I have a daughter. Her name is Eloise. She’s 14. And I have a son. His name is Axel. He’s 11. And our youngest is Lyla; she’s 9 — I’m a little worried about her. She’s a little crazy, little Lyla. But when my wife, Dawn, was pregnant with Eloise, she was pregnant with our first. So this was 15 years ago. And Eloise and Axel and Lyla were 10-pound babies. We lived in Beverly Hills when Dawn was pregnant with Eloise. Her belly was literally out that far because it’s a 10-pounder in there toward the end of the pregnancy. And if you live in Beverly Hills and your belly is out to there, every person in Beverly Hills, whether you’re at the coffee shop or buying groceries or just walking down the street on Rodeo Drive, sprints up to your belly and does this. [visual] And they ask, “Where is this child going to preschool?” So I go, “We don’t know. We haven’t met her yet. We don’t even know her. We don’t know a preschool.” She’s like, “No, no, no. You have to have this child enrolled in a preschool today. And if you don’t, this child will never get into the right elementary school. And this child will never get into the correct high school. And this child will never get into the proper college. Basically, you are raising a loser.”

My wife and I, we don’t know what to do, right? We’re like, “OK, we don’t want to raise a loser.” So we get on the preschool train in Beverly Hills. And then Eloise is born a month later. We meet Eloise, and then we start searching. We don’t even care that much about Eloise. We’re trying to find a preschool. So we’re all over Santa Monica, Brentwood, Beverly Hills — all over the place getting interviewed at these schools, and we get turned down by the first nine preschools. This is harder than going to college was for me.

Finally, the 10th preschool accepted my wife and me. We were so happy with ourselves. And each one of those nine that turned us down was more expensive than the last. But the 10th one accepted us. And so Eloise was in her crib, and we start paying for this preschool. She’s not going to that preschool for four years, so we start paying the preschool four years before Eloise grows up. And then we have another kid, Axel. He’s about 2, 2 1/2.

So, we go to the first day of preschool, and we take Eloise. We put her in her car seat, and we drive to this fancy preschool. We park on the street, and Dawn and I get Eloise out of the car seat, and we walk her into the little preschool. And I’m sure you guys have done this — they open the little gate, and we let Eloise go. Dawn and I are crying on the sidewalk waving goodbye to her.

She doesn’t even care. She walks right in the door. She’s good. But the one thing that I noticed about this preschool is that we were the only parents there. Every other kid in this preschool was being dropped off by a nanny and a town car.

So, you might know this if you have kids this age. I don’t know what the deal is with this preschool that we went to, but every weekend some kid in Eloise’s class had a birthday. Every weekend, there’s a kid whose got to have a birthday. They have these gigantic cool birthday parties, and they’re all the same, and they all drive me crazy. Because, I mean, we go every weekend to some kid’s party. We turn onto the fancy street. We park. We take Axel and Eloise out of their car seats. We walk into the fancy house and say hi to the fancy family, and I just walk straight out to the backyard. And these backyards aren’t like the ones you and I have. These are giant backyards. You’re like, “Oh my God.” And then Madonna’s over there, and Paula Abdul is giving dance lessons right over there. And there are piñatas and sand. You know the rusty equipment we had with our swing sets? That chain-link thing? They didn’t have that. These are wood and sand and piñatas and jugglers.

They have everything at these parties, and they drive me crazy. You know why? Because every time all the dads of these kids in Eloise’s class get into a huddle at every one of these parties right on the grass. And they’re all entertainment agents and entertainment lawyers, and they all get in the huddle and brag to each other about how they’re responsible for somebody walking down the red carpet or somebody being on the cover of “People” magazine. I don’t know how to contribute to the dads, to that conversation, so I just walk around and find my uncomfortable spot over here in the grass — at every party. I just stand there, and that’s what I do. And here comes another weekend — oh, what a shocker, another birthday party for Eloise’s class. OK, so we pack up the kids. Dawn and I put them in the car. We drive to the fancy neighborhood in Santa Monica. So nice. We pull over on the fancy street, and then we get the kids out. We walk to the fancy house. And I do what I always do, which is to wave at the fancy family, and then I walk straight out to the backyard and find my little uncomfortable spot right about here. [visual] And all the agents and lawyers are right here in the huddle. So I just find my little spot, and Eloise goes over there in the sand, and I’m watching her.

And Axel, who’s 2, 2 1/2, is over here in the shrubs. And he’s covered in mud. You can’t even see his face because his face is down in the shrubs. No one’s ever been in these shrubs before at this house. I’m just watching him, and I’m uncomfortable. I’m just sitting here watching the kids hoping we can get out of here soon. And Axel pops his head out of the shrubs, and he’s got something in his hands. He comes sprinting over to me at full speed. He’s like his dad. And what he had was a little white football covered in mud. And I said, “OK, this is my kind of party.” He wants to play catch. So Axel throws me the ball, and I catch it, and then I throw it right back to Axel, and he catches it. He throws it back to me. I catch it and throw it right back to Axel. He catches it and throws it back to me. I throw it back to Axel, and he drops the ball. I said, “Axel, don’t let the ball touch the ground.” And he said, “Oh yeah, Dad, oh yeah. He picks it up, and we continue to play catch. And right when I said that to Axel, this whole huddle did this. [visual] And they elected one of these guys to come have a little chat with me.

I could see this guy coming a mile away. I pretended I didn’t see him. I could see a man out of the corner of my eye, but I just kept playing catch with Axel. This guy walks right up to my ear and says, “Excuse me, sir. What did you just say to that boy?” I said, “That boy’s my son, and I told him, ‘Don’t let the ball touch the ground.’” “Really? Why would you say that to that boy?” I said, “That boy’s my son, and I say that to him because that’s a rule in our house; we don’t let the ball touch the ground.” “Really? Sir, why would that be a rule in your house?” I said, “Well, that’s a rule in our house because that was a rule in my house growing up. My dad bought my brother and me a football every Christmas. And my brother had to throw me that ball 1,000 times a day, and I had to catch that ball 1,000 times a day. My brother and I figured out that if that ball never touched the ground over that year, it would last to the next Christmas because my dad wasn’t getting a new one if we ruined that one. That’s why it’s a rule in my house.”

He said, “And how did that work out for you?” I was so happy he asked that question. I said, “It worked out pretty good. My brother and I both played in the NFL.” He said, “Really?” And as he returned to report back to the little huddle, he just could not let it go. He turned back around and said, “Sir, just so you know, I would never say that to my boy.” This is one of those times where you think of something good to say a day later. This is what I wished I’d said, but I didn’t: “Yeah, I wouldn’t say that to your son either. My daughter’s burying him in the sand right over there.”

When he gets back to the huddle, he reports to the beehive, and they are all over the place swarming. And I say to Axel, “Axel, pick up that ball. This family doesn’t need it. We’re taking it home. Let’s go.” We start walking out. I say, “Eloise, stop burying that kid, and let’s go.”

We walk into the kitchen. My wife’s in there talking to all the moms. I said, “Sweetheart, guess what? We’re leaving. Let’s go.” And we all go out to the fancy street, we put the kids in the car, and we start driving home. I’m like this on the steering wheel. [visual] And my wife is like, “Bo what’s the matter? Sweetheart, what happened?” I just remember saying this: “We’re moving.” We got home, we packed up, and we moved to an area outside of town, which was just a little bit more accepting of excellence. I am not comfortable with my life in the hands of amateurs. I am not comfortable with my kids in the charge of people who see mediocrity as being as high as you can possibly go. So, yeah, we moved.

Let’s talk about telling a personal story. Let’s talk about it, OK? All of you have one of those in you, all of you. There’s not one person in here or one person I’ve ever trained who doesn’t have one of those in them. You understand? It’s a simple story. It’s about a birthday party. It’s about kids. How could this relate? How could this work in business? You know why it works? Because you’re breaking down barriers of trust that are at the lowest levels we’ve ever had in this country. Gallup started doing a poll in 1974, and the poll was “Do you trust your neighbor.” In 1974, two-thirds of people said, “I trust my neighbor” — two-thirds. Now it’s down to one-third. Those are the people you share a back fence with. So what does that mean about the people sitting in this audience or across the street or from another country? Where’s the trust there? So, whoever is going to restore this eroded trust gets all the money, gets all that effect, gets all the impact, gets the date — the guy and the girl of your dreams.

It’s all one thing. If you have the ability to share yourself, to express this thing — whether it’s on video or on a phone or on a stage or in a meeting one-on-one or having a beer or a glass of wine with somebody — if you have the ability to share this instrument, this thing, then you’ve got it all. And there’s no one who can stop you, and you can build your business however you want to build it — to the point where you’re the one who decides how much income, how much you bring in. My wife runs our company, and we decide how much money we’re going to make. Guess why? Because all she has to do is go, “Bo, you’re on that stage,” and I go on that stage, or I go on that video. And we know there’s a dollar amount that’s equivalent to that. You’ve got to be able to share your story to be impactful up here.

I was asked a couple of years ago to go to London. They fly me to London, and they’re going to have the Top 100 financial advisors in the world in this audience. These guys and gals are three gals and 97 guys. These people manage or control a good majority of the money in Europe. They bring them all to this little library in London, and they bring me in to speak to them about how they can make more money. They bring me in, and they bring another dude in. This other guy runs a company called Oxford Analytica. Oxford Analytica has 200 think tanks throughout the world, and what they do is come up with threats. They come up with where the stock market could be going, where markets are going. They come up with all these analytics. And the dude is the complete opposite of me. So I get up, and I’m talking like this to them. I’m talking like this to all of these Europeans, and some of them are like, “Damn, this dude’s crazy!”

Then this dude gets up who runs Oxford Analytica, and he’s the opposite of me — you know, like real smart, glasses and stuff, and he’s got PowerPoints and stuff. He’s got things going on. I’m like, “That guy’s really cool.” But this dude, this speaker, comes up to me after I had spoken, and he says, “Bo, can I have a word with you?” I said, “Yeah, what?” He said, “All that stuff you were talking to those financial advisors about their personal stories being the key to their kingdom.” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Do you know you’re right?” I said, “I was hoping I was right. I’ve kind of dedicated my life to this.” He said, “Not only are you right, but I’m going to send you the analytics to prove you’re right.” I said, “Good, because I don’t have any analytics. All I’ve got is this primal, instinctual thing, certainly pretty good, right? But I don’t have a bunch of numbers.”

So he sends the study to me, and guess what it proves? Guess what the study shows? The study is about leadership, and the study begins with Julius Caesar and goes all the way through the centuries, all the way to the 2012 presidential elections in America. And they didn’t just have presidents and kings and queens. They were studying leadership. Lady Gaga was a part of this study, and, of all people, Osama bin Laden was a part of this study. They wanted to know why people follow people. And guess what the No. 1 ability you have to have is if people are to follow you? You have to have the ability to tell your own story because someone else will tell it if you don’t. You have to have the generosity to share yourself because what all people around you are waiting for— like in your communities at home and your audience online — is connective tissue, and you’re not giving them any because we can’t connect the numbers. We can’t. We can’t connect to columns; we connect to human beings, and human beings who share themselves get the connective tissue. That’s why every leader from Julius Caesar to Lady Gaga to Osama bin Laden all the way to the 2012 election — if those people can’t tell their story, they’re done. They have no effect.

Now, stories can be used for good, and they can be used for bad. Through history, they’ve been used for evil stuff, right? But they’re powerful. Stories work is what I’m telling you. So let’s think about this for a second. What is yours? What is your story? What is it? I’m going to train you on what this thing is. But let’s do an experiment first. I want all of you for five seconds to think of your greatest moment. Think of the moment that you are most proud of in your whole life. Now let’s think of the moment you looked around and there were no answers for you, when you thought it was over, when you had to pick up and fight for yourself. You made a decision in that moment. That’s a good story.

You know the story you don’t want to tell? That one. You know that one, right? I built a lifetime of armor to hide that one. That’s where all your gold lies right there. Isn’t that wild? It’s right there. So, let me train you on the story. Now listen, the first thing you have to surrender to when you’re telling your own story is that it’s got to be personal. It cannot be distant; you cannot be distant from it. It’s got to be personal. The more personal your story, the more effect you have on your audience. What was the first thing out of my mouth when I went onstage this morning? “I have a daughter. Her name is Eloise. She’s 14,” right? That was the first thing out of my mouth. Did I say anything else? No, that was it. That’s how I started. That’s how I want you to start because now you have the connection with your audience in the first sentence.

It’s got to be personal to you.

Now, there are a lot of people who go around training speakers and training these kind of people who are on video and on the phone, and businesspeople, and they say this line: “It’s not about me.” That’s what they say: “It’s not about me. It is about you. It’s about your connection to another person.” I’m not sitting here bragging, “Hey, I was an NFL player.” Did I do that? Did I go, “OK, I’m an NFL player”? You guys would have said, “Forget you, man.” You would have, right? You start with the story. You start with your mom. You start with your dad. You start with your daughter. Because the more personal it is to you, the more effect you have here. The more personal here, the more universality you get. Everybody connects with you based on how personal it is, so don’t be distant from your stories. This is the problem with the media and with politics. The reason we don’t trust them is because nothing’s personal to them. You don’t trust because nothing’s personal. They don’t tell personal things. They don’t talk about personal things. They’re so afraid to share who they are, so afraid that if they have no trust, they have no influence. They’re basically just running around talking. Isn’t that crazy? And if we rebuild this trust with us, with that personal story, then we’re the key to the kingdom. We’ve got it all. Everybody get this? The more personal, the more universal.

The second most critical step is storytelling physicality. Am I physical when I tell a story? Oh man, this is going to be bad news for some of you. Do you know what we are as human beings? I mean at the basic level, do you know what we are? We’re predators. Isn’t that weird? Now, I know, in this climate that we’re in, it is very risky to start talking about predators, isn’t it? Because who have we assigned this great moniker to? Who have we assigned this great, noble, trustworthy thing called a “predator” to? The worst of our society, the absolute worst of our society. The media says, “Let’s give them the noblest, the greatest, the most powerful thing that human beings are, and let’s assign it the worst moniker of our society, so everyone else has to walk around apologizing for who they are.”

It’s crazy. In your life, I don’t care what you do — you can walk around however you want to walk around — but you’re a predator, and you’ve been apologizing for way too long. Do you guys think bad of lions? Well, do you know that we’re more lethal than lions and great white sharks and orcas and falcons and eagles and cheetahs? We’re smarter, and we’re more lethal than them. And so you’re going to spend all of your life apologizing for it because that’s what the media tells you to do; that’s what society tells you to do. Why do you think they’re saying that? Why do you suppose they want to shame you for being what you are? Because they’re so afraid of their own shadow. That’s why they go into that business. Not us. I like being around the elite military. I like being around firefighters. I like being around moms with kids. Because I know what I’ve got. I’ve got a predator.

A lot of times when I’m talking like this, women will say, “Well, Bo, that sounds very masculine.” I’m like, “Really? Do you want me to introduce you to my mom?” My mom, she’s cool. She’s 88, still alive. She’s funny. She can dance. You guys would love her. If I put her on that stage, you’d love her. But if you step in the way of one of her kid’s dreams, you’re dead. That’s just how it goes.

So, guys, we don’t have the advantage of that. We don’t. That’s why guys — typically really elite athletics at the highest level — like the military because we want to fight, box. We want to test ourselves out there. Gals, you’re lucky you got it right here. [visual] You’ve got this protection mechanism that’s undeniable. So you’ve got to stop apologizing for it and bring it to the stage and bring it to video. Everybody got it? Here’s how apologies look, just to give you a couple of examples. [visual]

So, when I’m up here, you believe about 50 percent of what comes out of my mouth. And that’s true of every conversation you’ve ever had in your life. So imagine this — I’m up here talking, I say one sentence, and you go, “Oh yeah, Bo, OK, I believe that.” And then the very next sentence you go, “I don’t know, Bo. I don’t know if I believe that.” And then the next sentence you go, “Oh, I do believe it.” And the next one you don’t believe it. So you believe about 50 percent of what comes out of people’s mouths. But you believe this body 100 percent of the time because the body can’t lie. It won’t lie; it can’t lie.

We can do this all day. This is a learned thing or, better said, a relearned thing. We are predators. We know how to keep people off of us. We know how to kill things. We know how to give a speech. We know how to close a phone call. We know how to do that. We know how to go on a date. We know how to do that. We’ve just been off the mark. We’ve just been shamed right out of it. And so now we’re just walking around going, “I hope I don’t offend anybody. I’m just walking, I hope I don’t do anything right.”

I’ve been trained by the greatest movement coach in the world. His name is Jean-Louis Rodrigue, and he’s amazing. Some people in here have worked with him. He’s an amazing guy. He is obsessed with predator cats. So Jean-Louis trained me for the play because they brought in this movement guy. I go, “I don’t need no movement guy. I’m a friggin’ athlete!” That’s what I said to the director. The director had never seen a football game. He says, “Bo, we ended up bringing in a movement coach.” I’m like, “What? Have you ever seen me move?” And he’s like, “Yeah, it’s different on stage. It’s different.”

So they bring in Jean-Louis Rodrigue. He trains Leonardo DiCaprio and many big movie stars and musicians. Jean-Louis is obsessed with predator cats. He hears this story about the Nuba people in Africa. The Nuba people are known for not being eaten by predator cats, yet they live among them. And every other tribe that lives around the Nuba people gets eaten by the predator cats, but not the Nuba. Jean-Louis is like, “I can’t get my mind around this. How can that be?” He moves in with the Nuba people in Africa because he wants to teach the performers that he coaches exactly what the Nuba are doing. And he said, “Within a second, I just looked at the Nuba people, and the way they moved is how I moved. They move like predators, and they’re unapologetic about it. They move like this. [visual]

Imagine in the bush, in the trees, all around them are predator cats, everywhere. And the predator cats are, just based on instinct, going like this waiting for an easy meal. [visual] But they can’t get one with the Nuba people because the Nuba are unapologetic. They don’t have any weapons. They don’t need them. So Jean-Louis takes videos of these people. He takes pictures, and he brings them, and he shows them to us. We start to train exactly like the Nuba people. We turn into the predator ourselves so that other predators give us a wide berth and do not mess with us because predators are looking for victims, not only among the Nuba but here too. Our criminal element, they’re looking for an easy meal. They’re not looking for somebody who’s awake and alive and a predator and unapologetic.

So at the end of Jean-Louis’s stay, he goes to the leader of the Nuba and says, “Chief, what’s the deal, man? Hey, are you kidding me? No one’s ever been eaten by these cats? No one’s been attacked?” And the leader said, “No, we have some men eaten now and again.” And Jean-Louis goes, “How? When?” He said, “When the men drink, they get eaten.” So imagine the Nuba people going across the bush, moving just like they do, predators everywhere, no one wants a piece. Then they have a couple of pops at the local, and bam, dead. That’s how our world walks around — apologizing. These are all telltale signs that I’m not trusting my whole thing up here. And if you don’t trust it, they don’t trust it. It’s critical that when you start to get this physicality, this story that you have, you start attaching these molecules to this story so that this story is now moving around in space — dangerous but protective at the same time.

Why would I put a Navy SEAL here who could take that wall down and beat everybody up and blow things up and do anything he wants? Why aren’t you afraid of him? Why aren’t you afraid of firefighters who come charging up the stairs of burning buildings when you’re running out? Why aren’t you afraid of them? Because you trust them. Because somebody who trusts their own instrument, you trust. You fall in love with them. You rarely see it, so it’s intoxicating when you do see it, and that’s what we call love at first sight. You’ve all felt that, right? You don’t feel it very often, do you? Especially nowadays as we start to shut this thing down, we start to shut this body down to just protect ourselves. Now you never have that love at first sight anymore where you say, “Damn, who’s that?” Remember when that used to happen?

If you do it on stage, on video, you’ve got no competition because everyone else is embarrassed and afraid to offend. But you won’t. I promise that you won’t hurt anybody. But you can’t apologize for your physicality. Does everybody understand that the first critical step is that the story has to be personal?

What if I did this? [visual] You guys would have killed me by now. So if I walked out here, and I walked down, and I said, “Hi, I’m Bo Eason, and I played in the NFL. And I’m just going to apologize a little bit. OK. So I hope I don’t hurt anybody while I’m here. I just want to make sure everyone thinks I’m like them and that I won’t hurt them.” And I’m just doing all these goofy things that we do. You say to yourself, That dude doesn’t trust himself. And then you say, “I don’t need to trust him. I don’t need to care about him.” This is a human instinct that we all have. The first critical step is that your story has got to be personal. It’s got to be attached to the solar plexus. It’s got to be physical.

No. 3 is the most critical step, and it’s generosity. When I say “generosity,” I’m not talking about “Hey, Bo, I’m really generous; I left a big tip.” I’m not talking about that. Or “Hey, Bo, I give a lot of money to charity.” I’m not talking about that kind of generosity. I’m talking about the art of giving all of one’s self all of the time. Do you remember a guy named Jerry Rice? For those of you who don’t remember Jerry Rice, he’s known as the greatest football player ever to put a uniform on. He’s got so many more touchdowns than the guy in second place that he’ll never be caught. So I just have to play against this dude, Jerry Rice, and it is a friggin’ nightmare. When you play against somebody who’s willing to give all of himself for 60 minutes out there, it is a nightmare. But at the end of my career, I got traded from the Houston Oilers to the San Francisco 49ers. So me and the greatest player ever to play the game are on the same team. And I was like, “That’s good.”

And so the first day of training camp in Rockland, California, it was 110 degrees. This is my new team. I’d been in Houston for five years. I was in San Francisco putting on my uniform, and this is a little deal I made with myself when I was a kid. When I was little, I said to myself, I’m going to be the first person always and forever on the practice field. And I’m going to be the last person to ever leave that field every day and every night. I never told anybody about it; I just did it. And for 20 years, it went on where nobody beat me out there, and I was always the last one to leave the field. Then I got traded to San Francisco. I arrived in the locker room 2 1/2 hours before any players were there. I put on my uniform; I was going to be the first one out at the training camp. I get it all on, looking good in red and gold, and I walked out onto the field in Rockland, California. I looked around. I said, “Yeah, 20 years, baby!” I looked right over there, and guess who was standing there? The greatest player in the history of the game. How could that be?

I immediately thought of all the other guys who weren’t as good as him. Why weren’t they out here? And there he was. And so 2 1/2 hours went by. Jerry and I were warming up with the rest of the team, including Joe Montana, Steve Young, Ronnie Lott, Roger Craig. The Super Bowl team all got there. They all came out, and they were all sleepy-eyed. They’d been at the dorms. They ate breakfast, and they came out, and Jerry and I are warmed up. So here’s the warm-up for an NFL first day, first practice training camp: Joe Montana was about right here. [visual] He snapped a ball, and it just went nice and easy, and he threw some routes to the receivers who were all over here in the line. There were 16 receivers in this line right here; Jerry Rice was one of them. He was a receiver — 16 dudes were trying to make this San Francisco 49ers team.

The first guy came up — these were warm-ups, mind you. Joe Montana snapped the ball, and this is what the first receiver did: All-Pro glide, all cool, broke off a low slant route. Joe threw the ball; the receiver caught the ball and stopped. He walked the ball back to Joe Montana, gave Joe the ball and got back in line. The next guy came up, and this is what he did: All-Pro glide, all cool, broke off a low slant route. Joe threw the ball; the receiver caught the ball, stopped, walked the ball back to Joe Montana and got in line. And then Jerry Rice came up, the greatest player in the history of the game, and this is what he did: Full speed, bam, broke off a slam, bam, caught the ball. He was gone! The rest of us were going, “What the hell is he doing?” He ran 100 yards full speed into the end zone, turned around and ran full speed 100 yards back. He handed the ball to Joe Montana and got back in line. I said, “Damn.”

The next guy came up and was going to run a little out route. Joe Montana snapped the ball, and this is what the receiver did: All-Pro glide, all cool, broke off a little out. Joe threw the ball; the receiver caught the ball, stopped and handed the ball to Joe Montana.

Then Jerry Rice came up again. That’s what he did: full speed, bam, broke it out, bam, caught the ball, boom, he was gone. Gone, over and over and over and over again. He must have run 10 miles of sprints, every time, getting his body into the end zone. And every time turning around and sprinting all the way back to Joe Montana. I played for 20 years. I’ve never seen anything like that. So I went up to Jerry at the end the practice. I said, “Hey, Jerry, what’s the deal with you? What was all that, the running? Why do you do it?” He said, “Oh, Bo, that’s very simple. I do that because every time these hands touch a ball, this body ends up in an end zone somewhere.”

Mind you, we’re talking about generosity, right? I’ve never seen anybody as willing to give of himself to a sport, or to anything ever, to an art form. He has the dial turned up so high on generosity, and you and me — we’ve got our fingers on that dial too. So we’re the ones controlling that. I can’t control it if I haven’t any talent, but I am going to give you all I’ve got just based on my relationship with Jerry Rice. I mean, a couple of years ago my wife came running into our bedroom and said, “Bo, guess what? Your old teammate, Jerry Rice, is on “Dancing with the Stars.” What do you think I said? “He’ll win.” And he did. He won second place because he’s going to outwork everybody.

Most of us in locker rooms can dance, right? Jerry Rice can’t dance. All the rest of us can, but he can’t, and I can’t figure that out. But he beat them. And he beat them just because he stayed longer, just because he was out there grinding. And you and me control that; that’s what’s so cool about our lives. If you are onstage, and everything’s personal to you, and if you’re physical and you give them all you’ve got, you can go anywhere with your audience. They’re going to trust you; they’re going to go with you. Then some people are going to be afraid and say, “I’m not working with that dude” or “I’m not working with her.” Because it points out too much of what they’re not. And that’s cool; it’s totally fine. It’s fine. But the people who relate to and trust their own instincts, they trust their own human nature. They’re with you forever. Everybody got me? Because you’re with yours, right?

A couple of years ago, a young couple came to me and said, “Hey, Bo, will you marry us?” And I’m like, “Well, no, I’m not a preacher man.” They said, “No, no, we think you are.” And apparently I am because I went on the internet, and in about eight minutes, I was a preacher man. So, I’m a preacher man, and I’m officiating at my first wedding ever in a church in Santa Barbara, California. It’s a beautiful young couple with their families, with me standing up there with this young couple. I don’t use books or a PowerPoint or anything like that. I wanted to look official, though. I wanted to say something important and meaningful, so I bought this leather-bound notebook. It didn’t have anything in it, but it looked really cool.

I’m standing in front a congregation with this empty book, and at the first wedding I ever presided over, this was the first thing out of my mouth: “When I think of marriage, the first person I think of is Jerry Rice.” Every dude in the church was like, “Yeah, man, finally my kind of wedding.” Every lady was like, “Was Jerry Rice a famous romantic?” I’m telling you, he changed everything in my life — the way I got married, changed generosity, the way I parent. It changed because a guy was willing to give all of himself. Sometimes when I take the stage, which is a lot, I go, “Oh, why don’t I just give them 50 percent of what I’ve got?” And then I think it’s because I’m tired or I’m sick or I’ve got a sprained ankle. I’m like, “I’ll just give them a little bit; it’ll be OK.” And then I get out here, and I think of Jerry Rice, and I just go, “Give them all you’ve got. Give them everything you’ve got.”

So the first critical step is it’s got to be personal, got to be here. My daughter said this or my dad said this here — that’s what people relate to. Then they’ll start telling their story. Now you’ve got connection. Right from the first thing out of your mouth, you have connection right away; you don’t have to wait. Most people wait way too long. They think, I’ll get some connection in 10 minutes. That’s too late. You need it now, in the first sentence, personal. The second thing is physicality — let this predatory nature out. You won’t hurt anybody. In my workshops, Jean-Louis Rodrigue is there, and he turns you. He turned you into the predator that you are — no different than he does with Leonardo DiCaprio and other movie stars.

He gets his hands on you, and it’s not like it’s weird. I mean, he can really do it with a touch. He can really do it with just that, move that, do that. And all of a sudden, you go from this. [visual] I’ll try to do it. It’s hard to do. Once you’ve been a predator, it’s hard to be a nerd. So if you just go outside in the halls, you’re going to see this all day, every day. Watch. The human body is the most magnificent instrument of expression, and we use it like that. Now, watch when you guys go to break, go to lunch. Watch how you go to the urinal. It’s like a whole different experience. You’re like, “Damn.” That’s kind of how it is. Got to be physical.

And third is how much are you willing to give of yourself? Turn the thing up so it exposes you. You need to be exposed. This is why you don’t trust anybody because everyone’s afraid to expose who they are. They’re afraid to share who they are. They’re afraid to reveal anything about themselves. So just walking around like this: “I hope I’m not revealing. I hope I’m not too sexy. I hope my hair is OK. I hope my butt’s not too big.” We’re just walking around like this clog of ailments, instead of what we naturally are, which are predators. Do you know why we’re put on this earth? Do you ever think about that? There are three things we’re put on this earth to do. Do you know what those three are? Hunt, run fast and appropriate.

So, you’ve got to start asking yourself, How often am I doing those things? The rest of the world’s trying to numb this up. And to do it, you have to go against your own nature. You have to take a shot of Novocain. And you’ve got to go like this, like the rest of the world has done, and push Novocain into your heart until your numb enough to just dillydally around with these mediocre lawyers and agents that I’ve got to deal with in backyards. Do you ever wonder why they make 1,000 movies a year in Hollywood and there’s nothing to see? I love movies. Every weekend, I want to go to the movies. In a year’s time, how many times are my wife and I walking out going, “Damn, did you see that? That was inspiring. Did you see that movie? Damn. Why don’t we do that?” This is why.

This is why. Don’t be so excellent. Let the ball touch the ground a lot. It’s OK. Really? That’s why I am not down with that. I am not for that; I don’t think we’re made that way. I don’t like it. Everybody got me? Yeah, that’s how we’re going to play, right? Yeah, just like that. Would it be helpful for you if you could do what I do on stage? Just imagine for a second, because, look, I was an athlete, right? I played sports. I didn’t have any kind of background in this stuff. Then I went into the theater. I didn’t have any background in theater. I didn’t have to write a play, but I just wrote it. Imagine, just for a second, your business. If you can do that in front of people on video, on stage, or around a beer; if you have the ability to express yourself; if you have the ability to reacquaint yourself with your physicality and give all of yourself, imagine what that means to the bottom line of your business.

Now all that’s up to you. It’s not like you’ve got to be a brain surgeon to do this stuff. But you do have to give everything you’ve got. You can do that because you’re the one who’s controlling that. You’re still a little push over the edge. You just need the team that can put you there and put you in that place, the same team that trained me to be able to do this. I can’t stand watching somebody on stage, or somebody on video, who’s not willing to give of themselves and won’t share any intimate things about themselves so I can get to know them and trust them. You’re going to do it. You’re going to do it.

Bo Eason, is a former NFL standout, acclaimed Broadway playwright and performer, and presence/story coach to some of the most successful people in the world. He wrote and performed the play Runt of the Litter, which has toured more than 50 cities nationally and was named “one of the most powerful plays in the last decade” by the New York Times. Eason is currently adapting the play for the big screen.