November 21, 2023 • 42 mins
His story sounds improbable: middle class kid from Northern Colorado becomes a high caliber two sport athlete at the highest levels. After his athletic career, he starts a non-profit which gets acquired by AARP and a start up software company that sells a decade later for 9 figures. Now he’s husband to a Brazilian actress and father of two kids. This is your life Jeremy Bloom.
Jeremy’s story sounds like a fairy tale and while he’s extremely grateful for everything he’s accomplished, none of it came without trials and tribulations. The training it took to be a world class freestyle skier, college athlete and NFL player was constant. He was inches away from winning an Olympic gold medal. He was cut from two NFL teams. He was so focused on his athletic career, relationships sat on a back burner. He nearly threw in the towel on his start up when their capital was running out. Thankfully every time Jeremy encountered a roadblock, he recalibrated and found success.
Listen to his story here and find out how he made it all work with his book RECALIBRATE: Navigating the Winding Road to Success.
Jeremy’s story sounds like a fairy tale and while he’s extremely grateful for everything he’s accomplished, none of it came without trials and tribulations. The training it took to be a world class freestyle skier, college athlete and NFL player was constant. He was inches away from winning an Olympic gold medal. He was cut from two NFL teams. He was so focused on his athletic career, relationships sat on a back burner. He nearly threw in the towel on his start up when their capital was running out. Thankfully every time Jeremy encountered a roadblock, he recalibrated and found success.
Listen to his story here and find out how he made it all work with his book RECALIBRATE: Navigating the Winding Road to Success.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
It was a sobering moment. I'llnever forget the call. You know.
It was sort of like the lastpreseason game of the year, and it's
sort of that D day. Igot a call from Tom Heckert and he
said, hey, we're you know, we're going to move on from you
and you can come in and cleanout your locker room. And it hurt.
I mean it hurt. I thinkit hurts all all players. How
could it not. This is yourchildhood dream. Most of the players that
(00:22):
get that far haven't really heard alot a lot of times that they're not
good enough. Welcome to cunt,traded, fired, retired. This podcast
features conversations with professional athletes and coacheswho have ties in some way to Colorado
and it faced challenges just like youand I. Not only do we hear
about those challenges, we also hearinteresting and fun stories about working through them
(00:43):
and moving on. I'm your host, Susie Worgin. I've known this episode's
guest for a long time. Istarted covering prep sports at the NBC affiliate
in Denver in two thousand and onewhen Jeremy Bloom was making headlines as a
football star at Loveland High school,but those weren't his only headlines. Jeremy
had been in the spotlight for awhile with the US ski team, a
team he made at the age offifteen, becoming the youngest to ever do
(01:06):
so. He managed to keep bothsports going after high school, with the
CU Buff's football team and skiing inWorld Cup competitions and two Olympics. Unfortunately,
the NCAA put a stop to twosports due to endorsements, which in
today's nil world would be a mootpoint. The day after Jeremy competed in
the two thousand and six Olympics inItaly, he flew home for the NFL
combine, and he was later draftedin the fifth round by the Eagles.
(01:30):
His NFL career didn't last long,however, he gained valuable leadership insight from
one of his coaches. After football, Jeremy started a nonprofit and a software
company, both of which have beenacquired by other companies, yet he's still
very involved with each of them.He's also an author, a husband,
and a father to two young children. His story is pretty amazing. Ladies
(01:51):
and gentlemen, Jeremy bloom Cut TradedFired Retired podcast with Susie Wargen, Jeremy
Bloom Boom, My goodness, ithas been so long since I have seen
you. It's been a few years. Yeah, and have known you for
we were just chatting. I mean, it's been over twenty years since high
school days. It has been sincehigh school days. Yeah. When I
started working at nine News, Igot introduced to you and your family as
(02:14):
we were doing pieces on you goingto the Olympics. And then fun fact,
your mom taught our son how toski. He was deathly afraid of
skiing, and your mom, Idon't know what kind of miracles she did,
but she got him hooked and hewas great after that thing. For
that, yes she does, shedoes. So all right, let's go
back and kind of start at thebeginning with you. You're actually born in
(02:35):
Fort Collins, but you grow upin Loveland. Did you live in Fort
Collins or just the closest hospital,closest hospital. So, born in Porter
Valley in Fort Collins, but welived in Loveland, Okay, And so
I grew up on Boyd Lake andgreat place to grow up. We were,
you know, summers on the water, winters in the snow. Yeah,
you know, just anywhere in Colorado. It's such a great place to
(02:57):
grow up. How did you endup getting into both skiing or skiing?
I believe it was your grandfather thattaught you right, and then also into
football. And what other sports didyou do besides those two, I'm assuming
you did a bunch. Well,it was really football and skiing for me
because I was born in eighty two, the year that the Broncos drafted John
Elway, and so I had theluxury of growing up idolizing John Elway and
(03:20):
you know, watching his success onthe field, the Broncos success, and
every Sunday, you know, wea lot of times we wouldn't watch the
game, we would listen to itactually driving down because we would be say,
we love that from Koa. Welove that KOA was on our car
every Sunday driving down to the mountains. Yeah. So I always wanted to
be John Elway, and that wasmy first athletic dream because you know,
(03:40):
we were such big and still areBronco fans, and my parents just loved
to ski on the weekends. Wewere never a full time skiing family,
and so we would drive up sortof two hours from Loveland to Keystone.
Traffic was better back then traffic wasa lot better back then. There's no
doubt, you know, my parentsjust loved to get out of the city
and into the mountains like most people, a lot of people in Colorado.
(04:02):
And when I saw the Olympics whenI was ten, I had been skiing,
you know, on the weekends andthose types of things, and you
know, I was a hot dogand trying to take jumps and you know,
ski the bumps. And I sawa guy by the name of Edgar
gross Baran from France win an Olympicgold medal in freestyle skiing bumps and jumps
in his hometown of Teen, France, and I really started to idolize him,
(04:25):
and I said, geez, maybeI'm a skier, you know,
like maybe if I put my mindto this a little bit more then I
can maybe, you know, goto the Olympics. And it was really
that, it was a defining momentwas the Teen Olympics, the Little Hammer
Olympics, where I told my parentsthat I wanted to ski in the Olympics
and play in the NFL and thosewere going to be my two dreams.
And you know, sort of bothof them looked at me and they have
(04:45):
a healthy disregard for the impossible.They always have had that, and they
said, you know what, youcan go do that if you put your
mind to it and you really attackyour dreams. And that was the word
that really stood out to me asthe word attack, Like I couldn't just
dream about it. I really hadto attack it with every single thing that
I that I had And that reallyset off the course of my young life
at ten with those two goals,that's amazing. So then how do you
(05:08):
start to attack that as a tenyear old? Well, you know,
there were some intersections where, youknow, coaches wanted me to move to
the mountains and be a full timeskier, right because if you're going to
attack something, you want to doit every single day. But I just
I never could agree on the sideof just focusing on one sport, you
know, and conventional wisdom, especiallywhen I was, you know, fourteen
fifteen, would say just ski.You know, I was the smallest kid
(05:30):
on every football field I stepped ontoand I made the US ski team at
fifteen. Yeah, I was theyoungest to ever make it. And so
a lot of my coaches when Iwas fifteen said, well, you need
to be a full time skier.You know, all the people that you're
competing with, not only in thiscountry but around the world, they've been
full time skiers their whole life andyou're a part time skier and you know
this football stuff. You know you'regoing to get hurt on the field,
(05:51):
and you know there's probably not apath for you beyond high school. A
lot of roadblocks for trying to bea football player, big linebackers. Yeah,
so you know, I just Ijust had a lot of confidence in
myself, my ability, and youknow, just keep my head down and
keep focusing on daily progress. Whendid you start playing football football? Were
(06:13):
you playing it before ten? Probablyaround eleven when I started playing tackle football.
My dad was our head coach fora year. Yeah, Larry was
the head coach, and he wassuch a good head coach, and we
had I could see that we hadawesome team, Susie, I mean,
undefeated seasons. Most of the timeswhen you played, it was a lot,
it was a lot of fun,I bet. Yeah. And then
as you get into high school,you're at Loveland High School. Are you
(06:34):
always a wide receiver and a returner? Did you play other positions? So
my freshman year I was a quarterback, of course, because I wanted to
be John Elway. Absolutely nobody right, and nobody could tell me that I
was too short to play quarterback.But my sophomore year, Tony Davis,
who was a coach at Loveland HighSchool, his son Josh Davis, played
at Nebraska. He played in Nebraska. He also played in the NFL.
(06:57):
So he was a guy I reallyrespected. I mean, he was sort
of illuminates figure growing up in Loveland. He just sort of sat me down.
He said, hey, you're reallyfast and you can get out of
brakes really quick. I don't thinkyou have a future and quarterback because you're
just not going to be six foottwo, and I want to move you
to receiver. And he's probably theonly guy in the world I would have
listened to. And I'm grateful tohim for that feedback because if not for
(07:19):
moving to receiver, of course,you know, I was going to play
for college football as at quarterback,right, And so my sophomore year I
was a receiver, and same withmy junior and senior. And you were
a little before the Cordell Stewarts andthe running quarterback that didn't have to be
the John Elway, you know,six three, six, four two whatever.
So otherwise maybe they would have givenyou a chance at it. Yeah,
(07:40):
I don't know. I didn't havethe strongest of arms. I was
happy to be away from all thosebig guys in the middlefield and the outside
near the hash marks. So howdid you then balance doing skiing and football
at the same time, because everythingkind of is happening. As you said,
you made the US team at theage of fifteen, yet you're also
a star football player for Loveland atthe same time. How did that balance
(08:01):
go? I had to learn thatI couldn't balance them. I had to
integrate them, and so I hadto little, you know, be a
bit more prescriptive on when I wasspending time at which sport and work with
the coaches on both sides. Myfreshman season at Colorado, you know,
I was a starting kickoff in puntreturner and the third or fourth receiver and
we had a great team. Thiswas in two thousand and two. We
(08:24):
won the Big twelve North championship,and we played in the Big twelve Championship
and then we played in a bowlgame. I took my finals early after
the Nebraska game, I flew toFinland to compete in a World Cup.
I flew back for the Big twelvechampionship game and then played in the bowl
game. I had to work withCoach Barnett and my skiing coaches to sort
of help to integrate what that planlooks like, and by the way,
(08:46):
also my professors who cared about thefinals and so yeah that you know,
December was always the most tricky monthbecause sure, the World Cup ski season
would start, and then the collegefootball season, if you're doing well,
would sort of get real, whichyou guys were. Were coaches amicable to
be working together or at that stage, Yes, it was really easy.
(09:07):
I think Coach Barnett was really excitedabout my ski career, and my ski
coaches by that time sort of camearound and said, wow, this a
kid can play football, and it'sgetting the US Ski team great coverage on
ABC against you know, Florida State. You know. So at that point,
yes, but early on, no, In fact, I had to
petition all of my teammates to saythat they didn't mind that I played football
(09:28):
to my US Ski team coaches,because the coaches on the USK team basically
said, hey, it's unfair foryou to miss training camps and you know,
if you're playing football. This waswhen I was like fifteen to six.
Yeah, they actually didn't want meon the team because of it.
And so I I wrote up alittle note and gave it to all my
teammates, said, hey, doyou mind if I miss camp? Like
do you feel like this is anunfair advantage? And one hundred percent participation.
(09:50):
All of them signed that. Igave them to the coaches, They
gave it to the ministration and theysaid, all right, well let's see
what happens. That is incredible tothink about that as a teenager, just
like I'm going to make my ownlittle petition and just make sure the coaches
are okay with that. Brilliant Whenit came to recruiting, when you were
at Loveland High School, did youhave other schools besides see you that was
interested in you? My senior year, there were other schools looking and I
(10:11):
was getting some letters and some scoutsin the stadium, but I only had
one scholarship offer, and I wassort of always yeah, disappointed and had
a little chip on my shoulder thatColorado State never offered me a scholarship because
you know, they knew about me. Of course I was right here.
My dad was a professor there,and you know, they would send scouts
and stuff. And I'm incredibly gratefulto Coach Barnett because he's the only coach
(10:33):
in the country that saw potential inme and the opportunity to play Division one
college football. And if not forCoach Barnett, I would have never had
the opportunity to play in college orthe NFL for that matter, Oh for
sure, Yeah, very likely.You know, if I wouldn't have had
the chance to sort of play,I probably just would have focused on skiing,
absolutely. Yeah. And how manyof those colleges that were recruiting you
were also going to allow the skiingcareer. Two sport athletes in college just
(10:58):
don't happen. Yeah, And youknow, Colorado was always my number one
school. I grew up going togames with the Gebharts, you know,
in the nineties when you know theywinning national championships and you know, we
were young kids sitting there in fulsomefield watching just the greats, you know,
do what they do. And yeah, so even if I had one
hundred offers, I would have pickedColorado anyway. So you know, once
(11:18):
I got that offer. It makessense. Yeah, absolutely, all right,
So then while you're at college,you see you you said a number
of records. While you're there,you are, You're fast as all get
out. Then again, how areyou integrating your skiing at the same time,
Because you've got Olympics, You've gotthings that you're doing in World Cups
all at the same time. Itwas just busy, you know, and
(11:39):
I didn't have a second to sortof breathe, you know, beyond focusing
on football and skiing. But therewas also like this really cool moment when
the ski season would end in thefootball season would start, or vice versa,
because at the end of the footballseason, I mean, you're just
taxed. Oh yeah, you're mentallyso drained from football, and it was
just this like turning of the pagethe next day or it's like yes,
ski season starts, and so Icould sort of just jump into the World
(12:01):
Cup with a fresh perspective. Andthe other thing that it gave to me
was like at Colorado, we wereplaying in front of sixty seventy thousand people,
and so I was getting ready forbig time events every Saturday. So
mentally I was so sharp that jumpingright into the World Cup season when my
competitors have not sort of prepared fora big competition for six months. Was
a big deal. And I wouldjump into these big World Cups and have
(12:22):
zero, you know, fear oranxiety because I'm just like, let's go
like this. Your headspace is alreadythere. The head's there, So so
there was that benefit. And thentalk a little bit about what happened with
the endorsements and what went on there. I mean, today's world, you'd
be set with nil, wouldn't thatbe nice? And you were one of
the bigger per I mean, honestly, you probably look back, Jeremy,
(12:43):
and you were the perfect example ofwhy it could have should have started back
then, because it held you backand really changed some of the things that
was going on with you. Yeah. So right after my senior year of
high school, I went to myfirst Olympics in Salt Lake City and I
had a great year. In twothousand and two, I ended as the
number one ranks skis in the world. Before I got to Colorado, before
I went to college. As Iwas accepting my scholarship to go play college
(13:05):
football, I had endorsements, youknow, ski goggles and skis and polls
and you know, the various thingsthat skiers endorse, and all that money
paid for my ski career. It'sexpensive, which is not cheap. It's
expensive to fly to Finland and gethotels and pay for trainers and those types
of things. And the NCBLEA said, well, you know, if you
want to play college football, youcan't accept any of that money. I
(13:28):
felt it was very hypocritical, evenat the time. Forget about today,
obviously that would have never happened.But even at the time, there was
a guy named Drew Henson who wasa quarterback at Michigan and also a baseball
player, and he made over Ithink two million dollars in college in another
sport, baseball, while playing amateurfootball. And Tim Dwight did the same
thing, and Ricky Williams did thesame thing, and so we just felt
(13:50):
like this was really hypocritical, andso you know, we sued the nc
doable A. We sued the NCAAin Boulder District Court. We thought our
judge, who was a season ticketholder for thirty years, was like the
best choice we could have had.But my lawyer missed a really important restitution
by law in that case that costsus the case, and it was nineteen
point eight and it basically says,if a student athlete ever successfully sues the
(14:11):
NC double A and the school allowsthat player to play, if that decision
is ever overturned ten years later,the school will forfeit every game that that
player played in, all the revenuecreated, ticket sales, merchandise, et
cetera. WHOA, we should havegone to federal court because the federal judge
wouldn't have cared. But you know, our Boulder District court who'd been a
season ticket holder for thirty years,said he didn't want to put the university
(14:35):
at risk based off his decision,and so ultimately didn't work out. And
probably that was the hardest decision myathletic career, like what to do because
for the first time in my life, I was looking at real money and
you know, nothing's guaranteed in yourfuture. And I was still the smallest
kid on the field and a lotof people said him, you're never going
to see the playing field there.Don't give up four hundred thousand dollars as
(14:56):
an eighteen year old, which isa lot of money. Oh my gosh.
Yeah, And I just said,you know, I, no matter
how much money I would ever makein skiing, no matter how many gold
medals I would win, I justfelt I would always look back Susie and
say, what if? What ifI had this great opportunity to play for
my college football team that I idolizedand loved and I turned it down for
(15:18):
money? It became easy when Ithought of it under that lens, and
so I tore up all the contractsand played football. I wonder how many
people would actually do that. That'sa tough decision to make, Jeremy,
that really is in very introspective insomething you had to do as an eighteen
year old. Who'd you rely onto kind of bounce ideas off of.
I know you've been always close withyour folks, very close, Yeah,
very close to my dad and veryclose to my mom. Any thing is
(15:39):
it relates to sports. You knowmy dad, you know, he was
the most influential person in my lifeas it relates to everything athletics. And
my mom was the most supportive.She flew all over the world, she
didn't miss a competition, she didn'tmiss a football game, and at the
end of the day, my momwas like win loser, draw, I
love you and I'm proud of you. You know, I'm not there to
see you win. I'm there tosee my son have this great journey.
And you know, my parents weregreat at not prescribing advice. They never
(16:03):
were the parents to do this,do that, or they would ask great
questions. My dad's a psychologist,right, so he knows the great he
knows great questions to ask, andhe ultimately allowed me to make that decision
and then supported me. That's great. I remember. I have a great
memory of your dad the two thousandand six Olympics when you did your run.
I mean it was early early morning. Here he was at the nine
(16:25):
News studio. He had a bigscreen TV and he came down to the
studio and he was pacing the Ohmy gosh. I was like, he
was, do we need to isJeremy's dad okay or should we know you
something? He was not okay onany level. I'm like, well,
Larry, wow, I feel likeyou know. And then yeah, but
I mean with what he did fora profession, and then to also try
(16:47):
and work through, you know,his son being on the other side of
their world and doing this and doingthe run, and it was just I
mean, it was fascinating and Ican't imagine the pressure everybody felt at all
times. Yeah, I think therewas more pressure on my family than there
was for me. Really yeah,I mean now being a dad and the
granted my kids are young, they'reunder the age of three, but you
feel this transition in your life whereyou're no longer sort of fully in control
(17:12):
of the journey of people that youlove more than yourself. And so you
know, as I picture what itwould feel like to watch one of my
kids competing in the Olympics, whenwhen they sort of cared as much as
I did about the sport and whatI was doing, oh, there would
be way more pressure on me.I actually felt very little pressure in Trine.
I felt a lot of pressure inSalt Lake because I was nineteen years
(17:33):
of age. It was the firstinternational competition really that I was participating in.
I didn't even ski World Cup theyear before, so that spotlight felt
like unattainable for me. But inToronto it was totally different. Im me.
I was playing big time college footballon a national stage with a big
spotlight and learning how to mentally dealwith that. You had a huge story.
You had a lot of things thatwere going on that would have been
very tough. So in that twothousand and six year, you go to
(17:56):
the Olympics in February and then youget drafted because you're all done with your
college career, you get drafted acouple months later by the Eagles. I
mean, that had to be anabsolute whirlwind for you. It was incredibly
fun, Susie. It was unbelievable. I mean, I competed in February
at the two thousand and six Olympics, and then the next day boarded a
plane to go to the NFL Combine. So sort of within a week here
(18:17):
I got it was right after theother that the combine was there too.
Yeah, And so went to Indianapolis, ran the forty yard dash and met
with a bunch of coaches and itwas, you know, it was just
it was an incredible couple of weeks, and then went to California to train,
and then he had draft day inApril. Got a call from the
Philadelphia Eagles, which was my dad'shometown team. He grew up in Philly,
and so aunts, uncles, cousins, and you know, it was
(18:41):
like a homecoming. I bet itwas going back there to play. Tell
me about the combine, especially comingoff of You're in shape, you've been
doing another sport, you've cross trained. But so many guys will talk about,
you know, what a meat marketis. What we see on TV
is not really what happens. There'sa lot of mind games, there's a
lot of things that go on there. But you, being probably in a
different mental date, I bet youhandled it pretty well. I was really
(19:02):
relaxed. Some people were really freakingout. I'm sure I was really chill,
and you know, I was focusedon doing well. I wanted to
run fast and do all that.But I got to meet with almost not
every head coach, but probably halfthe league scheduled meetings with me, And
I just got to talk to headcoaches that I idolized, I had so
much respect for. It was surreal. I mean, as I look back,
(19:23):
my whole athletic journey was so surreal. Susie, and I don't think.
I mean, if you look atme and you look at how I
grew up, it's all just sounexpected, right do you don't look at
me? Says, yeah, thatkid's going to play in the NFL,
and you don't look at me asa weekend skier and say, yeah,
he's going to go to the Olympicsand be the number one rank skier in
the world. So I sort ofpinched myself as I look back, because
(19:44):
I was just sort of able tosummit some mountains that I don't think I
was fully capable of summoning. Ijust figured out a way. It's pretty
cool because you do think about it, You're just a family of five living
in Loveland, Colorado, and you'renot behind the gates on some you know,
great big, huge estate and you'rejust going up and ski on the
weekends, and then it just evolvesinto this incredible life that is has just
(20:06):
kept evolving. Middle class family.You know, my parents had enough resources
to buy you know, seasons passesand that was probably the most expensive thing.
In fact, it was the mostexpensive things that we bought because we
did not live in a stravagant lifestyleat all. But my dad did well
and you know, but he didn'tlike to spend money. So yeah,
sort of you know, humble beginningsand I think an unlikely path that played
(20:26):
out. It's really cool. Sothe Eagles, you get there at fifth
round of the two thousand and sixdraft. That first year you end up
injuring your hamstring in training camp andyou go on, ir, yeah,
I hadn't played football in two years. If I could do it again,
I would have cross trained differently inthose two years when the ncable Stay declared
me permanently in eligible and took awaymy junior and senior season, and I
(20:48):
focused exclusively on skiing. Everything fromthe weight rooms to the field to the
cross training was all focused on skiingmaneuvers and those types of things. And
what would you have done differently?What are some of the things. I
would have kept my football cleats around. I would have continued to run routes.
I would have continued to sprint.I didn't sprint for two and a
half years. Hey, you don'tneed to for skiing. You don't need
to, And so your hamstrings.Turns out your hamstrings are really important for
(21:11):
sprints and they are not as importantfor skiing. And so you know I
had this in balance, great quadsand weak cam strings, that's right,
Yeah, yeah, And so Iwent to Philly, which you know Andy
Reid was the head coach, andit was the air raid off. I
mean he threw the ball seventy percentof the time. Donovan nab was a
quarterback. So just to get throughtraining camp, just to get through practice,
you are literally sprinting one hundred percentof your speed, like miles and
(21:34):
miles per day, that's how muchyou're running. So I just my body
unfortunately wasn't wasn't ready for that.And then you get cut by them in
two thousand and seven. What wasthat like because you haven't had a lot
of downs at that point. Imean, you had as far as the
NC doable A goes, but asfar as your athletic career, right,
you know, it was a soberingmoment. I'll never forget the call,
you know, in Wayne, Pennsylvania, and you know, it was sort
(21:56):
of like the last preseason game ofthe year, and it's sort of that
d Day in the NFL. AndI got a call from Tom Heckert and
he said, hey, we're youknow, we're gonna move on from you
and you can come in and cleanout your locker room. And it hurt.
I mean it hurt. I thinkit hurts all all players. How
could it not. This is yourchildhood dream. Most of the players that
(22:18):
get that far haven't really hurt alot a lot of times that they're not
good enough, right, I meanthey're all sort of the seevers maybe never
so, Yeah, it was.It was a tough situation. But in
my ski career I sort of encountereda lot of adversity getting to where I
was, and so it wasn't newto me to sort of recalibrate and sort
of figure out what I needed todo next and take that input in that
(22:41):
experience and make myself stronger and betterthrough it. Yeah, and then you
go to the Steelers. I'll goto the Steelers, And I really actually
I loved my time with the PittsburghSteelers. And I'm such a big Mike
Tomlin fan. He's the best leaderI've ever been around. I Mean,
he can unite a group of menunlike anybody I have ever seen. And
these are men that come from tofor economic backgrounds and racial backgrounds and religious
(23:02):
backgrounds, and he has an uncannyway of really uniting a group man.
And it is a big contrast betweenAndy Reid and Mike tom Mike Andy Reid's
not going to inspire you with hiswords, you know, like he's just
not that guy. He's got otherskills. He's a mastermind when it comes
to offense. Yeah, and yourespect the heck out of him for that.
But he's not the guy that's goingto stand up in front of you
(23:23):
know, eighty guys and just geteverybody ready to run through walls. So
I learn a lot from Mike Tomlin. I use a lot of the things
I learned in business today. Ohreally, Oh absolutely, Like what if
you can think of a couple things, Oh, there's a couple. I
mean, transparency is one. Youknow, one of the things that I
disliked in Philadelphia is the lack oftransparency. So you never really knew where
(23:44):
you stood. Hey, how amI doing? What do I need to
do to make the team? Whatdo I need to do to stand out?
What does the front office think ofme? What do you think of
me? No feedback, very littleblack box, and so you just sort
of, you know, pack yourlunch pail and go to work and try
to do the yes you can do. But in Pittsburgh it just was the
total opposite. You always knew whereyou stood, and he had He has
(24:07):
a radical candor, and I thinkit comes from a place of caring.
It doesn't come from it you know, he's being a jerk, but he's
going to let you know exactly whereyou stand on what you need to do
to be successful. And it's notjust him, it's the Rooneyes, it's
the whole organization. And I lovedthe fan base. I think the Pittsburgh
Steelers have, if not the best, certainly up there with the best fan
base in the world. And Iwould qualify that by saying, win or
(24:30):
lose, they're with you. That'scool. They're with you. And in
Philly it's not really like that way. You lose and they're not really with
you. No, you know.John Hall told me a great story because
when he went to Tampa Bay,he was there with John Lynch and I
can't remember some of the DB's butMike Tomlin was their DB's coach, and
John Lynch said, that guy's goingto be a head coach in the NFL.
(24:52):
Like they just knew he had comein and they were like, who
is this guy? Just they werelike, we had seen nothing else like
it throughout our whole career. Thatdoesn't surprise me. He just has that
it factor. So I loved mytime in the Pittsburgh and sharing the locker
room with Hines Word and Troy Paulamala, who is a friend of mine.
Today we go snowboarding sometimes. That'sawesome. Seeing Troy on the snowboard's hilarious.
So you still have all the hair. Oh yeah, he's got the
(25:14):
hair flowing out of his helmet andhe snowboards just like he played football.
Oh yeah. He throws his shoulderand things like should I try a backflip
here? I'm like, I don'tknow, have you ever tried a backflip?
He's like no, I'm like,then you probably shouldn't try it.
Oh my gosh, how funny.So are you're with Pittsburgh for a full
season? Yeah? Okay, andthen they released you as well. And
(25:36):
then they released me after my secondseason in the preseason, and that was
a sort of a crossroads for me. You know, I've been with two
teams. I got this incredible experienceof being in the NFL around the NFL,
not having the success on the fieldthat I that I hoped and wanted
for, but really having the experience. And what was looming for me at
that time was my third Olympics.Yeah, the twenty ten in Vancouver,
(26:00):
and you know, I didn't winthe Olympic gold and O six, and
I didn't win in O two,and both of them it was one tiny
mistakes. I mean, in sportof freestyle skiing, you train your whole
life for twenty two seconds, andif your knees split three inches, there's
the difference between first and sort ofsixth. And so I was thinking,
hey, well, maybe this isthe time. I'm in great shape,
obviously been in the NFL for threeyears, and my hamstrings you don't need
(26:23):
a hamstring in skiing, and sortof my quads are good. My quads
were good, like maybe, Andso I very seriously thought that I had
an opportunity to go to Tampa Bayand stead on the practice squad, and
I just concluded that, you knowwhat, I'm going to go for my
third Olympics. But when I wasin Pittsburgh, I started the Wish of
a Lifetime Foundation, and I reallyhad this big dream of granting wishes to
(26:45):
eighty ninety and one hundred year oldpeople. And so when I left Pittsburgh,
I met Nancy Tarpin here in Denver, and she turned out to be
our first wish recipient. And Imet Nancy in a room and She didn't
know who I was, and shedidn't even probably know why I want to
talk to her, But we werejust talking about life, and I said,
Nancy, if you had one wish, what would it be? And
she said, well, my daughter, Lucille has terminal ovarian cancer and we
(27:08):
haven't seen each other in a decade. She lives in Claypool, Arizona,
and her condition's getting worse. Andtears my heart out to know I'm gonna
lose my daughter without being able tosay goodbye, And so my wish would
be able to see her. Youknow, Susie, They you hear this
phrase through life, where you don'tknow what someone's going through unless you walk
in their shoes. And here Iwas playing in the NFL and traveling the
(27:30):
world as an Olympic skier, andI'm sitting across the table from the most
selfless human being you could ever imagine, kind giving back in her eighties.
She can't even see her daughter.And so the next week we went to
Claypool, Arizona. We got ona plane. I drove up there from
Phoenix Airport, dropped her off,met Lucille, and then I went back
(27:51):
to Phoenix for three or four daysand I picked her up, and I
picked up a completely different human being. She was glowing, and I'm like,
I had ever felt so much gratificationin my life. Seriously, Like
winning gold medals was amazing and youfeel great when you climb mountain. You
can say I am the best inthe world at this Very few people can
do that, and it's gratifying,or winning a football game, But when
(28:12):
you're a small part in changing thelife of an eighty year old woman forever.
After that experience, I called mymom and Dad said, I'm retiring.
I'm focusing on wish of lifetime.I'm not worried about the twenty ten
Olympics, Like, this is whatI want. Altered your life, totally
alternate. She altered my life.Nancy Tarpett had had a similar impact in
my life that Coach Barnett did orAndy Reid did that drafted me. She
(28:33):
changed this trajectory of my life.Wow, that's amazing. I am seed.
I think your first one, yourfirst wish of a lifetime Gayla that
we had over at Wings of theRock You can do the Rockies, yes,
and so I remember I think shewas there. She was at that
one yeah, and then and fromthere, I mean, you have raised
so much money and granted so manymore wishes. I am a true believer
the more you give, the moreyou get back. And I'm sure you've
(28:56):
probably found that with this foundation andall the wishes that you granted, and
just how it kept enriching your life, not only just knowing you know you're
making people's lives better, but Ithink that the way the world works enriches
you in many other ways too.It's been the best journey of my life,
the most meaningful journey of my life, notwithstanding my kids, ye you
know, but the most meaningful,the journey that I've extracted the most amount
(29:18):
of gratification out of. We've grantedthousands of wishes, thousands now thousands,
and Susie, we commonly show upin eulogies that people have lived eighty ninety
one hundred years and to say,hey, and lewis sending flowers, send
a donation to wish of a lifetimebecause they change the trajectory of sort of
this person's life, and so weknow we're having a big impact. And
two years ago I got a callfrom AARP, Joanne Jenkins, who's the
(29:40):
CEO in Scott Fish, who's thepresident, and they said, we want
to fly out to Colorado see you, and I said great, because we're
serving similar populations. I didn't realizethis at the time, but what they
said is we should have been doingthis for the last thirty years. We
want you to join AARP. Wewant to acquire the foundation and sit on
our balance sheet. We're a Xbillion dollar so we're part of AARP now.
So I sit on the board ofAARP And Joanne Jenkins is a huge
(30:04):
supporter of Wish of a Lifetime andso is Scott and we're granting wishes in
all fifty states and we're really scalingthe mission. So it's amazing. Is
it still called Wish of a Lifetime? Okay? And then but it's just
under that umbrella. Yeah, whichprobably helps you because that's a lot.
I mean, once a great idea, once it gets bigger, it becomes
time consuming and harder to run.Sometimes we have all the resources in the
(30:26):
world. Now we have a stateoffice in every single state, and our
operating budget is five to six timesbigger than it ever has been and so
we're making a bigger impact. That'sso cool. Jeremy. That is awesome,
that is really cool. Okay,and then in the meantime, you
also got married if you've had kiddos, So tell me a little bit about
that story. Because you were forthe longest time a really phenomenal eligible bachelor.
(30:48):
You even went on a dating game. I'm like, what is Germany
to go on a dating game for? Well, that was before dating apps,
right, Oh, there you go. Okay, before the swiping,
before the swiping. I mean,you know, most of most of my
life I was really focused on sports, and I could multitask between football and
skiing, but I couldn't really multirelationship. So I had sort of a
(31:11):
lot of failed relationships, and youknow, not at the fault of my
exes at all, just at thefault you know. I lionized football and
skiing over everything else. And Ithink most you know, athletes will tell
you that in order to become thebest in the world, you just sort
of you have to be myopic inyour view of like every day I got
to get better and how to getbetter. It's sort of working on yourself.
And so it's part of the reasonI started Wish of Life time because
I wanted to do something outside ofmyself. I met my wife about seven
(31:34):
years ago, really at a perfecttime. I was building wish of a
lifetime. I was building Integrate thatthe software business that I started. And
she's from Brazil but had lived inthe US for about ten years. Her
parents lived here. And you know, your failed relationships do a great benefit
to you because they sort of theygive you the framework for what you're looking
for. Absolutely, you know,without those, you don't have the framework
(31:55):
of you know, what are thekind of critical things. And when when
we first met and started spending timetogether, it was so obvious from the
very beginning our first date. Itwas like it would be like, you
know, if I was a dolphinswimming in the water and I was dating
all these other fishes of like alldifferent types of rites, and all of
a sudden one day I swim upand see another dolphin. I'm like,
oh my god, there's another dolphinout there. You know, like,
(32:15):
oh that was an analogy. Thatwas the feeling like I found my all,
you know, my dolphin. Didsomebody set you up? Or how'd
you guys meet through mutual friends?Okay? She set a mutual friend group
in La I sort of spent theweekends there in Venice Beach. My best
friend and I rented a place wewere single bachelor's this is a great place
to spend the weekends. Like yeah, yeah, I mean, if you're
going to be single, go toLa, right, And so that's how
(32:37):
we met, and it sort oftook both of us by surprise, and
by day three we started planning ourwedding and talking about kid names. I
always tell my daughter, and youknow, she's twenty one, and you
have to go through a whole bunchof them before you find the right one.
And then when you least expect it, I was done with guys,
and then I met your dad andI was like, wait what and you
know all my friends and okay,this is great. I think that's great
(33:00):
wisdom. And I think for me, like my twenties were getting to know
myself, and I was at thirtythree, I think when I met my
wife around around there, so Iwas past sort of getting to know myself
a little bit. My prefrontal cortexwas a little bit more solid and like
who I was. And the timingreally was great. Is yeah. One
thing my husband always said, hissister told him this. She said,
(33:22):
Wow, you finally found somebody youliked better than yourself, because yeah,
I guess I did. And that'sthe whole thing too, is that you
do. You focus so much onyou, you, you, and then
all of a sudden you're like,okay now, and then the kids come
into the mix, and you've gottwo kids. Now? How different is
that? And how fun is that? It's amazing to me that I've ever
felt before this point in time thatlife has a lot of meaning because I
(33:45):
can't imagine a world without my kids. It has given me so much meaning
in life, and it is hard, Susie. Most people don't talk about
how hard. It is very hard. That zero to one phase is training
for the Olympics, it's I mean, it's training camp in Lehigh, and
especially for like the mother, it'smy wife has put harder work in than
(34:07):
anything I've ever seen in my life. And I've seen people working really hard
at different things, and so youknow, the struggle is worth it because
you care so so deeply. Butit is not that that zero to one
is not easy. My goal nowis to just be the best dad that
I possibly can, which maybe soundssimple and principle, but it's practice.
It's it's really hard. Yeah,you just try not to mess them up.
(34:29):
They don't give you a manual andthey don't tell you how to do
things very well. So you're like, okay, are we doing this right
well? And it will and everybodywill say it just keeps getting better,
and it really does. And nowthat I have kids in their twenties and
there are friends and we'd love totravel with them and it's really cool.
Yeah, so it's fun. Isometimes I miss those young, little innocent
days when nobody talked back, andyou know, those are fun times.
(34:51):
Those are fun. I'm in thoseright now. Yeah, No, those
are those are really fun. Okay. So you mentioned Integrate. You're the
CEO of Integrate. What is thatcompany? And obviously it's grown very,
very large. I started to Integratenow twelve years ago and it's a software
business for marketers. And you know, it started from really humble beginnings,
an idea on a whiteboard, aco founder who was technical, so he
sort of built what I would havefigured that would work, and I took
(35:14):
it to market in those early days. And I like to call the business
an overnight success ten years later becauseyou know those first three or four years,
there was multiple times where we thoughtwe were going to put padlocks on
the door as we were running outof capital. It just wasn't working.
We weren't providing product market fit.It's been a really tough journey, but
in twenty sixteen we really hit somebig tailwinds and you know, found product
(35:35):
market fit and landed Microsoft as acustomer and Adobe and Salesforce, and so
today that the businesses. You know, we're still a startup, but we're
quite large. We were acquired byprivate equity two years ago at the sort
of height of the valuation. Wow, and we sold for a big nine
figure number that's not been disclosed,but you know, it was an incredible
outcome for all my investors and myteam and of course my family. And
(35:59):
so I'm really really grateful for youto audex the private equity from that.
They own it now and you're stillinvolved though they've kept me on. Okay,
that's great. Deal was sort ofcontingent upon me staying at CEO,
so I continue to run the businessand having a lot of fun and still
learning a lot. So and allalong the way, you have done what
the name of your most recent bookis and that's recalibrate. Put that out
(36:22):
this spring. Tell me about yourbook. I always talk about reinvention,
and I really like the word recalibrate. I love the word recalibrate, Susan.
I look at the sort of theark of my of my history of
my life, whether it be footballand you know, climbing the ranks as
an undersized kid that you know,against all odds, or or skiing and
failing many more times than I succeededin route to making the US ski team
(36:45):
and going to Olympics, or buildinga nonprofit that's now part of AARP,
or a company that got acquired byprivate equity. And I think the common
thread in all four of those isthe ability to recalibrate, the ability to
face adversity, face FI and useit as an input rather than something that's
going to deter you from continuing thejourney. Remember those early GPS systems like
(37:07):
the Tom Tom and the Garden Yeah, that you'd plug into your cigarette lighter.
Well, those sort of came ofage when I was just first traveling
the world and we'd be in Switzerlandall of a sudden, we wouldn't need
a map, and you plug itin and you put the destination to the
skier where you're going, and ifyou take a wrong turn, it just
says recalibrating, and it puts youright on a different path. And by
the way, that different path thatyou didn't know that you were going to
(37:28):
take ultimately gets you to your destination. And I think there's a lot of
commonality that in life. It's likewe have a goal, we think we
know the path that's going to getus there. Ultimately, it's never that
path that we think. There's alwaysthese detours, we make these wrong turns,
and the Tom Tom or the garmentdoesn't say, oh, gosh,
well I'm terrible at giving directions.I should just screw it up. Turn
(37:50):
Yeah, I should just quit andyou know, cancel this operating says.
So I think that there's sage wisdomto this concept of really learning how to
recalibrate in life. And no matterwhat the inputs you're seeing or the failures
or the experiences that you're having,knowing and having the confidence that's just an
input, what can you learn fromit? How can you use that sort
of waypoint to recalibrate your destination ofwhere you're going? And I think by
(38:13):
doing that and this is this issomething that I've had to practice years and
years on, I'm just not emotionalin these experiences that I used to be
very emotional. And when things don'twork, when when we lose a customer,
we don't get funding, or youknow, any of these things,
or a failed relationship, it's sortof it's given me the opportunity to have
a framework that really scales interesting.So, without giving away too much of
the books, I want people toget your book. But my last question
(38:36):
to you would be what do youtell people when they have kind of those
ups and downs and when they're down, how to recalibrate and figure out,
you know, how do I goin a different direction and have the faith
that it's going to be successful.Well, there's two different types of people.
There's bouncers and there's splatters. Andthere's people that just splat, you
know, right on the floor whenthey are received bad news or they find
(38:59):
something that life is not working out. And there's other people that bounce.
They use the inertia that of thatexperience to sort of the ball bounces back
and you're sort of back on thejourney and the good news for everybody.
This is a learned skill. It'snot an innate skill. It's not like
you're either born with the fact thatyou can't bounce with this inershore or that
you splat. And that's why Iwrote the book, because I've learned a
(39:19):
lot of through the anecdotes of mylife, the experiences that I've had,
but I've also learned a lot fromothers. So I wrote the book and
I think it provides a framework forpeople who are curious, you know,
about the topic, because I certainlyI certainly was and recalibrate. It's sort
of in pre release right now inAmazon. And you know, it was
a fun experience and I did learna lot through it. I bet you
did. Yeah, Well, we'llget the link to the book and the
(39:43):
show notes because I want people toget it. I need to get it.
I need to read it, becausethat's what this podcast is about.
It. It's all focused on athletesand coaches, but you don't get to
do it forever as much as you'dlike to. And the things that you
missed, the locker room that youmiss, the camaraderie with the teammates.
Yeah, just one more point onthat. To build on it, you
know, because I really do believewe're all built with the ability to recalibrate
really quickly. And if we thinkabout being an infant again, and I
(40:06):
sort of have a front row seatand I have two kids under three,
but think about how we learn inthis world as infants. I watch my
son take a thousand steps and falldown before he learned how to walk.
I listened to him, you know, utter all these crazy words before he
learns the English language. And Ithink to myself, if my son had
an ego, an adult ego,he'd probably never walk because after a couple
(40:28):
steps of it not working, he'dbe like, oh, well, I'm
just not built to work. Orif he you know, we wouldn't learn
nearly the things that we would learnif we had adult egos as infants.
And so we were all built withthe ability to use a failure like falling
or not knowing how to speak thelanguage in route to learning and mastering it.
So we all have it in us. We just have to learn how
to tap into it as adult.I need to go back to our infant
(40:51):
egos. That's right, which thereisn't one, right, I know,
it's like little kids I always looa little kids. I'm like, they
look like little, tiny drunk peoplethat just don't care what happens, and
they fall over and they just getright back up and they're totally fine.
Right. Yeah. Oh, Jeremy, this has been so much fun.
Thank you for the time. AndI look forward to checking out the book.
And it's been so fun just towatch your career. Like I said,
(41:13):
you know, I've been watching youand covering you for twenty years,
and knowing your family and knowing Mollyand Jordan, and just seeing what everybody
has done in the Bloom family hasbeen really cool. And I love that
you guys have all really stayed hereand stayed very connected to Colorado. I
know that's been important to you todo that. Oh, absolutely has.
It's always good to see you,Susie. Thanks for having me. Thanks
Jeremy, Thanks so much. Jeremy. Make sure you check out the podcast
(41:34):
notes for a link to his bookRecalibrate on Amazon. New episodes of Cut,
Traded, Fired, Retired come outevery Tuesday. Please download and,
if possible, review this podcast.Wherever you listen to podcasts, you can
keep up on new podcast releases byfollowing on Twitter and Instagram at ctfur Podcast
and also on the website ctfropodcast dotcom. If you like cut, traded,
(41:55):
fired, retired, it would beamazing if you shared some episode with
your friends. I'm your host,Susie Wargen. To find out more about
me, visit Susiewargen dot com.Thanks so much for listening, and until
next time, please be careful,be safe and be kind. Take care
It was a sobering moment. I'llnever forget the call. You know.
It was sort of like the lastpreseason game of the year, and it's
sort of that D day. Igot a call from Tom Heckert and he
said, hey, we're you know, we're going to move on from you
and you can come in and cleanout your locker room. And it hurt.
I mean it hurt. I thinkit hurts all all players. How
could it not. This is yourchildhood dream. Most of the players that
(00:22):
get that far haven't really heard alot a lot of times that they're not
good enough. Welcome to cunt,traded, fired, retired. This podcast
features conversations with professional athletes and coacheswho have ties in some way to Colorado
and it faced challenges just like youand I. Not only do we hear
about those challenges, we also hearinteresting and fun stories about working through them
(00:43):
and moving on. I'm your host, Susie Worgin. I've known this episode's
guest for a long time. Istarted covering prep sports at the NBC affiliate
in Denver in two thousand and onewhen Jeremy Bloom was making headlines as a
football star at Loveland High school,but those weren't his only headlines. Jeremy
had been in the spotlight for awhile with the US ski team, a
team he made at the age offifteen, becoming the youngest to ever do
(01:06):
so. He managed to keep bothsports going after high school, with the
CU Buff's football team and skiing inWorld Cup competitions and two Olympics. Unfortunately,
the NCAA put a stop to twosports due to endorsements, which in
today's nil world would be a mootpoint. The day after Jeremy competed in
the two thousand and six Olympics inItaly, he flew home for the NFL
combine, and he was later draftedin the fifth round by the Eagles.
(01:30):
His NFL career didn't last long,however, he gained valuable leadership insight from
one of his coaches. After football, Jeremy started a nonprofit and a software
company, both of which have beenacquired by other companies, yet he's still
very involved with each of them.He's also an author, a husband,
and a father to two young children. His story is pretty amazing. Ladies
(01:51):
and gentlemen, Jeremy bloom Cut TradedFired Retired podcast with Susie Wargen, Jeremy
Bloom Boom, My goodness, ithas been so long since I have seen
you. It's been a few years. Yeah, and have known you for
we were just chatting. I mean, it's been over twenty years since high
school days. It has been sincehigh school days. Yeah. When I
started working at nine News, Igot introduced to you and your family as
(02:14):
we were doing pieces on you goingto the Olympics. And then fun fact,
your mom taught our son how toski. He was deathly afraid of
skiing, and your mom, Idon't know what kind of miracles she did,
but she got him hooked and hewas great after that thing. For
that, yes she does, shedoes. So all right, let's go
back and kind of start at thebeginning with you. You're actually born in
(02:35):
Fort Collins, but you grow upin Loveland. Did you live in Fort
Collins or just the closest hospital,closest hospital. So, born in Porter
Valley in Fort Collins, but welived in Loveland, Okay, And so
I grew up on Boyd Lake andgreat place to grow up. We were,
you know, summers on the water, winters in the snow. Yeah,
you know, just anywhere in Colorado. It's such a great place to
(02:57):
grow up. How did you endup getting into both skiing or skiing?
I believe it was your grandfather thattaught you right, and then also into
football. And what other sports didyou do besides those two, I'm assuming
you did a bunch. Well,it was really football and skiing for me
because I was born in eighty two, the year that the Broncos drafted John
Elway, and so I had theluxury of growing up idolizing John Elway and
(03:20):
you know, watching his success onthe field, the Broncos success, and
every Sunday, you know, wea lot of times we wouldn't watch the
game, we would listen to itactually driving down because we would be say,
we love that from Koa. Welove that KOA was on our car
every Sunday driving down to the mountains. Yeah. So I always wanted to
be John Elway, and that wasmy first athletic dream because you know,
(03:40):
we were such big and still areBronco fans, and my parents just loved
to ski on the weekends. Wewere never a full time skiing family,
and so we would drive up sortof two hours from Loveland to Keystone.
Traffic was better back then traffic wasa lot better back then. There's no
doubt, you know, my parentsjust loved to get out of the city
and into the mountains like most people, a lot of people in Colorado.
(04:02):
And when I saw the Olympics whenI was ten, I had been skiing,
you know, on the weekends andthose types of things, and you
know, I was a hot dogand trying to take jumps and you know,
ski the bumps. And I sawa guy by the name of Edgar
gross Baran from France win an Olympicgold medal in freestyle skiing bumps and jumps
in his hometown of Teen, France, and I really started to idolize him,
(04:25):
and I said, geez, maybeI'm a skier, you know,
like maybe if I put my mindto this a little bit more then I
can maybe, you know, goto the Olympics. And it was really
that, it was a defining momentwas the Teen Olympics, the Little Hammer
Olympics, where I told my parentsthat I wanted to ski in the Olympics
and play in the NFL and thosewere going to be my two dreams.
And you know, sort of bothof them looked at me and they have
(04:45):
a healthy disregard for the impossible.They always have had that, and they
said, you know what, youcan go do that if you put your
mind to it and you really attackyour dreams. And that was the word
that really stood out to me asthe word attack, Like I couldn't just
dream about it. I really hadto attack it with every single thing that
I that I had And that reallyset off the course of my young life
at ten with those two goals,that's amazing. So then how do you
(05:08):
start to attack that as a tenyear old? Well, you know,
there were some intersections where, youknow, coaches wanted me to move to
the mountains and be a full timeskier, right because if you're going to
attack something, you want to doit every single day. But I just
I never could agree on the sideof just focusing on one sport, you
know, and conventional wisdom, especiallywhen I was, you know, fourteen
fifteen, would say just ski.You know, I was the smallest kid
(05:30):
on every football field I stepped ontoand I made the US ski team at
fifteen. Yeah, I was theyoungest to ever make it. And so
a lot of my coaches when Iwas fifteen said, well, you need
to be a full time skier.You know, all the people that you're
competing with, not only in thiscountry but around the world, they've been
full time skiers their whole life andyou're a part time skier and you know
this football stuff. You know you'regoing to get hurt on the field,
(05:51):
and you know there's probably not apath for you beyond high school. A
lot of roadblocks for trying to bea football player, big linebackers. Yeah,
so you know, I just Ijust had a lot of confidence in
myself, my ability, and youknow, just keep my head down and
keep focusing on daily progress. Whendid you start playing football football? Were
(06:13):
you playing it before ten? Probablyaround eleven when I started playing tackle football.
My dad was our head coach fora year. Yeah, Larry was
the head coach, and he wassuch a good head coach, and we
had I could see that we hadawesome team, Susie, I mean,
undefeated seasons. Most of the timeswhen you played, it was a lot,
it was a lot of fun,I bet. Yeah. And then
as you get into high school,you're at Loveland High School. Are you
(06:34):
always a wide receiver and a returner? Did you play other positions? So
my freshman year I was a quarterback, of course, because I wanted to
be John Elway. Absolutely nobody right, and nobody could tell me that I
was too short to play quarterback.But my sophomore year, Tony Davis,
who was a coach at Loveland HighSchool, his son Josh Davis, played
at Nebraska. He played in Nebraska. He also played in the NFL.
(06:57):
So he was a guy I reallyrespected. I mean, he was sort
of illuminates figure growing up in Loveland. He just sort of sat me down.
He said, hey, you're reallyfast and you can get out of
brakes really quick. I don't thinkyou have a future and quarterback because you're
just not going to be six foottwo, and I want to move you
to receiver. And he's probably theonly guy in the world I would have
listened to. And I'm grateful tohim for that feedback because if not for
(07:19):
moving to receiver, of course,you know, I was going to play
for college football as at quarterback,right, And so my sophomore year I
was a receiver, and same withmy junior and senior. And you were
a little before the Cordell Stewarts andthe running quarterback that didn't have to be
the John Elway, you know,six three, six, four two whatever.
So otherwise maybe they would have givenyou a chance at it. Yeah,
(07:40):
I don't know. I didn't havethe strongest of arms. I was
happy to be away from all thosebig guys in the middlefield and the outside
near the hash marks. So howdid you then balance doing skiing and football
at the same time, because everythingkind of is happening. As you said,
you made the US team at theage of fifteen, yet you're also
a star football player for Loveland atthe same time. How did that balance
(08:01):
go? I had to learn thatI couldn't balance them. I had to
integrate them, and so I hadto little, you know, be a
bit more prescriptive on when I wasspending time at which sport and work with
the coaches on both sides. Myfreshman season at Colorado, you know,
I was a starting kickoff in puntreturner and the third or fourth receiver and
we had a great team. Thiswas in two thousand and two. We
(08:24):
won the Big twelve North championship,and we played in the Big twelve Championship
and then we played in a bowlgame. I took my finals early after
the Nebraska game, I flew toFinland to compete in a World Cup.
I flew back for the Big twelvechampionship game and then played in the bowl
game. I had to work withCoach Barnett and my skiing coaches to sort
of help to integrate what that planlooks like, and by the way,
(08:46):
also my professors who cared about thefinals and so yeah that you know,
December was always the most tricky monthbecause sure, the World Cup ski season
would start, and then the collegefootball season, if you're doing well,
would sort of get real, whichyou guys were. Were coaches amicable to
be working together or at that stage, Yes, it was really easy.
(09:07):
I think Coach Barnett was really excitedabout my ski career, and my ski
coaches by that time sort of camearound and said, wow, this a
kid can play football, and it'sgetting the US Ski team great coverage on
ABC against you know, Florida State. You know. So at that point,
yes, but early on, no, In fact, I had to
petition all of my teammates to saythat they didn't mind that I played football
(09:28):
to my US Ski team coaches,because the coaches on the USK team basically
said, hey, it's unfair foryou to miss training camps and you know,
if you're playing football. This waswhen I was like fifteen to six.
Yeah, they actually didn't want meon the team because of it.
And so I I wrote up alittle note and gave it to all my
teammates, said, hey, doyou mind if I miss camp? Like
do you feel like this is anunfair advantage? And one hundred percent participation.
(09:50):
All of them signed that. Igave them to the coaches, They
gave it to the ministration and theysaid, all right, well let's see
what happens. That is incredible tothink about that as a teenager, just
like I'm going to make my ownlittle petition and just make sure the coaches
are okay with that. Brilliant Whenit came to recruiting, when you were
at Loveland High School, did youhave other schools besides see you that was
interested in you? My senior year, there were other schools looking and I
(10:11):
was getting some letters and some scoutsin the stadium, but I only had
one scholarship offer, and I wassort of always yeah, disappointed and had
a little chip on my shoulder thatColorado State never offered me a scholarship because
you know, they knew about me. Of course I was right here.
My dad was a professor there,and you know, they would send scouts
and stuff. And I'm incredibly gratefulto Coach Barnett because he's the only coach
(10:33):
in the country that saw potential inme and the opportunity to play Division one
college football. And if not forCoach Barnett, I would have never had
the opportunity to play in college orthe NFL for that matter, Oh for
sure, Yeah, very likely.You know, if I wouldn't have had
the chance to sort of play,I probably just would have focused on skiing,
absolutely. Yeah. And how manyof those colleges that were recruiting you
were also going to allow the skiingcareer. Two sport athletes in college just
(10:58):
don't happen. Yeah, And youknow, Colorado was always my number one
school. I grew up going togames with the Gebharts, you know,
in the nineties when you know theywinning national championships and you know, we
were young kids sitting there in fulsomefield watching just the greats, you know,
do what they do. And yeah, so even if I had one
hundred offers, I would have pickedColorado anyway. So you know, once
(11:18):
I got that offer. It makessense. Yeah, absolutely, all right,
So then while you're at college,you see you you said a number
of records. While you're there,you are, You're fast as all get
out. Then again, how areyou integrating your skiing at the same time,
Because you've got Olympics, You've gotthings that you're doing in World Cups
all at the same time. Itwas just busy, you know, and
(11:39):
I didn't have a second to sortof breathe, you know, beyond focusing
on football and skiing. But therewas also like this really cool moment when
the ski season would end in thefootball season would start, or vice versa,
because at the end of the footballseason, I mean, you're just
taxed. Oh yeah, you're mentallyso drained from football, and it was
just this like turning of the pagethe next day or it's like yes,
ski season starts, and so Icould sort of just jump into the World
(12:01):
Cup with a fresh perspective. Andthe other thing that it gave to me
was like at Colorado, we wereplaying in front of sixty seventy thousand people,
and so I was getting ready forbig time events every Saturday. So
mentally I was so sharp that jumpingright into the World Cup season when my
competitors have not sort of prepared fora big competition for six months. Was
a big deal. And I wouldjump into these big World Cups and have
(12:22):
zero, you know, fear oranxiety because I'm just like, let's go
like this. Your headspace is alreadythere. The head's there, So so
there was that benefit. And thentalk a little bit about what happened with
the endorsements and what went on there. I mean, today's world, you'd
be set with nil, wouldn't thatbe nice? And you were one of
the bigger per I mean, honestly, you probably look back, Jeremy,
(12:43):
and you were the perfect example ofwhy it could have should have started back
then, because it held you backand really changed some of the things that
was going on with you. Yeah. So right after my senior year of
high school, I went to myfirst Olympics in Salt Lake City and I
had a great year. In twothousand and two, I ended as the
number one ranks skis in the world. Before I got to Colorado, before
I went to college. As Iwas accepting my scholarship to go play college
(13:05):
football, I had endorsements, youknow, ski goggles and skis and polls
and you know, the various thingsthat skiers endorse, and all that money
paid for my ski career. It'sexpensive, which is not cheap. It's
expensive to fly to Finland and gethotels and pay for trainers and those types
of things. And the NCBLEA said, well, you know, if you
want to play college football, youcan't accept any of that money. I
(13:28):
felt it was very hypocritical, evenat the time. Forget about today,
obviously that would have never happened.But even at the time, there was
a guy named Drew Henson who wasa quarterback at Michigan and also a baseball
player, and he made over Ithink two million dollars in college in another
sport, baseball, while playing amateurfootball. And Tim Dwight did the same
thing, and Ricky Williams did thesame thing, and so we just felt
(13:50):
like this was really hypocritical, andso you know, we sued the nc
doable A. We sued the NCAAin Boulder District Court. We thought our
judge, who was a season ticketholder for thirty years, was like the
best choice we could have had.But my lawyer missed a really important restitution
by law in that case that costsus the case, and it was nineteen
point eight and it basically says,if a student athlete ever successfully sues the
(14:11):
NC double A and the school allowsthat player to play, if that decision
is ever overturned ten years later,the school will forfeit every game that that
player played in, all the revenuecreated, ticket sales, merchandise, et
cetera. WHOA, we should havegone to federal court because the federal judge
wouldn't have cared. But you know, our Boulder District court who'd been a
season ticket holder for thirty years,said he didn't want to put the university
(14:35):
at risk based off his decision,and so ultimately didn't work out. And
probably that was the hardest decision myathletic career, like what to do because
for the first time in my life, I was looking at real money and
you know, nothing's guaranteed in yourfuture. And I was still the smallest
kid on the field and a lotof people said him, you're never going
to see the playing field there.Don't give up four hundred thousand dollars as
(14:56):
an eighteen year old, which isa lot of money. Oh my gosh.
Yeah, And I just said,you know, I, no matter
how much money I would ever makein skiing, no matter how many gold
medals I would win, I justfelt I would always look back Susie and
say, what if? What ifI had this great opportunity to play for
my college football team that I idolizedand loved and I turned it down for
(15:18):
money? It became easy when Ithought of it under that lens, and
so I tore up all the contractsand played football. I wonder how many
people would actually do that. That'sa tough decision to make, Jeremy,
that really is in very introspective insomething you had to do as an eighteen
year old. Who'd you rely onto kind of bounce ideas off of.
I know you've been always close withyour folks, very close, Yeah,
very close to my dad and veryclose to my mom. Any thing is
(15:39):
it relates to sports. You knowmy dad, you know, he was
the most influential person in my lifeas it relates to everything athletics. And
my mom was the most supportive.She flew all over the world, she
didn't miss a competition, she didn'tmiss a football game, and at the
end of the day, my momwas like win loser, draw, I
love you and I'm proud of you. You know, I'm not there to
see you win. I'm there tosee my son have this great journey.
And you know, my parents weregreat at not prescribing advice. They never
(16:03):
were the parents to do this,do that, or they would ask great
questions. My dad's a psychologist,right, so he knows the great he
knows great questions to ask, andhe ultimately allowed me to make that decision
and then supported me. That's great. I remember. I have a great
memory of your dad the two thousandand six Olympics when you did your run.
I mean it was early early morning. Here he was at the nine
(16:25):
News studio. He had a bigscreen TV and he came down to the
studio and he was pacing the Ohmy gosh. I was like, he
was, do we need to isJeremy's dad okay or should we know you
something? He was not okay onany level. I'm like, well,
Larry, wow, I feel likeyou know. And then yeah, but
I mean with what he did fora profession, and then to also try
(16:47):
and work through, you know,his son being on the other side of
their world and doing this and doingthe run, and it was just I
mean, it was fascinating and Ican't imagine the pressure everybody felt at all
times. Yeah, I think therewas more pressure on my family than there
was for me. Really yeah,I mean now being a dad and the
granted my kids are young, they'reunder the age of three, but you
feel this transition in your life whereyou're no longer sort of fully in control
(17:12):
of the journey of people that youlove more than yourself. And so you
know, as I picture what itwould feel like to watch one of my
kids competing in the Olympics, whenwhen they sort of cared as much as
I did about the sport and whatI was doing, oh, there would
be way more pressure on me.I actually felt very little pressure in Trine.
I felt a lot of pressure inSalt Lake because I was nineteen years
(17:33):
of age. It was the firstinternational competition really that I was participating in.
I didn't even ski World Cup theyear before, so that spotlight felt
like unattainable for me. But inToronto it was totally different. Im me.
I was playing big time college footballon a national stage with a big
spotlight and learning how to mentally dealwith that. You had a huge story.
You had a lot of things thatwere going on that would have been
very tough. So in that twothousand and six year, you go to
(17:56):
the Olympics in February and then youget drafted because you're all done with your
college career, you get drafted acouple months later by the Eagles. I
mean, that had to be anabsolute whirlwind for you. It was incredibly
fun, Susie. It was unbelievable. I mean, I competed in February
at the two thousand and six Olympics, and then the next day boarded a
plane to go to the NFL Combine. So sort of within a week here
(18:17):
I got it was right after theother that the combine was there too.
Yeah, And so went to Indianapolis, ran the forty yard dash and met
with a bunch of coaches and itwas, you know, it was just
it was an incredible couple of weeks, and then went to California to train,
and then he had draft day inApril. Got a call from the
Philadelphia Eagles, which was my dad'shometown team. He grew up in Philly,
and so aunts, uncles, cousins, and you know, it was
(18:41):
like a homecoming. I bet itwas going back there to play. Tell
me about the combine, especially comingoff of You're in shape, you've been
doing another sport, you've cross trained. But so many guys will talk about,
you know, what a meat marketis. What we see on TV
is not really what happens. There'sa lot of mind games, there's a
lot of things that go on there. But you, being probably in a
different mental date, I bet youhandled it pretty well. I was really
(19:02):
relaxed. Some people were really freakingout. I'm sure I was really chill,
and you know, I was focusedon doing well. I wanted to
run fast and do all that.But I got to meet with almost not
every head coach, but probably halfthe league scheduled meetings with me, And
I just got to talk to headcoaches that I idolized, I had so
much respect for. It was surreal. I mean, as I look back,
(19:23):
my whole athletic journey was so surreal. Susie, and I don't think.
I mean, if you look atme and you look at how I
grew up, it's all just sounexpected, right do you don't look at
me? Says, yeah, thatkid's going to play in the NFL,
and you don't look at me asa weekend skier and say, yeah,
he's going to go to the Olympicsand be the number one rank skier in
the world. So I sort ofpinched myself as I look back, because
(19:44):
I was just sort of able tosummit some mountains that I don't think I
was fully capable of summoning. Ijust figured out a way. It's pretty
cool because you do think about it, You're just a family of five living
in Loveland, Colorado, and you'renot behind the gates on some you know,
great big, huge estate and you'rejust going up and ski on the
weekends, and then it just evolvesinto this incredible life that is has just
(20:06):
kept evolving. Middle class family.You know, my parents had enough resources
to buy you know, seasons passesand that was probably the most expensive thing.
In fact, it was the mostexpensive things that we bought because we
did not live in a stravagant lifestyleat all. But my dad did well
and you know, but he didn'tlike to spend money. So yeah,
sort of you know, humble beginningsand I think an unlikely path that played
(20:26):
out. It's really cool. Sothe Eagles, you get there at fifth
round of the two thousand and sixdraft. That first year you end up
injuring your hamstring in training camp andyou go on, ir, yeah,
I hadn't played football in two years. If I could do it again,
I would have cross trained differently inthose two years when the ncable Stay declared
me permanently in eligible and took awaymy junior and senior season, and I
(20:48):
focused exclusively on skiing. Everything fromthe weight rooms to the field to the
cross training was all focused on skiingmaneuvers and those types of things. And
what would you have done differently?What are some of the things. I
would have kept my football cleats around. I would have continued to run routes.
I would have continued to sprint.I didn't sprint for two and a
half years. Hey, you don'tneed to for skiing. You don't need
to, And so your hamstrings.Turns out your hamstrings are really important for
(21:11):
sprints and they are not as importantfor skiing. And so you know I
had this in balance, great quadsand weak cam strings, that's right,
Yeah, yeah, And so Iwent to Philly, which you know Andy
Reid was the head coach, andit was the air raid off. I
mean he threw the ball seventy percentof the time. Donovan nab was a
quarterback. So just to get throughtraining camp, just to get through practice,
you are literally sprinting one hundred percentof your speed, like miles and
(21:34):
miles per day, that's how muchyou're running. So I just my body
unfortunately wasn't wasn't ready for that.And then you get cut by them in
two thousand and seven. What wasthat like because you haven't had a lot
of downs at that point. Imean, you had as far as the
NC doable A goes, but asfar as your athletic career, right,
you know, it was a soberingmoment. I'll never forget the call,
you know, in Wayne, Pennsylvania, and you know, it was sort
(21:56):
of like the last preseason game ofthe year, and it's sort of that
d Day in the NFL. AndI got a call from Tom Heckert and
he said, hey, we're youknow, we're gonna move on from you
and you can come in and cleanout your locker room. And it hurt.
I mean it hurt. I thinkit hurts all all players. How
could it not. This is yourchildhood dream. Most of the players that
(22:18):
get that far haven't really hurt alot a lot of times that they're not
good enough, right, I meanthey're all sort of the seevers maybe never
so, Yeah, it was.It was a tough situation. But in
my ski career I sort of encountereda lot of adversity getting to where I
was, and so it wasn't newto me to sort of recalibrate and sort
of figure out what I needed todo next and take that input in that
(22:41):
experience and make myself stronger and betterthrough it. Yeah, and then you
go to the Steelers. I'll goto the Steelers, And I really actually
I loved my time with the PittsburghSteelers. And I'm such a big Mike
Tomlin fan. He's the best leaderI've ever been around. I Mean,
he can unite a group of menunlike anybody I have ever seen. And
these are men that come from tofor economic backgrounds and racial backgrounds and religious
(23:02):
backgrounds, and he has an uncannyway of really uniting a group man.
And it is a big contrast betweenAndy Reid and Mike tom Mike Andy Reid's
not going to inspire you with hiswords, you know, like he's just
not that guy. He's got otherskills. He's a mastermind when it comes
to offense. Yeah, and yourespect the heck out of him for that.
But he's not the guy that's goingto stand up in front of you
(23:23):
know, eighty guys and just geteverybody ready to run through walls. So
I learn a lot from Mike Tomlin. I use a lot of the things
I learned in business today. Ohreally, Oh absolutely, Like what if
you can think of a couple things, Oh, there's a couple. I
mean, transparency is one. Youknow, one of the things that I
disliked in Philadelphia is the lack oftransparency. So you never really knew where
(23:44):
you stood. Hey, how amI doing? What do I need to
do to make the team? Whatdo I need to do to stand out?
What does the front office think ofme? What do you think of
me? No feedback, very littleblack box, and so you just sort
of, you know, pack yourlunch pail and go to work and try
to do the yes you can do. But in Pittsburgh it just was the
total opposite. You always knew whereyou stood, and he had He has
(24:07):
a radical candor, and I thinkit comes from a place of caring.
It doesn't come from it you know, he's being a jerk, but he's
going to let you know exactly whereyou stand on what you need to do
to be successful. And it's notjust him, it's the Rooneyes, it's
the whole organization. And I lovedthe fan base. I think the Pittsburgh
Steelers have, if not the best, certainly up there with the best fan
base in the world. And Iwould qualify that by saying, win or
(24:30):
lose, they're with you. That'scool. They're with you. And in
Philly it's not really like that way. You lose and they're not really with
you. No, you know.John Hall told me a great story because
when he went to Tampa Bay,he was there with John Lynch and I
can't remember some of the DB's butMike Tomlin was their DB's coach, and
John Lynch said, that guy's goingto be a head coach in the NFL.
(24:52):
Like they just knew he had comein and they were like, who
is this guy? Just they werelike, we had seen nothing else like
it throughout our whole career. Thatdoesn't surprise me. He just has that
it factor. So I loved mytime in the Pittsburgh and sharing the locker
room with Hines Word and Troy Paulamala, who is a friend of mine.
Today we go snowboarding sometimes. That'sawesome. Seeing Troy on the snowboard's hilarious.
So you still have all the hair. Oh yeah, he's got the
(25:14):
hair flowing out of his helmet andhe snowboards just like he played football.
Oh yeah. He throws his shoulderand things like should I try a backflip
here? I'm like, I don'tknow, have you ever tried a backflip?
He's like no, I'm like,then you probably shouldn't try it.
Oh my gosh, how funny.So are you're with Pittsburgh for a full
season? Yeah? Okay, andthen they released you as well. And
(25:36):
then they released me after my secondseason in the preseason, and that was
a sort of a crossroads for me. You know, I've been with two
teams. I got this incredible experienceof being in the NFL around the NFL,
not having the success on the fieldthat I that I hoped and wanted
for, but really having the experience. And what was looming for me at
that time was my third Olympics.Yeah, the twenty ten in Vancouver,
(26:00):
and you know, I didn't winthe Olympic gold and O six, and
I didn't win in O two,and both of them it was one tiny
mistakes. I mean, in sportof freestyle skiing, you train your whole
life for twenty two seconds, andif your knees split three inches, there's
the difference between first and sort ofsixth. And so I was thinking,
hey, well, maybe this isthe time. I'm in great shape,
obviously been in the NFL for threeyears, and my hamstrings you don't need
(26:23):
a hamstring in skiing, and sortof my quads are good. My quads
were good, like maybe, Andso I very seriously thought that I had
an opportunity to go to Tampa Bayand stead on the practice squad, and
I just concluded that, you knowwhat, I'm going to go for my
third Olympics. But when I wasin Pittsburgh, I started the Wish of
a Lifetime Foundation, and I reallyhad this big dream of granting wishes to
(26:45):
eighty ninety and one hundred year oldpeople. And so when I left Pittsburgh,
I met Nancy Tarpin here in Denver, and she turned out to be
our first wish recipient. And Imet Nancy in a room and She didn't
know who I was, and shedidn't even probably know why I want to
talk to her, But we werejust talking about life, and I said,
Nancy, if you had one wish, what would it be? And
she said, well, my daughter, Lucille has terminal ovarian cancer and we
(27:08):
haven't seen each other in a decade. She lives in Claypool, Arizona,
and her condition's getting worse. Andtears my heart out to know I'm gonna
lose my daughter without being able tosay goodbye, And so my wish would
be able to see her. Youknow, Susie, They you hear this
phrase through life, where you don'tknow what someone's going through unless you walk
in their shoes. And here Iwas playing in the NFL and traveling the
(27:30):
world as an Olympic skier, andI'm sitting across the table from the most
selfless human being you could ever imagine, kind giving back in her eighties.
She can't even see her daughter.And so the next week we went to
Claypool, Arizona. We got ona plane. I drove up there from
Phoenix Airport, dropped her off,met Lucille, and then I went back
(27:51):
to Phoenix for three or four daysand I picked her up, and I
picked up a completely different human being. She was glowing, and I'm like,
I had ever felt so much gratificationin my life. Seriously, Like
winning gold medals was amazing and youfeel great when you climb mountain. You
can say I am the best inthe world at this Very few people can
do that, and it's gratifying,or winning a football game, But when
(28:12):
you're a small part in changing thelife of an eighty year old woman forever.
After that experience, I called mymom and Dad said, I'm retiring.
I'm focusing on wish of lifetime.I'm not worried about the twenty ten
Olympics, Like, this is whatI want. Altered your life, totally
alternate. She altered my life.Nancy Tarpett had had a similar impact in
my life that Coach Barnett did orAndy Reid did that drafted me. She
(28:33):
changed this trajectory of my life.Wow, that's amazing. I am seed.
I think your first one, yourfirst wish of a lifetime Gayla that
we had over at Wings of theRock You can do the Rockies, yes,
and so I remember I think shewas there. She was at that
one yeah, and then and fromthere, I mean, you have raised
so much money and granted so manymore wishes. I am a true believer
the more you give, the moreyou get back. And I'm sure you've
(28:56):
probably found that with this foundation andall the wishes that you granted, and
just how it kept enriching your life, not only just knowing you know you're
making people's lives better, but Ithink that the way the world works enriches
you in many other ways too.It's been the best journey of my life,
the most meaningful journey of my life, notwithstanding my kids, ye you
know, but the most meaningful,the journey that I've extracted the most amount
(29:18):
of gratification out of. We've grantedthousands of wishes, thousands now thousands,
and Susie, we commonly show upin eulogies that people have lived eighty ninety
one hundred years and to say,hey, and lewis sending flowers, send
a donation to wish of a lifetimebecause they change the trajectory of sort of
this person's life, and so weknow we're having a big impact. And
two years ago I got a callfrom AARP, Joanne Jenkins, who's the
(29:40):
CEO in Scott Fish, who's thepresident, and they said, we want
to fly out to Colorado see you, and I said great, because we're
serving similar populations. I didn't realizethis at the time, but what they
said is we should have been doingthis for the last thirty years. We
want you to join AARP. Wewant to acquire the foundation and sit on
our balance sheet. We're a Xbillion dollar so we're part of AARP now.
So I sit on the board ofAARP And Joanne Jenkins is a huge
(30:04):
supporter of Wish of a Lifetime andso is Scott and we're granting wishes in
all fifty states and we're really scalingthe mission. So it's amazing. Is
it still called Wish of a Lifetime? Okay? And then but it's just
under that umbrella. Yeah, whichprobably helps you because that's a lot.
I mean, once a great idea, once it gets bigger, it becomes
time consuming and harder to run.Sometimes we have all the resources in the
(30:26):
world. Now we have a stateoffice in every single state, and our
operating budget is five to six timesbigger than it ever has been and so
we're making a bigger impact. That'sso cool. Jeremy. That is awesome,
that is really cool. Okay,and then in the meantime, you
also got married if you've had kiddos, So tell me a little bit about
that story. Because you were forthe longest time a really phenomenal eligible bachelor.
(30:48):
You even went on a dating game. I'm like, what is Germany
to go on a dating game for? Well, that was before dating apps,
right, Oh, there you go. Okay, before the swiping,
before the swiping. I mean,you know, most of most of my
life I was really focused on sports, and I could multitask between football and
skiing, but I couldn't really multirelationship. So I had sort of a
(31:11):
lot of failed relationships, and youknow, not at the fault of my
exes at all, just at thefault you know. I lionized football and
skiing over everything else. And Ithink most you know, athletes will tell
you that in order to become thebest in the world, you just sort
of you have to be myopic inyour view of like every day I got
to get better and how to getbetter. It's sort of working on yourself.
And so it's part of the reasonI started Wish of Life time because
I wanted to do something outside ofmyself. I met my wife about seven
(31:34):
years ago, really at a perfecttime. I was building wish of a
lifetime. I was building Integrate thatthe software business that I started. And
she's from Brazil but had lived inthe US for about ten years. Her
parents lived here. And you know, your failed relationships do a great benefit
to you because they sort of theygive you the framework for what you're looking
for. Absolutely, you know,without those, you don't have the framework
(31:55):
of you know, what are thekind of critical things. And when when
we first met and started spending timetogether, it was so obvious from the
very beginning our first date. Itwas like it would be like, you
know, if I was a dolphinswimming in the water and I was dating
all these other fishes of like alldifferent types of rites, and all of
a sudden one day I swim upand see another dolphin. I'm like,
oh my god, there's another dolphinout there. You know, like,
(32:15):
oh that was an analogy. Thatwas the feeling like I found my all,
you know, my dolphin. Didsomebody set you up? Or how'd
you guys meet through mutual friends?Okay? She set a mutual friend group
in La I sort of spent theweekends there in Venice Beach. My best
friend and I rented a place wewere single bachelor's this is a great place
to spend the weekends. Like yeah, yeah, I mean, if you're
going to be single, go toLa, right, And so that's how
(32:37):
we met, and it sort oftook both of us by surprise, and
by day three we started planning ourwedding and talking about kid names. I
always tell my daughter, and youknow, she's twenty one, and you
have to go through a whole bunchof them before you find the right one.
And then when you least expect it, I was done with guys,
and then I met your dad andI was like, wait what and you
know all my friends and okay,this is great. I think that's great
(33:00):
wisdom. And I think for me, like my twenties were getting to know
myself, and I was at thirtythree, I think when I met my
wife around around there, so Iwas past sort of getting to know myself
a little bit. My prefrontal cortexwas a little bit more solid and like
who I was. And the timingreally was great. Is yeah. One
thing my husband always said, hissister told him this. She said,
(33:22):
Wow, you finally found somebody youliked better than yourself, because yeah,
I guess I did. And that'sthe whole thing too, is that you
do. You focus so much onyou, you, you, and then
all of a sudden you're like,okay now, and then the kids come
into the mix, and you've gottwo kids. Now? How different is
that? And how fun is that? It's amazing to me that I've ever
felt before this point in time thatlife has a lot of meaning because I
(33:45):
can't imagine a world without my kids. It has given me so much meaning
in life, and it is hard, Susie. Most people don't talk about
how hard. It is very hard. That zero to one phase is training
for the Olympics, it's I mean, it's training camp in Lehigh, and
especially for like the mother, it'smy wife has put harder work in than
(34:07):
anything I've ever seen in my life. And I've seen people working really hard
at different things, and so youknow, the struggle is worth it because
you care so so deeply. Butit is not that that zero to one
is not easy. My goal nowis to just be the best dad that
I possibly can, which maybe soundssimple and principle, but it's practice.
It's it's really hard. Yeah,you just try not to mess them up.
(34:29):
They don't give you a manual andthey don't tell you how to do
things very well. So you're like, okay, are we doing this right
well? And it will and everybodywill say it just keeps getting better,
and it really does. And nowthat I have kids in their twenties and
there are friends and we'd love totravel with them and it's really cool.
Yeah, so it's fun. Isometimes I miss those young, little innocent
days when nobody talked back, andyou know, those are fun times.
(34:51):
Those are fun. I'm in thoseright now. Yeah, No, those
are those are really fun. Okay. So you mentioned Integrate. You're the
CEO of Integrate. What is thatcompany? And obviously it's grown very,
very large. I started to Integratenow twelve years ago and it's a software
business for marketers. And you know, it started from really humble beginnings,
an idea on a whiteboard, aco founder who was technical, so he
sort of built what I would havefigured that would work, and I took
(35:14):
it to market in those early days. And I like to call the business
an overnight success ten years later becauseyou know those first three or four years,
there was multiple times where we thoughtwe were going to put padlocks on
the door as we were running outof capital. It just wasn't working.
We weren't providing product market fit.It's been a really tough journey, but
in twenty sixteen we really hit somebig tailwinds and you know, found product
(35:35):
market fit and landed Microsoft as acustomer and Adobe and Salesforce, and so
today that the businesses. You know, we're still a startup, but we're
quite large. We were acquired byprivate equity two years ago at the sort
of height of the valuation. Wow, and we sold for a big nine
figure number that's not been disclosed,but you know, it was an incredible
outcome for all my investors and myteam and of course my family. And
(35:59):
so I'm really really grateful for youto audex the private equity from that.
They own it now and you're stillinvolved though they've kept me on. Okay,
that's great. Deal was sort ofcontingent upon me staying at CEO,
so I continue to run the businessand having a lot of fun and still
learning a lot. So and allalong the way, you have done what
the name of your most recent bookis and that's recalibrate. Put that out
(36:22):
this spring. Tell me about yourbook. I always talk about reinvention,
and I really like the word recalibrate. I love the word recalibrate, Susan.
I look at the sort of theark of my of my history of
my life, whether it be footballand you know, climbing the ranks as
an undersized kid that you know,against all odds, or or skiing and
failing many more times than I succeededin route to making the US ski team
(36:45):
and going to Olympics, or buildinga nonprofit that's now part of AARP,
or a company that got acquired byprivate equity. And I think the common
thread in all four of those isthe ability to recalibrate, the ability to
face adversity, face FI and useit as an input rather than something that's
going to deter you from continuing thejourney. Remember those early GPS systems like
(37:07):
the Tom Tom and the Garden Yeah, that you'd plug into your cigarette lighter.
Well, those sort of came ofage when I was just first traveling
the world and we'd be in Switzerlandall of a sudden, we wouldn't need
a map, and you plug itin and you put the destination to the
skier where you're going, and ifyou take a wrong turn, it just
says recalibrating, and it puts youright on a different path. And by
the way, that different path thatyou didn't know that you were going to
(37:28):
take ultimately gets you to your destination. And I think there's a lot of
commonality that in life. It's likewe have a goal, we think we
know the path that's going to getus there. Ultimately, it's never that
path that we think. There's alwaysthese detours, we make these wrong turns,
and the Tom Tom or the garmentdoesn't say, oh, gosh,
well I'm terrible at giving directions.I should just screw it up. Turn
(37:50):
Yeah, I should just quit andyou know, cancel this operating says.
So I think that there's sage wisdomto this concept of really learning how to
recalibrate in life. And no matterwhat the inputs you're seeing or the failures
or the experiences that you're having,knowing and having the confidence that's just an
input, what can you learn fromit? How can you use that sort
of waypoint to recalibrate your destination ofwhere you're going? And I think by
(38:13):
doing that and this is this issomething that I've had to practice years and
years on, I'm just not emotionalin these experiences that I used to be
very emotional. And when things don'twork, when when we lose a customer,
we don't get funding, or youknow, any of these things,
or a failed relationship, it's sortof it's given me the opportunity to have
a framework that really scales interesting.So, without giving away too much of
the books, I want people toget your book. But my last question
(38:36):
to you would be what do youtell people when they have kind of those
ups and downs and when they're down, how to recalibrate and figure out,
you know, how do I goin a different direction and have the faith
that it's going to be successful.Well, there's two different types of people.
There's bouncers and there's splatters. Andthere's people that just splat, you
know, right on the floor whenthey are received bad news or they find
(38:59):
something that life is not working out. And there's other people that bounce.
They use the inertia that of thatexperience to sort of the ball bounces back
and you're sort of back on thejourney and the good news for everybody.
This is a learned skill. It'snot an innate skill. It's not like
you're either born with the fact thatyou can't bounce with this inershore or that
you splat. And that's why Iwrote the book, because I've learned a
(39:19):
lot of through the anecdotes of mylife, the experiences that I've had,
but I've also learned a lot fromothers. So I wrote the book and
I think it provides a framework forpeople who are curious, you know,
about the topic, because I certainlyI certainly was and recalibrate. It's sort
of in pre release right now inAmazon. And you know, it was
a fun experience and I did learna lot through it. I bet you
did. Yeah, Well, we'llget the link to the book and the
(39:43):
show notes because I want people toget it. I need to get it.
I need to read it, becausethat's what this podcast is about.
It. It's all focused on athletesand coaches, but you don't get to
do it forever as much as you'dlike to. And the things that you
missed, the locker room that youmiss, the camaraderie with the teammates.
Yeah, just one more point onthat. To build on it, you
know, because I really do believewe're all built with the ability to recalibrate
really quickly. And if we thinkabout being an infant again, and I
(40:06):
sort of have a front row seatand I have two kids under three,
but think about how we learn inthis world as infants. I watch my
son take a thousand steps and falldown before he learned how to walk.
I listened to him, you know, utter all these crazy words before he
learns the English language. And Ithink to myself, if my son had
an ego, an adult ego,he'd probably never walk because after a couple
(40:28):
steps of it not working, he'dbe like, oh, well, I'm
just not built to work. Orif he you know, we wouldn't learn
nearly the things that we would learnif we had adult egos as infants.
And so we were all built withthe ability to use a failure like falling
or not knowing how to speak thelanguage in route to learning and mastering it.
So we all have it in us. We just have to learn how
to tap into it as adult.I need to go back to our infant
(40:51):
egos. That's right, which thereisn't one, right, I know,
it's like little kids I always looa little kids. I'm like, they
look like little, tiny drunk peoplethat just don't care what happens, and
they fall over and they just getright back up and they're totally fine.
Right. Yeah. Oh, Jeremy, this has been so much fun.
Thank you for the time. AndI look forward to checking out the book.
And it's been so fun just towatch your career. Like I said,
(41:13):
you know, I've been watching youand covering you for twenty years,
and knowing your family and knowing Mollyand Jordan, and just seeing what everybody
has done in the Bloom family hasbeen really cool. And I love that
you guys have all really stayed hereand stayed very connected to Colorado. I
know that's been important to you todo that. Oh, absolutely has.
It's always good to see you,Susie. Thanks for having me. Thanks
Jeremy, Thanks so much. Jeremy. Make sure you check out the podcast
(41:34):
notes for a link to his bookRecalibrate on Amazon. New episodes of Cut,
Traded, Fired, Retired come outevery Tuesday. Please download and,
if possible, review this podcast.Wherever you listen to podcasts, you can
keep up on new podcast releases byfollowing on Twitter and Instagram at ctfur Podcast
and also on the website ctfropodcast dotcom. If you like cut, traded,
(41:55):
fired, retired, it would beamazing if you shared some episode with
your friends. I'm your host,Susie Wargen. To find out more about
me, visit Susiewargen dot com.Thanks so much for listening, and until
next time, please be careful,be safe and be kind. Take care
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