Michael Strahan on Learning the One Belief That Changed His Life | Impact Theory

i hope you guys enjoy the episode brought to you by our sponsor blinkist go to blinkist.com impact theory to get 25 off a blinkist premium membership and a seven-day free trial all right enjoy the episode hey everybody we just hit a major milestone we crossed two million subscribers on youtube we obviously could not have done it without you guys this amazing community which has been there for us from day one and speaking of day one hitting this milestone made us all think about our very first guest ever the extraordinary michael strahan and to honor the crossing of the two million mark we're gonna re-air the episode where michael and i talk about how to build a winning mindset how to cultivate real happiness in your life and how to always and i mean always do the work all right without further ado i bring you nfl hall of famer and host of good morning america the one the only michael strahan thank you for having me oh yeah how have you been oh i've been great busy we're good really you a little bit how often do you go back and forth coast to coast every weekend from september through basically february to super bowl every time i get on a plane and i have to fly like two and a half hours and it's 30 minutes delay and i'm all pissed off i think strahan is doing this literally every weekend that's but it's good for me because to be honest with you it's the most quiet peaceful six hours coming this way of my week right so if i if i want to be on the phone if i want to do email if i want to you know do that i can but if not if i want to take a nap which is mostly what i do then i can do that but that's why i don't complain too because my father worked really hard and if my biggest complaint is being on an airplane and sleeping right then i got a problem if i'm complaining about that so i keep everything in check by thinking back to how hard and how realistic life is and how you know i've been very fortunate i don't take it for granted yeah you're super thoughtful like you really think about like pretty deeply i mean you go into you go into some depth about like um the neurochemical cascades and how to manipulate them and life philosophies and very specifically like not just because you've got this concept from your dad i believe of it's not if it's when yeah which okay most people leave it at the platitude but you went a lot deeper than that what does like walk us through that philosophy how do you bridge the gap from if to when i think i actually got that from my dad without even knowing i don't even know if he knew what he was doing you know my dad i think it it is he's just a hard driving person he grew up with nothing in the backwoods of texas and weirgate texas i don't even know if the town exists anymore and he decided to leave and he went to the army and just enlisted and he was a soldier for 12 years and he realized i can't be what i want to be i can't be an officer i can't really advance without an education he got out of the army after 12 years had five kids and me on the way went to prairie view university and went into the rotc program they called him old man you can't do this you can't do that and he graduated magna laude of the other rotc class and so i can't tell him what i can't do right because he's been in a lot tougher situations and he's done it and i just remember as a kid just being working out and doing all those things with him because there was a i started to work out when i was 13 and a little chunky and my brothers called me bob which is of course you read that in the book bob which meant booty on back and they would say you can grab your wallet over your shoulder you don't have to reach behind you and it hurt me man i'm 13 years old i was crushed i'm the youngest of sick the young in the youngest of four boys and i bought the jane fonda workout book and i started doing the you know the the leg lifts and the butt kicks my dad saw that and he said hey we can go to the gym and he would read muscle and fitness magazines and all these workout magazines and he would write out programs and we'd go to the gym you have to write how many reps and how much weight and he kept the meticulous log of things and i didn't always want to be there not sure but he could tell and i don't know what it was when you tell a 13 14 15 year old kid that we did it until i went off to college was hanging there to pay off one day now he's telling this to me and i'm living in germany right not like i'm in the states and i play football and it's like oh next year you're gonna have a great football season and then you can get a scholarship it was just hang in there son it'll pay off one day right and years later he woke up and said hey i think you're good enough to play football i think you can get a football scholarship this is all in germany that's what's weird it's not like you're playing every day and you know really around it you know i would watch it but i didn't play i didn't really know all the nuances or any of the techniques or anything about the game and he just said hey you can do it you're going to go to houston you're going to stay with your uncle you're going to get a football scholarship and being i guess naive i said okay little bit okay fine on the plane i go jump see my uncle stayed with my uncle for five months played one year football high school at westbury high school in houston got one scholarship to texas southern university didn't care where it was admission was accomplished and i went back to germany that december and i graduated high school over there and my dad never told me if he never doubted me said you're going to do this you can do that from a kid until we won the super bowl until you know all these things that are happening now he's never doubted me and i don't know if it was by design i don't know if he sent me to houston because he just was too cheap to pay for college it worked out and my mentality and now i have adopted that for myself and with my my kids it's not if you really want something bad enough right it's not going to be easy and you can see where you want to go but there are so many things you're going to have to go through to get there but truly if you focus and know where you want to end up you'll be there it may not be exact time you want which is now kind of immediate for most people but you'll eventually get there at your time when you're supposed to yeah that it's such a powerful belief and you talk a lot about that in the book and and so i judge books in a very critical fashion which is either the information is usable or it's not and then if it's usable if i do it will it work or not your book is both usable meaning there's clear very action oriented steps it's not just like an autobiography it's like hey do this and this is what i did if people do what you say in the book it will actually work like it's really incredible advice and it has fantastic backing in your understanding of the brain and all of that it's you make decisions it's up to you you know you make choices in your life you program your mind neither be happy or not that's a choice that you make it's not something that somebody else makes for you is not not even your situation no matter what the situation you truly do make the choice to be happy in that situation or not and we also have the ability to change a situation that we're not happy with talk a little bit about that because if for anybody that doesn't know the sort of legendary beef that you had with the final coach at the giants it's such a powerful thing and what i'm talking about specifically is is that you've switched right so you come in hot you guys are we hated heads yeah but then in the end you said that if you were going to go back he's the only one that you'd go back and play for yeah i absolutely hated tom coughlin and not long ago i was at the giants monday night game to induct him into the ring of honor which was like amazing for me because this is a guy i went to my first meeting with him and i had been in the nfl for 11 12 years my first meeting with the guy and i felt as if he was dismissive and as if i hadn't accomplished anything and pretty much listen to me and you can do something with your life kid i was thinking okay i kind of done some things already but i felt disrespected and slighted and i i went home and i said i'm playing one year with this guy because i have to now i'm right too late but i'm not going to play after this i can't stay here with this guy i won't do it he already had a bad reputation around the league has been a really tough coach and he was if your socks weren't pulled up high enough you're gonna find if you had blue sleeves on instead of gray sleeves that day you get a fine right if you're not five minutes early to a meeting it gets fine i'm like dude if the meeting's at 7 55 just tell me that don't tell me eight and i get to 7 57 and i'm late but it was just we were butting heads and not just with me but with all the players but being that i was a senior leader they would come to me and i would talk to him hey coach and he would just go i hear you i hear you i hear you and it came to a head after he fined me for being three minutes early to a meeting we had a heated discussion to the point where he was like um you know what it is what it is and i said coach we just had this discussion well you shouldn't cut it so close i said coach i'm not cutting it close he goes well next time you're lucky i could have fined you more and when he said that it it just that's when the football player's side went and and i heard you say so i'm gonna curse i'm gonna tell you what i said to him and i said okay that's fine you find me i ain't about the money anyway it's about the principal but you know what it it you want to find me i'll come in here when i want to then if i'm going to be late you're going to find my mother will show up when i want so i'll go do some errands then i'll come into this when i want to and he looked at me like and i was surprised because that was kind of like you know the whole different side i was usually on the field and he said you can't talk to me like that and i said yes i can he said no you can't i said yes i can and you know why because you don't respect me i can't respect you and as i come to you every day with all the problems of the players and what the god they're feeling and you always say to me i hear you i hear you and i said when you say that you're just dismissing me and you think i don't realize that you're dismissing me but you're losing this team do you hear that and i walked away from it and ever since that day our relationship has been like that it's as if we're two dogs circling around she was gonna jump on each other we finally got into a scrum but we came out of it with an understanding that we both wanted the same thing and that was to win once we really deep looked at it deeply we both wanted to win and i was so um happy to see him change to the point where it made me change and realize that if you both had the same objectives you just have to find a way to make it work to get there he loosened up his stance with the players we loosened up our stance with his rules as far as we were more attentive to them and guys felt like we weren't fighting against the rules we were fighting the opponent on the field where before we were fighting his rules instead of focusing on who we were playing that week and he became a coach who would come in and tell jokes and give you a hug and tell you he loved you and before he was not that guy yeah and i've heard you tell stories about it was sort of the inside of seeing him with other players kids his own grandkids warner what the hell kurt warner on the day off you know the quarterbacks they go and they pick up the game plan and kurt warner quarterback at the time went in to pick up his game plan with his kids he goes into the quarterback off coaches office and when he comes out coach kaufman is on the floor with his kids outside the office playing and it's like why don't we as players see that compassion that side of you because it's definitely there we see you with your grandkids sometimes but it was amazing to see him do it and he learned how to transfer that over to us as adults and we in in turn learn how to you know give him everything because as a coach the toughest thing and the thing i loved about playing and the one thing i love about work and working with a lot of people is the leadership aspect it is the opportunity to get so many people to believe in one thing that makes everybody better so that everybody wins and in order to do that you may you have to make everybody's have value and feel valuable i don't care for somebody who's sweeping the floor or the president of the company everybody needs to be treated like a human being with value and if they are they will do anything for you and once he got that down guys would do anything for him and i was one of those guys that once i was into that matrix anything he needed it would get done and all the way down to just my belief in us winning a super bowl and watching all that happen and and just the way that we did it and now if i had to go back and play seriously i would i wouldn't play for any other coach if he wanted me to play for him i would play for him only it's interesting that you tie it to compassion so one of the the most fascinating things about you off camera which dear god if you ever get a chance to spend time with michael ryan just let me know hit him up on that let me tell you right now so joe glazer summed you up really well when he was doing the hall of fame induction speech and he said strahan has a switch and he is one guy off the field and he's another guy when he comes out the tunnel and when he flips that switch he's there to stomp you dump you out yes so hanging out with you you're so warm and so it is crazy the bear hugs the just kindness the generosity of spirit but here's the thing it's one thing to like people when you're on camera and everyone is going to distrust that it's another when you're just you really are like that and it's from a leadership perspective it's such a beautiful thing to open yourself up to that i love your ritual of going around before the game and touching everybody yeah that was important and i actually really want to start doing that with the team here like we've got such a group of die-hard people and it had like in doing so the whole point to me of the people that i bring on the show is to bring people the more i research them the more i get to know who they are that i'll find these little nuances that i can bring into my own life and when i pictured you going around to everybody and and saying i'm accountable to you right i'm accountable to you and when i go out on that field i'm going to hold us up i'm going to do what we've all agreed that we're here to accomplish and i thought oh my god like that's so powerful and to have built that trust and rapport with them ahead of time where they feel connected to you and then you say hey i'm here to serve you right like we're all going to do this together that's super it's bigger it's bigger it was always bigger than me and i had success on a football field singular success right you know i've been defensive player of the year a few times and it's like i can't celebrate this or teammate losing records like there's no i never found much joy in something that was a singular success the best time does anyone ever ask me what is the best thing from your career it's like it's a super bowl it's everybody being able to celebrate the accomplishment of us as a team and not me as an individual and there is definitely a switch you have to have and to me i do love people and and it's natural for me to be nice to people i don't know any other way i don't know why you wouldn't be but it's also has worked for me because in anything i do i have to be fake i don't have to be something i'm not right i don't have to be nice to you here and then leave and you see me later on because i've been around a lot of people like that and it's as if they're a different person like i just saw you 10 minutes ago who this guy right i never wanted to be that i always wanted to be myself the entire time which works great for me i love psychology of things that's why i think i love a team i love getting people on the same page in the psychology of from football to me and in the media with football and simple things you get the game program every week and it's the same picture throughout the whole year of the guys but i had a ritual i would look at the program i would look at everybody on my team same guys and then i would look at the other teams guys and when you're a young player you get intimidated by faces and some guys sitting there looking like this and you're like oh man that guy's a killer oh i don't look scared but as i got older i said it's like psychologically if somebody looks like that then they're you know then okay but how much more afraid would you be if somebody you know with a kill and they just smile so in my program fidget i'd be like this it looked like a glamorous shot like it looked like i went to the mall and it was like this is the guy this must be crazy to be smiling these photos like this and and so like i would just do a little silly things like that with the media i didn't talk every day until then i said i talk one day a week i talk thursdays and i did it because if you talk all the time it's like going to the same restaurant it's not special and especially in the media of new york when there are so many different people and so many um outlets and everybody just there's so much content you need yours to stand out so if you want to talk to me and you only get me one day a week i guarantee when i talk to you you're going to cherish that and you're going to use that and i would mix it up on the media as well as they would give me a hard time i give them a hard time one question today i'm not in a bad mood but i just like give me one question asked me one answer they asked me a second i said you hear what i said i said one i'm sorry i gotta go right then other days i sit there and i would chat how your wife doing you know everything's good and i would just mix them up keep them off their off off balance a little bit and i just enjoyed the psychological battle of football i enjoyed the psychological battle of the media and and in a lot of ways now it's not quite the same but i still like that aspect of psychologically getting everybody on the same page to be successful yeah there's some pretty uh incredible footage of you getting well let's talk psychological warfare and then getting everybody on the same page so one the trash talking that you did when you would tackle people was absolutely fantastic welcome home baby yeah there were some great ones but then what you did in the super bowl was really really crazy and i want to hear what was the the psychological principle at work so you the team is losing but you gather everybody on the sideline and you say you're losing at the moment i think it was 10 to 14. yeah to the undefeated champions coming into this game and you say with like very little time left guys we're one drive away we're going to win 17 to 14. that's going to be the final score if you believe it it's going to happen yeah gene strahad my dad that's crazy it was it was weird because by the way that was the end score that was the end score against an undefeated team 18-0 at that point and had beaten us early in the season and i i just my dad that that week in phoenix he said you know what you guys have already won the game and i was like i think old man's losing it what's he talking about you guys have already won the game now you just have to go through the formalities but trust me you've already won the game and i'm thinking have you seen the patriots have you seen their record they said good they are that's tom brady and randy moss junior sayo like all these phenomenal um hall of fame players over there and we got to the point in that game where there are just several things that come to mind bill belichick is a brilliant coach probably the best coach ever to to coach professional football and we had a fourth down they had to punt he rushes the punt team out there they run a punt we didn't get all our guys off the field in time so it gives them a first down in our territory and field goal position and everything else and tom coughlin's losing it you know he's beat ready screaming on the sideline and i i just had such a peace during that game so he tells this story um all the time he said you reached over and you grabbed me by my shoulders before you ran out on the field and you smiled and said coach don't worry we got it and we go out i actually got a sack that's a sack i got on that drive moved them out of field co position they didn't score any points and that was just like the peacefulness of the game so when we came to that point in the fourth quarter where they scored uh and when they went up 14-10 it was like you know what if dad said we're gonna win damn it we're gonna win now i'm not on offense i can't do anything about it but i'm gonna go over here and talk to the guys who can and we're in this together our our journey to get there has been too great to end like this i mean we're here for a reason there's something special about us being here because we were not supposed to be here and i went on and said 17 14 fellows will be the final score believe it and it will happen one touchdown will work we'll be world champion believe it and it will happen and we won 17 to 14 and i retired after that what i love about stories like that from someone who has built their career around hard work discipline watching more tape putting more hours running the stairs more often is that the lurking behind the believe it and it will happen is um [Music] psychological principle for lack of better word right so it's what are the things that you do on a regular basis from a routine perspective to build that mindset to know that you've put in the work that you're able to execute and essentially not get in your own way you know i think i think we doubt ourselves more than anybody else ever doubts us so and i fight that too i fight that every day especially you know these new jobs and businesses that i've never um thought that i would be in and never knew i could be and i was supposed to or could be any good at and i i think the thing the routines that i have my mama routines are very simple i find out what the job is and i bust my ass to get it done everyone there's no way to build an empowering mindset or get ahead in business without constantly learning and accessing new information and today i want to share with you guys my secret weapon in the battle to learn new things and get ahead blinkist blinkist 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and happiness two books from their library that i've listened to and highly recommend are start with why by simon sinek and the power of habit by charles duhigg right now blinkist has a special offer just for our audience go to blinkist.com impact theory to start your free 7-day trial and get 25 off a blinkist premium membership that's spelled b-l-i-n-k-i-s-t blinkist dot com slash impact theory to get 25 off a blinkist premium membership and a seven day free trial all right guys take care and be legendary and it's not half the stuff is not that complicated for for gma i understand that i need to read i need to read a lot i need to know what i'm talking about before i open my mouth and it's something great about that because it's challenged me in a way that i haven't been challenged at live i didn't have to do that live i could take two minutes to read the questions that i'm gonna ask the guests and then the rest of it was personality driven so i could get away with just you know being there and just being you know i guess joyful and entertaining well gma requires some of that but it requires for you to have some knowledge on different things and that's what i love about it it takes me back to be honest with you to football it relates to football to me because not growing up playing i was still learning my 15th and final season right i never got bored with the game and that's how i feel about gma i don't think i'll ever get bored because every day is so different and every day of the challenge and so for me it's about just studying and knowing what my job is and knowing what my job description is and knowing what i'm what i can bring to the equation and the toughest thing you know going to gma for me was figuring that out because you have george you have robin you have amy you have lara and you have people who have been established on a show that has been established for a long time and how does my personality fit in so it's been like you know running into wall here and there until i can find okay i fit into that slot now let me find the next one and it's a work in progress you know i work every day you know the wheels are spinning in my head as i'm sitting there with the camera on my face that i'm talking about how to be myself within a situation that you usually don't have a chance to inject personality into but that's what they want and but it's been it's been a challenge but it's been fun it's been exciting and i wake up every day and i love being there and i love making the people around me happy that i'm there that's important to me too yeah that was really neat so going from part-time to full-time you do the first day and i remember one of the first things they said to you i forget who said it but she said you know we're all looking forward to our morning kiss on the cheek and she said it so warmly it was like for a second she was not a tv personality she was your friend and she was super stoked that it was like gonna be you know this like slumber party every day that you guys were gonna get to be able to hang out and i thought wow that's so cool that you're able to have that and i'm a routine person i if i take my wallet out of my pants at night i know where i put it that way i know it's there like i thought oh where's my wallet where are my keys i'm not that guy but i'm also a routine person in terms of when i go to work like good morning very simple words not hard i'm joyful and happy to be there i'm gonna be the same i'm gonna good morning i talk to this everybody and certain people i know they're the connection when you get you know good morning shake somebody hand you give or you walk by and you give him a tap on the shoulder like those things are important because when i was a kid i was washing dishes i was cutting grass i was a mover and you were unseen you were very unseen and unappreciated and in some in some ways talk to us if you weren't you know not only saying we weren't human but you just were below a level below and and that has always bothered me and to this day it bothers me to think about that because i remember when that was happening thinking to myself you think this is where i'm going to be right this is just what i got to do now to get where i'm going and i didn't necessarily know where i was going but i knew it was not going to be there and so it's very important that when i walk in as one particular security guard who you know he just every time you walk in he just and now good morning how you doing hey bud have a good day everything else and now when i walk in hey michael how you doing like it totally changed and i see his he's happy when i walk around that corner and just because he feels valuable man and that's so important to me because you get so much more out of yourself and so much more out of people because you're in an environment you create it right you created happiness because you want to be happy you want to be around happy people and sometimes it's you got to you know you got gotta bang your head against the wall to make it happen but you have to be consistent with it and you have to be persistent with it and if you are then people come around to that and then people can trust you because they know what they're gonna get one of the worst things is to be unpredictable in terms of your emotion or the way that you approach people mm-hmm because that makes people you know i don't know what i'm going to do never want to be that guy i want to be the guy you know what you're going to get unless you were a reporter when i was a player but you know what you're going to get and you know what you're going to get is going to be genuine right it's going to be honest it's going to be real it's going to be sincere and you're going to get everything i have to make this work and and in some ways i'm a perfectionist at work if i mess up one word or not think of something i'll go i don't watch myself on tv for that reason half the time it bothers me could say oh that was great i'll go damn i missed that yeah i see that's gonna know exactly so going back to what you're saying about creating happiness which is an incredibly really really important concept that i hope everybody is listening to um once you understand it's a creation once you understand its neural chemistry once you understand that that's something that you can craft and control everything in your life changes yeah once you realize that that it's all a construct right that you uh can shape it then you realize that you're awake in the matrix and that was the first thing that you and i connected over when we first met and i don't even remember why i brought it up i guess because i'm so obsessed with the matrix i bring it up to everybody but i'm literally wearing this shirt in your honor uh the matrix was the doctor that was my movie man you said it impacted your phone god did it ever it was weird that movie everybody watched it they talk about how great it was and i'm one of these guys you tell me how great everything is uh it can't be that good and i wait so i didn't see it until it was on like one of these cable channels and i'm watching it and that point where he he gets shot and you think he's dead and then she believes in him and she kisses him and he comes back and then mr smith turned around and they shoot at him again he goes no yeah a stop whatever and he takes the bullet and then he and lauren fitzpan goes he is the one he believed in himself he didn't limit himself he limited himself up until that point and i used to think oh i get a sack oh i got a sack okay oh that's good i don't know if i can get another stack oh man get two or i don't know if i can get three and i started why can't i get why say one is enough why why am i limiting myself and anything i do and as the football player changed me i set the sack record i didn't have a sack the first three games of that season so to get all those sacks within 13 games it's incredible which i look back and go holy smoke but it was i don't know i just would go and go and i didn't say okay michael that's good enough it was like okay michael you got one go get two go get another one and go get another one and that movie taught just truly that moment it was like i see it now and i smile because it just makes me realize we limit ourselves and why yes you hold yourself back when there's no reason to hold yourself back because there is no reason as a friend of mine told me mike he said michael there's no reason that a black man with a gap tooth in his mouth who can't say the letter s without spitting on people should be on tv talking for a living and he's 100 right so i have proven that the matrix works anything is possible that's awesome that's your version of you know stopping the bullets yeah i like that i was watching that clip today i was thinking about you i was thinking about the matrix and i put that clip on where he says are you telling me i can dodge bullets no neo when you're ready you won't have to oh like that that i know what a nerd i am like i totally get that but like i geek out to the and the funny thing it gives me chills you say that it's like oh you're breaking it oh yeah as you were saying it me as well and the funny thing is so people look at you and they think oh it must come easy for him it might he must not um have a problem in social situations you know all that's on the football field oh he's just a big tough guy so yeah of course it's easy for him and the thing that i love about the i don't think that you can be on camera and not create a persona right because you're gonna have to project something so you're asking yourself what am i gonna project but i love that you have clearly made the demand that the thing you project has to actually be you and so you're so honest and for someone like me who has spent so much time like am i the only one who's afraid of like what is going on like i have to overcome this all the time and so people always say to me like oh you must be really relaxed in front of the camera you see i'm like i am literally like freaking out every time before i do one of these shows like the 10 minutes leading up to it thinking god am i going to be able to pull it off this time or or is this the one right i imagine doing that every day yes that's me every day it really is and the thing is innately i'm a shy guy i'm still that chubby kid bob with easy access to the world with easy access to my wallet and i'm still that that shy kid so it's i do what i do and i love what i do but the second that is over and i'm like walking down the street and people going michael michael it makes me want to curl up like that 13 year old kid again and i don't know what it is when i play football my first i played when i was seven and eight years old and i was a good player and i cried the entire game and i tell you not just cry ball like not snot bubble cries like nasty cries and the coach would pull me out it was wrong nothing nothing it's because i would make a tackle i'd make a play and the parents were clapping yeah and like and i just oh it made me so uncomfortable and that's how i get a little bit when i'm when i'm off camera and people come up because oh you did this and you did that and it makes me feel like yeah i don't know i don't when football was over i kind of you know i know what i did but i don't pay attention i have a super bowl ring and i pull it out or somebody asks me to see it but other than that i forget i have it i know i got it but i forget physically the ring i know i won that game and it's just weird i don't hang on to stuff like that you know i kind of it's like holding on to the past it's kind of keeping me from moving and one day when i decide i don't want to go forward anymore and i'm done career-wise then i look back and i go okay well maybe i'm pretty good that's actually really interesting and really powerful for me because i feel exactly the same way now i may have gotten lucky in this because my memory is actually really bad um your memory oh my friend my friend i'm telling you so and this is this is one of the like right now you're doing that thing that people do to you and you hate so how how am i able to do this because i work my ass off because i understand that my memory is bad everyone would think like for even me and i'm knowing you i would think your memory is fantastic so let's say i want to remember 10 amazing facts i know i only remember 10 so now i got to read 100 facts that's literally my life like part of the reason i read as voraciously as i do the reason i take notes the reason i record voice memos the reason that i go back over this stuff is because that's what i have to do to make it usable right so for me it's all about usability like what is this company the aim of this company the aim of the show is is literally to get people out of the matrix but you have to understand what that means getting someone out of the matrix is simply to get them to stop saying i got one i guess i can't get two sacks that's it yeah like once you do that you're out the limit but you yes you have to i have chills in my face just because this like yeah but but but everyone thinks it's easy everyone thinks you're not scared and i tell you and everyone thinks you haven't had failures which i've had plenty of failures but i don't look at failure i've never looked at a failure and said ugh woe is me oh i don't know i'm just programmed no it didn't work okay let's go next thing work harder figure something else out keep going i'm not programmed to go it didn't work out and let me contemplate and feel sorry for myself and you know and and go over here and get sympathy i just i don't know if it's the way i was brought up or if it's from the business of football where it's a win or lose it's like success or failure and if you lose a football game i don't have time to think about how i lost it and what i did wrong because if i'm doing that then the guy i'm playing next week is getting ahead of me so i got to worry about what's coming up next and push for what's next and get better for what's next not get better for what's in the not worry about what i wasn't good enough for in the past right and i've done sitcom fail um the business of fail you know you but you figured out life is about figuring it out life is not going to be perfect and if you expect it to be perfect you're fooling yourself and a perfect life without a challenge is not a perfect life it's a boring life boring do you see the movie um war dogs oh the gun runners yeah yeah yeah i did all right there's a great line in there which they don't intend this way but when you were talking it really hit me they say the money is made between the lines now in the movie they're talking about something a little bit different but when you were saying like i fail and i think about okay what's next how do i learn from this you know what's the pivot how do i move or you know reinvent yourself um that's that's the money like if people want to know how you've had such astronomical success in so many crazy different arenas it's that when you said life is about figuring it out i was like no one's going to write that down like people at home and i'm putting a pin in it so people will write it down because once they get that the magic of michael strahan is that that you take the time to assess and figure it out like you were saying with gma and watching you on gma has been so cool to see you really changing from what you were doing on live with kelly and michael like what you were calling the it was personality you know roll up and shine yeah and then now this i see you and you've talked about you talk about in the book about i wanted a challenge and i needed to know in my am i saying no to this because i'm scared because if that's it then i'm going all in because fear is just something get over and overcome and figure out that dude that to me like yeah the juice is worth the squeeze right yeah the juice is worth the squeeze you read that book but i definitely michael definitely was i did more than read that book i have notes upon notes of that book it is really powerful thank you that was blown away so good well you know what the mission accomplished thing you know and i i and i don't know man i you talk about all accomplishments and stuff but for me i like i really haven't done any like much like i feel like i'm just like starting i love that tell me if this is true the reason that you feel like that is because you're always looking forward you're not looking back and you're always putting yourself in a situation where you're a little bit sucky and your goal is to rapidly stop sucking at that but by the time you're good at that you're already looking at the next thing that you're a little bit sucky at and the cycle repeats right but that's how you escalate so when you and i went and we met your mutual friend or your friend uh who what he does with homes is unbelievable yeah it is it is on another planet and you and i got in the car and we're like there's levels to this you know because it was like what is happening like we thought we were doing all right yeah for this for real it was it was bonkers but i felt in that moment such a kindred spirit to you because i did not look at that house and go i can't have it i looked at that house and thought what do i need to do what's next what situation now do i have to put myself in like what is that construct and i think of that you know going back to the matrix i think of that in in sort of all aspects of my life like what's that next thing and thinking about what you're doing the partnership that you have with jcpenney like how do you have the guts to kick that off fashion to to like true entrepreneurship it's no longer personality driven like your stuff's gonna live and die yeah is that that next phase for you well you you and i are very similar in that too that i i don't look at something and think it's unattainable i look and i go okay i gotta work a little harder if that's something i want or something i want to do and and and jcpenney was the perfect example is that you know the collection which is suits and ties and everything you need to look sharp like you know and when i'm on gma everything i wear there fox nfl sunday everything i wear is that everything the guys on fox nfl sunday wear is is really my line yeah wow and um troy aikman and tony gonzalez so it's really something but the reason it's authentic to me and i'm involved so i'm just not a passive yeah those fabrics you guys do it put a suit out there stamp my name in it and it's good oh i look at every swatch of fabric i'll get every dress shirt every tie belts shoes socks it's exhausting but it's necessary because i know people who work really hard with me on that and i want them to know that i'm as engaged as they are and from the marketing of it to who we're going to pick the model and adds um the direction of that but for us we were so happy because it was a start it was a start and i think we started maybe 200 stores just to get a little feeler i look back now and i think wow it's only been like a year but we've been successful enough that we were 500 and then now we're going to 600 a year ahead of schedule and then we kicked off msx which was like you know fleeces and casual and like um athleisure wear so we kicked off a whole nother line with them now athleisia it has just completely evolved into this thing that is like hey why not right why can't we it's authentic to me i don't do it not wear it i don't do it you don't see me in it i'm in it every day so i'd rather be authentic and everything that i do and everything that we do at the company with we do that is authentic to whoever we're putting into positions including myself that people can stand behind it because they know that's really you and that's important yeah there's so a lot of entrepreneurs watch the show and there's two things you said there that i think are incredibly incredibly important for entrepreneurs to understand and that's one that you get one of the defining characteristics of being an entrepreneur is dealing with the mundane and if you believe in what you're doing enough to fight through the mundane like if you look at this set if you knew what we had to do to build this thing like it is it is like one tedious thing after another i i have on pieces of this that there is actually my blood because but that's just right that's what you have to do to make it happen right so it's not like wait why am i painting this it's that's what we have to do why am i looking at this watch a fabric that's what you have to do it's like you have the vision you believe in it enough you're gonna see it through all the way to the end and when i was painting i thought this is the part of being an entrepreneur that people don't understand yeah like this is not what they think they think of it kind of like fame oh your boy i know we got to get you out of here but your boy kevin hart so i'm assuming you've seen laughing my pain yes all right so he has this quote which i just went to i actually went to the live concert that's inserted into that film he's phenomenal dude phenomenal so i didn't know i knew him as a comedian that was it at the beginning of the the film version they do that chant everybody wants to be famous nobody wants to put the work in yeah everybody wants to be famous nobody wants to put the work in and i was like oh my god kevin hart like totally understands it so i was blown away and i was like that guy's gonna last and then you mentioned him in your book about being a guy who puts the work in and i thought that's so true there are two guys the entertainment who i know put to work in and i respect them so much it's kevin and and dwayne johnson the rock yes because i watch these two and i and i study these two and their approach to everything that they do and it's always joyful it's always they have so much energy and so much conviction about what they're doing and belief yeah and and and i'm feeding off of them even though i'm in a totally different business because it keeps me going to the point of where they'll say man you know you work too hard i'm like what are you talking about you guys are working so i think we all kind of feed off of each other to push each other even though we're all in in like different spaces sometimes to be successful unbeknownst to the other sometimes and i think that that is you got to have role models you have to have people that you look up to that that make you push yourself and make you want to um be better and when it comes to business and you talk about painting on this set and doing all these things if you do something and your name is on it your name is right there if it's not successful who's going to get blamed for it right you if it is successful who's going to get credit for it you and i found that if i'm going to get blamed for something because this happened before i didn't really put everything into it i'm pissed that i'm being blamed for something failing because i didn't put all the work into it right but yet for me if i'm getting all the credit for being successful and i know i didn't put anything into it i feel like a fraud right and and you gotta you gotta put up with that for yourself and maybe some people are comfortable with that i'm just not comfortable with that right so that's why all the businesses i like to be a part of because i don't i don't want to feel like a fraud i want to if someone asks me about it i want to talk to you about it i'm real i don't have to make up some story and then go home and go you know boy i sure had to lie about that it's not a good feeling so if you're going to get blamed for failure accept it hey i put all my i put everything i had into it it failed move on to the next but i know i busted my ass and if you're getting credit and everybody getting credit for success you can feel good because you truly have been a part of that too and and that's something that keeps me involved in everything and like i said those the rock and kevin are like bust your ass bust your ass workers man i appreciate that and okay like you thank you all right one last question what's the impact you want to have on the world i i don't know you know the biggest thing for me to be honest with you is just it's like my kids making them proud let letting them understand about hard work respect for not like not now give me respect but how to respect people and just to be nice people and you know that's that's really my main focus is to you know make sure that when i'm gone more people happy that i was here and that they don't show up at the funeral to make sure i'm really dead that's it that's awesome man thank you so much thank you man love it great time all right guys this is somebody that you are going to want to dive into in a big way you're going to want to learn as much as you can you are definitely going to want to start by reading his book wake up happy which is the perfect title he talks about happiness is not a test that you take once and then it's done it's this ongoing pursuit and the real way that he talks about it from neurochemistry to all of the truths of the way that life is going to knock you sideways and you've got to find a way to recalibrate and balance and he talks about all the different steps and things that you can do and take to actually find that path to happiness and actually be somebody who wakes up happy and somebody who encounters a negative situation and has the tools the things that he repeats in his head the framework to view the world that will actually help get you back on track it is super powerful you would love it watch his induction into the hall of fame speech it is him in a nutshell from both the just joy of life to loving the sound that another grown man makes when you tackle him and he you hear the breath escaping his body it's hilarious you have to hear it it's an amazing story and guys you can join michael on sunday february 5th as nfl on fox cover super bowl 51 live from houston anytime this man is live i'm trying to be there see it watch it because he does everything with joy and authenticity and for those of you who are about to write me and say you never said what the other thing was that he mentioned that's so powerful for an entrepreneur and it's authenticity and this guy has it from top to bottom and everything that he does and i will vouch for him on camera off camera it's exactly the same person and that's so cool thank you guys so much for being on the show michael thank you thank you guys until next time my friends if you haven't already be sure to follow at tom bilyew and at impact theory that's the new bad boy check it out join us thank you guys so much and until next time be legendary my friends take care well done thank you so much [Applause] you