Former NFL Star Talks About Transitioning From the NFL | Shawne Merriman Digital Social Hour #85

guy just across from you,

he's not playing around.

This is not a game to him.

He's coming here to cause physical harm to you.

Dude, my first time with Randy Goutour, Randy was throwing my ass around.

Who's the best quarterback you played against?

People are going to think I'm Hayden, right?

And I'm not.

But

I think Peyton Manning was the best quarterback.

Over Brady?

Over Brady.

Welcome back to the Digital Social Hour, guys.

I'm your host, Sean Kelly, here with an awesome guest for you guys today, Sean Merriman.

How's it going?

Good, man.

How you doing?

Can't complain, man.

What you been up to?

Too much?

Too much.

No, you know, things are good, man.

Obviously, you know, being in the fight business and stuff now and being in the insurance business, like, i you know for me man i just i got to stay active yeah you know i like to stay active um

but things been great man post post-career you know things have been great

see you transitioned well because it seems like a lot of pro athletes after they retire they seem kind of lost for a bit right yeah but no matter what even me when i retired at the end of 2013 i got straight into tv right with the nfl network and i was doing the broadcasting thing but you still it's it didn't feel right right it didn't feel normal

And so whenever I talk to athletes now, I say, look, figure out what you want to do while you're playing and then do it as soon as you're done.

Right.

Because that first year is a struggle for anybody because the locker room is gone, the camaraderie, the

regimen, your schedule,

being able to compete and watch film.

All these things are gone that you've been doing since most of us were like 10 or 11 years old.

And so you're going to go through that transition no matter what.

So when you got into broadcasting, you were like, man, I wish i I was on the field dude you know you know was what was the hardest thing for me to be in a broadcasting booth was

saying something negative about the players right like if a guy was in a certain coverage and you knew that he blew his coverage yeah right

You didn't want to call him out because, you know, in the locker room, man, you're like, hey, you know, we don't we don't do that.

Yeah, yeah.

But, you know, I had to get comfortable with, you know, especially people, guys that I knew.

Yeah.

Right.

Somebody was supposed to be in cover three and they and they blew it.

You're like, hey, you got to call it out because that's what the audience and the people watching want to hear.

Yeah, for sure.

And you mentioned when you retired, some people thought you retired pretty early.

Was that like a decision you wanted to make?

Yeah, man.

For me,

when I started having the back-to-back injuries and I couldn't stay healthy, and then I finally got healthy.

But even when you're healthy, you've already had those injuries before, so you can never get back to where you were.

Mentally, right?

No, physically.

Physically.

So mentally, I was fine.

Okay.

But the physical aspect of it is that my body could continue to do what I wanted it to do, right?

Perform at a high level.

And even my last year with the Buffalo Bills, they asked me to come back

another year because I finished a year strong.

And they were like, hey, man, we want you back.

We want to sign you to another deal.

And I knew in the back of my head, I'm like, I'm done.

You know, I'm just done.

I was already ready to do that next thing.

I was ready.

And the other side of it, when I talk to players, I tell them, I say, dude, play until your legs fall off, right?

Like, play until they literally force you out of there because it really is, man.

It's like

it's an honor to get a chance to play on that level.

Yeah.

And it's a dream come true.

And you don't want to walk away with any regrets.

Right.

Leave it all out.

You got to leave it all out there because when you're done, that's it.

There's no going back.

There's no, and I was ready to be done.

Mentally, you were checked out.

I was checked out, man.

I've just, I had, you know, TV lined up.

I had stuff with lights out.

You know, at one point, I was training to fight as well.

I was working with the WWE.

I was over the WWE Network, and I hosted

the WWE

WrestleMania when it was in New Orleans.

Oh, that's dope.

And so, you know, I grew up, like everybody else, like a WWE

fan.

I was just,

I loved it.

And so to get a chance and opportunity to work with them for that period of time, you know,

I had a lot of other things going on.

But, you know, I tell guys, man if you don't have things lined up you know get lined up when you're playing but also play as long as you possibly can that you're that you don't compromise your body and you know your well-being but play as long as you can for sure were there any injuries you sustained that you still feel to this day um no not really oh okay

yeah i still um you know because i'm in uh in the the mma business in the fight business uh i still train with a lot of guys i still i'm at dragon's lair a couple like four or five days a week i'm at extreme guitar like three days a week.

So my body, because I take care of my body, I feel great.

But I don't feel great enough to go out there and produce on the field the way I did.

Once you have the injuries and stuff like that, your body's just starting to go like, and you can't sustain.

Like I couldn't, I couldn't sustain an entire training camp.

Like my body wouldn't hold up through an entire training camp.

Do it would just shut down?

It would just shut down.

I would have a hip, a back, a knee, a shoulder.

Like my body would break down over that course of a month in training camp.

i couldn't do that

i saw you say on a podcast uh the raiders have the worst fan base now i'm a giants fan so do you really think they're worse than the eagles

yeah

because the eagles are known to be you know oh listen um

you know anytime you got a jail

anytime you got a jail at at your at your stadium I would say this about the Eagles.

They are tough to be there when they're playing their rivalries.

I think the reason why I say the Raiders, because the Chargers fans and the Raiders fans, they hated each other so much.

So I seem the worst of the worst, right?

Especially me coming there.

I talk a lot of, you know, talk a lot of shit.

I'm going back and forth with fans on social media.

Like, you know, I'm that person, right?

Like, I'm the villain walking in there.

Yeah.

And I think with the Eagles, it wasn't a rivalry there.

But the Eagles are definitely...

Close second.

Okay.

For sure.

I'll take that.

And rookie year, what was your mindset?

Were you intimidated?

Were you excited?

Like, where were you at?

You know,

to be honest, man, I,

when I came in, because first of all, you come into the locker room with four potential Hall of Famers, right?

Right.

You know, LT,

in the Hall of Fame, Gates, Antonio Gates, Philip Rivers, Lorenzo Neal.

I mean, you're walking in with these Hall of Fame caliber guys, probably like five different guys that could potentially be in the Hall of Fame.

Yeah.

And so, and I was 20 years old when I got drafted.

At the time, I think I was the youngest, if not one of the youngest drafted ever to the NFL.

But I was already like living beyond my years because everybody else I was around was older than me.

And so I didn't come in the locker room with like this rookie, you know, this rookie attitude.

You were used to it.

Yeah, I was used to it.

In fact,

by like the fourth or fifth game of the year, I was breaking the team down.

What do you mean?

Like, you know, the end of the game, the huddle, right before you go out.

You know, you get, you know, get in the middle, you hype everybody up.

Oh, you were doing that?

Yeah, my rookie year.

That's like unheard of.

Yeah.

You know, because it was, it was like one of those roles that was like fitting, fitting for me, right?

I always, always looked at you got your team captain, you got, you know, like your spiritual guys, and you got all these guys.

And like, they go the fire starter, him, right?

Like, he's going to get everybody going.

And that's the kind of role that I took in playing.

Like, that was it.

Nice.

You had a leadership role like very early on.

Yeah.

You were the guy early on.

Yeah.

And from there, what was it like throughout the years?

Like, well,

I think the biggest thing is,

and I just got off Fox Sports and they asked me about this.

We're talking about teams that never won the Super Bowl, right?

And they asked me

when I was on the radio.

And because we didn't win a Super Bowl in 2006,

we had the most dominant, in my opinion, the most dominant team of the decade.

Really?

Yeah, when we went 14-2.

And I'm not trying to be biased.

I mean, you can, I think there's a good amount of people to say, hey, this team, this 06 Chargers team, was probably the best team to ever not win a Super Bowl.

Wow.

That's crazy.

What caused you guys to lose that year?

Well, I mean, Ben Rothensberger,

Peyton Manning,

Tom Brady.

So we had to go through all those guys to get there.

But, you know, more importantly, man, I think that we just didn't realize the moment.

You get what I'm saying?

Yeah.

A lot of us was young.

And when you're young and you're that good in your head, you automatically think you can do this anytime you want.

Yeah.

I find we'll get back there next year.

The next year.

We'll get back the next year.

And so it became the

playoffs in 06.

Then when it came the AFC championship game in 07.

another championship, you know, back-to-back.

So in your head, you're like, we're good.

We can do this every year.

We're getting one at some point.

And I don't think that we just capitalize on those type of teams that we had at that time.

And there's so many unpredictables, like injuries, coaching.

It was a lot of that.

Firings.

Yeah, no, it was definitely a lot of that.

We were hit with the injury buck.

We walked in that 07, 2007 championship game against the Patriots, and every one of us was hurt.

Really?

Oh, yeah.

You know, I had a knee.

Antonio Gates had a foot.

Actually, Philip Rivers was playing on a partially torn ACL that he had surgically scoped just to play in the game.

LT had a knee.

His MCL was sprained.

So we kind of walked in that game banged up, man.

It was just bad timing.

God.

Who do you remember as some people that were just really tough to stop?

You know, that Patriots team, like during that course of between 2006 to 2010,

I don't think they were better than us on paper.

Like they wouldn't, they weren't a better team for sure,

but they knew how to win.

Right.

They didn't make any mistakes.

Bill Belichick, you know, coached the hell out of that team.

So, you know, we kept running up into them.

They put us out of the playoffs in 06.

We lost the

AFC championship game in 2007.

Then in 2008, we turned around and I think we had

08 or 09, we had the Steelers.

So we just kept kept running into really, really good teams at the time with great quarterbacks.

Yeah, the Patriots one always fascinated me because they're not more athletic than the teams they beat, but they somehow just win.

You know what I mean?

Like their receivers are never as

bouncy or whatever.

Right.

But they just find a way to win.

And that was them.

That was them through the course of their time in general.

They're very well coached.

And they just didn't make mistakes.

You look back on those teams now, and I hate the, you know, the shit or woulda-coulda coulda things.

Yeah.

Or somebody asked me, like, do I regret anything?

Like, no, I just, I just wish we would have beat the Patriots.

You know, like,

a lot of teams wish that, so you're not the only one.

And then afterwards, when did you start getting into the fight business?

So I started to train.

Jake Lazer from over at Fox Sports, he introduced me to Randy Couture.

And so I started to train with Randy first, my first day in the MMA gym, working with him.

And so I was like, you know, I like this.

I just had a passion for

this sport and then learning the discipline of it.

I got really good with my hands.

You know, being outside linebacker and pass rusher, I got really, really good with my hands.

Yeah.

And so I started to do it every offseason.

And then I got better, I got better, I got better.

And then at one point, I was going to take a fight in 2015 or 16.

Yeah.

Somewhere around there because I was seriously training by then.

Oh, nice.

And, you know, I had a couple offers, but the money just wasn't there okay for me uh and it because i had all this other stuff going on like i'm over here you know i got a great tv contract you know i'm over here doing stuff with the wwe and i had you know stuff with the lights out going on i'm like if i'm gonna throw down if i'm gonna fight like i'm it's gonna have to be worth it right because you know i'll tell anybody this like you can play basketball you can play football but you can't play fighting like it's just one of those things where you you all the way in or you don't do it right you know and so i when I hear people like, oh, I'm going to go try to fight or go try to do this.

Like, no, no, no, you either fight or you don't fight because that guy just across from you,

he's not playing around.

This is not a game to him.

He's coming here to cause physical harm to you.

Yeah.

Your life's on the line, man.

Yep.

It's not a joke.

No, no, not at all.

And we've seen some tragedies, man, with some athletes who are trying to transition to the sport and be knocked out.

And I tell guys all the time, I say, look,

because we're athletic, right?

We got an athletic background.

We've

competed on the highest level.

I said, when you get here, man, you have to switch your mentality when you're training a fight because your strength and all that stuff plays very little part in you actually being good.

Yeah.

You know, these guys have technique.

They've been doing it for a long time.

Their skill set is much higher than yours.

So you might be more athletic than them or stronger or faster, but ultimately they're going to have the advantage.

So when you go in and, you know, dude, my first time with Randy Couture, like, Randy was throwing my ass around.

Like, Like, you know, just tossing me around, and I couldn't figure out

how or why.

And it just clicked over time as I got better.

I was like, he was just on a whole different

experience.

A lot of experience, yeah.

Yeah.

So with the Lights Out League, what's your plan there?

Where do you see that going?

So we got a big fight in San Diego, August 26th, coming up at Casino Palma in San Diego.

Tickets will be up by Monday at lightsoutxf.com.

And we're on Fubo TV.

Okay.

Fubo Sports.

So,

you know, what's cool about that is when you have a TV partner, right?

It changes the ballgame because what do these fighters do?

Same thing with me when I was a former player.

I used to love Sunday night and Monday night football games, Thursday night.

Like, I wanted to be on TV, right?

You want a prime time, you want to be seen.

That's what you want to do as an athlete.

And so you have an opportunity to be seen on a platform like we have.

Actually, our last fight, man, we broke into like the top 10, top five or top, top, top five most watched on football sport.

You serious?

Yeah.

Wow.

And so,

you know, for us, that was cool because

for me, I listened to the fans, right?

The fans will tell you if you got something great or they'll tell you that you suck.

And I think for me, ultimately,

they just like the product.

And these next up-and-coming guys, like we have.

At likes how we have the next up-and-coming superstars of the sport.

And when we put together these fight cards and I started to get around them through the weigh-ins and

a lot of them I know, but some of them I don't.

And you can get around them right away because I've been around so many great athletes before in my life and I'm like, you know, he's going to be a star or she's going to be a star in one day.

Because they stick out

from everybody else.

The way they prepare, the way they go about their work, the way they go about their business, it's never any bullshit with them.

Like no excuses.

They're there to fight

and handle business.

And I can tell that.

So for me,

the funnest part about that is being able to grow these guys who one day eventually are going to be superstars in this sport.

Yeah, that's huge.

Have you been approached by like Bellator or UFC or anyone yet?

I know all the guys.

Sky Colgrette, Bellator.

You know, I worked with them for a short period of time.

You know, Don Davis.

Peter, all these guys at PFL.

I know them.

Yeah.

You know, when I go to the UFC fights, I just was at the one at T-Mobile.

Yeah, yeah, I was there.

Yeah, I was, yeah.

So that was huge.

Crazy.

And normally when I go to them, like sometimes I'll go up and I'll sit with Dana.

We went to San Diego.

We sat together.

And so.

I mean,

I've been around the sport for 17 years.

Yeah.

You know, I was like one of the few that before MMA started to become mainstream at all, you know, I was at the fights.

You know, when there was like no weight class.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Those big days.

Back when it was like, you know, guys were fighting in gi and shoes.

And, you know what I mean?

Like, I saw the sumo wrestler one.

Yeah.

You know, and so I was, I was going to those fights back then

before it became mainstream.

So to see where the sport is now.

And the crazy thing is this, like with us, we have so many like tech verticals coming, you know, with AI.

We have gloves now.

You can measure speed, power, accuracy that I'm going to, you know, introduce here probably in the next couple of months.

That's sick.

And just give fans live data, more engagement, because because for us we're not trying to be the ufc we don't care

uh we're not trying to be like pfl bellator anyone and we feel like we have carved out a lane to be like an incubator for these other companies that's just trying to come up and and do test trials in the tech space yeah um and metaverse vr xr i mean we're we're in the next like you know three to six months we're going to look completely different as a company wow because of all these new things that we're we're adding man you're on top of the trends man i love it well you got to man and and look the fights are going to be the fights, right?

Like, you're, in my opinion, maybe, maybe one day somebody dethrone UFC.

I don't think they ever will.

Yeah.

But I'm sure that there'll be enough that's going to try it.

We're not trying to do that, right?

We, we love this space that we're in.

And to be able to, to be able to move, move around, maneuver, and pivot to these creative ideas and do different things like this, I love that space of it.

That's huge.

A lot of pro athletes go broke.

You've seen them manage to just dominate even after retirement.

What would you say separated you from everyone else?

I think

I'm very,

when I lock into something, that's it.

Right.

And

I don't get easily distracted by anything.

You know, I'm a five, wake up at 5:30, 6 o'clock in the morning.

I'm in the gym, you know, six days a week.

And I'm just very

organized and smart with my time and very efficient.

I think that's what, you know, what makes me different than a lot of people in this space is that, you know, I have a lot of opportunities to do a lot of stuff.

And, you know, people bring these ideas and all this great stuff, which is cool.

And I'm like, no, man, I have these three things right here.

I have to do it.

And so I'm not even looking or talking to anyone else or even hearing other people's stuff until I get these three things done.

Wow.

And I think that's what separates me.

And I've always been like that, even as a player, right?

Like, I'm not doing this, I'm not doing that until these two or three things are done.

And so it allows me to execute everything that I'm doing.

If I got something going, it's getting executed, it's getting done, and then I move on to the next thing.

So you're just locked in.

I'm always locked in.

You know, seven days a week, man.

I'm just, I'm constantly locked in.

You'll never get an out-of-the-office reply on my email.

You know, that don't even exist.

Or a time that I'm saying, hey, I'm doing this.

I'm not working today.

I'm not working at this moment.

I mean, you know, the only time I try to block out out where I don't like people to really interrupt me is when I'm in the gym.

Okay.

But even then, man, I'll still send out a quick text or a quick email, or you know, I'll answer the phone while I'm in the middle of the bench press, you know what I mean?

Like,

but you know, no matter what, that's a minute phone call, I'm off, and I'm back to it.

So, yeah, you're right.

I'm just, I'm constantly locked into everything that I do.

That's sick.

And with football, would you say you were naturally talented at first, or was it a lot of work ethic?

It was both.

It was both.

But,

you know, for me,

especially when you get up to the NFL, but when you start young, your mentality is the most important thing.

Athleticism and all that stuff, because I know a lot of guys who wasn't worth it athletically at all.

Really?

Right.

But their mentality was scrappy.

These guys would do anything.

They'll jump over a pile.

They'll hit you out of bank.

Like, they were just scrappy.

And a lot of those guys survived a lot longer than the people who are talented.

Wow.

Because their mentality and their approach, how they looked at everything was just completely different.

Yeah.

And so I had that mentality, but I also had the athletic side to me, where it's like, okay,

my mentality was these scrappy guys over here that will just do anything, right?

They'll fight you all the way to the death.

But I had the athleticism to back up my mentality.

And that's what kind of separated me from a lot of other people when we played because you get up to the level, dude.

I mean,

I was talking to to somebody the other day in a barber shop and these guys were discussing, he was like, oh, such and such is a bum, right?

He was talking about the second string quarterback.

I forgot for which team.

And I stopped him.

I said, dude, listen, that second string quarterback or that second string linebacker or that second string defensive lineman is the most athletic guy you'll ever meet in your life.

Probably the strongest guy, probably the, you know, whatever.

And

when you get on that level, everybody's so good.

But what starts to separate guys is their mentality and their approach to the game.

Yeah, it's so funny hearing just normal people saying, oh, that player's trash

when they're even worse.

Right.

Yeah, no, that's, that's crazy.

Like, it's interesting to dive into the mindset of pro athletes and see, because there's some that just elevate past the regular athletes.

Yeah, I mean, and,

you know, like certain, certain people are, first of all, you got to have discipline, right?

Discipline is the key factor in everything.

Yeah.

You know, you have to have that first.

The second part of that is you have to be willing to sacrifice and do certain things that people won't do.

Right.

You know, when you're tired as hell in that fourth quarter, it's hot as hell outside.

And you put your face mask and your helmet up in the air because you're trying to grasp for air.

Ain't nothing there.

You can't breathe.

But you're able to go out and then make that one more play.

Right.

Make that one big play and suck it up and go out and do it.

And that is what separate the average guy or average athlete to the ones that are your pro bowlers and your all-pros and your defensive rookie of the year,

offensive rookie of the year, players of the year.

Like those guys, when you get to that level,

are able to take their mind much further than the average human being or the average player that's on the field.

Yeah.

Who is the best quarterback you played against?

People are going to think I'm hating, right?

And I'm not.

But

I think Peyton Manning was the best quarterback.

Over Brady?

Over Brady.

Wow.

Personally.

You know, like

if I'm starting a team,

I'm picking Peyton Manning over Tom Brady in a heartbeat.

Really?

Yeah.

Because,

in my opinion, I think that when it came to a football player, the best quarterback, take the team aspects, take the rings, take all that stuff out.

If you got this guy or that guy, I'm going with Peyton Manning.

I think that he was capable of a lot more.

I think that

his way of the game, his nickname was the general, right?

Peyton would come out and scan the whole field and call his own plays.

And he was different when it came to that.

He was built different.

What made Tom the way he is is his competitiveness.

You know,

I played with Phillip.

Phillip's the most competitive person I ever played with.

Phillip Rivers?

Yeah, Phillip Rivers.

He's the most competitive person I played with.

Tom Brady is the most competitive person I played against.

And

his will to compete and his approach and how we his preparation and his willingness to compete is what made Tom Brady who he is.

But when you're talking about quarterbacks, the skill set,

Peyton Manning.

Wow.

Yeah, that's a rare answer for sure.

I feel like.

Now, there's a lot of trash talk in the NBA, but what about the NFL?

Are people talking?

Oh, non-stop.

Really?

Yeah, no.

I mean, I wasn't a big talker like that.

You know, I talk with my helmet, my shoulder pads.

Those two did a lot of talking.

Oh, yeah.

But,

yeah, you just, you hear like the most ridiculous, disrespectful s, man.

Like,

they don't go as crazy as they are now because they got, you know, cameras and microphones and stuff.

People are mediced up.

People are mic'd up all the time.

So, but man, I mean, before it got that crazy, you would hear the craziest shit.

Really?

You know, guys talking about families and their wives and their kids, like people, all kinds of shit.

I never knew that.

And

yeah,

it was pretty wild.

It was pretty wild.

But I think that when they started to introduce all the tech stuff and the microphones and cameras,

people toned it down a little bit.

What would you do if someone talked to you?

Depending on what position they play.

I mean, can I get to them?

Because there's a lot that can happen legally between the whistle.

And so I,

you know,

first of all, guys, nobody really said a whole lot to me because I didn't talk back anyway.

But the other part of that is, if they ever did do it, it's like, okay, cool.

I'll see you around.

You know, I'm going to see you at some point.

Yeah.

And, you know,

I'll let that situation happen in.

But, you know, I never looked at it, do anything dirty to another guy.

Yeah.

I just, I was never like that.

I think that there's more than enough time between the whistle to do something to people if you want to do it.

Were there dirty players?

Because I know NBA, there's some.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

There's dirty.

Yeah, on every team.

Like, they're out to hurt you, right?

Yeah, they're on every team.

But you know that going into the game.

Right.

Right?

Like, when you watch film during the week and you're watching the whole season or a previous season, my guys, and you'll see somebody

standing by the pow, right?

Before the, right, right when the play is over, and then the offensive, defensive lineman or linebacker, somebody come and take them right over the pow.

The play is clearly over.

Yeah, I've seen guys do that.

Right.

And so we're sitting around in the meeting room like, okay, you know, 76, y'all watch out for 76.

Watch out for 64.

And so you know that going into the game, which one of the guys is dirty?

Yeah.

So you know.

Yeah.

I feel like people know in the NBA too for the most part.

So do you have like scouting reports before the games where you know each player?

Oh, I would, you know, watch probably four,

at least four hours of film a day.

A day?

Yeah.

Holy crap.

Even in the regular season?

Yeah.

Yeah.

At least four hours of film.

Wow.

You know, you come in, you'll watch maybe an hour or so

with the team, and then you'll come back in and you'll watch practice and you'll watch

the team again.

And then when I go home, I'll watch another hour or two

film.

So all in all, you're getting at least four hours or close to it of film a day.

Wow.

And that probably helped a lot with just planning out your strategy, right?

No,

that was everything.

Because once you start knowing so much about a player, somebody else,

it's a game then at that point.

When you know how many times this guy is going to kick out before he tries to block you or what his stand is before the players and if they're throwing the ball or running it,

the game, and then they're looking around, it's third and seven.

The ball is on this hash yard on the right side.

They're only going to run three plays out of this formation.

And now that guy is standing up high.

So you're looking at this is everything that's going on in one play.

And this is one play, not a series.

Like one play it you're looking at down and distance okay third and seven they're in this formation okay they've run these three plays out of this formation now i'm looking at my guy and looking at his stance is he is he wide is his stance closed is he is his hand in the ground okay so which now out of these three plays which one do they run which one do they run out of this formation this down and distance and by the way his hand is in it in the wow you knew all that oh yeah you knew that you knew that pre-snap so now you got one or two plays they could possibly run and so me you knowing that you're going full steam ahead wow you're going full steam ahead so that's when when you see quarterbacks get sacked instantly that's usually because they know what's going to happen yeah you you know

you know and some of the some and i had to by the way i had to learn how to watch film because i did you know i i was at first i would just kind of watch myself and and how i played or whatnot and when i learned how to watch film i started watching everything play clock down the distance what quarter was it?

How's that guy stands?

What formation?

And all these, what we call pre-snap keys, you start knowing

which one or two plays they're going to run out of this situation.

Wow, that's insane.

I didn't know that much went into it.

That's crazy.

I want to touch up on the life insurance stuff before we drop up.

Guys like Patrick Bett David, Sean Mike have sold their companies for a lot of money.

What made you want to get into the life insurance space?

Well, Sean Mike was one of the ones who,

I was working with Family First Life.

Oh, nice.

And so Sean Mike, you know, I got introduced to him by a good friend of mine, Brad Alkeisen.

And he introduced me to Sean.

And we had a very similar thought process in

business

and in life.

And, you know, he's a pit bull, man.

He likes to get after.

So I love that part of it too.

But more importantly, man, I started to see like an upside in this insurance industry that I didn't know was there.

And obviously, because I play ball, I have a big outreach.

I started to build a massive agent agency and started helping all these other people making six-figure incomes.

And so, and it just happened by, that wasn't my plan.

It was just like I realized the upside in the business and I started to bring in the people I knew who wanted to make some extra money and take care of some families and build a business.

And so, once I realized it worked for like the first 10 or 15 people, and I brought in another 10 or 15 people, I brought in another 10 or 15 people, and I just naturally organically started growing the agency.

And we're hiring I have over 200 agents throughout the country that I work with

and you know at this rate I wouldn't I wouldn't put a past if I had a few thousand over the next year or two

because we have a system and a formula that's helping people change their lives that's insane I like life insurance because you're providing a valuable product to someone too yeah and that's the thing man um

obviously the money is great there's a lot of money in it but there's not too many industries where you can you're helping somebody right right because life insurance is a necessity it's not like a privilege like it's not like hey i'm gonna i might get some life insurance i might not right if you got kids you have a spouse you got a family you you got to have life insurance yeah you know you got it you got to find a way to afford it and uh and figure it out but you know just this business alone man i

it's it became really fun for me um because the other day i was actually before when i just pulled up i was on the phone with an agent that i worked with and you know he um he left his job He was

working at Verizon for some time.

Never, never made anything more than like $5,000 a month.

He was struggling, behind on a bunch of stuff.

And going on, now he's like looking for homes.

Wow.

He's looking at plots of land.

That's crazy.

Yeah.

And this is within a year.

That's nuts.

And so I think that when there's this much upside into a business, you got to look at it.

And so, yeah, so more, anybody out there that's listening, you want to work with me in life insurance, go to lightsoutagency.com or DM me on Instagram or something like that and reach out.

Man, I'd love to love to work with you.

Oh, yeah, man.

Anything you want to close off with?

Yeah, we got a again, we got a big fight coming up in San Diego, August 26th

at Casino Palma.

This is my actually, what's cool about it is this is my first event back in San Diego since I retired.

Oh, nice.

Um, and so I was trying to put get something down there for some for a long time.

That's home for me, right?

I mean, it's still my, you know, my backyard.

Um, so yeah, Casino Palmer is going to be going to be lit August 26th.

It'll be live on Fubo, live on Fubo Sports.

And we got three guys in this car that's already in the process of signing contender deals with the UFC.

And so that part is really cool for me because these guys are going to be bona fide superstars.

I know.

But to have them come and fight for us for Lightside Extreme Fighting

is really dope.

That's awesome, man.

Yeah, definitely check it out.

August 26th.

Otherwise, see you guys next time.