27 Drew Bledsoe Career Change, NFL to Business
b"Drew Bledsoe, the top draft pick in the NFL, knew football doesn't last forever. How he transitioned to an entirely new occupation.\\n\\n\\n\\nCareer change is a key to life today and must be planned ahead. Today, we have a very special guest and an exemplary position in life to give you a perspective that\\u2019s very different and something that we\\u2019ve talked about in other episodes, but here we have a real life example. Today we have Drew Bledsoe. If there\\u2019s anybody on the planet who doesn\\u2019t know or remember, he was drafted number one in the NFL, and then became a starting quarterback, etc. Extremely successful. We know that.\\n\\nI want to talk a little bit both about how he got there, what he went through, what he did, and then the new business he\\u2019s in, which is wine; how he did that, how he made the transition, because that\\u2019s what so many people have to do so many times in life. Almost nobody ends up in the same place, or the same job, or the same career that they started with.\\n\\nWelcome, Drew.\\n\\nDrew Bledsoe: Thanks for having me on. I\\u2019m really excited to visit with you, Thomas, and I welcome the opportunity.\\n\\nThomas: Thank you. Thank you for coming on. You\\u2019re such a good example . Could you tell us a little bit about what it takes to attain the level in sports that you did?\\n\\nDrew:\\xa0 There are a lot of things at work, there. First, you\\u2019ve got to program your mind. If somebody saw me in the seventh or eighth grade, I was not the guy that anybody was going to pick out as the guy who was going to go on to be a professional athlete. I was tall and skinny, and not very fast. I had really big feet; I just didn\\u2019t move very well.\\n\\nThat didn\\u2019t change how I viewed myself in my mind. I really felt like I could be a great football player, and really programmed my mind so that I could never accept anything less than my very best effort, whether it came to training, practice, school \\u2013 you name it. Because I had those high expectations and that view of myself as somebody that was going to be excellent, I wouldn\\u2019t accept less than my very best in anything that I did. That was really where it started.\\n\\nThomas: It\\u2019s interesting, because so often so many people think that somebody has just got this natural ability, natural talent, and that\\u2019s why they are where they are. I know in college, etc., when I went to graduate school at Berkeley, my impression was: \\u201cOh, gosh. I\\u2019m going to meet these professors, and they\\u2019re just these superhuman people.\\u201d Then, low and behold, I get in there and I find out they\\u2019re there early, they\\u2019re there late, they\\u2019re working on weekends. These are Nobel Prize winners. It wasn\\u2019t just a gift. It was also a dedication, effort, and fortitude. I am hearing you saying something of the same thing. Is that true?\\n\\nDrew: You\\u2019re 100% right. One of the advantages that I had, as I was growing up, my father and his good friend ran a football camp and I got a chance to be around very successful professional football players when I was growing up. I got a chance to see these guys and meet these guys, and I discovered that they\\u2019re not superheroes. They are regular guys that have athletic ability that obviously is outside the norm, but that\\u2019s not really what allowed them to be successful. What allowed them to be successful was the work they put in, and the continued work that they put in.\\n\\nFred Biletnikoff, who was one of the great wide receivers ever to play professional football, and still, the best receiver in college football every year receives the Biletnikoff Award. I got to meet and be around Fred Biletnikoff when I was growing up, and the guy, I think he was probably 5\\u201910-5\\u201911, probably 180 pounds, and by the time I met him, slightly balding. He was not the guy that you looked at and said: \\u201cMan, that guy is an NFL wide receiver.\\u201d\\n\\nWhen I was around him, every time he was on the practice field just coaching kids up, he was always practicing running routes, and he was always practicing proper catching technique,"