you don't dream big enough. Like, you literally told us that people were hanging out with the standards, goals. kind of like lines, finish lines we're setting. We're way, way too small. And it changed our perspective. And literally from that day forward, like, things have just changed, which has been really cool.

So we always, like, appreciate your wisdom on everything. Not saying you're perfect. Don't get a big head. I'm kidding. But now that you have gone through so much, you have gone to the Olympics, you played in the NFL, you've started your own company, had it acquired. You're building the most beautiful homes I've ever seen in my life. You've had a very, very blessed life. You have babies.

My question to you is, after seeing everything you have for the past however many years, when your babies grow up and they ask you, Dad, I want to be an influencer. Or dad, I want to start my career in skiing. Or I want to go to this college. Or I don't want to go to college. Or whatever it is. What are like three?

big things that you would teach them in current culture and today, if that makes sense? First of all, I want to support the dreams of my kids no matter what they are. Like, I don't need them to go into football. I certainly don't need them to be competitive skiers. Like, I want, I just want to be the wind beneath their wings and whatever they want to do. And I can't wait for that. I can't wait for my daughter to come to me and say, Dad, I got a dream. And I'm just going to help attack it with them. Like, you know, and I'm not going to impart a lot of the things that. that I did, because I don't want to be that overarching, like, do it this way parent. I think the beauty of life is we're all on our unique journeys together, and it's not one-size

fits all. And I think, you know, when you've been sort of successful in an area, you can really over-index on what worked for you, but might not work for somebody else. And so I want to be there to listen, to learn, to ask questions, but I would rather be the parent who helps them solve problems by asking them questions than rather telling them what to do. And, you know, I'm not really in that phase yet because I'm three, you know, three and a half and one and a half, but it's something I think about a lot. Like when I can be that mentor, that co-pilot in their life, in whatever they want to go accomplish and sort of watch them stumble and fall and succeed and all the things in between and sort of sort of be that right hand man for them, I get really

excited um i get really excited for that i can't wait for that phase of life i want you to know this is encouragement and also maybe just for your awareness in regards to the kids the things that i might consider audacious or impossible or wild or out there like huge dream i feel like one of your unique gifts is you consider those big crazy dreams normal and it's like to you it's like yeah great go get it go attack it it's just like really fascinating i'm not sure i've ever met anybody else dislike that where it's like yeah sure i could i could i could build a massive company yeah no big deal yeah we could go to yeah whatever it's just like you know it's like a sure well i mean it's it's easy to dream about it it's easy to come up with it it it's a lot harder

to execute it and look at what you guys have built and i remember that day sean where you told me i'm like i was a great idea but you had to think bigger and look where you guys are now i'm just and I mean this from the bottom of my heart. I'm so proud of you both because it is hard to transition in life. It is hard to transition from an Olympic gold medalist gymnast or an NFL football player. And I don't care how much money you have or how many trophies you have to find fulfillment in that next chapter. You've got to go for something big. And you guys did and you're absolutely crushing it. And I couldn't be more proud of how the hard work that you guys have put and to build this incredible platform and the success that you guys are having. But, you know,

I think the subcontext that is like, you got to go attack it. And you got to wake up every day and go from one failure to the other failure with no loss of enthusiasm. And just keep showing up and just keep showing up. And eventually the thing is going to work. And it might not be the one thing you thought it was, but it will lead you to something else in your life that will work and be spectacular and be worth all the sweat, blood, and tears. and years and tears that you cry and everything you got. It just makes it more worth it when you get there. Can you, because you've played this role for us, parents, no, I'm not going to say that. You can ask one more, but parents aside, who has been a mentor to you and how so?

Gosh, Andrew, I have been so lucky as it relates to mentors. I met John Elway, my hero. My biggest hero in life at probably 14 or 15. And I didn't just meet him. I got his phone number. And I hung out with him at games and I could ping questions off of him. And in skiing, it was Edgar Gross Braun and Sergei Shupiltsov, the two best skiers of all time in my sport at a young age. And so I've always been this sponge in the room and like, you know, growing from them. And then I started integrate. And right before I started the tech company, I met a guy named Chad Hurley, his co-founder of YouTube. and Google had just bought his company and he introduced me to Sergey Brin and Bill Maris who started Google Ventures. And before I knew it, I'm like, oh my God, I'm like best friends with the co-founder of Google and all these crazy and compressive guys.

And I got to hang out with them consistently and pick their brain and ask them questions. And of course, they remain friends today. So I feel like a lot of my journey has been shaped by just being around greatness and building relationships with them and learning from them and absorbing. you know information uh from them so you know i would certainly not have been able to do things i've been able to do without you know great mentors and great friends who've you know helped me a tremendous amount along the way that's amazing that's part of the reason i love what you've built with wish of a lifetime so much um which i think is about 16 years old now uh is that you grant lifelong wishes to people 80 90 100 year old 100 years old

and you've you've done over a thousand of these grants of wishes which is fantastic it also got acquired which i can't emphasize this enough if if you're sitting at home and you're like wow this guy is the world's most interesting man alive you're correct and you should look into jeremy bloom's life uh but i i always love talking to you i'm always so grateful for you giving us your time and your wisdom you have a website jeremy bloom that com i know you have a parenting section on there, jeremy bloom.com slash parenting, where you have an article about how to raise high achieving parents. My dad wrote it.

My dad wrote it. Is that right? Yeah, because I just did the question so much. My brother and sister get a question like, hey, how did your parents raise you? And so he wrote sort of his framework for parenting on the website. You have the book, Recalibrate. You were also part of the weight of gold, HBO film. and you've gotten your hands in so much.

I've only known you for less than 10 years, and I can't wait for the next 10 years to see what else you get into. But thank you for the time, Jeremy. I love you guys. I really do. And I cherish the time that we have together anytime we get to spend together. It was so fun to go to Nashville and get our kids together for the first time. And then, of course, at the Olympics.

I mean, it's a magical time. I'm proud, grateful to call you both close friends, family, however you want to say it but um i love you guys so proud of you and and it was fun stopping by and chatting with you as always we love you love you too jb can't wait to see what these babies do my gosh all of them let's go gosh gosh