What would happen if you trained like the best athlete in the world? How about the best actor or artist?
Today we have the incredible honor of speaking with Bo Eason—a former star safety in the NFL, as well as an acclaimed playwright, author, and coach. After competing with all-time greats like Jerry Rice and Walter Payton in the NFL, Bo changed his dream and went on to write and perform on Broadway… despite having no experience as a writer or stage performer.
As he shares his multi-decade journey becoming the best in the world in completely unrelated fields, Bo proves that the principles of mastery truly are universal… and you can learn them, too.
This is excellent news for mere mortals like us.
In this episode with Bo, you’ll hear:
Bo Eason’s book, “There’s No Plan B For Your A-Game” is an 8 time National Best Seller! Order now and claim your bonuses by going to BoEasonBook.com
Join the Abel James’ Substack channel: https://abeljames.substack.com/
Listen and support the show on Fountain: https://fountain.fm/show/6ZBhFATsjzIJ3QVofgOH
Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/fatburningman
Like the show on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/fatburningman
Follow on X: https://x.com/abeljames
Click here for your free Fat-Burning Kit: http://fatburningman.com/bonus
Brought to you by:
Pique Life – Save 20% off the Pu’er Bundle plus a free starter kit when you go to: PiqueLife.com/wild
Juvent Micro-Impact Platform from Juvent.com – Save $500 off your purchase with code WILD
Today we have the incredible honor of speaking with Bo Eason—a former star safety in the NFL, as well as an acclaimed playwright, author, and coach. After competing with all-time greats like Jerry Rice and Walter Payton in the NFL, Bo changed his dream and went on to write and perform on Broadway… despite having no experience as a writer or stage performer.
As he shares his multi-decade journey becoming the best in the world in completely unrelated fields, Bo proves that the principles of mastery truly are universal… and you can learn them, too.
This is excellent news for mere mortals like us.
In this episode with Bo, you’ll hear:
- The roadmap to becoming a world class performer in any field
- Why we need to reclaim our natural physicality instead of apologizing for it
- How to harness the magic of storytelling to build your dream life
- And much more…
Bo Eason’s book, “There’s No Plan B For Your A-Game” is an 8 time National Best Seller! Order now and claim your bonuses by going to BoEasonBook.com
Join the Abel James’ Substack channel: https://abeljames.substack.com/
Listen and support the show on Fountain: https://fountain.fm/show/6ZBhFATsjzIJ3QVofgOH
Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/fatburningman
Like the show on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/fatburningman
Follow on X: https://x.com/abeljames
Click here for your free Fat-Burning Kit: http://fatburningman.com/bonus
Brought to you by:
Pique Life – Save 20% off the Pu’er Bundle plus a free starter kit when you go to: PiqueLife.com/wild
Juvent Micro-Impact Platform from Juvent.com – Save $500 off your purchase with code WILD
[00:00:00]
Abel James:
Hey, folks. This is Abel James, and thanks so much for joining us on the show. What would happen if you trained, like, the best athletes in the world? How about the best actors or artists? Today, we have the incredible honor of speaking with Bo Eason, a former star safety in the NFL, as well as an acclaimed playwright, author, and coach. After competing with all time greats like Jerry Rice and Walter Payton in the NFL, Bo rewrote his dream and went on to perform on Broadway despite having no experience as a writer or stage performer. As he shares his multi decade journey, becoming the best in the world in completely unrelated fields, Beau proves that the principles of mastery truly are universal and you can learn them too. This is excellent news for mere mortals like us. A few quick words before we get to the interview. In the age of AI, doubling down on connections and relationships with real humans is more critical than ever. So if you're looking to get unstuck and maximize your performance in business and life this year, listen up. We'll be launching a new high level program this year with the potential to work together with me 1 on 1. So if you're interested in connecting with me or joining one of our future events here in Austin, Texas and beyond, you can visit abeljames.com.
That's abeljames.com and you can sign up for my newsletter. If you wanna get in touch, you can just hit reply to one of my email newsletters or you can find me on most socials under Abel James or Abel Jams. You can also listen until the end of this episode to hear one of my original tunes called Live While I'm Alive, which actually just hit number 1 on the fountain fm chart. So thanks to all of you who are listening and sharing the tunes. I hope you enjoy. Without further ado, in this episode with Beau, you'll hear the road map to becoming a world class performer in any field, why we need to reclaim our natural physicality instead of apologizing for it, how to harness the magic of storytelling to build your dream life, why NFL players don't watch NFL games, and much more. Let's go hang out with Bob. Welcome back, folks. Today, I am honored to be joined by Bo Eason, former NFL star who played for the Houston Oilers as well as the San Francisco 40 niners.
And he's also an acclaimed playwright, life coach, corporate trainer, and author of There's No Plan b For Your a Game, a fantastic book. In 2001, Beau wrote and starred in his one man play, Runt of the Litter, which he performed on Broadway to rave reviews. The New York Times called it one of the most powerful plays in the last decade. Beau toured with a play in over 50 cities, and it is now being adapted as a major motion picture. Thanks so much for joining us, Beau. Honored to have you here.
[00:07:33] Bo Eason:
Fable, thanks for having me.
[00:07:34] Abel James:
So I was just telling you before we started recording that I've seen you speak a a a couple of times. It was about 10 years ago, and I was struck by, and you get into this in your book, your physical presence, the energy that you brought to the stage was something truly special. So I'd love to get into how you arrived at that spot. But your trajectory was a long and windy one in many ways, dipping your toes into some incredible experiences and a wonderful career. So I'll hand you the mic to kinda get started. How would you tell your story?
[00:08:07] Bo Eason:
Well, I I mean, it all starts, like, just having a dream. You know? Like, having a dream at 9 years old and just going, wow. I wanna be this. And the the key part of the dream, Abel, is that and I've had 5 of these in my lifetime, these dreams, and I call them declarations. All of them have the term the best in them. So the my first one was when I was 9 years old, and I just declared that I wanted to be the best safety in the world. And safety is a position in football for those of of people who don't know, and that's what I wanted at 9. And I'm just, like, hardheaded enough or dumb enough to actually follow these things, stay loyal to these declarations that I've made all the way through.
And at first, anyway, they take many, many years for me to achieve them, but they've all happened. And as we go through these declarations, as we go through these dreams that I was pursuing, they got shorter each time I did it because what I learned was that the principles of being the best at something, at mastering something are all the same. So it didn't matter if I was a a one was my first one was being a football player, being a a safety. My second one, 20 years later, was being a playwright. So those things are completely seemingly unrelated.
Right? But the principles are the same. If you wanna be the best in those two fields, the principles are are are exactly the same, and you just have to follow the same, you know, recipe. But what I've learned also is that it shortens your timeline. So it used to take me 20 years, now can happen pretty damn quick because the principles of mastery are just the same. So, anyway, that's kind of where I began this journey, And every turn that I try to make, like so after football, I became playwright. It became stage performer. And I didn't know how to do that stuff. I had no experience. I was an athlete. You know? Those two worlds just didn't mix, but I just applied the same principle, and it came true. It it took me some years, but it it came into existence. And then I said, wow. I wanna do this for other people. I wanna teach other people to be able to do this, and that's your opener, Abel, about the physicality of when you saw me on stage.
When I was training to be on stage, I met a guy, and he was the best in the world at what he did. And what he did was train performers to be physical or unapologetically physical on stage. And now he works with, like, you know, Margot Robbie and, you know, I mean, that's the that's the actress who played Barbie and played, you know, Tonya Harding in the in the I, Tonya movie. And the Wolf of Wall Street, I mean, she's amazing to watch on screen because of her physicality, and that's what he taught her. He's he's taught Leonardo DiCaprio. He's worked with me for 17 years, and it it is a lost art, this physicality of the human being. But but if you can learn it, and you can, because it's almost like you don't have to learn it. You kinda just have to reremember who you are naturally.
And who we are is, you know, animals. And most people that I tell that to, they always go, oh, shoot, Beau. We're more evolved than that. We're we've moved beyond that. We're sophisticated. And I'm like, no. Not really. We're, you know, we're more we're just basically predatory animals. You know, that's really what we are. And what I learned from this guy was that and this is the promise that was made to me, and this is the reason probably why I'm on this podcast today is that's the thing that stuck with you after 10 years, is he made a promise to me many, many years ago when I was about to go on Broadway with my play.
He said, if you do what I tell you to do, or more importantly, if you do what I do, then the audience people will not have the ability to look away from you. And I was like, wow. That's some promise. You know, the way he phrased it, people will not have the ability to look away from you. Because, you know, it's pretty wild promise, but think about this. He said, if I put a a cheetah or a lion or a great white shark or, a falcon, if I put those predatory animals on a stage in front of people, a live audience, what would the live audience do? And I was like, well, nothing. Like, we're not taking our eyes off them. I know that. You know, if you put a lion in front of me, not in a cage, a lion in front of me or a silverback gorilla in front of me, I'm not doing anything.
I'm just gonna watch, and I'm gonna try to take a breath when I can. And funny enough, Abel, he was right. I did what he said, and I did what he was modeling for me and all his performers do. And the audiences can't look away. They cannot look away, which is why the people that he trains win academy awards. You don't win academy awards for something you say. You just don't win them for that. You win them for who you are, what your behavior is, and can the audience dismiss you. Right? We can get into that deeper, Abel, but just to answer that initial, I guess, attraction that you and I had was, oh, man. I remember that physicality. I that's that's the one thing I can't get out of my mind, and it's true.
That is always the case. People that work with me, it's only because of that. That's what sticks with them. And that works on camera. That works in everyday life. That war works when you're walking into Starbucks. The beauty of it is it's not that hard because it's who we are naturally. We've just been domesticated so much, which I think is a perfect word for us. We've been domesticated so much by media, by polite society that we're not as attractive as as we once were when we were just straight up predatory, masculine, and feminine, and unapologetic about that.
I think we're very self conscious culture now, worried about taking up too much space, worried about being too big for our britches, as my mom used to say. And I think that's hurt us. But when you're when you work, when you're in the business of helping people, whether you're a doctor, whether you're a financial adviser, if you're in the business of helping people, firefighter, you have to be physical. You cannot apologize for your physicality because you're in the business of the survival of people. Mhmm. Right? And now most people don't think of themselves like that. Like, a doctor doesn't necessarily think of themselves like that. I think of them like that. A financial adviser may not think about themselves like that. I do because my finances are my survival, so I want you taking care of them.
Right? No different than a firefighter or a Navy Seal. We are they're in the business of keeping people safe. Well, you and me, we're in that same business. We just don't view our life like life and death, so we start apologizing, and we start trying to fit into polite society. Well, the way I was trained, especially when you're on camera, especially when you're in front of people and you're leading, is to not be that way, is to be the opposite, to be naturally what you are, which is a predatory animal, if you will. I'll I'll pause right there, Abel, if you have a question. I love it. Well, I'm curious,
[00:17:17] Abel James:
just to go a little bit deeper on this. What is the iterative process, if there is one, to kind of embrace that physicality or get rid of that conditioning when you're up on stage. Because as you share in your book, it doesn't necessarily come from playing pro ball. I'm sure there are a few things that might have been somewhat helpful, but probably a lot of things you had to unlearn through that process to show up on stage the way that you wanted to. Right?
[00:17:41] Bo Eason:
Yeah. For sure. I did because it's strange. When you're in the NFL, especially in the eighties, I don't know how it is today. I'm sure it's because the rules have changed a lot, and the money is so big and corporate that they had to soften the rules. Right? Because they wanted to have different audiences watch them, so they made the rules less dangerous, if that's at all possible. So when I played in the NFL, I was a safety. Right? So you're in the eighties, if you're a safety in the NFL, you get paid to hurt people and intimidate people and knock their teeth out, basically. And the better you do that, the more you get paid and the more pats on the back that you get. And I know that sounds crazy, but that's how it was.
And so those safeties in the NFL were feared. I feared them, and I was one of them. You know? I wanted to be one of them, and I was one of them. So when I left that world, the scariest part of leaving that world was I was being paid. I had been trained my whole life, 20 years of my life, to be the best in the world at hurting people. Like running my body full speed head first into another man's body. So I was so worried when I had to leave. I was so worried. I had my 7 knee surgeries while I played, and the 7th one was it was I couldn't go anymore. I couldn't do it anymore. They were getting parts outside of my body to put in there, so I was running out. So when I left that world, I thought for sure, I don't know how I'm gonna survive in a world with laws and rules. Like, I've been in the NFL where the rules were okay.
You know, it was okay to hurt people. This violent safety was you know, got an ovation. You know, people clapped for that. But when I enter civilian society, what the hell am I gonna do? How am I gonna make money? How am I not gonna go to prison? Yeah. Because what I do best is throw my head full speed into other people. That ain't gonna translate too well. So the first thing I did, April, was I moved. I I know this might sound crazy to you, but I moved to New York City, which I had never lived in New York City before. But I didn't know this one thing about New York City was they put on shows.
They put on stage plays. They had Broadway. They had off Broadway. They had off off Broadway. I knew that people went to the theater in New York City. That's all I kinda knew. I had been to New York. I had played against the Jets and the Giants there, but never, like, as a person living there. So I moved there, and I'm at this time, I retired from football, so I'm, like, 27, 28 years old. Still pretty young. But I got myself into every performance class, every acting class, every improv class, writing class, theater class, voice class. I just transferred all of what it took for me to be the best safety in the NFL, and I transferred it into, I wanna be the best stage performer of my time.
So I took the same principles and moved them over to theater. Now I'm not sure anybody ever did that before, but I'm just like that. I'm like that. I when I find a system that works, I don't care about the occupation. Mhmm. It doesn't matter. The principles work. And so that's what I did. And I remember going to all these classes, and I had saved all my money from football to so I could take classes, so I could just be trained and and not have to make a living for many, many years so I could be the best at this thing. That's what I was doing. So in these classes, I would go up to the other students in the class, and they were much younger than me because they were, you know, they're, like, college age, or just out of college, and they were entering this acting world, this performance world. And I was, like, I was, like, okay, you guys, who's the best stage performer of our time? Who is that? I wanna be that. Who is that now?
And they all said the same person. It was 1990, and they all said Al Pacino. And I said, cool. Where is this dude Al Pacino? And these and these kids are all like, wait. I don't know where he is. He's probably on a movie set somewhere. You know? I was like, no. No. I gotta talk to this guy because he can tell me how to be what he is and only him because 2nd place ain't gonna tell me. 1st place, the the best stage for that dude's gonna share it with me because you know why? He doesn't think I'm gonna do it. And sure enough, you know, within a week, I am at Al Pacino's house, and it is exactly what you're thinking his house would be like.
It is full of Italian people. It's like a Godfather movie. Right? It is. The no one speaks English except Al, and they're cooking. Everyone's cooking, stirring gravies, pastas. It's just what you you kinda would think his house may be like. So he and I go back in the back room. He had a pool table back there, and he goes, Beau, I know why you're here. Let's break this down. And I said, cool. I said, you know, what's it gonna take for me to be the best? And he basically drew a map, no different than me being the best safety in the world, started when I was at 9. Same map, same thing, but it had to do with stage performance.
And he said, you know, basically, you're gonna have to repeat what you've already done, but you're gonna have to have your butt on a stage rehearsing, practicing what that is, writing, story, physicality, story tell, all of these, the acting, movement, voice, all of these things, and that's what I did. So I just repeated what it took for me to be the top safety in the NFL to be in the top stage performer. Now he said to me he goes, Beau, listen, man. You know? Because I was thanking him at the end of our meeting there at his house. Took about 3 hours. I shook his hand. I said, Al, thank you, man. I appreciate this. I'm gonna do it. And he goes, you know, I wish you luck, Beau. I this is probably gonna take you about 15 years because you're behind. You know, there's there's people ahead of you. And I go, no. That's good. I I 15 years, that sounds good to me. That's that's a good time that's that's a good timeline for me. And I said to him, thanks. Because I'm guessing that a lot of actors come to you and, make this request of you. And he said, no. You're the first.
And he I was so shocked. He said a lot of actors come to me and wanna be famous Mhmm. Or they want me to get them a job in a movie or they want me to introduce them to my agent. And he said, but you didn't say any of that. You said, how do I take your mantle? How do I be the best like you? So he said, you're the first. So on I went. And, you know, for the next several years, Abel, it it doesn't look like this thing is gonna work out. Right? Like, every step of the way and I find this to be true in in in truly world class, ventures, is every step of the way looks like you're not getting evidence that it's gonna that it's gonna come through, that it's gonna happen.
And then one day, in my case, several years later, I am opening a play, my play that I wrote, that I'm the only guy in, And it's opening night in New York City, and the critics are there, and all the fancy people are there. And I'm backstage about to take the stage so nervous that I think I'm gonna faint. And mind you, I had already taken on the most dangerous people on the planet. Right? And I this was scarier than that. This was much more scary than tackling the refrigerator Perry or Walter Payton or whoever. And yet I ran out there, did the play, and as I'm doing the play, I'm having, like, this out of body experience. Like, these people are here, and I'm trying to remember my dialogue.
And all I could think was, look at these people, and I'm I'm the only one on the stage. And and I wrote this play, and I'm here. And then I make eye contact with a dude right on the aisle. Row 5, Al Pacino is in the audience. And I'm like, holy shit. That's Al Pacino. And I hadn't seen him since that day 15 years before. I mean, I saw him in movies, but I hadn't we haven't met since 15 years ago. And he's looking at me, and I'm looking at him, and I'm trying to remember my lines, and I'm going, shit. That's freaking how Pacino came in my play. I and and he was sitting there, like, just with his arms crossed like this, and he's just watching me.
And I'm watching him, and he's just he's going like this. And that's the best review I ever had, Abel. I mean, that was like a day where I go, this is, like, surreal. And then I I thought back to my NFL career, and the same thing happened in the NFL. That it was different circumstances, and I was much younger, but the same kind of sequence happened. You know? Mhmm. Where and this is why I always say the principles, I don't care what I'm gonna do next. The principles will be the same. When I wanted to be the best safety in the world, I remember cutting out of Sports Illustrated a picture of the best safety in the NFL.
And at that time, it was a guy named it was 1979, and it was Mike Reinfeld. And he was a safety for the Houston Oilers, and he had just been named most valuable defensive player or defensive player of the year. And so I put him I can't remember if I put him on my wall or my locker. But every day, I could see Mike Reinfeld's picture. He's the best safety in the world, which is what I wanted. Again, I didn't have any evidence that I was ever gonna be it because nobody recruited me. Nobody really cared. I walked on at a college that doesn't have pro players, division 2 college, you know, 350 universities don't want me.
So I just didn't have evidence. But lo and behold, in 1984, I'm the top safety, in the country. I get drafted to the team that Mike Rheinfeld is the safety for, the Houston Oilers. So all these years later, Mike Rheinfeld is the safety that I looked up to and modeled myself after. And now they draft me, Abel, to take his place. So now my locker in Houston is right next to my idol, Mike Reinfeld, who I'm supposed to replace. But he's he's older than me. He's much more mature than me. He knows how to play safety in the NFL. I'm a rookie. I just arrived. We became friends.
He helped me, and, eventually, I replaced him. So every time I choose a dream or a declaration to become this thing, first, I draw up a plan, you know, to do it, and then I always go to the best person that's already in that position. Right? And, I meet them. I act like a rookie, which I am in their field, and I go, hey. I'm a rookie. I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I wanna be you. I want your mantle. And guess what? They helped me do it. I think the mistake most people make, Abel, and then I'll I'll pause after this and, you know, let you, you know, enjoy your podcast, is what I noticed about the best and then second best or 3rd best or a 150th best, 1st best, the top, the top one, the gold medalist, they always wanna help.
Isn't that wild? Like, the top in their field wanna help. 2nd place in their field, they don't want you to pass them. Mhmm. They see you as the enemy. They see you as the competition. Where first best, the gold medalist, that's what they want. They want the competition. They wanna be around that. And I'm I promise you the 5 dreams that I've had in my life from, you know, writing, or being a screenplay writer or being a husband or being a dad, all of those, I wanted to get the mentor that was holding the trophy, who was holding the gold medal.
And I always got bad advice from anybody who wasn't holding that gold medal. Like, something that was a little bit off about them. And that is the one thing that is principle, number 2, that whoever that person is you're going to for to be your mentor, to guide you, boy, they'd better be the top because if they're 2nd place, they're just a little bit envious. Mhmm. They're just a little bit not willing to give you what it takes. But people like Mike Reinfeld, people like Al Pacino, The first screenplay I ever wrote, which I'd never written a screenplay, was, the guy who bought the rights to my play was a guy named Frank Darabont. Well, this Frank Darabont is, you know, been nominated for 12 Academy Awards for writing.
The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, Saving Private Ryan. I mean, you name it. This guy has written it. So he became my mentor in the first screenplay I'd ever written. I don't know what I'm doing, but he does. Yeah. You know? He does. So I guess I'll just, you know, hit the pause button there, Abel, and have you jump in and see where you wanna go with this. Well, I just love that because there's gotta be such a huge advantage actually to being quite green. The the rookie going into that situation,
[00:33:41] Abel James:
talking to the true master, because you don't have time in between or or you haven't accumulated all of this nonsense, this conditioning that's working against these bad habits. You're kinda starting a little bit fresh. And I can imagine putting myself into the mentor's shoes for a second that that would be really exciting because usually you're trying to, you know, work on deconditioning or or, like, basically getting people out of that negative headspace, like you were talking about at the beginning of this conversation where you have gotten rid of your primal instincts and your natural power that's that's there. You've kinda layered over it. You've gotten a little bit smaller, a little bit more cautious over the years. You've forgotten what it's like to be truly yourself. So I just wanted to share that that's that's probably something that a lot more people could do than they realize because a lot of Yeah. The folks at the top really have been helped their entire life. They've been doing the same process. Right? They've been reaching out and and following their dreams, trying to get the best to help them, and in many cases, they have. So they just wanna keep passing it forward. But I wanna mention as well, in in your book, you you talk about, you know, the folks who you put on your locker. So, like, Walter Payton, for example. And then eventually, you say you have to go nose to nose with your heroes and actually play against them because that's how your dream comes true. So maybe you can walk us through that process. It must be totally surreal.
[00:35:07] Bo Eason:
It's like a journey. It's like I don't it's like deja vu, I guess. Because you've seen this picture every time you open your locker, which, you know, when you're at school, you I in between every class, we would go to our lockers. Right? Lock and then I'd go to my locker at at at practice after, school. So you're always in your locker, at least, you know, when I was growing up. And every time you open it, you're seeing, boom. There's Walter Payton. There's Mike Reinfeld. And Walter Payton, you you know, obviously, is one of the greatest running backs of all time. And I always just looked up to them, admired how he played the game.
Then many years later, again, I'm playing against Walter Payton. I'm looking across the field at him. I'm like, holy shit. That's Walter Payton. Like, you idolize them, then you realize that they're gonna fight back. Mhmm. They don't know that Boiesen idolizes Walter Payton. They think I'm there to hurt them, and so they're gonna fight back. Right? They're gonna push back. So I remember, every day opening my locker, Walter Payton, Walter Payton, Walter Payton. And the picture of him was very distinct in my mind. He was running right at the cameraman, and it looks like he's running right into the camera, and he's got the ball in his hand, and he's like like an action photo seared in my mind all these years. And I'm playing against Walter Payton. I'm looking I'm over there, and I'm looking at him, and then they break the huddle. They come up to the line of scrimmage. They give Walter Payton the ball, and he starts running to his his right, to my left.
And I start to pursue him. I start to go, okay. This is oh, shit. And the image that I have of him is that same picture. Like, he he's running right at me just like he was running at that camera of the picture I have in my locker. And as he's getting closer to me and I'm getting closer to me, everything just good turns to slow motion. And it's like, oh my gosh. And your whole life kinda just passes, you know, through your mind. And I'm as I'm approaching, you know, trying to tackle Walter Payton, through my mind, I'm like, shit. That is Walter Payton. I'm about to tackle Walter Payton. I hope my mom and dad are watching this on TV.
And as I get closer to Walter Payton, it just becomes more surreal and more surreal until I wrap my arms around him. He goes to the ground because you have to imagine you have to know that this is a godlike figure for a kid growing up idolizing Walter Payton and now knocking him down, taking him to the ground like he's a man. As I'm on top of Walter Payton, I was enjoying it so much that I stayed on top of him instead of getting off. So if you're a rookie and you tackle a veteran superstar player like Walter Payton, they don't like it. So they don't want you laying on them. But I just decided to enjoy it just a little bit too long, and I was just laying there enjoying the moment, and he kicks me.
He kicks me. Now this guy's, like, the most nicest guy in the world. Right? But he does not want a rookie laying on top of him. So he kicks me as I'm getting up to get me off of him quicker, and I'm like, oh, shit. Walter Payton is just a man. He's a man. I just tackled him and then he kicked me. He's a man. And it was it was no more idolization after that. We were peers right then. It was like, okay. If you're gonna kick me and I'm gonna lay on you, you know, we're men. We're we're both dudes. Right? And at that point, you're just, like, kinda shocked. You're like, shit. I got him on the ground. He's not a god. He's a man. We're all men out here.
Sometimes people it takes that to get over that idolization. Right? That difference between being a fan and being a player. It's a big distinction, being a fan and being a player. Once you're a player, you realize that you're just peers with the greatest athletes on the planet. I I don't care how big they are. It doesn't matter. And they respect you, and you respect them because you can hurt each other. Those kind of visualizations, those kinds of incidents happen in my life every time I put myself in a demanding situation. Mhmm. Like, I look up to somebody. I I try to attempt to achieve my birthright, which is being the best.
And as soon as I'm there, it becomes real. It becomes very real. Like, there's no more idolization. There's no more, like, Al Pacino, I looked up to him, but he's a dude, man. He's a guy. You know? Mike Rainfeld, he's a guy. But you don't realize it until you're right next to him. You're like, jeez. I can run faster than this guy. Yeah. And that means he's a man. Right? Yes. You start to realize that. So for everybody who's listening to us right now or watching us, I would just say, like, look. The people who you look up to and admire, they are peers of yours. You just may not know it yet.
They are peers of yours, and only they can give you the advice that you're looking for. And when you resolve the fact that you are peers, you're gonna meet them. You're gonna be in front you're gonna be with them. You're gonna be compared with them, and it's gonna become really real to you. And and, you know, when we we open this whole can of worms about physicality, my movement coach, the guy who was introduced to me, only reason he was introduced to me is because I wanted to be the best stage performer. And so a guy heard me say that, and the guy went to my movement coach and said, hey. There's this guy that wants to be the best. I think you should work with him. And so my guy only works with movie stars and, you know, the great music performers, ballet performers. I mean, he's about movement. Think about that. He's about predatory animals moving on a stage.
Crazy, right, in front of a camera. The only reason I was introduced to him is because of that, because they heard my dream, and they said, well, you better have the best movement guy. And so I just find it funny that we we open this podcast with that situation that 10 years ago, you and I were in the same room. I happened to be speaking, and you probably don't remember one thing that I said, but you remember how you feel because of some physical expression that I had 10 years ago on a stage that we both probably can't even remember where that was. So that's why I'm really big on working with the best.
And and, you know, since physicalization, especially for men, but for women too, Especially for men, it you just you see men apologizing for their physicality left and right, left and right, and it weakens them so much. It makes people think less of you when you apologize for who you actually are. And this guy has taught me to revisit my raw animal instincts, and it turns out to be the most attractive thing that I have or that I am. And it's true for you too, Abel, and it's true for everybody, on this podcast. It is true. The most attractive thing about you, all of you, is this unapologetic physicality that you have.
And in our world, it only shines when we're in a very demanding situation. So for a for a mom out there, you know, if you moms have a lot of this predatory instinct because they're they have this ability to have children. And the minute that that child is in trouble or there's a threat to the child, guess who the beautiful female mom turns into? They turn into their raw animal instincts, which is they turn into predator animals, which is what they actually are. Mhmm. Isn't that crazy? And then they can do unimaginable feats, like pick up a pickup truck and throw it. You always hear these stories of a woman that has this herculean strength when their child is in trouble. Mhmm.
And if you have a mom, which we all do, and you have a I'm guessing you have a wife, you know, you're attracted to that. That's what us men want in our females. Well, that's what females want in masculinity also. So think of this. Think of there's a fire in your house, and we don't know how to put it out. We don't know how to save ourselves, so we call the fire department. Now do you want the firefighter to come in your house apologetically, towing around? Like, of sex drugs. Yes. Apologizing. Excuse me. I'm I'm a firefighter, and I'm here to be polite. And I don't wanna ruffle any feathers, but I do wanna put the fire out. Could you point me in the direction? No. No. We want our firefighters to bust the door down, to be bring mud in if you have to, be impolite if you have to, get over there, do this, I got this shit.
That's what we're attracted to. Yeah. That's what we desire. Right? But you have to be this in your position, and you have to be this in my position. And I think it's a lost art that I would really love for the rest of the world to grab ahold of and know that this is what is attractive about all of us is that predatory nature. It's just it's an instinct. And we get so, I don't know what the right word is, evolved, I guess. Like, we think we've been but we're not. We're not that that evolved. Right? We're pretty basic. Yeah. And for anybody who has a dream, the only way to build that dream right? Abel do there's one way to build the dream. The business that you want, the home that you want, the lifestyle that you want. That's those are dreams. Right? The career that you want, that has to be built. And that has to be built with unapologetic predatory nature to protect that vision and to recruit people like Al Pacino, like Mike Reinfeld, like Frank Darabont, to help you build that dream.
They ain't attracted to somebody who's apologetic, who's, oh, I'm sorry, mister Pacino, but I would like to be kind of mediocre actor. Can you help me with that? He would have not responded to that. I would not be at his house because he doesn't care. Yeah. He doesn't care. Alright. Where do you wanna go?
[00:47:16] Abel James:
So and then don't let me get too worked up over here. No. Not at all. And, not to correct you. This is meant to be a a compliment. I do remember a number of the things that you said when I saw you speak even though it was, I think, more than 10 years ago now. Simply because of the combination of what you were saying, the stories that you were telling, and acting out a lot of those stories on stage, which just kinda cemented it in my mind. So I'll never forget your Jerry Rice story. Maybe you can share that now or at the end. But, I mean, when I saw you up there, I was just like, this dude I've been playing lead guitar for most of my life as as my first career. And I'm like, look, watching you, and I'm like, this is the the first speaker I've ever seen who's, like, playing a rad guitar solo right now. He is just walking the whole stage. And so it totally makes sense to me that you studied with the same people who these rock stars have studied with because it's one of those things where everyone knows that feel. I I hope everyone knows that feeling of someone. You you watch them do what they do and your hair just stands on end. You know? You get goosebumps.
It's real. It's raw. And I've experienced this as well. Like, trying to play with groups, if you just kinda, like, lean back and be nice and kinda paddle along or you play a nice little tasty solo, nobody cares. But if you are just riding the edge, going completely unhinged, playing notes that shouldn't go there in ways that don't make sense, then everyone just, like, goes nuts, loves it because that's what being human really is. It's not being all buttoned up and polite, as you say. It's being yourself and being unapologetic about it, once you've honed the skill anyway.
[00:48:51] Bo Eason:
Yeah. A 100%. I mean, I've never played the guitar, but I've always was going, why do all the girls and their all the guys in the band could be all good looking, playing their instrument, lead singer, all that drama, all that shit, But the lead guitar player loses themselves. Mhmm. That's why they're the lead guitar player. They lose themselves, and now they're not self conscious about what their mouth is doing or how their hair is doing or whether they're sweating their ass off or snot is coming out of their they don't they don't give a shit. They are lost. I'm not looking at every girl.
Is freaking that's what they love. That. Not the guy who's in control, and that's what we're all being fed. That's what we're all being, you know, taught. Oh, I hope you fall in love with the choir boy. No. No. No girl ever fell in love with a choir boy. I'm sorry. It never happened in the history of man caught kind. They fell in love with the lead guitarist because his instrument, his body, was fully in line with the instrument that he's playing, which is out of control. It's not in control. Right? It's like it's just expressive. It is it is what it is, sweaty, dirty. It's what it is.
That's how I was trained to be on stage 2. Same thing. Now and I always have the same. When I'm training people to be I do a 3 day event, and I train people to do what I've been trying to do and speak and and stuff like that perform. And the first thing I tell them is I don't trust any speaker that it, for one, is not sweating their ass off. Mhmm. You know how people go, oh, I'm pitting out. I don't wanna go on stage. Oh, I hope I don't sweat. Oh, I hope my hair stays perfect. No. I want somebody who's fighting up there, who's who's expressing up there, who can't sometimes hold you know, they they say bad words that just fall out of their mouth. They here's what I don't trust, and I don't I don't think anybody trusts this anymore.
I don't trust polished speakers. I don't. I don't trust polished, leaders. Don't trust. Look. When I see somebody play the guitar, like you play the guitar, all I see is the training that they've been through. I see the hours. I see the months and the years stacked on top of one another. When I go to see a heavyweight championship fight, that's all I see. Mhmm. And then it's all full of sweat and blood and ex physical expression. The only reason they're able to do that because they mastered all those years of training. Yeah. Those are the only people I trust.
And I think those are the only people anybody trusts anymore as a leader, as a speaker, as, somebody building a business. That is true. And the way I was trained is the same way that you were trained. It's the same thing. And it's not just girls. I use girls because it's a great example, attracted to the lead guitarist. Then why does every man wanna be the lead guitarist? Not the singer. Right? Not necessarily the not the drummer. Mhmm. Why do they wanna be that guy? Because that's the most expressive person we've ever seen, and that's the one that everybody's responding to.
That's cool. Now everybody should just think about what it that's your position in life. That's your position. You just have to find the place where this guitar lives in your life. Doesn't have to be you don't have to be a guitar player. You don't necessarily have to be a speaker. But this instrument of expression that God has given us is powerful, and people are attracted to it if it displays freedom and expression. They no one's attracted to it if it's hemmed in. Mhmm. If it's neutered, if it's, antiseptic. Mhmm. No one's attracted to it. That's why you don't trust politicians as a rule. That's why you don't trust people who do news broadcast as a rule.
We really don't trust those positions anymore because it's so buttoned down and controlled that you go, what are they hiding? Yeah. The guitar player can't hide anything. Right. The person who does a great performance in whatever field that is, they can't hide. They don't have a false bone in their body because it's been trained out of them. That's where I'd like all of you. That I would love that. I love that world. You know, when you get in a huddle in the NFL, especially when I played in the eighties, you're in there with some criminal elements because there's no way they could have gotten that high unless they had that minus. Yeah. It's funny it's funny to say. But we have that we have that ability, that mindset.
So it can either go in a very dark way or it can go in a very great way like the NFL. And when you're in a huddle with these dudes, you're just looking around going, holy shit. How did I get in this huddle? There's a bunch of criminals in this huddle, and I trust them more than I trust members of my own family. You see what I mean? Mhmm. When people have to express themselves fully in their line of work, I trust that. I the whole world trusts that. So I just I wanna put that out there because one can be trained back to what you actually are, which is this primitive animal.
[00:55:18] Abel James:
What about Beau? And you've kinda mentioned this a little bit, but, the difference between folks who play pro ball or play pro sports for a while there, you see a number of them go out there and continue to crush in a different direction. Right? They build a a giant business. They affect a bunch of people. They train a bunch of people. They give back to their communities, whatever it is. But a large portion kinda just fall off. They, you know Yeah. All of a sudden balloon to £400 plus. They have all these health issues. They're broke. What is the difference between those two trajectories in your experience?
[00:55:53] Bo Eason:
Yeah. I'm so glad you asked this. No one ever asked me this question, by the way.
[00:55:58] Abel James:
My Al Pacino moment.
[00:56:00] Bo Eason:
Yeah. Right? It is. Because what you don't know, which it it's always the silent majority. Most NFL players, most former athletes, they're really effing smart. You know? And they I know they don't have that. You know, people don't talk about that. To get that high in that sport, you, of course, you have to have all the danger and the physicality and that stuff. Of course. But you have to be very smart because to play at that level, it is very complex. It is not easy. Your mindset has to be in the right place. Otherwise, they're just gonna cut you because they're they can pick anybody. They can get rid of you anytime because there's a bunch of guys waiting in line to take your place.
So they're very smart. Well, that smartness, that intelligence to play that at that level, most of us are like me. Most of us succeed in whatever they do next. They succeed in their marriages. They succeed in their businesses because they're effing smart, and they know how to bring something into existence. They've already proven it. Mhmm. The ones that seem like the majority are the ones you hear about, and those are the guys who lose all their money because and I think this is the problem. They try to keep the lifestyle that they had while they played. Mhmm.
Well, when we played, you know, in my day, we would go out drinking afterwards. We'd eat too much. We'd chase girl. We did everything. Right? We did all this crazy shit because we were 21 years old. Nice. You know? We were like, we were doing what 21 year we weren't married. We drove cars that were fast, and we drove them fast. Bad idea. Yeah. So here's the difference. For 1, the ones who do lose all their money and gain £400, and they try to hang on to that lifestyle of living on the edge. The ones that are more like me come stops that lifestyle and realized, hey, nothing in the NFL we do is natural. So my weight went back to my natural weight. It was, like, 180 a £184.
Big old 300 pound lineman now go down £195. You know? Wow. Because that's their natural weight. Mhmm. Because they stopped the drinking. They stopped the they stopped living that lifestyle. So the ones who can make that lifestyle change, really successful because they're very smart to get that far and stay in there that long. I have found that to be true all the way throughout my life. And I also found that to be true is that the ones that have hit the skids, you know, that gained the the the pounds and been divorced 3 times and lost all their money, you hear more about them.
You don't hear about the guys like the successful guys. Yeah. It's not a great story in in ESPN's mind or whoever's, you know, the newspapers, the media. Those are the stories they love to share, right, of one fallen from grace.
[00:59:23] Abel James:
Yeah. But, I mean, at least when I've met folks like you, the the people who played at such a high level, when you meet them in real life, it's the the intelligence is obvious and the the work ethic as well. And, what are some of the things that people might be able to apply in terms of envisioning their future? Because that's another piece I'd love to touch on. You share a few of the drawings that you made when you were a child. I know that that your children as well have dream boards. And you mentioned on your locker, sometimes some of these things actually show up in your real life in the same vision that you were kinda looking at them for a while. So maybe you could talk about the magic of that and and how to maybe dip your toes into that if you haven't experimented with that sort of just courageous, envisioning process of the future. How how do you go about it?
[01:00:12] Bo Eason:
Yeah. You know what? It's pretty natural. It's pretty common for all of us to see these visions that we have. Now as we get older, we get a little bit more less good at it if we're not practicing it. If you're not great at visualization or if you're not great at, like, seeing where you wanna go or what you see in your future, you just you have to practice it. You have to set aside time. I just start my day that way because I I've always had kind of this sense of, rehearsal. Like, even when I was a kid, I would pretend I was playing pro football.
I would run-in slow motion pretending that I was doing these things, pretending I was tackling Walter Payton. And then, you know, many, many years later, I actually get to tackle Walter Payton, and it's the same vision. The vision actually remains exactly how you had visualized it. But a lot of people go, well, Beau, I'm not good at visualization. Well, you probably just haven't practiced it enough and given yourself not enough of an opportunity because we're all really good at shutting in our our eyes and seeing, you know, our future, like us maybe standing on a stage in front of a microphone.
Or this is what when I met my wife, I always had this vision of her, but I was 33 years old and that I had dated plenty of girls by the time I was 33, but none of them wore that vision that I had. They were great girls. They just weren't the vision. And so I thought to myself, I'm 33. I'm probably am I gonna get married? That's what I was thinking. Maybe I'm not gonna get married. But I always had this vision of this, you know, this instrument of a woman, a female instrument person. And when I was 33, energy hit me as this girl walked past me. It hit me like a ton of bricks. I just went, oh, shit.
And I she was walking away from me, and I I swear, and this has never happened to me until this moment, I said, I'm gonna marry that girl. The I had never had that feeling Wow. Ever. I said, I'm gonna marry her. And then she turns around, and I said, I'm definitely marrying that girl because she was so pretty. But the energy hit me before I saw her face. Yeah. Right? And we went on a date that night, and there was a big age difference between us. Like, she was 19 at the time. I was 33. I was actually in an acting class, and she was in this class. And we went on a date that night. I didn't know she was 19. She seemed older than me.
We went on a date that night. We went and saw Tarantino movie. Which one was it? It was, oh, that's a great one. Pulp Fiction? Pulp Fiction. Yeah. It was Pulp Fiction. Classic. Thanks for the reminder. It was Pulp Fiction. I never went on another date again. That was 30 years ago. I never went on a date ever. That was my last date, and that was it. Now we have 3 kids, and, you know, they're going off to college. And you have to keep revisiting. If you don't have that ability because I I somehow see these things, I want you to just practice seeing these things and then rehearse being those things.
So I rehearsed being the best safety for years before they named me best safety. I rehearsed being the best stage for years, Rehearsal practice, just behaviors. Walking down the street like I'm the best stage performer in the world in New York City. What? No. I wasn't. No one would say I was. No one even knows who I am. But then many years passed, and all of a sudden they go, I just saw you. Hey, dude. I saw you in that your play. Oh my gosh. I'm like, shit. I behaved as if I was, and then I was. Listen, you guys. Let's use Tom Brady as a great example of this. Right? So, yeah, we can probably all agree that he's the greatest quarterback of all time. He's won the most Super Bowls, probably the greatest football player ever to play the game at this point. Right? But here's what's so crazy about me being able to say that and you being able to say that is he's like the worst athlete on the planet. Terrible. Yeah.
Right? Like, how could this be? Right? How can this be? How could this guy be unwanted in high school, unwanted in college football, unwanted in pro football? But what was Tom Brady doing that whole time, you guys, behind closed doors? He was behaving like the greatest player in football history. That's how he was behaving. And then we caught up to his behavior. The rest of the world caught up to how he was rehearsing all of this time. Same thing with Michael Jordan. You know, people, greatest basketball player of all time cut from his high school basketball team, not once, but twice. So what was his behavior? What was he being that we couldn't see, and more importantly, his high school coach couldn't see?
Right? He was behaving behind closed doors like the greatest basketball player ever to lace him up. That's how we know him. Right? But what's the story? We see Tom Brady now and we go, oh, we're just not him. He's so handsome. He's so tall. He's won so many Super Bowls. I can't do that. Well, yes, you can, but you have to behave. You have to be what he is being, what Michael Jordan is being, what Al Pacino is his behaviors, how he's being. That is the part everybody misses. So you have to start by visualizing it, by seeing it, and then behaving like it, just your behavior.
So if I asked you to be you know what? Right now, you are the greatest saxophone player in the world. Let's make something about you're the best ballet dancer on the planet. You're Mikhail Baryshnikov. How would you walk into Starbucks if that was the case? Would you slink in all disheveled and whining about your day and getting in line with everybody and then waiting and looking around. Would you do that? Would no. Would you behave that no. You would not behave that way. Well, people make the mistake of waiting until ESPN names you the best safety before you start behaving like the best safety. No. It's too late.
That happens way before. So right now, choose what you wanna be the best at, and it could be anything. And the more impossible it is, the easier it is. Whatever that is for you, then begin to behave as such. Now I'm not giving you a to do list, am I? I'm not saying, hey. You gotta practice the ballet more than anyone else. I'm not saying that. I'm saying start behaving like Mikhail Baryshnikov. Mhmm. Start behaving like that. And now your story lives in real time, and people recognize it in a minute. If you see somebody walk past you in an airport that is headed somewhere with an intent of greatness, you're gonna be attracted to them. I don't care if they're a man or a woman. What the hell they are.
It doesn't matter. You're attracted to greatness, and greatness is always headed somewhere. It is always behaving in a way that even though the world may not recognize it yet, they do. This is why I have been able to do what I've done 5 times is only because this is what I love. I love rehearsal. Remember practice, you go out to practice in a sport, and everyone would be like, shit. We gotta practice again today. It's hot. It's no you know, everyone else is out smoking weed or doing you know, they're driving their fast car. They're and I gotta be here at practice. Remember that? Mhmm. I actually like that. I always have liked that.
I liked being left out of what the popular people were doing and just doing what I was behaving like I was the best safety in the world. Same thing. They changed the word from practice to rehearsal once I got to theater. Yeah. There was same damn thing. Yeah. It's all it is. You're just rehearsing this character that you're becoming. And guess what? If you're great at it, you become the character. You're not faking a character. You are the character. That's what they call great acting. No acting at all. You are the character. Well, that is true in our everyday life. I behave when I go into Starbucks as if I am the greatest dad and the greatest, husband on the planet, and people feel it. When I go on stage, you guys, and when I'm doing a podcast like this, I go on like I am the best in the world at what I do because that's how I've been trained to do.
That's it. That's it. If I'm a brain surgeon, guess what I'm behaving in a certain way until the rest of the world catches up, and my training catches up with me being the best brain surgeon in the world. Visualization, big part of that, you guys, because your brain doesn't know the difference. Think about it. My brain, when I was 9 years old, thought I was the best safety in the world. Now the rest of the world was going like this. Bo, you actually suck. You actually suck at safety. You're slow. You're little. You can't even tackle anybody. And I just saw what I saw.
I had my mind seeing what I was seeing, which was the best safety in the world. It didn't have to happen today, but it it was gonna happen sooner or later. As long as I stayed the course, it was gonna happen because my brain doesn't know the difference. It thinks I'm the best. I'm only 9. I'm freaking weak. I'm slow. I'm not the best, but my brain doesn't know the difference. So I just keep rehearsing it. I keep behaving like I am. And you guys, I'll I won't give you a timeline on it, but it's, it's it's a function of how clear you are on that visualization, how quickly that thing, you know, comes into existence.
Same thing with my wife. I kept seeing her. I kept seeing her. I it was more a feeling, not exactly what she looked like, but what she what she was like, what she was powerful and feminine and beautiful and and was gonna, like, have kids with me that were just gonna be just boom. You know? Just the kids I want, like, good citizens, powerful leaders. And sure enough, that's how it's all ended up.
[01:12:25] Abel James:
Amazing. We we only have a few minutes left, but what I would love if you could even just an abridged version of what you learned from practicing with Jerry Rice and some of the other bests over the course of your career because definitely rubbed off on you. And even when I heard the story for the first time, it rubbed off on me too.
[01:12:43] Bo Eason:
Yeah. Jerry Rice, you guys. You know? So Tom Brady, you know, when he won that last Super Bowl, that was the moment because I used to tell this I tell this story about Jerry Rice, my comings and goings with him. And he at this at the time I was telling these stories, he's the greatest football player ever to play the game. I mean, I never seen anything like it. No one had ever seen anything like it. And to this day, he holds the touchdown record, and no one can catch him. Nobody can catch this guy. Well, I I felt like Tom Brady, like, as he he got traded to Tampa Bay, and he won that Super Bowl for Tampa Bay, he might have surpassed Jerry Rice as the greatest football player ever to put on a uniform. But, you guys, I used to play against Jerry Rice. Right? Used to play against him. And, you know, when you're playing against the best that ever put a uniform on, it is a nightmare for you.
Right? It's attractive, but if you have to defend and guard this dude, jeez, it's a nightmare. And, again, like Tom Brady, not the greatest athlete. I was faster than Jerry Rice. I was bigger than Jerry Rice. I could handle Jerry Rice. But here's the one thing I learned about playing against him and then eventually playing with him was you know, we all have this spirit inside of us. Right? We all have this we can control our spirit. Right? Like, we can we can decide whether our spirit's generous or whether we're we're gonna withhold this spirit and kind of tap on the brakes. Well, Jerry Rice is the most generous person spiritually that I've ever seen, And he's a football player. Right? So I played for many years. I guarded this guy. He's a nightmare.
I I knew he knew how to play this game. But then I got traded to his team, and his team had just won a Super Bowl. They're about to win another, and there's no accident to the team who wins the Super Bowl. They have players on their team that are like Jerry Rice. He was the example of what it takes to win a Super Bowl. So when I saw this guy play, you know and when you're in the NFL and you're out at training camp, I was new to this team. He was a wide receiver. I was a defensive back. They go straight head to head. I noticed that all the receivers during warm ups were running like you know, they were all kinda chill. They were all kinda all cool. You know? That's how they they ran their routes, warming up. You know? They don't wanna get hurt.
You know? It's training camp. You know? It's it's not too serious yet. And they were all what we call in the NFL, they all had their all pro glide going, meaning not full speed. Very cool, very chill, but it looks kinda good. So they were all doing that when they were catching these balls. Joe Montana was throwing them these footballs, and all this line of receivers was all chill, catching these balls, and then stopping, and then kinda walking back to Joe Montana, giving Joe the ball over and over and over. Their receivers are going. This was my first day of practice with this team. And then it was Jerry Rice's turn to come up.
He's the greatest player to ever put on a uniform. And I'm like, okay. I wanna see what he does. The the first ten guys were pretty chill. They were pretty all pro glad. What's Jerry gonna do? And sure enough, boom, full speed. Not chill. The opposite of chill. Like the lead guitar player sweating, tongue out of his mouth, hair all messed up. Full speed, fully expressed, spiritually. Fully speed, catches the ball, instead of stopping and walking the ball back to Joe Montana, like everybody else did, he caught the ball, he ran full speed to the end zone, and it didn't matter where the end zone was, you guys.
If the end zone was a 100 yards away, it was a 100 yard sprint, put his body in the end zone, turn around, run all the way back. You guys, this isn't practice. This isn't warm ups. So everybody else sketching, chilling, stopping, walking, hand not Jerry Rice. Fully expressed spirit of generosity. Like, this ball is getting everything I got. Every time I touch it, I end up in the end zone. And that's what he did over and over and over again. You guys, after this 2 hour practice, I walked up to him. I said, Jerry, what the hell, man?
What is wrong with you? What do you I never seen anything I never seen anybody do it. Played 20 years, football, I never seen anybody do it. Isn't that weird? Isn't it weird? I go up to him and I go, Jerry, what the hell is wrong with you, man? We're in warm ups, dude. We're chilling. Right? What are you doing? You run at full speed every time. I go, why do you do that? And he goes, boo, it's very simple why I do it. Whenever these hands touch the football, this body ends up in an end zone somewhere. And I was like, you man, I just remember in that moment going, and I'd already played 20 years, you guys.
I was like, there are no accidents in this game. There's a reason this guy has scored more touchdowns than any of us are ever gonna think about scoring because he has trained his body that every time it touches leather, he ends up in the end zone somewhere. And you could put the end zone a 1000000 miles away and he's gonna put his body in it. This is a guy who's not faster than me, but how could he run faster than me once the ball's in his hands? Somehow that happened. That happened over and over and over again. He had just this generosity of spirit that I just I never could put my finger on.
The day you guys that, some young couple came up to me many years later, and they said, Beau, will you marry us? Will you be officiate our marriage? I go, I don't you know what? I don't do that. That's not really what I do. I'm not a preacher man. And they said, well, we think you are a preacher man. And as it turned out about 10 minutes on the Internet, and I'm a preacher man. Yeah. So I married this couple, you guys, and it's in Santa Barbara. It's beautiful. It's right on the ocean. And the first marriage that I ever presided over you guys, I get up in front of the congregation, beautiful young families. I get up there, and I have a a fake notebook in front of me. It doesn't have any writing in it, but I wanted to look official. So it doesn't have there's nothing in it. It's a notebook with no writing in it, and it's leather bound, and it looks kinda like a preacher man. So I open this thing up. I'm in front of this couple, and the first thing out of my mouth is this.
When I think of marriage, the first person I think about is Jerry Rice. The whole congregation, every dude stands up and goes, yeah. This is my kind of wedding. And all the ladies in it, they're all going, man, who's Jerry Rice? Was he a famous romantic? But, you guys, what I was trying to communicate to the congregation was this. I had never seen anybody treat a ball with that kind of respect. I never seen anybody treat a game, it's a game, with this kind of honor. And I I said to this young couple, if you treat each other the way Jerry Rice treated the ball, with that kind of respect and that kind of tenacity and generosity of spirit, then you will have the greatest marriage on the planet.
And that still holds out to be true. There is never a day, you guys, that I don't think about what I experienced being a teammate of Jerry Rice. I tell my kids about that all the time. I tell everybody about that as much as I can just because he just decided that he was gonna treat it with honor. Now this guy, you know, he wasn't a superstar. He went you know what college this dude went to? Mississippi Valley State. Where the hell is that? Who's ever come from Mississippi Valley State? No one. How did this happen? How did he end up being the greatest player to ever put a uniform on?
His generosity of spirit. So, you guys, every time I speak, every time I get interviewed, every time I am called to be in front of a camera, I think of Jerry Rice. I think of him. Even in my marriage, I think of him because of what I saw him do and what I saw all the other receivers do, how they glided through their careers, and he did not. He treated it with ultimate respect. If you do that with your life, if you do that in your presentations, in your speeches, you will be the equivalent of the greatest player to ever put a uniform on. That's cool. That's a cool life. That's what I strive for, and that's what I have the people that I train and I coach.
That's what I have them try for. And that's that generosity that that you remember all these 10 year 10 years later. It's so funny because people go, well, Beau, is is that your story or is that Jerry Rice's story? And I would say, well, it's his story, but it's through it's told through my perspective of my experience of Jerry Rice. So those are powerful, powerful stories for all of you to use as you're bringing your vision into existence, because you're gonna need those to raise money, to draw attraction, to draw eyeballs. You're going to have people watch your podcast. You're gonna need those kind of stories because that's what human beings are attracted to, is greatness that is headed somewhere. Now it might be your greatness or it might be somebody else's, but you have to let them know those
[01:24:00] Abel James:
stories. I love it. Beau, so amazing to talk to you. What is the best place for the listeners out there to find your work, your book, and everything that's coming next?
[01:24:09] Bo Eason:
Yeah. I mean, you can find me, you know, on Instagram, boeason 21 is my handle on, Instagram. You can go to boeason.com. I've got website, all kinds of things there. I'd love to give, you know, your listeners something because I I can have you text a number, and I could send something to you, a video training to you right now just because I want I don't want you to wait. I want you to get started with this vision that you have. And how I start every if you notice, for this hour that we've been talking, everything I talk about is through a story, Whether that's about Mike Reinfeldt or Al Pacino or or Jerry Rice, they're all stories. They're just stories.
And that's how I've built all the visions that I've had and all the companies and brands that I've begun is through story. Well, I want you to have your story now instead of later. So I wanna send you a free story guide that is a video training that will train you on your story, on how to find it, and then start to tell it so you can start that today. So with your permission, I'd love to be able to to share that number with them. Is that cool? Please. Yeah. Okay. Good. So all you have to do is text personal story. So personal story, the word personal story, that's one word, to 323-310-5504.
So text personal story, one word, to 323-310-5504, and I will send you a free story guide so you can start to because I want you to start to declare this thing. I want you to have this personal story so you start to share it. And the minute you get it get that training, start to nail that story down so you can get out there and get this thing moving. I have found that to be the the the difference between, you know, the dreams and the declarations that I've had. I also have a story that gets me to those to those places. There's always a story when you have a dream, and that story leads you to that dream. Well, you're gonna need that story, and you're gonna be I want you to be able to tell it, to share it physically because that's how you're gonna build it. Because you can't build it alone. You gotta share it with people so they can help you build it. It's kinda no different than yours and my relationship.
It will I mean, it it really is. If you think about it, like, here we are all these years later doing a podcast because of something that happened, a story that was told 10 years ago. Yeah. Right? It's and here we are. I want all your listeners to know that once you get this, you guys, once you know what your story is and then you have the ability to share it, now all doors open to you. And I'd like you to have that, you know, now. So wow. Abel, this was cool, man. This was really fun to, you know, get into all this stuff. I didn't realize we'd get into all these things, you know, but it's it's cool.
[01:27:24] Abel James:
Yeah. This is a total humdinger. I I really appreciate the conversation and, the generosity that you've showed with us sharing your time and and your deep wisdom and and knowledge and experience. It's been a true pleasure. So thank you so much, Beau. I I look forward to doing this again sometime.
[01:27:39] Bo Eason:
Yeah. Anytime. Let me know.
[01:29:58] Abel James:
Thanks for joining us on this episode. To round out the show as promised, here's one of my original tunes called Live While I'm Alive, which you can find and also send a boost to on modern podcast players like Fountain FM. I hope you enjoy.
[01:30:35] Unknown:
When you see that beauty over there, I'm gonna make her mine. Gonna show her everything I got because I ain't worth a dime. They said, no. You won't. Know who you won't. Boy, you must've lost your mind. Said I just found the ride for me, an 85 Mercedes Benz. A couple of screws to sneeze some TLC, but she found herself a friend. They said, no, you don't. No, you don't. Son, you must've lost your mind. You must've lost your mind. Said I'm gonna live while I'm alive. Ain't nobody ever gonna change my mind. No, no. So I said bye, bye, baby.
Bye, bye, baby, I'm gone. Don't want this job no more. I'm gonna play guitar all day. Make my rent in smoky bars, whacking my blues away. They said, no. You don't. No. You don't. Kid, you must've lost your mind. You must've lost your mind. I said I'm gonna live while I'm alive, and ain't nobody ever gonna change my mind. Now I'm gonna drive across the country, have myself a time. Gonna grab my girl and my guitar, gonna change my
[01:36:07] Bo Eason:
mind.
[01:37:25] Abel James:
They were gonna change
[01:37:28] Unknown:
my mind.
Hey, folks. This is Abel James, and thanks so much for joining us on the show. What would happen if you trained, like, the best athletes in the world? How about the best actors or artists? Today, we have the incredible honor of speaking with Bo Eason, a former star safety in the NFL, as well as an acclaimed playwright, author, and coach. After competing with all time greats like Jerry Rice and Walter Payton in the NFL, Bo rewrote his dream and went on to perform on Broadway despite having no experience as a writer or stage performer. As he shares his multi decade journey, becoming the best in the world in completely unrelated fields, Beau proves that the principles of mastery truly are universal and you can learn them too. This is excellent news for mere mortals like us. A few quick words before we get to the interview. In the age of AI, doubling down on connections and relationships with real humans is more critical than ever. So if you're looking to get unstuck and maximize your performance in business and life this year, listen up. We'll be launching a new high level program this year with the potential to work together with me 1 on 1. So if you're interested in connecting with me or joining one of our future events here in Austin, Texas and beyond, you can visit abeljames.com.
That's abeljames.com and you can sign up for my newsletter. If you wanna get in touch, you can just hit reply to one of my email newsletters or you can find me on most socials under Abel James or Abel Jams. You can also listen until the end of this episode to hear one of my original tunes called Live While I'm Alive, which actually just hit number 1 on the fountain fm chart. So thanks to all of you who are listening and sharing the tunes. I hope you enjoy. Without further ado, in this episode with Beau, you'll hear the road map to becoming a world class performer in any field, why we need to reclaim our natural physicality instead of apologizing for it, how to harness the magic of storytelling to build your dream life, why NFL players don't watch NFL games, and much more. Let's go hang out with Bob. Welcome back, folks. Today, I am honored to be joined by Bo Eason, former NFL star who played for the Houston Oilers as well as the San Francisco 40 niners.
And he's also an acclaimed playwright, life coach, corporate trainer, and author of There's No Plan b For Your a Game, a fantastic book. In 2001, Beau wrote and starred in his one man play, Runt of the Litter, which he performed on Broadway to rave reviews. The New York Times called it one of the most powerful plays in the last decade. Beau toured with a play in over 50 cities, and it is now being adapted as a major motion picture. Thanks so much for joining us, Beau. Honored to have you here.
[00:07:33] Bo Eason:
Fable, thanks for having me.
[00:07:34] Abel James:
So I was just telling you before we started recording that I've seen you speak a a a couple of times. It was about 10 years ago, and I was struck by, and you get into this in your book, your physical presence, the energy that you brought to the stage was something truly special. So I'd love to get into how you arrived at that spot. But your trajectory was a long and windy one in many ways, dipping your toes into some incredible experiences and a wonderful career. So I'll hand you the mic to kinda get started. How would you tell your story?
[00:08:07] Bo Eason:
Well, I I mean, it all starts, like, just having a dream. You know? Like, having a dream at 9 years old and just going, wow. I wanna be this. And the the key part of the dream, Abel, is that and I've had 5 of these in my lifetime, these dreams, and I call them declarations. All of them have the term the best in them. So the my first one was when I was 9 years old, and I just declared that I wanted to be the best safety in the world. And safety is a position in football for those of of people who don't know, and that's what I wanted at 9. And I'm just, like, hardheaded enough or dumb enough to actually follow these things, stay loyal to these declarations that I've made all the way through.
And at first, anyway, they take many, many years for me to achieve them, but they've all happened. And as we go through these declarations, as we go through these dreams that I was pursuing, they got shorter each time I did it because what I learned was that the principles of being the best at something, at mastering something are all the same. So it didn't matter if I was a a one was my first one was being a football player, being a a safety. My second one, 20 years later, was being a playwright. So those things are completely seemingly unrelated.
Right? But the principles are the same. If you wanna be the best in those two fields, the principles are are are exactly the same, and you just have to follow the same, you know, recipe. But what I've learned also is that it shortens your timeline. So it used to take me 20 years, now can happen pretty damn quick because the principles of mastery are just the same. So, anyway, that's kind of where I began this journey, And every turn that I try to make, like so after football, I became playwright. It became stage performer. And I didn't know how to do that stuff. I had no experience. I was an athlete. You know? Those two worlds just didn't mix, but I just applied the same principle, and it came true. It it took me some years, but it it came into existence. And then I said, wow. I wanna do this for other people. I wanna teach other people to be able to do this, and that's your opener, Abel, about the physicality of when you saw me on stage.
When I was training to be on stage, I met a guy, and he was the best in the world at what he did. And what he did was train performers to be physical or unapologetically physical on stage. And now he works with, like, you know, Margot Robbie and, you know, I mean, that's the that's the actress who played Barbie and played, you know, Tonya Harding in the in the I, Tonya movie. And the Wolf of Wall Street, I mean, she's amazing to watch on screen because of her physicality, and that's what he taught her. He's he's taught Leonardo DiCaprio. He's worked with me for 17 years, and it it is a lost art, this physicality of the human being. But but if you can learn it, and you can, because it's almost like you don't have to learn it. You kinda just have to reremember who you are naturally.
And who we are is, you know, animals. And most people that I tell that to, they always go, oh, shoot, Beau. We're more evolved than that. We're we've moved beyond that. We're sophisticated. And I'm like, no. Not really. We're, you know, we're more we're just basically predatory animals. You know, that's really what we are. And what I learned from this guy was that and this is the promise that was made to me, and this is the reason probably why I'm on this podcast today is that's the thing that stuck with you after 10 years, is he made a promise to me many, many years ago when I was about to go on Broadway with my play.
He said, if you do what I tell you to do, or more importantly, if you do what I do, then the audience people will not have the ability to look away from you. And I was like, wow. That's some promise. You know, the way he phrased it, people will not have the ability to look away from you. Because, you know, it's pretty wild promise, but think about this. He said, if I put a a cheetah or a lion or a great white shark or, a falcon, if I put those predatory animals on a stage in front of people, a live audience, what would the live audience do? And I was like, well, nothing. Like, we're not taking our eyes off them. I know that. You know, if you put a lion in front of me, not in a cage, a lion in front of me or a silverback gorilla in front of me, I'm not doing anything.
I'm just gonna watch, and I'm gonna try to take a breath when I can. And funny enough, Abel, he was right. I did what he said, and I did what he was modeling for me and all his performers do. And the audiences can't look away. They cannot look away, which is why the people that he trains win academy awards. You don't win academy awards for something you say. You just don't win them for that. You win them for who you are, what your behavior is, and can the audience dismiss you. Right? We can get into that deeper, Abel, but just to answer that initial, I guess, attraction that you and I had was, oh, man. I remember that physicality. I that's that's the one thing I can't get out of my mind, and it's true.
That is always the case. People that work with me, it's only because of that. That's what sticks with them. And that works on camera. That works in everyday life. That war works when you're walking into Starbucks. The beauty of it is it's not that hard because it's who we are naturally. We've just been domesticated so much, which I think is a perfect word for us. We've been domesticated so much by media, by polite society that we're not as attractive as as we once were when we were just straight up predatory, masculine, and feminine, and unapologetic about that.
I think we're very self conscious culture now, worried about taking up too much space, worried about being too big for our britches, as my mom used to say. And I think that's hurt us. But when you're when you work, when you're in the business of helping people, whether you're a doctor, whether you're a financial adviser, if you're in the business of helping people, firefighter, you have to be physical. You cannot apologize for your physicality because you're in the business of the survival of people. Mhmm. Right? And now most people don't think of themselves like that. Like, a doctor doesn't necessarily think of themselves like that. I think of them like that. A financial adviser may not think about themselves like that. I do because my finances are my survival, so I want you taking care of them.
Right? No different than a firefighter or a Navy Seal. We are they're in the business of keeping people safe. Well, you and me, we're in that same business. We just don't view our life like life and death, so we start apologizing, and we start trying to fit into polite society. Well, the way I was trained, especially when you're on camera, especially when you're in front of people and you're leading, is to not be that way, is to be the opposite, to be naturally what you are, which is a predatory animal, if you will. I'll I'll pause right there, Abel, if you have a question. I love it. Well, I'm curious,
[00:17:17] Abel James:
just to go a little bit deeper on this. What is the iterative process, if there is one, to kind of embrace that physicality or get rid of that conditioning when you're up on stage. Because as you share in your book, it doesn't necessarily come from playing pro ball. I'm sure there are a few things that might have been somewhat helpful, but probably a lot of things you had to unlearn through that process to show up on stage the way that you wanted to. Right?
[00:17:41] Bo Eason:
Yeah. For sure. I did because it's strange. When you're in the NFL, especially in the eighties, I don't know how it is today. I'm sure it's because the rules have changed a lot, and the money is so big and corporate that they had to soften the rules. Right? Because they wanted to have different audiences watch them, so they made the rules less dangerous, if that's at all possible. So when I played in the NFL, I was a safety. Right? So you're in the eighties, if you're a safety in the NFL, you get paid to hurt people and intimidate people and knock their teeth out, basically. And the better you do that, the more you get paid and the more pats on the back that you get. And I know that sounds crazy, but that's how it was.
And so those safeties in the NFL were feared. I feared them, and I was one of them. You know? I wanted to be one of them, and I was one of them. So when I left that world, the scariest part of leaving that world was I was being paid. I had been trained my whole life, 20 years of my life, to be the best in the world at hurting people. Like running my body full speed head first into another man's body. So I was so worried when I had to leave. I was so worried. I had my 7 knee surgeries while I played, and the 7th one was it was I couldn't go anymore. I couldn't do it anymore. They were getting parts outside of my body to put in there, so I was running out. So when I left that world, I thought for sure, I don't know how I'm gonna survive in a world with laws and rules. Like, I've been in the NFL where the rules were okay.
You know, it was okay to hurt people. This violent safety was you know, got an ovation. You know, people clapped for that. But when I enter civilian society, what the hell am I gonna do? How am I gonna make money? How am I not gonna go to prison? Yeah. Because what I do best is throw my head full speed into other people. That ain't gonna translate too well. So the first thing I did, April, was I moved. I I know this might sound crazy to you, but I moved to New York City, which I had never lived in New York City before. But I didn't know this one thing about New York City was they put on shows.
They put on stage plays. They had Broadway. They had off Broadway. They had off off Broadway. I knew that people went to the theater in New York City. That's all I kinda knew. I had been to New York. I had played against the Jets and the Giants there, but never, like, as a person living there. So I moved there, and I'm at this time, I retired from football, so I'm, like, 27, 28 years old. Still pretty young. But I got myself into every performance class, every acting class, every improv class, writing class, theater class, voice class. I just transferred all of what it took for me to be the best safety in the NFL, and I transferred it into, I wanna be the best stage performer of my time.
So I took the same principles and moved them over to theater. Now I'm not sure anybody ever did that before, but I'm just like that. I'm like that. I when I find a system that works, I don't care about the occupation. Mhmm. It doesn't matter. The principles work. And so that's what I did. And I remember going to all these classes, and I had saved all my money from football to so I could take classes, so I could just be trained and and not have to make a living for many, many years so I could be the best at this thing. That's what I was doing. So in these classes, I would go up to the other students in the class, and they were much younger than me because they were, you know, they're, like, college age, or just out of college, and they were entering this acting world, this performance world. And I was, like, I was, like, okay, you guys, who's the best stage performer of our time? Who is that? I wanna be that. Who is that now?
And they all said the same person. It was 1990, and they all said Al Pacino. And I said, cool. Where is this dude Al Pacino? And these and these kids are all like, wait. I don't know where he is. He's probably on a movie set somewhere. You know? I was like, no. No. I gotta talk to this guy because he can tell me how to be what he is and only him because 2nd place ain't gonna tell me. 1st place, the the best stage for that dude's gonna share it with me because you know why? He doesn't think I'm gonna do it. And sure enough, you know, within a week, I am at Al Pacino's house, and it is exactly what you're thinking his house would be like.
It is full of Italian people. It's like a Godfather movie. Right? It is. The no one speaks English except Al, and they're cooking. Everyone's cooking, stirring gravies, pastas. It's just what you you kinda would think his house may be like. So he and I go back in the back room. He had a pool table back there, and he goes, Beau, I know why you're here. Let's break this down. And I said, cool. I said, you know, what's it gonna take for me to be the best? And he basically drew a map, no different than me being the best safety in the world, started when I was at 9. Same map, same thing, but it had to do with stage performance.
And he said, you know, basically, you're gonna have to repeat what you've already done, but you're gonna have to have your butt on a stage rehearsing, practicing what that is, writing, story, physicality, story tell, all of these, the acting, movement, voice, all of these things, and that's what I did. So I just repeated what it took for me to be the top safety in the NFL to be in the top stage performer. Now he said to me he goes, Beau, listen, man. You know? Because I was thanking him at the end of our meeting there at his house. Took about 3 hours. I shook his hand. I said, Al, thank you, man. I appreciate this. I'm gonna do it. And he goes, you know, I wish you luck, Beau. I this is probably gonna take you about 15 years because you're behind. You know, there's there's people ahead of you. And I go, no. That's good. I I 15 years, that sounds good to me. That's that's a good time that's that's a good timeline for me. And I said to him, thanks. Because I'm guessing that a lot of actors come to you and, make this request of you. And he said, no. You're the first.
And he I was so shocked. He said a lot of actors come to me and wanna be famous Mhmm. Or they want me to get them a job in a movie or they want me to introduce them to my agent. And he said, but you didn't say any of that. You said, how do I take your mantle? How do I be the best like you? So he said, you're the first. So on I went. And, you know, for the next several years, Abel, it it doesn't look like this thing is gonna work out. Right? Like, every step of the way and I find this to be true in in in truly world class, ventures, is every step of the way looks like you're not getting evidence that it's gonna that it's gonna come through, that it's gonna happen.
And then one day, in my case, several years later, I am opening a play, my play that I wrote, that I'm the only guy in, And it's opening night in New York City, and the critics are there, and all the fancy people are there. And I'm backstage about to take the stage so nervous that I think I'm gonna faint. And mind you, I had already taken on the most dangerous people on the planet. Right? And I this was scarier than that. This was much more scary than tackling the refrigerator Perry or Walter Payton or whoever. And yet I ran out there, did the play, and as I'm doing the play, I'm having, like, this out of body experience. Like, these people are here, and I'm trying to remember my dialogue.
And all I could think was, look at these people, and I'm I'm the only one on the stage. And and I wrote this play, and I'm here. And then I make eye contact with a dude right on the aisle. Row 5, Al Pacino is in the audience. And I'm like, holy shit. That's Al Pacino. And I hadn't seen him since that day 15 years before. I mean, I saw him in movies, but I hadn't we haven't met since 15 years ago. And he's looking at me, and I'm looking at him, and I'm trying to remember my lines, and I'm going, shit. That's freaking how Pacino came in my play. I and and he was sitting there, like, just with his arms crossed like this, and he's just watching me.
And I'm watching him, and he's just he's going like this. And that's the best review I ever had, Abel. I mean, that was like a day where I go, this is, like, surreal. And then I I thought back to my NFL career, and the same thing happened in the NFL. That it was different circumstances, and I was much younger, but the same kind of sequence happened. You know? Mhmm. Where and this is why I always say the principles, I don't care what I'm gonna do next. The principles will be the same. When I wanted to be the best safety in the world, I remember cutting out of Sports Illustrated a picture of the best safety in the NFL.
And at that time, it was a guy named it was 1979, and it was Mike Reinfeld. And he was a safety for the Houston Oilers, and he had just been named most valuable defensive player or defensive player of the year. And so I put him I can't remember if I put him on my wall or my locker. But every day, I could see Mike Reinfeld's picture. He's the best safety in the world, which is what I wanted. Again, I didn't have any evidence that I was ever gonna be it because nobody recruited me. Nobody really cared. I walked on at a college that doesn't have pro players, division 2 college, you know, 350 universities don't want me.
So I just didn't have evidence. But lo and behold, in 1984, I'm the top safety, in the country. I get drafted to the team that Mike Rheinfeld is the safety for, the Houston Oilers. So all these years later, Mike Rheinfeld is the safety that I looked up to and modeled myself after. And now they draft me, Abel, to take his place. So now my locker in Houston is right next to my idol, Mike Reinfeld, who I'm supposed to replace. But he's he's older than me. He's much more mature than me. He knows how to play safety in the NFL. I'm a rookie. I just arrived. We became friends.
He helped me, and, eventually, I replaced him. So every time I choose a dream or a declaration to become this thing, first, I draw up a plan, you know, to do it, and then I always go to the best person that's already in that position. Right? And, I meet them. I act like a rookie, which I am in their field, and I go, hey. I'm a rookie. I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I wanna be you. I want your mantle. And guess what? They helped me do it. I think the mistake most people make, Abel, and then I'll I'll pause after this and, you know, let you, you know, enjoy your podcast, is what I noticed about the best and then second best or 3rd best or a 150th best, 1st best, the top, the top one, the gold medalist, they always wanna help.
Isn't that wild? Like, the top in their field wanna help. 2nd place in their field, they don't want you to pass them. Mhmm. They see you as the enemy. They see you as the competition. Where first best, the gold medalist, that's what they want. They want the competition. They wanna be around that. And I'm I promise you the 5 dreams that I've had in my life from, you know, writing, or being a screenplay writer or being a husband or being a dad, all of those, I wanted to get the mentor that was holding the trophy, who was holding the gold medal.
And I always got bad advice from anybody who wasn't holding that gold medal. Like, something that was a little bit off about them. And that is the one thing that is principle, number 2, that whoever that person is you're going to for to be your mentor, to guide you, boy, they'd better be the top because if they're 2nd place, they're just a little bit envious. Mhmm. They're just a little bit not willing to give you what it takes. But people like Mike Reinfeld, people like Al Pacino, The first screenplay I ever wrote, which I'd never written a screenplay, was, the guy who bought the rights to my play was a guy named Frank Darabont. Well, this Frank Darabont is, you know, been nominated for 12 Academy Awards for writing.
The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, Saving Private Ryan. I mean, you name it. This guy has written it. So he became my mentor in the first screenplay I'd ever written. I don't know what I'm doing, but he does. Yeah. You know? He does. So I guess I'll just, you know, hit the pause button there, Abel, and have you jump in and see where you wanna go with this. Well, I just love that because there's gotta be such a huge advantage actually to being quite green. The the rookie going into that situation,
[00:33:41] Abel James:
talking to the true master, because you don't have time in between or or you haven't accumulated all of this nonsense, this conditioning that's working against these bad habits. You're kinda starting a little bit fresh. And I can imagine putting myself into the mentor's shoes for a second that that would be really exciting because usually you're trying to, you know, work on deconditioning or or, like, basically getting people out of that negative headspace, like you were talking about at the beginning of this conversation where you have gotten rid of your primal instincts and your natural power that's that's there. You've kinda layered over it. You've gotten a little bit smaller, a little bit more cautious over the years. You've forgotten what it's like to be truly yourself. So I just wanted to share that that's that's probably something that a lot more people could do than they realize because a lot of Yeah. The folks at the top really have been helped their entire life. They've been doing the same process. Right? They've been reaching out and and following their dreams, trying to get the best to help them, and in many cases, they have. So they just wanna keep passing it forward. But I wanna mention as well, in in your book, you you talk about, you know, the folks who you put on your locker. So, like, Walter Payton, for example. And then eventually, you say you have to go nose to nose with your heroes and actually play against them because that's how your dream comes true. So maybe you can walk us through that process. It must be totally surreal.
[00:35:07] Bo Eason:
It's like a journey. It's like I don't it's like deja vu, I guess. Because you've seen this picture every time you open your locker, which, you know, when you're at school, you I in between every class, we would go to our lockers. Right? Lock and then I'd go to my locker at at at practice after, school. So you're always in your locker, at least, you know, when I was growing up. And every time you open it, you're seeing, boom. There's Walter Payton. There's Mike Reinfeld. And Walter Payton, you you know, obviously, is one of the greatest running backs of all time. And I always just looked up to them, admired how he played the game.
Then many years later, again, I'm playing against Walter Payton. I'm looking across the field at him. I'm like, holy shit. That's Walter Payton. Like, you idolize them, then you realize that they're gonna fight back. Mhmm. They don't know that Boiesen idolizes Walter Payton. They think I'm there to hurt them, and so they're gonna fight back. Right? They're gonna push back. So I remember, every day opening my locker, Walter Payton, Walter Payton, Walter Payton. And the picture of him was very distinct in my mind. He was running right at the cameraman, and it looks like he's running right into the camera, and he's got the ball in his hand, and he's like like an action photo seared in my mind all these years. And I'm playing against Walter Payton. I'm looking I'm over there, and I'm looking at him, and then they break the huddle. They come up to the line of scrimmage. They give Walter Payton the ball, and he starts running to his his right, to my left.
And I start to pursue him. I start to go, okay. This is oh, shit. And the image that I have of him is that same picture. Like, he he's running right at me just like he was running at that camera of the picture I have in my locker. And as he's getting closer to me and I'm getting closer to me, everything just good turns to slow motion. And it's like, oh my gosh. And your whole life kinda just passes, you know, through your mind. And I'm as I'm approaching, you know, trying to tackle Walter Payton, through my mind, I'm like, shit. That is Walter Payton. I'm about to tackle Walter Payton. I hope my mom and dad are watching this on TV.
And as I get closer to Walter Payton, it just becomes more surreal and more surreal until I wrap my arms around him. He goes to the ground because you have to imagine you have to know that this is a godlike figure for a kid growing up idolizing Walter Payton and now knocking him down, taking him to the ground like he's a man. As I'm on top of Walter Payton, I was enjoying it so much that I stayed on top of him instead of getting off. So if you're a rookie and you tackle a veteran superstar player like Walter Payton, they don't like it. So they don't want you laying on them. But I just decided to enjoy it just a little bit too long, and I was just laying there enjoying the moment, and he kicks me.
He kicks me. Now this guy's, like, the most nicest guy in the world. Right? But he does not want a rookie laying on top of him. So he kicks me as I'm getting up to get me off of him quicker, and I'm like, oh, shit. Walter Payton is just a man. He's a man. I just tackled him and then he kicked me. He's a man. And it was it was no more idolization after that. We were peers right then. It was like, okay. If you're gonna kick me and I'm gonna lay on you, you know, we're men. We're we're both dudes. Right? And at that point, you're just, like, kinda shocked. You're like, shit. I got him on the ground. He's not a god. He's a man. We're all men out here.
Sometimes people it takes that to get over that idolization. Right? That difference between being a fan and being a player. It's a big distinction, being a fan and being a player. Once you're a player, you realize that you're just peers with the greatest athletes on the planet. I I don't care how big they are. It doesn't matter. And they respect you, and you respect them because you can hurt each other. Those kind of visualizations, those kinds of incidents happen in my life every time I put myself in a demanding situation. Mhmm. Like, I look up to somebody. I I try to attempt to achieve my birthright, which is being the best.
And as soon as I'm there, it becomes real. It becomes very real. Like, there's no more idolization. There's no more, like, Al Pacino, I looked up to him, but he's a dude, man. He's a guy. You know? Mike Rainfeld, he's a guy. But you don't realize it until you're right next to him. You're like, jeez. I can run faster than this guy. Yeah. And that means he's a man. Right? Yes. You start to realize that. So for everybody who's listening to us right now or watching us, I would just say, like, look. The people who you look up to and admire, they are peers of yours. You just may not know it yet.
They are peers of yours, and only they can give you the advice that you're looking for. And when you resolve the fact that you are peers, you're gonna meet them. You're gonna be in front you're gonna be with them. You're gonna be compared with them, and it's gonna become really real to you. And and, you know, when we we open this whole can of worms about physicality, my movement coach, the guy who was introduced to me, only reason he was introduced to me is because I wanted to be the best stage performer. And so a guy heard me say that, and the guy went to my movement coach and said, hey. There's this guy that wants to be the best. I think you should work with him. And so my guy only works with movie stars and, you know, the great music performers, ballet performers. I mean, he's about movement. Think about that. He's about predatory animals moving on a stage.
Crazy, right, in front of a camera. The only reason I was introduced to him is because of that, because they heard my dream, and they said, well, you better have the best movement guy. And so I just find it funny that we we open this podcast with that situation that 10 years ago, you and I were in the same room. I happened to be speaking, and you probably don't remember one thing that I said, but you remember how you feel because of some physical expression that I had 10 years ago on a stage that we both probably can't even remember where that was. So that's why I'm really big on working with the best.
And and, you know, since physicalization, especially for men, but for women too, Especially for men, it you just you see men apologizing for their physicality left and right, left and right, and it weakens them so much. It makes people think less of you when you apologize for who you actually are. And this guy has taught me to revisit my raw animal instincts, and it turns out to be the most attractive thing that I have or that I am. And it's true for you too, Abel, and it's true for everybody, on this podcast. It is true. The most attractive thing about you, all of you, is this unapologetic physicality that you have.
And in our world, it only shines when we're in a very demanding situation. So for a for a mom out there, you know, if you moms have a lot of this predatory instinct because they're they have this ability to have children. And the minute that that child is in trouble or there's a threat to the child, guess who the beautiful female mom turns into? They turn into their raw animal instincts, which is they turn into predator animals, which is what they actually are. Mhmm. Isn't that crazy? And then they can do unimaginable feats, like pick up a pickup truck and throw it. You always hear these stories of a woman that has this herculean strength when their child is in trouble. Mhmm.
And if you have a mom, which we all do, and you have a I'm guessing you have a wife, you know, you're attracted to that. That's what us men want in our females. Well, that's what females want in masculinity also. So think of this. Think of there's a fire in your house, and we don't know how to put it out. We don't know how to save ourselves, so we call the fire department. Now do you want the firefighter to come in your house apologetically, towing around? Like, of sex drugs. Yes. Apologizing. Excuse me. I'm I'm a firefighter, and I'm here to be polite. And I don't wanna ruffle any feathers, but I do wanna put the fire out. Could you point me in the direction? No. No. We want our firefighters to bust the door down, to be bring mud in if you have to, be impolite if you have to, get over there, do this, I got this shit.
That's what we're attracted to. Yeah. That's what we desire. Right? But you have to be this in your position, and you have to be this in my position. And I think it's a lost art that I would really love for the rest of the world to grab ahold of and know that this is what is attractive about all of us is that predatory nature. It's just it's an instinct. And we get so, I don't know what the right word is, evolved, I guess. Like, we think we've been but we're not. We're not that that evolved. Right? We're pretty basic. Yeah. And for anybody who has a dream, the only way to build that dream right? Abel do there's one way to build the dream. The business that you want, the home that you want, the lifestyle that you want. That's those are dreams. Right? The career that you want, that has to be built. And that has to be built with unapologetic predatory nature to protect that vision and to recruit people like Al Pacino, like Mike Reinfeld, like Frank Darabont, to help you build that dream.
They ain't attracted to somebody who's apologetic, who's, oh, I'm sorry, mister Pacino, but I would like to be kind of mediocre actor. Can you help me with that? He would have not responded to that. I would not be at his house because he doesn't care. Yeah. He doesn't care. Alright. Where do you wanna go?
[00:47:16] Abel James:
So and then don't let me get too worked up over here. No. Not at all. And, not to correct you. This is meant to be a a compliment. I do remember a number of the things that you said when I saw you speak even though it was, I think, more than 10 years ago now. Simply because of the combination of what you were saying, the stories that you were telling, and acting out a lot of those stories on stage, which just kinda cemented it in my mind. So I'll never forget your Jerry Rice story. Maybe you can share that now or at the end. But, I mean, when I saw you up there, I was just like, this dude I've been playing lead guitar for most of my life as as my first career. And I'm like, look, watching you, and I'm like, this is the the first speaker I've ever seen who's, like, playing a rad guitar solo right now. He is just walking the whole stage. And so it totally makes sense to me that you studied with the same people who these rock stars have studied with because it's one of those things where everyone knows that feel. I I hope everyone knows that feeling of someone. You you watch them do what they do and your hair just stands on end. You know? You get goosebumps.
It's real. It's raw. And I've experienced this as well. Like, trying to play with groups, if you just kinda, like, lean back and be nice and kinda paddle along or you play a nice little tasty solo, nobody cares. But if you are just riding the edge, going completely unhinged, playing notes that shouldn't go there in ways that don't make sense, then everyone just, like, goes nuts, loves it because that's what being human really is. It's not being all buttoned up and polite, as you say. It's being yourself and being unapologetic about it, once you've honed the skill anyway.
[00:48:51] Bo Eason:
Yeah. A 100%. I mean, I've never played the guitar, but I've always was going, why do all the girls and their all the guys in the band could be all good looking, playing their instrument, lead singer, all that drama, all that shit, But the lead guitar player loses themselves. Mhmm. That's why they're the lead guitar player. They lose themselves, and now they're not self conscious about what their mouth is doing or how their hair is doing or whether they're sweating their ass off or snot is coming out of their they don't they don't give a shit. They are lost. I'm not looking at every girl.
Is freaking that's what they love. That. Not the guy who's in control, and that's what we're all being fed. That's what we're all being, you know, taught. Oh, I hope you fall in love with the choir boy. No. No. No girl ever fell in love with a choir boy. I'm sorry. It never happened in the history of man caught kind. They fell in love with the lead guitarist because his instrument, his body, was fully in line with the instrument that he's playing, which is out of control. It's not in control. Right? It's like it's just expressive. It is it is what it is, sweaty, dirty. It's what it is.
That's how I was trained to be on stage 2. Same thing. Now and I always have the same. When I'm training people to be I do a 3 day event, and I train people to do what I've been trying to do and speak and and stuff like that perform. And the first thing I tell them is I don't trust any speaker that it, for one, is not sweating their ass off. Mhmm. You know how people go, oh, I'm pitting out. I don't wanna go on stage. Oh, I hope I don't sweat. Oh, I hope my hair stays perfect. No. I want somebody who's fighting up there, who's who's expressing up there, who can't sometimes hold you know, they they say bad words that just fall out of their mouth. They here's what I don't trust, and I don't I don't think anybody trusts this anymore.
I don't trust polished speakers. I don't. I don't trust polished, leaders. Don't trust. Look. When I see somebody play the guitar, like you play the guitar, all I see is the training that they've been through. I see the hours. I see the months and the years stacked on top of one another. When I go to see a heavyweight championship fight, that's all I see. Mhmm. And then it's all full of sweat and blood and ex physical expression. The only reason they're able to do that because they mastered all those years of training. Yeah. Those are the only people I trust.
And I think those are the only people anybody trusts anymore as a leader, as a speaker, as, somebody building a business. That is true. And the way I was trained is the same way that you were trained. It's the same thing. And it's not just girls. I use girls because it's a great example, attracted to the lead guitarist. Then why does every man wanna be the lead guitarist? Not the singer. Right? Not necessarily the not the drummer. Mhmm. Why do they wanna be that guy? Because that's the most expressive person we've ever seen, and that's the one that everybody's responding to.
That's cool. Now everybody should just think about what it that's your position in life. That's your position. You just have to find the place where this guitar lives in your life. Doesn't have to be you don't have to be a guitar player. You don't necessarily have to be a speaker. But this instrument of expression that God has given us is powerful, and people are attracted to it if it displays freedom and expression. They no one's attracted to it if it's hemmed in. Mhmm. If it's neutered, if it's, antiseptic. Mhmm. No one's attracted to it. That's why you don't trust politicians as a rule. That's why you don't trust people who do news broadcast as a rule.
We really don't trust those positions anymore because it's so buttoned down and controlled that you go, what are they hiding? Yeah. The guitar player can't hide anything. Right. The person who does a great performance in whatever field that is, they can't hide. They don't have a false bone in their body because it's been trained out of them. That's where I'd like all of you. That I would love that. I love that world. You know, when you get in a huddle in the NFL, especially when I played in the eighties, you're in there with some criminal elements because there's no way they could have gotten that high unless they had that minus. Yeah. It's funny it's funny to say. But we have that we have that ability, that mindset.
So it can either go in a very dark way or it can go in a very great way like the NFL. And when you're in a huddle with these dudes, you're just looking around going, holy shit. How did I get in this huddle? There's a bunch of criminals in this huddle, and I trust them more than I trust members of my own family. You see what I mean? Mhmm. When people have to express themselves fully in their line of work, I trust that. I the whole world trusts that. So I just I wanna put that out there because one can be trained back to what you actually are, which is this primitive animal.
[00:55:18] Abel James:
What about Beau? And you've kinda mentioned this a little bit, but, the difference between folks who play pro ball or play pro sports for a while there, you see a number of them go out there and continue to crush in a different direction. Right? They build a a giant business. They affect a bunch of people. They train a bunch of people. They give back to their communities, whatever it is. But a large portion kinda just fall off. They, you know Yeah. All of a sudden balloon to £400 plus. They have all these health issues. They're broke. What is the difference between those two trajectories in your experience?
[00:55:53] Bo Eason:
Yeah. I'm so glad you asked this. No one ever asked me this question, by the way.
[00:55:58] Abel James:
My Al Pacino moment.
[00:56:00] Bo Eason:
Yeah. Right? It is. Because what you don't know, which it it's always the silent majority. Most NFL players, most former athletes, they're really effing smart. You know? And they I know they don't have that. You know, people don't talk about that. To get that high in that sport, you, of course, you have to have all the danger and the physicality and that stuff. Of course. But you have to be very smart because to play at that level, it is very complex. It is not easy. Your mindset has to be in the right place. Otherwise, they're just gonna cut you because they're they can pick anybody. They can get rid of you anytime because there's a bunch of guys waiting in line to take your place.
So they're very smart. Well, that smartness, that intelligence to play that at that level, most of us are like me. Most of us succeed in whatever they do next. They succeed in their marriages. They succeed in their businesses because they're effing smart, and they know how to bring something into existence. They've already proven it. Mhmm. The ones that seem like the majority are the ones you hear about, and those are the guys who lose all their money because and I think this is the problem. They try to keep the lifestyle that they had while they played. Mhmm.
Well, when we played, you know, in my day, we would go out drinking afterwards. We'd eat too much. We'd chase girl. We did everything. Right? We did all this crazy shit because we were 21 years old. Nice. You know? We were like, we were doing what 21 year we weren't married. We drove cars that were fast, and we drove them fast. Bad idea. Yeah. So here's the difference. For 1, the ones who do lose all their money and gain £400, and they try to hang on to that lifestyle of living on the edge. The ones that are more like me come stops that lifestyle and realized, hey, nothing in the NFL we do is natural. So my weight went back to my natural weight. It was, like, 180 a £184.
Big old 300 pound lineman now go down £195. You know? Wow. Because that's their natural weight. Mhmm. Because they stopped the drinking. They stopped the they stopped living that lifestyle. So the ones who can make that lifestyle change, really successful because they're very smart to get that far and stay in there that long. I have found that to be true all the way throughout my life. And I also found that to be true is that the ones that have hit the skids, you know, that gained the the the pounds and been divorced 3 times and lost all their money, you hear more about them.
You don't hear about the guys like the successful guys. Yeah. It's not a great story in in ESPN's mind or whoever's, you know, the newspapers, the media. Those are the stories they love to share, right, of one fallen from grace.
[00:59:23] Abel James:
Yeah. But, I mean, at least when I've met folks like you, the the people who played at such a high level, when you meet them in real life, it's the the intelligence is obvious and the the work ethic as well. And, what are some of the things that people might be able to apply in terms of envisioning their future? Because that's another piece I'd love to touch on. You share a few of the drawings that you made when you were a child. I know that that your children as well have dream boards. And you mentioned on your locker, sometimes some of these things actually show up in your real life in the same vision that you were kinda looking at them for a while. So maybe you could talk about the magic of that and and how to maybe dip your toes into that if you haven't experimented with that sort of just courageous, envisioning process of the future. How how do you go about it?
[01:00:12] Bo Eason:
Yeah. You know what? It's pretty natural. It's pretty common for all of us to see these visions that we have. Now as we get older, we get a little bit more less good at it if we're not practicing it. If you're not great at visualization or if you're not great at, like, seeing where you wanna go or what you see in your future, you just you have to practice it. You have to set aside time. I just start my day that way because I I've always had kind of this sense of, rehearsal. Like, even when I was a kid, I would pretend I was playing pro football.
I would run-in slow motion pretending that I was doing these things, pretending I was tackling Walter Payton. And then, you know, many, many years later, I actually get to tackle Walter Payton, and it's the same vision. The vision actually remains exactly how you had visualized it. But a lot of people go, well, Beau, I'm not good at visualization. Well, you probably just haven't practiced it enough and given yourself not enough of an opportunity because we're all really good at shutting in our our eyes and seeing, you know, our future, like us maybe standing on a stage in front of a microphone.
Or this is what when I met my wife, I always had this vision of her, but I was 33 years old and that I had dated plenty of girls by the time I was 33, but none of them wore that vision that I had. They were great girls. They just weren't the vision. And so I thought to myself, I'm 33. I'm probably am I gonna get married? That's what I was thinking. Maybe I'm not gonna get married. But I always had this vision of this, you know, this instrument of a woman, a female instrument person. And when I was 33, energy hit me as this girl walked past me. It hit me like a ton of bricks. I just went, oh, shit.
And I she was walking away from me, and I I swear, and this has never happened to me until this moment, I said, I'm gonna marry that girl. The I had never had that feeling Wow. Ever. I said, I'm gonna marry her. And then she turns around, and I said, I'm definitely marrying that girl because she was so pretty. But the energy hit me before I saw her face. Yeah. Right? And we went on a date that night, and there was a big age difference between us. Like, she was 19 at the time. I was 33. I was actually in an acting class, and she was in this class. And we went on a date that night. I didn't know she was 19. She seemed older than me.
We went on a date that night. We went and saw Tarantino movie. Which one was it? It was, oh, that's a great one. Pulp Fiction? Pulp Fiction. Yeah. It was Pulp Fiction. Classic. Thanks for the reminder. It was Pulp Fiction. I never went on another date again. That was 30 years ago. I never went on a date ever. That was my last date, and that was it. Now we have 3 kids, and, you know, they're going off to college. And you have to keep revisiting. If you don't have that ability because I I somehow see these things, I want you to just practice seeing these things and then rehearse being those things.
So I rehearsed being the best safety for years before they named me best safety. I rehearsed being the best stage for years, Rehearsal practice, just behaviors. Walking down the street like I'm the best stage performer in the world in New York City. What? No. I wasn't. No one would say I was. No one even knows who I am. But then many years passed, and all of a sudden they go, I just saw you. Hey, dude. I saw you in that your play. Oh my gosh. I'm like, shit. I behaved as if I was, and then I was. Listen, you guys. Let's use Tom Brady as a great example of this. Right? So, yeah, we can probably all agree that he's the greatest quarterback of all time. He's won the most Super Bowls, probably the greatest football player ever to play the game at this point. Right? But here's what's so crazy about me being able to say that and you being able to say that is he's like the worst athlete on the planet. Terrible. Yeah.
Right? Like, how could this be? Right? How can this be? How could this guy be unwanted in high school, unwanted in college football, unwanted in pro football? But what was Tom Brady doing that whole time, you guys, behind closed doors? He was behaving like the greatest player in football history. That's how he was behaving. And then we caught up to his behavior. The rest of the world caught up to how he was rehearsing all of this time. Same thing with Michael Jordan. You know, people, greatest basketball player of all time cut from his high school basketball team, not once, but twice. So what was his behavior? What was he being that we couldn't see, and more importantly, his high school coach couldn't see?
Right? He was behaving behind closed doors like the greatest basketball player ever to lace him up. That's how we know him. Right? But what's the story? We see Tom Brady now and we go, oh, we're just not him. He's so handsome. He's so tall. He's won so many Super Bowls. I can't do that. Well, yes, you can, but you have to behave. You have to be what he is being, what Michael Jordan is being, what Al Pacino is his behaviors, how he's being. That is the part everybody misses. So you have to start by visualizing it, by seeing it, and then behaving like it, just your behavior.
So if I asked you to be you know what? Right now, you are the greatest saxophone player in the world. Let's make something about you're the best ballet dancer on the planet. You're Mikhail Baryshnikov. How would you walk into Starbucks if that was the case? Would you slink in all disheveled and whining about your day and getting in line with everybody and then waiting and looking around. Would you do that? Would no. Would you behave that no. You would not behave that way. Well, people make the mistake of waiting until ESPN names you the best safety before you start behaving like the best safety. No. It's too late.
That happens way before. So right now, choose what you wanna be the best at, and it could be anything. And the more impossible it is, the easier it is. Whatever that is for you, then begin to behave as such. Now I'm not giving you a to do list, am I? I'm not saying, hey. You gotta practice the ballet more than anyone else. I'm not saying that. I'm saying start behaving like Mikhail Baryshnikov. Mhmm. Start behaving like that. And now your story lives in real time, and people recognize it in a minute. If you see somebody walk past you in an airport that is headed somewhere with an intent of greatness, you're gonna be attracted to them. I don't care if they're a man or a woman. What the hell they are.
It doesn't matter. You're attracted to greatness, and greatness is always headed somewhere. It is always behaving in a way that even though the world may not recognize it yet, they do. This is why I have been able to do what I've done 5 times is only because this is what I love. I love rehearsal. Remember practice, you go out to practice in a sport, and everyone would be like, shit. We gotta practice again today. It's hot. It's no you know, everyone else is out smoking weed or doing you know, they're driving their fast car. They're and I gotta be here at practice. Remember that? Mhmm. I actually like that. I always have liked that.
I liked being left out of what the popular people were doing and just doing what I was behaving like I was the best safety in the world. Same thing. They changed the word from practice to rehearsal once I got to theater. Yeah. There was same damn thing. Yeah. It's all it is. You're just rehearsing this character that you're becoming. And guess what? If you're great at it, you become the character. You're not faking a character. You are the character. That's what they call great acting. No acting at all. You are the character. Well, that is true in our everyday life. I behave when I go into Starbucks as if I am the greatest dad and the greatest, husband on the planet, and people feel it. When I go on stage, you guys, and when I'm doing a podcast like this, I go on like I am the best in the world at what I do because that's how I've been trained to do.
That's it. That's it. If I'm a brain surgeon, guess what I'm behaving in a certain way until the rest of the world catches up, and my training catches up with me being the best brain surgeon in the world. Visualization, big part of that, you guys, because your brain doesn't know the difference. Think about it. My brain, when I was 9 years old, thought I was the best safety in the world. Now the rest of the world was going like this. Bo, you actually suck. You actually suck at safety. You're slow. You're little. You can't even tackle anybody. And I just saw what I saw.
I had my mind seeing what I was seeing, which was the best safety in the world. It didn't have to happen today, but it it was gonna happen sooner or later. As long as I stayed the course, it was gonna happen because my brain doesn't know the difference. It thinks I'm the best. I'm only 9. I'm freaking weak. I'm slow. I'm not the best, but my brain doesn't know the difference. So I just keep rehearsing it. I keep behaving like I am. And you guys, I'll I won't give you a timeline on it, but it's, it's it's a function of how clear you are on that visualization, how quickly that thing, you know, comes into existence.
Same thing with my wife. I kept seeing her. I kept seeing her. I it was more a feeling, not exactly what she looked like, but what she what she was like, what she was powerful and feminine and beautiful and and was gonna, like, have kids with me that were just gonna be just boom. You know? Just the kids I want, like, good citizens, powerful leaders. And sure enough, that's how it's all ended up.
[01:12:25] Abel James:
Amazing. We we only have a few minutes left, but what I would love if you could even just an abridged version of what you learned from practicing with Jerry Rice and some of the other bests over the course of your career because definitely rubbed off on you. And even when I heard the story for the first time, it rubbed off on me too.
[01:12:43] Bo Eason:
Yeah. Jerry Rice, you guys. You know? So Tom Brady, you know, when he won that last Super Bowl, that was the moment because I used to tell this I tell this story about Jerry Rice, my comings and goings with him. And he at this at the time I was telling these stories, he's the greatest football player ever to play the game. I mean, I never seen anything like it. No one had ever seen anything like it. And to this day, he holds the touchdown record, and no one can catch him. Nobody can catch this guy. Well, I I felt like Tom Brady, like, as he he got traded to Tampa Bay, and he won that Super Bowl for Tampa Bay, he might have surpassed Jerry Rice as the greatest football player ever to put on a uniform. But, you guys, I used to play against Jerry Rice. Right? Used to play against him. And, you know, when you're playing against the best that ever put a uniform on, it is a nightmare for you.
Right? It's attractive, but if you have to defend and guard this dude, jeez, it's a nightmare. And, again, like Tom Brady, not the greatest athlete. I was faster than Jerry Rice. I was bigger than Jerry Rice. I could handle Jerry Rice. But here's the one thing I learned about playing against him and then eventually playing with him was you know, we all have this spirit inside of us. Right? We all have this we can control our spirit. Right? Like, we can we can decide whether our spirit's generous or whether we're we're gonna withhold this spirit and kind of tap on the brakes. Well, Jerry Rice is the most generous person spiritually that I've ever seen, And he's a football player. Right? So I played for many years. I guarded this guy. He's a nightmare.
I I knew he knew how to play this game. But then I got traded to his team, and his team had just won a Super Bowl. They're about to win another, and there's no accident to the team who wins the Super Bowl. They have players on their team that are like Jerry Rice. He was the example of what it takes to win a Super Bowl. So when I saw this guy play, you know and when you're in the NFL and you're out at training camp, I was new to this team. He was a wide receiver. I was a defensive back. They go straight head to head. I noticed that all the receivers during warm ups were running like you know, they were all kinda chill. They were all kinda all cool. You know? That's how they they ran their routes, warming up. You know? They don't wanna get hurt.
You know? It's training camp. You know? It's it's not too serious yet. And they were all what we call in the NFL, they all had their all pro glide going, meaning not full speed. Very cool, very chill, but it looks kinda good. So they were all doing that when they were catching these balls. Joe Montana was throwing them these footballs, and all this line of receivers was all chill, catching these balls, and then stopping, and then kinda walking back to Joe Montana, giving Joe the ball over and over and over. Their receivers are going. This was my first day of practice with this team. And then it was Jerry Rice's turn to come up.
He's the greatest player to ever put on a uniform. And I'm like, okay. I wanna see what he does. The the first ten guys were pretty chill. They were pretty all pro glad. What's Jerry gonna do? And sure enough, boom, full speed. Not chill. The opposite of chill. Like the lead guitar player sweating, tongue out of his mouth, hair all messed up. Full speed, fully expressed, spiritually. Fully speed, catches the ball, instead of stopping and walking the ball back to Joe Montana, like everybody else did, he caught the ball, he ran full speed to the end zone, and it didn't matter where the end zone was, you guys.
If the end zone was a 100 yards away, it was a 100 yard sprint, put his body in the end zone, turn around, run all the way back. You guys, this isn't practice. This isn't warm ups. So everybody else sketching, chilling, stopping, walking, hand not Jerry Rice. Fully expressed spirit of generosity. Like, this ball is getting everything I got. Every time I touch it, I end up in the end zone. And that's what he did over and over and over again. You guys, after this 2 hour practice, I walked up to him. I said, Jerry, what the hell, man?
What is wrong with you? What do you I never seen anything I never seen anybody do it. Played 20 years, football, I never seen anybody do it. Isn't that weird? Isn't it weird? I go up to him and I go, Jerry, what the hell is wrong with you, man? We're in warm ups, dude. We're chilling. Right? What are you doing? You run at full speed every time. I go, why do you do that? And he goes, boo, it's very simple why I do it. Whenever these hands touch the football, this body ends up in an end zone somewhere. And I was like, you man, I just remember in that moment going, and I'd already played 20 years, you guys.
I was like, there are no accidents in this game. There's a reason this guy has scored more touchdowns than any of us are ever gonna think about scoring because he has trained his body that every time it touches leather, he ends up in the end zone somewhere. And you could put the end zone a 1000000 miles away and he's gonna put his body in it. This is a guy who's not faster than me, but how could he run faster than me once the ball's in his hands? Somehow that happened. That happened over and over and over again. He had just this generosity of spirit that I just I never could put my finger on.
The day you guys that, some young couple came up to me many years later, and they said, Beau, will you marry us? Will you be officiate our marriage? I go, I don't you know what? I don't do that. That's not really what I do. I'm not a preacher man. And they said, well, we think you are a preacher man. And as it turned out about 10 minutes on the Internet, and I'm a preacher man. Yeah. So I married this couple, you guys, and it's in Santa Barbara. It's beautiful. It's right on the ocean. And the first marriage that I ever presided over you guys, I get up in front of the congregation, beautiful young families. I get up there, and I have a a fake notebook in front of me. It doesn't have any writing in it, but I wanted to look official. So it doesn't have there's nothing in it. It's a notebook with no writing in it, and it's leather bound, and it looks kinda like a preacher man. So I open this thing up. I'm in front of this couple, and the first thing out of my mouth is this.
When I think of marriage, the first person I think about is Jerry Rice. The whole congregation, every dude stands up and goes, yeah. This is my kind of wedding. And all the ladies in it, they're all going, man, who's Jerry Rice? Was he a famous romantic? But, you guys, what I was trying to communicate to the congregation was this. I had never seen anybody treat a ball with that kind of respect. I never seen anybody treat a game, it's a game, with this kind of honor. And I I said to this young couple, if you treat each other the way Jerry Rice treated the ball, with that kind of respect and that kind of tenacity and generosity of spirit, then you will have the greatest marriage on the planet.
And that still holds out to be true. There is never a day, you guys, that I don't think about what I experienced being a teammate of Jerry Rice. I tell my kids about that all the time. I tell everybody about that as much as I can just because he just decided that he was gonna treat it with honor. Now this guy, you know, he wasn't a superstar. He went you know what college this dude went to? Mississippi Valley State. Where the hell is that? Who's ever come from Mississippi Valley State? No one. How did this happen? How did he end up being the greatest player to ever put a uniform on?
His generosity of spirit. So, you guys, every time I speak, every time I get interviewed, every time I am called to be in front of a camera, I think of Jerry Rice. I think of him. Even in my marriage, I think of him because of what I saw him do and what I saw all the other receivers do, how they glided through their careers, and he did not. He treated it with ultimate respect. If you do that with your life, if you do that in your presentations, in your speeches, you will be the equivalent of the greatest player to ever put a uniform on. That's cool. That's a cool life. That's what I strive for, and that's what I have the people that I train and I coach.
That's what I have them try for. And that's that generosity that that you remember all these 10 year 10 years later. It's so funny because people go, well, Beau, is is that your story or is that Jerry Rice's story? And I would say, well, it's his story, but it's through it's told through my perspective of my experience of Jerry Rice. So those are powerful, powerful stories for all of you to use as you're bringing your vision into existence, because you're gonna need those to raise money, to draw attraction, to draw eyeballs. You're going to have people watch your podcast. You're gonna need those kind of stories because that's what human beings are attracted to, is greatness that is headed somewhere. Now it might be your greatness or it might be somebody else's, but you have to let them know those
[01:24:00] Abel James:
stories. I love it. Beau, so amazing to talk to you. What is the best place for the listeners out there to find your work, your book, and everything that's coming next?
[01:24:09] Bo Eason:
Yeah. I mean, you can find me, you know, on Instagram, boeason 21 is my handle on, Instagram. You can go to boeason.com. I've got website, all kinds of things there. I'd love to give, you know, your listeners something because I I can have you text a number, and I could send something to you, a video training to you right now just because I want I don't want you to wait. I want you to get started with this vision that you have. And how I start every if you notice, for this hour that we've been talking, everything I talk about is through a story, Whether that's about Mike Reinfeldt or Al Pacino or or Jerry Rice, they're all stories. They're just stories.
And that's how I've built all the visions that I've had and all the companies and brands that I've begun is through story. Well, I want you to have your story now instead of later. So I wanna send you a free story guide that is a video training that will train you on your story, on how to find it, and then start to tell it so you can start that today. So with your permission, I'd love to be able to to share that number with them. Is that cool? Please. Yeah. Okay. Good. So all you have to do is text personal story. So personal story, the word personal story, that's one word, to 323-310-5504.
So text personal story, one word, to 323-310-5504, and I will send you a free story guide so you can start to because I want you to start to declare this thing. I want you to have this personal story so you start to share it. And the minute you get it get that training, start to nail that story down so you can get out there and get this thing moving. I have found that to be the the the difference between, you know, the dreams and the declarations that I've had. I also have a story that gets me to those to those places. There's always a story when you have a dream, and that story leads you to that dream. Well, you're gonna need that story, and you're gonna be I want you to be able to tell it, to share it physically because that's how you're gonna build it. Because you can't build it alone. You gotta share it with people so they can help you build it. It's kinda no different than yours and my relationship.
It will I mean, it it really is. If you think about it, like, here we are all these years later doing a podcast because of something that happened, a story that was told 10 years ago. Yeah. Right? It's and here we are. I want all your listeners to know that once you get this, you guys, once you know what your story is and then you have the ability to share it, now all doors open to you. And I'd like you to have that, you know, now. So wow. Abel, this was cool, man. This was really fun to, you know, get into all this stuff. I didn't realize we'd get into all these things, you know, but it's it's cool.
[01:27:24] Abel James:
Yeah. This is a total humdinger. I I really appreciate the conversation and, the generosity that you've showed with us sharing your time and and your deep wisdom and and knowledge and experience. It's been a true pleasure. So thank you so much, Beau. I I look forward to doing this again sometime.
[01:27:39] Bo Eason:
Yeah. Anytime. Let me know.
[01:29:58] Abel James:
Thanks for joining us on this episode. To round out the show as promised, here's one of my original tunes called Live While I'm Alive, which you can find and also send a boost to on modern podcast players like Fountain FM. I hope you enjoy.
[01:30:35] Unknown:
When you see that beauty over there, I'm gonna make her mine. Gonna show her everything I got because I ain't worth a dime. They said, no. You won't. Know who you won't. Boy, you must've lost your mind. Said I just found the ride for me, an 85 Mercedes Benz. A couple of screws to sneeze some TLC, but she found herself a friend. They said, no, you don't. No, you don't. Son, you must've lost your mind. You must've lost your mind. Said I'm gonna live while I'm alive. Ain't nobody ever gonna change my mind. No, no. So I said bye, bye, baby.
Bye, bye, baby, I'm gone. Don't want this job no more. I'm gonna play guitar all day. Make my rent in smoky bars, whacking my blues away. They said, no. You don't. No. You don't. Kid, you must've lost your mind. You must've lost your mind. I said I'm gonna live while I'm alive, and ain't nobody ever gonna change my mind. Now I'm gonna drive across the country, have myself a time. Gonna grab my girl and my guitar, gonna change my
[01:36:07] Bo Eason:
mind.
[01:37:25] Abel James:
They were gonna change
[01:37:28] Unknown:
my mind.
Introduction and Guest Overview
Bo Eason's Journey from NFL to Broadway
The Power of Physicality and Mastery
Transitioning from NFL to Civilian Life
The Importance of Mentorship and Learning from the Best
Embracing Your Natural Power and Physicality
Life After the NFL: Success and Challenges
Visualization and Envisioning Your Future
Behaving Like the Best: Lessons from Tom Brady and Michael Jordan
Jerry Rice: Generosity of Spirit and Excellence
Conclusion and Final Thoughts
