All-Pro NFL Fullback - Jedidiah Collins

In 2008 when Jed was a rookie in the NFL, he wrote in his journal that he needed someone to explain the language of money to him, without selling him. 

Twenty years later, he is that person.

As a former NFL Fullback turned Certified Financial Planner®,  Jed brings value through a unique blend of athletic discipline and financial expertise to every stage. As a self proclaimed 'Great Failure' Jed pulls from his NFL journey and the Veterans he was fortunate to be around to deliver practical actions for success.

As a public speaker, author of a best-selling book, university professor, and the founder of both Money Vehicle and Rookie to Veteran, Jed is passionate about empowering individuals to grow in both their money & mindset.

https://jedidiahcollins.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:15

Yeah, just outside of Seattle.

SPEAKER_00 0:17

Okay, cool, man. Cool. Well, Jedediah, it is good, man, that we're finally getting on the Books for Guys podcast as we've been working to do this for a while. And uh, dude, it is a pleasure to have you on today.

SPEAKER_01 0:31

Timing could not be better, and I just appreciate the opportunity to connect and then obviously share my a little bit about my message and who I am with your audience. So thank you.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

No, I appreciate it. I love that you got the full fullback of finance on there. We'll dive into that. But no, Jenna, I want to kick things off because there's as I've been learning about you and reading about your career and the work you do, there is one thing that keeps standing out to me. And I just think it's uh it's an incredible thing that I think you and you you have a message behind, but you were an all-pro fullback in the NFL, and you were also cut 12 times. And I was telling my wife, I was like, I was like, man, I got this guy coming on the podcast, and he is awesome because you're a former NFL athlete. I was like, You're not gonna believe this. He's an all-pro NFL fullback. And she's like, awesome. I was like, he was cut 12 times, and she's like, that's crazy. It's so doesn't add up. That doesn't add up. I know, but that's a cool thing. I was looking through and I was like, man, what a story, brother.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

And that's, I mean, it's the epitome of who I am, the essence of what makes me me. I call myself and introduce myself as a great failure. And it's this mentality that so many of us, you know, in today's social media lane where everybody shows their highlight reel, so many of us forget that every success is after the trials and errors. And in today's world of being so worried about what everybody else thinks, we're worried to not even try because of that word failure. And one of my, you know, missions is to get people to see that term fail, F-A-I-L, differently. I want you to see it and think, fail is just my first attempt in learning. And that's what I really looked at in the NFL. I got cut a dozen times, but each time I left a building, I would sit and write in my journal, who was I around? You know, there's a 20-year kicker, there's a 15-year lineman, there's a 14-year quarterback or safety. What were those guys doing that I wasn't that allowed them to stay? And that's really what led to kind of a lot of, you know, my my documentation of what it takes to go from rookie to a veteran, but that skill wasn't created in the NFL. I I learned how to battle, how to struggle through college, but mostly it was born in my backyard. My dad invented a game called King for a Day. You know, despite being a football player, we were all a basketball family. Uh, and yeah, I was pretty good at basketball too. My neighbors now are like, Joe, you're the football guy. I'm like, I can I can hoop. I can do it. He's a basketball guy too. But both my brothers ended up playing Division I basketball. And go figure, being the youngest brother, I lost King for a Day, this game my dad created every time. You know, we played a thousand times in the backyard. I vividly remember the two days I walked off as king. And I will say, if you know you're not going to be king tomorrow, be a humble king today. You know, and you're precious there. But what I realized going out onto that court was I couldn't tie who I was and what I identified as success for the day with the outcome. The reality was I probably wasn't going to win. And so I started to redefine what it meant for me to have a successful day. And it wasn't being king. It was, did I score? Did I get better? Did I improve? Even if it's a small measurement, did I progress? And that mentality allowed me to go into the NFL and go, you don't think I'm good enough? I've been here before. You told me to leave, I'll be back. Greatest compliment one of my coaches gave me is Jed, you're Freddie Krueger, man. You just don't die. You just don't go away. And that mentality is, you know, if you want to be a leader, if you want to be an entrepreneur, if you want to build a brand, if you just want to survive in today's capitalistic society, look at Oracle recently, 30,000 people, you're gonna have circumstances outside of your control dictate who and where you are. It's the mentality, it's the attitude, it's your preparation, it's your effort focusing on those things. But yeah, no, it was uh it was a tremendous journey. And I look back on it, and obviously I, you know, some people say, Do you wish you were a draft pick now? Do you wish you wouldn't have got cut so much? And I go, no, like I have the guys on TV now I was teammates with. Why? Because I got cut so many times, I was on a lot of teams.

SPEAKER_00 4:52

Yeah, I was about to say, man, you got to be around so many great players and coaches, and again, you were great too. I mean, you you have you well, you accomplished something that not a lot of people do. You you have an all-pro title that you had in one of your seasons. That that doesn't happen. That's hard to get. They don't yeah, they don't just give those out, man. And I think I love how you dived right into that because I talk about a lot of that with with books. We see the highlight reel of so many people that are doing so many successful things, but it seems like, and again, we don't see the struggle. There's always a struggle. Always, always a struggle. But it's always the people that seem to do the most incredible things, they they have the best ability to almost become just numb at the things that don't work out. They're just like, who cares? Like they don't they don't worry about it at all, they don't waste any time thinking about the failure. It's like, okay, what I learned today, cool, just do better tomorrow. And it's just like they can just kick it and move on to the next thing, and that's how they build. And I just love how you jumped into that with yourself and just like, all right, cool, I'll be back. Like, whatever I got to fix, I'll do it, no big deal.

SPEAKER_01 5:54

And that's, you know, we we look at growth. And I, you know, I look at my daughters now of like, hey, I want them to have this resilience mindset, but I also don't want them to feel pain or discomfort or or anything bad in the world to happen. And so it is a catch-22. You got to go through hard times to become a hardened person. And I always looked at that idea of, you know, what was this supposed to teach me? How can I come back and be better? And so, yeah, I look at, you know, where journaling has been my greatest gift. It was because the hard times, the lows I captured. I capture the highs and I enjoy them and I try to, you know, stay in those moments. But success and failure are just brief moments gone by. And so if you can continue down the path, this is the greatest thing I realized, and people have told me, they're gonna call you crazy. Jed, you got cut at 10 times and you're going back for 11th, you're crazy. But just like any entrepreneur who knows, they're gonna call you crazy until they call you a crazy genius. And that's the difference is can you continue to believe in yourself? The hardest thing for an athlete is film, is being judged. I, you know, in my book coming out, I go through free agency, and it's the idea of, oh, I want to know how good I am. I want to know what my market value is. And then you get told that what really people think you are. And the the hack, the craziness of being a great athlete, of being an entrepreneur, of being a success in anything, is you see something no one else sees. I knew I was a Pro Bowl fullback before anybody even thought I could make a roster. I had to believe that because if I didn't believe it, nobody else would. And so they're gonna call you crazy until they call you crazy genius. And the hard fact for my daughters, for myself, for anyone is if you want to find out what grit is, put yourself in difficult situations. Grit, tenacity, resilience, that doesn't come with wins. It comes with L's. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:54

And I love that word grit. I use it in uh we use it from a hiring standpoint, like a grit factor on figuring out who will be the best team player within the organization. I love people that go about that process using that word because it can be uh so transformative and and really weed out who can who can handle it and who can't. But I'm sitting there thinking, too, you're talking about, you know, you're cut 10 times, you're going back for an 11th, and I'm sitting there thinking, well, heck yeah, man, not everybody gets a chance to go, you know, who cares if they cut me again, they're calling, you know.

SPEAKER_01 8:26

If the phone rings, kick it up. Yeah. And I was fortunate the phone kept ringing. Not by coincidence, not easy. Like we were out hustling and trying to find our way, but you're absolutely right. Greatest advice my brothers gave me was Jed, the real world's gonna be there. Keep chasing the dream.

SPEAKER_00 8:42

Yeah. A lot of guys want that phone call. Even if it's the 12th or 13th time, they'll take it.

SPEAKER_01 8:47

They'll take it.

SPEAKER_00 8:48

But curious, Jediah, you were talking about journaling, and I want to kind of transition this into your world now of finance and the books. You have a book out, you're you're working on a second one, it sounds like.

SPEAKER_01 9:00

Yes, sir. About a couple couple weeks.

SPEAKER_00 9:02

Yeah, perfect, man. Were you all like I guess growing up? Because you know, books for guys is kind of created out of that thought of, you know, guys growing up loving sports, doing that. They don't read a lot. And even me personally, like I didn't journal, I didn't write a lot of things down. It's something I've learned is important now, but it sounds like you picked up that skill a long time ago. Where did you, I don't know, where did you find the motivation to start journaling and how did that propel you? Because not a lot of guys do that.

SPEAKER_01 9:31

No, not at all. I mean, as men, we are emotional midgets. Let's let's be real. Like we we hide everything from one another. And so what it was for me was a resource that I could go and provide an outlet. I was fortunate. My father was a journaler, mainly because he struggles socially and emotionally to share anything, but in his journal, he could find some solace. I mean, he had five kids. I'm the only one that journals, so 20%, not great, but he got on base. As I looked at it, you know, I started with some little things in high school. You know, I wanted to do it because my dad did it and I wrote some moments down. I got to my freshman year of college and I was like, I'm not comfortable enough to do this in front of people. My entire freshman year of college, I didn't journal at all. Probably for the best. That's a year that, you know, there's a lot of good times and a lot of things I probably don't want to remember. But then I circled back to, you know, I was starting to make some big decisions. Was Washington State the place for me? Football. I was going from a linebacker to the offensive side of the ball. And I really wanted to just get my train of thought down. I wanted to get what I was going through on paper for both that moment and for the future, because I saw some of the writings from high school. Journaling is the coolest thing in the world because you were you traveled through time. I can go talk to 20-year-old Jed, 30-year-old Jed, and now 40-year-old Jed. I could take you back to my honeymoon. I could take you back to, you know, my first touchdown in the NFL. That is the beauty journaling provides. Why I think it is now more than ever going to be an essential skill in the future is there's this new technology card artificial intelligence. Not sure if you heard of it, Chris, yet. If you haven't, go go Google it. It's it's pretty cool. But what it's gonna do in the future is create opinions. It's gonna create stories, it's gonna tell tales. What it cannot do is tell your first person experience. Can't you went to the Super Bowl? Great. I can click a button and tell you kind of what happened at the Super Bowl. I can't tell you what you went and saw, where you came from. And so as I really started to see this skill that I've had for 20 plus years, I have 15 plus journals. I started to look at men specifically, one, emotionally, two, from a perspective of growth and a perspective of how am I gonna be a better leader to my family, my wife, my kids, my job, my career. Everything is gonna come down to remaining human in this era of AI. And nothing is more human than your experiences and your emotions that you've gone through. You wanna lead a team of two or 2,000, you gotta have a story. And that storytelling begins in your journal. And so I started to kind of go through this. My daughter actually asked me, her first year of being born was my seventh season, my last year in the NFL. And she asked me something about that time in Detroit. And I went back, I said, I think I journaled about it. And I opened that journal. And brother, I did not have any idea how much I actually wrote because I wrote every day of that season in the building, sitting in special teams meetings and just filling up this document. And I started to look at the beauty that it allowed me. I got to go back into the life in time travel and go into this season, but it also showed me so many things I've forgotten, big things. If you would have asked me, Jed, were you ever a captain in the NFL? I'd be like, no, I was a fullback. Like, not I was a captain for a game that year in New England, and I had totally forgotten that. But those are the beauties of what journaling can do. And so now in this era of AI, I am challenging athletes. You want to ever have an NIL brand and business? You need to journal. You want to ever be an entrepreneur and start your own company and tell a story about why you're gonna change the world, you need to journal. You ever want to start being a leader in your company and take that next step, you're gonna have to storytell and you're gonna have to story sell. Those stories come through your experience and your daily human first person idea. And so I see this new tool that I've had, you know, many have had, not many, some have had for a long time. And I look at the future and say, this is where we are going to remain human. We have to start documenting our journeys.

SPEAKER_00 13:52

And I love that you are a proponent for that because while, and again, I started doing it about four or five years ago, and I've had pauses in between or whatnot, but there's not a more fulfilling moment, like you said, going back and reading some of the things you wrote and you forgot, and it just takes you back to the feeling you had at that day or what you were going through, and you're just like, dang, I forgot this was 2023, that was three years ago. Wow, we did that then. Like so many things happen, you know, in a short amount of time, and it is a very while during while at the time of sitting down and writing, sometimes you can feel it being a hassle, but you will always appreciate taking those five, 10 minutes and being able to go back. I think that's part of what I've been sharing too is like why did you start four or five years ago? To be honest, yeah, I'm not sure. Uh, someone gave me a journal and it was kind of a gratitude journal at first, but it allowed you to write like three things that happened to you today, three things you're thankful for. At the end of the day, what did you do today? What do you want to remember in you know so many years? So I kind of I took it seriously. It was one a day, it was a full year of it. And as I was getting to the end, I was like, hey, I really enjoyed this. So I bought another journal for the next year and racked up three of them. And so but I remember saying, like, this is totally worth it. Like, this is so cool being able to go back and just kind of relive some of these days and times that you just you forget about just through your course of life happening. Um, but like you said, it's it's your story. And every I was talking to a guy yesterday, and he was talking about the importance of you know, writing a memoir at some point. Like everyone has a story, it doesn't matter who you are or what you go through, like you have your own unique story, and somebody can take something from it, whether it's one person reading it or thousands and millions of people, like there's something you've gone through that can help somebody else, and everyone should share their story. But to do that, you gotta write. You gotta write it out, you gotta do the work for it.

SPEAKER_01 15:44

So it's and we all hear the voice. And that's what I I try to tell people is everybody, a lot of people come to me and go, Jed, you create a lot of content. Like you create, you create. And it's like, no, I just I hear the voice. You have a voice, I have a voice. My difference is I document it, I write that voice down. And believe me, like with anything, 70% of it is garbage. You know, 70% of it is just random trains of thoughts that really never land or go anywhere. But that's the beauty of the practice. And as with anything, the more, you know, the first month of you doing that gratitude journal was hard. And then it stopped being as hard because throughout the day you started to go, there was. That was my that was my gratitude moment right there. That's when I'm gonna go write down. Ooh, now I have a story. Wow, this happened. And did you set it up? And did you so you get that muscle and you get the practice? But so many people are intimidated, and I just go, what is the voice saying in your head? Jot that down. Don't try to capture it all. Just go until all of a sudden you're thinking, you know, we're we're going to the store to get apples, and then boom, why am I back at a summer event, you know, water park in in 13 years old? That's the beauty. Like that's what it starts to do. And yes, if you ever want to be a speaker, if you ever want to, and by speaker, doesn't mean stand on stage. It means, hey, I'm a salesperson and I gotta go deliver a presentation. Today, man, the information, the data, it's a click of a button away. That is not your advantage. It's can I tell the story? And you're gonna need human moments and you're gonna need the details. Like you said, everybody has a story, right? Good, bad, different. What is your story? I think that is gonna be the question. It's the old one of the only questions I've come to that AI can't answer yet. And so as we look at the next decade, if I'm 22 years old graduating into this world and seeing Oracle lose 30,000 jobs in a day, I gotta stop putting my future and everything I have in something I don't control. This is something that you can document, you can grow, you'll see the highs, you'll see the lows. And every time you'll have a one-minute or a 10-minute quip that brings people into your world. And that connectivity is king this, you know, as we move forward. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:10

No, I love that. And then yeah, you mentioned 10 years from now, everyone's gonna have a lot of write about in these journals in the way and how fast we're going. But no, Jenna Dott, I want I want you to talk about your book you've written, and I want you to talk about the book that you've got coming out a little bit. And I want to start your money vehicle. And I'm curious to know, just first off, what led you down the path of getting into personal finance and helping coach people in this aspect of their lives.

SPEAKER_01 18:37

And this is what's so cool because these are both connected. So, your money vehicle is something I wrote down in my journal. There you go. About 18 years ago, when I was a rookie in the NFL, I was a business major in college, I had an accounting degree, but I was still handed that first NFL paycheck with no plan, no thoughts, no guidance. You know, I could give you a hundred thousand widgets, I could fill out uh, you know, some financial statements. Nobody told me the Collins family was going to get$100,000. Here's what to go do with it. And so I really looked around the NFL and heard the statistics and the stories of guys going broke, and I just said, it's partly our fault, but it's not all our fault. Nobody guided us. You you gave me thousands of hours in a weight room and never once a cash management strategy. Like, that's insane. So, your money vehicle was this idea that I wanted to translate this foreign language of money into concepts I, as a young man and young woman, would understand. And so, money vehicle is the beginning of that analogy. I want you to see money as a vehicle, a verb, taking you somewhere. Money is not the destination. So many people get lost in that. Money is supposed to take you to your destination. And as we move through that, we really build upon that vehicle analogy where the engine is your investments, the steering wheel is that cash management. You start to look at pieces in your vehicle and how do you educate yourself around it, all through stories and analogies that bring this foreign language into a comprehensible, digestible, and most importantly, actionable sequence. And as I'm going through these journals, I start realizing this after financial literacy, something else I am passionate about is this journaling idea. And looking back at this Detroit one, I used an AI tool that took my pen and paper and sent me a Word document. It ended up being about 90,000 words. And I was like, whoa, this is a book. And so this book, Fourth and Goal, coming out April 28th, is literally my personal journal from every day of that season. I'm going through free agency in New Orleans. It doesn't turn out the way I think, as my entire career did. I land in Detroit. Now I'm in this new world around greatness, Matthew Stafford and Dominican Sue, a guy named Calvin Johnson. You get to sit next to these things and you start to observe and absorb not just their skills, but the moments. And those are my stories now. Those are the stories I'm sharing in this book is I got to sit next to Calvin Johnson after he's caught the 10,000 yard pass on Thanksgiving Day against the Green Bay Packers. Then the head ref, the white cap official, comes to the sideline and during the game starts shaking Calvin's hand. That's when you know you're around greatness. That's when you know something's different. AI can tell you about Megatron. AI can't sit next to him and observe the situations and the moments that I got to be a part of. I'm the fly on the wall guy. I'm a no-name player. And so it's walking through the grit and survival of being on the bubble. It's being around greatness. And then it's everything in between the funny moments in the locker room, the emotions I got to share. And I really wanted it to be a template for a young journaler. How do I get started? Okay, I just saw this. Big story that Jed just documented and wrote. Maybe that's too much for me to even believe I can do right now. But throughout the book, throughout Fourth and Gold, there's about a hundred journaling prompts. So the goal is you get through a day and then you go start your own journaling. You go start capturing your ideas. And that is the purpose of what we're doing. Books, publishing books as the meeting of the minds. This is going to be a question a lot of people have asked have you ever wondered what it would be like to be inside the helmet of an NFL player? I am giving that first person glimpse. I don't think there's ever been a book like this published. I know there are memoirs, people going back and writing about their journey. That's not this book. This is real time. You're going to walk with me as the coach calls me out and says, you need to go do this, this, and this better. It's my reaction and then my response to those comments. So I'm excited about putting it out there as a man, as an artist to some degree. I'm very nervous in how it's going to be received. But I hope people, men especially, read it and go, I actually have those thoughts. I hear that voice. I know that insecurity. I know those things. Now I need to capture what I'm going through to eventually build into who I want to become. And the proudest thing I can say is what I wrote down in my journal almost 18, 20 years ago, I've become that man. And that's not coincidence and that's not accident or random. It's been a series of challenges, of failures, and identifying what path do I want to continue down. And that mostly is because of my journals. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:37

I love how you let us know that it how different of a book it's going to be. Because, like you said, like I've read Drew Brees' book. I've read Brady versus Manning. I had Gary Myers who wrote that book on the podcast early on, read a lot about athletes. But you're right, it's not, it's not fully a book of the season and the daily thoughts and all that. It's more of just their life and you know, kind of as it goes along in a little bit of a different route. I'm excited for your book to come out. And you know, a lot of my friends are football fans, they love reading sports books, so that's an easy, easy sell and giveaway with when your book does drop. But Jededai, just a couple more questions for you. Yeah, but one of them, it's kind of you may include this in your book. I'm not sure, but I'm curious to know, just you know, again, you were around so many fantastic coaches and players. Who are a few that you look back on and say, like, wow, I'm so glad I got to be around them because they impacted my life in a very positive way.

SPEAKER_01 24:30

I mean, I'll go to greatness first. I mentioned Calvin Johnson. Another guy I got to work with for a few years was Drew Brees. You want to talk about I I've always been a breakfast club guy. I'm a first person in the building. I would go into the weight room and scream at the weights and tell everybody, I woke the weights up this morning. Don't worry. Like, hey, I get you get in there after me. Two guys who beat me into the building were Drew Brees and Calvin Johnson. And that's not coincidence. That's not by accident or mistake. They have all the money in the world, all the accolades, all the fame, and they're still in there hustling and grinding. So that in and of itself is a great walk away. One of the things I pride myself in is stealing that greatness from the buildings I was in. I call it rookie to veteran. I actually have principles that I got to walk away from. Perhaps one of my favorite, and it's actually not in this book, it was earlier in my career, but I got to train with the linebackers. So there's the skilled guys we know from fantasy, there's the big guys, just giants. And then the big skilled group is the the fullbacks, the safeties, the linebackers. And so I would train next to this 15-year linebacker, and I noticed, man, he we'd run 50 yards, he'd run 55. We'd run 60, he'd run 65. We'd go, we put 225 on a bench press, and he'd slide two and a half pounds on it after we were done and doing it the same rep. And I started to observe him, and finally I just asked, and I said, Man, I don't get it. Like, is it hard? You're an old man now. Is it hard for you to slow down out on the field? Five pounds on a bench press? Like, what is five pounds ever going to prove? And he said, Look around. Everybody here is younger than me, cheaper than me, healthier than me. Everybody's here to take my job. I've been here 15 years. And it's not because I'm the best in the world, it's because I still come in every day and I try to steal this. And he held up his fingers and he said, this inch is what my objective is every day. An inch leads to a yard, a yard to a first down, a first down to a touchdown, and touchdowns eventually get you to wins. And I really took that concept and I really embodied it. Now I was on the Chiefs. I ended up getting cut by the Chiefs, so it didn't work immediately. But as you look at that dozen times I got cut, every time I showed up, I was an inch, two inches better than I was. And as a fullback, we start measuring our success in six-inch battles. And so I started to look at Monday through Saturday and say, there's six days of the week. If I can steal an inch every day, Monday it's recovery, Tuesday it's a lift, Saturday it's film, right before Sunday. I would walk out on the field Sunday and I would have already won that six-inch battle because I stole it and won it throughout the week. That's where I became a Pro Bowl caliber player. I was a top-tier fullback every year I was in because of that inch concept. Because every day I was looking around at a little thing. They weren't massive. I didn't come in and put 100 pounds on my bench press, or I stole subtle little things. And it's that mentality, it's that mindset. Everybody says they miss the locker room when they're done playing. No doubt. You miss the camaraderie. You miss the fact that there is no HR department. You can say pretty much anything you want and get away with it. But what I miss about that building and about being around the NFL is the understanding of our standard. And our standard is we're going for greatness. Nobody gives greatness away. You earn it, you take it off somebody else's table. And I miss that everyday hunt of that inch. I still try to interpret it into my entrepreneurial life, but meeting more and more people, you know, you meet as a young man, I in my 20s, I was around the best in the world. And then you go into your 30s and you realize not everybody is the best in the world. Not everybody has those mindsets. And I challenge more people to say, I don't care what your job is, you can get an inch better today. And that that is something that will stick with me for the rest of my life. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:28

Damn, man, you got any given Sunday uh speech vibes going down. Game of inches, baby. Game of inches. I love that, man. I love everything you're you're saying and putting out there because it is such a, you know, again, it's it's easy. You get motivation for a little bit, but the discipline, I hear that in in the way you talk of gotta show up, gotta be better, gotta do this, and doing that every single day to get get ahead in those those six inches being ahead of everybody else.

SPEAKER_01 28:56

And so many people mistake what discipline is. Everybody says all they're disciplination. Discipline is telling yourself to do it when you don't want to do it. There are days I don't want to get up and go do it. Shut up and do it is the voice that overrides that. Discipline is the ability to turn your brain off and go forward anyway. I think a lot of people look, and even me, they'll go, Jed, you got your energy and you got it. And it's like, no, man, you won't know, but some days I'm faking it. Some days I'm just trying. But I can tell myself to do it when I don't want to, and that is a great skill. Fullback, not every day did I want to go lead up on a lead ISO, but I understood I had to be willing to do it. That's the discipline of the practice. Yep. And that's the difference of being here and being up here.

SPEAKER_00 29:45

No, well, Jedediah, man, I got one last question for you. And I'm sitting here thinking this is awesome because I was I was, you know, asking you the question of who had has had a positive impact on you. And I was thinking from a book standpoint, I remember the first book that that launched me into loving reading, and it was actually Tony Dungey's book, Quiet Strength. Yeah. Uh yeah. So learned a lot just about him as a person, his leadership qualities and style. And then it led me to to learning about players that he coached, and it was just took me down, took me down this path, which I'm so appreciative of. Thank you, Grandma, for giving me that book.

SPEAKER_01 30:18

Love it.

SPEAKER_00 30:19

But I'm curious to know just you personally, what are what are some books that have had a big impact on you personally or professionally? And and what's a book you like to recommend to others?

SPEAKER_01 30:28

Great question. I mean, financially, number one, obviously, Rich Dad, Poor Dad is is timeless. Again, don't lose the message in the messenger. Some people, Robert Kiyosaki, and he's crazy and he's a crazy genius in and of itself. But the mentality that that teaches, how you see money is what changed my life. I try to create money vehicle because I loved the mindset. I wanted more of the practical actions. But truly, today I teach thousands of professional athletes each year. And it's really that rich dad, poor dad, money vehicle concept of seeing yourself as a business. So financially, love that. As I look at kind of books that have changed the way I think, Atlas Shrugged is going to be one that's a massive read, but it is more timely now than ever. As I live in the state of Washington and we're starting to implement different taxes and different things and just how different people approach rules. Rules are great and rules should be followed. And some people find their way around rules. So I loved that from in an introduction to how society is going to work. But I would say, you know, some of the man, I love this. Some of the books that I have just enjoyed the most. A fictional one is Shogun. Um, a buddy of mine just actually went to Japan and I got him a copy of that. And that's part of a trilogy. And then you you do come back to these ideas. One is, and this is a little bit spiritual based, but it's called the power of now. And that book I read my early in my career, and you start to realize everything is going to happen in the now. And with social media, with the amount of information, with AI, with all the things, typically in journaling forces you to do this at times. We live in fear of the future or regret of the past. And power of now really was the first thing that taught me to just breathe and be here. Uh, Nick Sabin says it best be where your feet are. Being in the present moment is such a gift today because there are so many distractions and so many escapes. And there are so many people who regret what they did last week, last month, whatever. I think if we can get the power of this moment, capture it in a journal, capture it in just being present, that is going to be such a skill of the future. And it's something I'm trying to practice because as an ambitious man, it is a curse, a curse to always want to improve where I am. I see what I have accomplished and I go, great, just watch. There's more to come. And the power of now really teaches me that ambition is good. Being content in this moment is arguably better. And I think that's one that, you know, again, it's it's not for everyone, but it is a good one. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:13

No, great recommendation. I'm glad and I'm glad you even admitted like this takes practice because it's it's hard. It's hard to be in the moment when you've got so much going on and so much you want to do and so much to get done. It is, it's so hard to pause and just be where your feet are. And so it's it's something everybody has got to practice and focus on. But no, Jediah, where can people, and I want to get give you a chance to share, where can people follow you at? Announce again when your new book comes out, and we'll get that spotlighted on the Books for Guys website. The day it comes out, I'll I'll post it on there for people to find. But where can people follow you and see your work at?

SPEAKER_01 33:51

So you can follow me, pullback and finance on all the social medias, Jedediah Collins. I got a YouTube channel at Jeddai Collins, JedediahCollins.com will be me as kind of the speaker, and your money vehicle.com will be the financial literacy. April 28th, Fourth and Goal comes out. And the last thing, I've said it earlier, but this is a book that's never been written, but I really do see a new industry starting. For the Detroit Lions fans out there, I captured a historic year in the Detroit Lions facility. 2014 was the changing of the tides there. And I think as we look at in the future, players are going to be the ones who get to go, well, you want to relive the 2025 Seahawks Super Bowl? I was on that team. Let me tell you my 10 stories. Let me tell you my moments. I really want to see the athlete of the future think like a business and build their brand. Everybody asks me, how do you build a brand? How do you have NIL? How do you do starts with your journal? But then you translate it to that humanity and leadership for an entrepreneur or somebody in corporate America. This is where it's going to go. This is my first person, real-time ups and downs. I cry. I get, you know, just absolutely blown away and blindsided. And I get to live and be in some of the coolest moments and the coolest places I can imagine. That's what Fourth and Gold is about. My hope is I get to go write more of my career because that's only year seven. But April 28th, you can get it on Amazon. You can get it on JedediahCollins.com website. Get it, listen to it. I mean, let's be real. Not everybody wants a book. Some people want to listen. We also, I've I've recorded the audible, so that will come out as well. But if you ever asked yourself, what's it like to be in the mind of an NFL player, a fullback to boot, this is that book.

SPEAKER_00 35:39

Heck yeah, man. Heck yeah, man. Can't wait to read it. And I know you're gonna put more work out there. And so as you continue to do so, man, we'll be there cheering for you and spotlighting all the work that we can for you. So a fullback of finance, Jedediah, thank you so much, man. This means a lot.

SPEAKER_01 35:55

Hey, brother, appreciate the opportunity to share with your community. And truly, my father has an immense library. Reading is an amazing gift. It's changing, it's evolving like everything else. Like I said, listening is the new reading, but the respect that men need to connect with other men, and this is a personal and quiet place to be able to do it. I love what the message you're putting out. Appreciate it, man.

SPEAKER_00 36:20

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 36:21

Enjoy the day.